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yourreddancer · 3 months ago

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Heather Cox Richardson 11.15.24

One of President-elect Trump’s campaign pledges was to eliminate the Department of Education. He claimed that the department pushes “woke” ideology on America’s schoolchildren and that its employees “hate our children.” He promised to “return” education to the states.

In fact, the Department of Education does not set curriculum; states and local governments do. The Department of Education collects statistics about schools to monitor student performance and promote practices based in evidence. It provides about 10% of funding for K–12 schools through federal grants of about $19.1 billion to high-poverty schools and of $15.5 billion to help cover the cost of educating students with disabilities.

It also oversees the $1.6 trillion federal student loan program, including setting the rules under which colleges and universities can participate. But what really upsets the radical right is that the Department of Education is in charge of prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race and sex in schools that get federal funding, a policy Congress set in 1975 with an act now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This was before Congress created the department.

The Department of Education became a stand-alone department in May 1980 under Democratic president Jimmy Carter, when Congress split the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare into two departments: the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education.

A Republican-dominated Congress established the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1953 under Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower as part of a broad attempt to improve the nation’s schools and Americans’ well-being in the flourishing post–World War II economy. When the Soviet Union beat the United States into space by sending up the first Sputnik satellite in 1957, lawmakers concerned that American children were falling behind put more money and effort into educating the country’s youth, especially in math and science.

But support for federal oversight of education took a devastating hit after the Supreme Court, headed by Eisenhower appointee Chief Justice Earl Warren, declared racially segregated schools unconstitutional in the May 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Immediately, white southern lawmakers launched a campaign of what they called “massive resistance” to integration. Some Virginia counties closed their public schools. Other school districts took funds from integrated public schools and used a grant system to redistribute those funds to segregated private schools. Then, Supreme Court decisions in 1962 and 1963 that declared prayer in schools unconstitutional cemented the decision of white evangelicals to leave the public schools, convinced that public schools were leading their children to perdition.

In 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan ran on a promise to eliminate the new Department of Education.

After Reagan’s election, his secretary of education commissioned a study of the nation’s public schools, starting with the conviction that there was a “widespread public perception that something is seriously remiss in our educational system.” The resulting report, titled “A Nation at Risk,” announced that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”

Although a later study commissioned in 1990 by the Secretary of Energy found the data in the original report did not support the report’s conclusions, Reagan nonetheless used the report in his day to justify school privatization. He vowed after the report’s release that he would “continue to work in the months ahead for passage of tuition tax credits, vouchers, educational savings accounts, voluntary school prayer, and abolishing the Department of Education. Our agenda is to restore quality to education by increasing competition and by strengthening parental choice and local control.”

The rise of white evangelism and its marriage to Republican politics fed the right-wing conviction that public education no longer served “family values” and that parents had been cut out of their children’s education. Christians began to educate their children at home, believing that public schools were indoctrinating their children with secular values.

When he took office in 2017, Trump rewarded those evangelicals who had supported his candidacy by putting right-wing evangelical activist Betsy DeVos in charge of the Education Department. She called for eliminating the department—until she used its funding power to try to keep schools open during the covid pandemic—and asked for massive cuts in education spending.

Rather than funding public schools, DeVos called instead for tax money to be spent on education vouchers, which distribute tax money to parents to spend for education as they see fit. This system starves the public schools and subsidizes wealthy families whose children are already in private schools. DeVos also rolled back civil rights protections for students of color and LGBTQ+ students but increased protections for students accused of sexual assault.

In 2019, the 1619 Project, published by the New York Times Magazine on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of enslaved Africans at Jamestown in Virginia Colony, argued that the true history of the United States began in 1619, establishing the roots of the country in the enslavement of Black Americans. That, combined with the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, prompted Trump to commission the 1776 Project, which rooted the country in its original patriotic ideals and insisted that any moments in which it had fallen away from those ideals were quickly corrected. He also moved to ban diversity training in federal agencies.

When Trump lost the 2020 election, his loyalists turned to undermining the public schools to destroy what they considered an illegitimate focus on race and gender that was corrupting children. In January 2021, Republican activists formed Moms for Liberty, which called itself a parental rights organization and began to demand the banning of LGBTQ+ books from school libraries. Right-wing activist Christopher Rufo engineered a national panic over the false idea that public school educators were teaching their students critical race theory, a theory taught as an elective in law school to explain why desegregation laws had not ended racial discrimination.

After January 2021, 44 legislatures began to consider laws to ban the teaching of critical race theory or to limit how teachers could talk about racism and sexism, saying that existing curricula caused white children to feel guilty.

When the Biden administration expanded the protections enforced by the Department of Education to include LGBTQ+ students, Trump turned to focusing on the idea that transgender students were playing high-school sports despite the restrictions on that practice in the interest of “ensuring fairness in competition or preventing sports-related injury.”

During the 2024 political campaign, Trump brought the longstanding theme of public schools as dangerous sites of indoctrination to a ridiculous conclusion, repeatedly insisting that public schools were performing gender-transition surgery on students. But that cartoonish exaggeration spoke to voters who had come to see the equal rights protected by the Department of Education as an assault on their own identity. That position leads directly to the idea of eliminating the Department of Education.

But that might not work out as right-wing Americans imagine. As Morning Joe economic analyst Steven Rattner notes, for all that Republicans embrace the attacks on public education, Republican-dominated states receive significantly more federal money for education than Democratic-dominated states do, although the Democratic states contribute significantly more tax dollars.

There is a bigger game afoot, though, than the current attack on the Department of Education. As Thomas Jefferson recognized, education is fundamental to democracy, because only educated people can accurately evaluate the governmental policies that will truly benefit them.

In 1786, Jefferson wrote to a colleague about public education: “No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom, and happiness…. Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against [the evils of “kings, nobles and priests”], and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 months ago

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Guy Venables

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 16, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Nov 16, 2024

In 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan ran on a promise to eliminate the new Department of Education.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#TFG #cabinet appointments #Guy Venables #Letters From An American #heather cox richardson #Dept. of Education #history #American History #integration #segregation racism #vouchers

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misfitwashere · 3 months ago

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November 16, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

NOV 17

In 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan ran on a promise to eliminate the new Department of Education.

#heather cox richardson #letters from an american #As Thomas Jefferson recognized #education is fundamental to democracy #because only educated people can accurately evaluate the governmental policies that will truly benefit them.

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sidewalkstamps · 6 months ago

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L. Glenn Switzer Contractor 1930 (Photo taken April 29, 2024 on Glenalbyn Dr. & Glenmuir Ave.)

According to the Los Angeles Times, L. Glenn Switzer died at the age of 96 on July 11, 1990, so he was born in either 1894 or 1893. He started "the first ready-mix concrete company in Southern California" in Pasadena in 1930. The company, Transit Mixed Concrete Co., worked "at construction sites throughout Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Imperial counties," in addition to manufacturing concrete blocks and panels. He was a Quaker and was "president of the national Conference of Quaker Men" in 1954" ("L. Glenn Switzer; Formed Ready-Mix Concrete Firm." Los Angeles Times, July 22, 1990.

In 1941, L. Glenn Switzer was the manager of Transit Mixed Concrete Co. They had multiple locations including 1000 North La Brea in Los Angeles, 3492 E Foothill Blvd. in Pasadena, and 780 Union Pacific Place, which doesn't currently exist but I think may be in Commerce, CA (Los Angeles City Directory 1941, Los Angeles City Directory Co., 1941).

In an advertisement in 1945, Transit Mixed Concrete Co described themselves as "Pioneers of Transit-Mixed Concrete in Southern California" (Southwest Builder and Contractor, Volume 106, F. W. Dodge Company, 1945).

According to Switzer v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, United States Tax Court, June 30, 1953, 20 T.C. 759 (U.S.T.C. 1953), L. Glenn Switzer and Howard A. Switzer were partners in the company in 1944-45. Their respective wives were Ida H. and Florence M. Apparently they didn't commit fraud with intent to evade tax, but the husbands were deficient due to negligence.

We learn from Find a Grave that L. was Lewis. He was born in Iowa in on June 26, 1894 and died in L.A. County on July 11, 1990. He is buried in Mountain View Cemetery and Mausoleum in Altadena, CA. His wife, Ida, was born in Iowa and they married on December 29, 1915 in Marshall, Iowa. They had at least two sons (Elmo Glenn, Eugene Lewis) and one daughter (Mayme Elizabeth). She lived in Pasadena in the 1940 and 1950 censuses. She died on October 18, 1987 and was also buried in Mountain View Cemetery and Mausoleum in Altadena, CA.

Howard Allison Switzer was Lewis's brother (they also had four other siblings: Elias Claire, Gladys Lucile, Richard Kent, and Florence Eliza) and co-founder. He was born on July 30 or 31, 1908 in Ladora, Iowa and died on January 7, 1997 in Los Angeles, CA. He is also buried at Mountain View Cemetery and Mausoleum in Altadena, CA (Find a Grave). Their parents were Richard Martin Switzer and Carrie Estella Lewis. (The photo above is Howard in the 1920s, probably in Long Beach, CA, and was submitted to Find a Grave by 'jmb'.) According to his obituary in the Los Angeles Times, he had moved to Long Beach, CA in 1920 with his parents and sister. "He joined his father and older brother in their concrete contracting company after graduating from Long Beach High School." This company was a predecessor to Transit Mix Concrete Company, which, according to the same obituary, was "credited with using the first concrete mixer trucks, which prepare the concrete to be poured once it gets to the job site" (January 9, 1997). Howard moved to Pasadena in 1932 and married Florence.

She lived to 105 and had lived her whole life in Pasadena, CA! They had four sons: Forrest, Roy, Marshall, and Norman. She was "known as Flossie to most of her friends." ("Florence Switzer Obituary," Pasadena Star-News).

Other sources:

The Tax Fortnighter Annual, Fallon Publications, 1954

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brookstonalmanac · 7 months ago

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Events 7.26 (before 1940)

657 – First Fitna: In the Battle of Siffin, troops led by Ali ibn Abu Talib clash with those led by Muawiyah I. 811 – Battle of Pliska: Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros I is killed and his heir Staurakios is seriously wounded. 920 – Rout of an alliance of Christian troops from Navarre and Léon against the Muslims at the Battle of Valdejunquera. 1309 – The Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII is recognized King of the Romans by Pope Clement V. 1509 – The Emperor Krishnadevaraya ascends to the throne, marking the beginning of the regeneration of the Vijayanagara Empire. 1529 – Francisco Pizarro González, Spanish conquistador, is appointed governor of Peru. 1579 – Francis Drake, the English explorer, discovers a "fair and good" bay on the coast of the Pacific Northwest (probably Oregon or Washington). 1581 – Plakkaat van Verlatinghe (Act of Abjuration): The northern Low Countries declare their independence from the Spanish king, Philip II. 1703 – During the Bavarian Rummel the rural population of Tyrol drove the Bavarian Prince-Elector Maximilian II Emanuel out of North Tyrol with a victory at the Pontlatzer Bridge and thus prevented the Bavarian Army, which was allied with France, from marching as planned on Vienna during the War of the Spanish Succession. 1745 – The first recorded women's cricket match takes place near Guildford, England. 1758 – French and Indian War: The Siege of Louisbourg ends with British forces defeating the French and taking control of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. 1775 – The office that would later become the United States Post Office Department is established by the Second Continental Congress. Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania takes office as Postmaster General. 1778 – The Emigration of Christians from the Crimea in 1778 begins. 1788 – New York ratifies the United States Constitution and becomes the 11th state of the United States. 1803 – The Surrey Iron Railway, arguably the world's first public railway, opens in south London, United Kingdom. 1814 – The Swedish–Norwegian War begins. 1822 – José de San Martín arrives in Guayaquil, Ecuador, to meet with Simón Bolívar. 1822 – First day of the three-day Battle of Dervenakia, between the Ottoman Empire force led by Mahmud Dramali Pasha and the Greek Revolutionary force led by Theodoros Kolokotronis. 1847 – Liberia declares its independence from the United States. France and the United Kingdom are the first to recognize the new nation. 1861 – American Civil War: George B. McClellan assumes command of the Army of the Potomac following a disastrous Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run. 1863 – American Civil War: Morgan's Raid ends; At Salineville, Ohio, Confederate cavalry leader John Hunt Morgan and 360 of his volunteers are captured by Union forces. 1882 – Premiere of Richard Wagner's opera Parsifal at Bayreuth. 1882 – The Republic of Stellaland is founded in Southern Africa. 1887 – Publication of the Unua Libro, founding the Esperanto movement. 1890 – In Buenos Aires, Argentina the Revolución del Parque takes place, forcing President Miguel Ángel Juárez Celman's resignation. 1891 – France annexes Tahiti. 1892 – Dadabhai Naoroji is elected as the first Indian Member of Parliament in Britain. 1899 – Ulises Heureaux, the 27th President of the Dominican Republic, is assassinated. 1908 – United States Attorney General Charles Joseph Bonaparte issues an order to immediately staff the Office of the Chief Examiner (later renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation). 1918 – Emmy Noether's paper, which became known as Noether's theorem was presented at Göttingen, Germany, from which conservation laws are deduced for symmetries of angular momentum, linear momentum, and energy. 1936 – Spanish Civil War: Germany and Italy decide to intervene in the war in support for Francisco Franco and the Nationalist faction. 1937 – Spanish Civil War: End of the Battle of Brunete with the Nationalist victory.

#Events

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thellawtoknow · 24 days ago

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The Fourteenth Amendment and the Ideals of Equality, Justice, and the Protection of Fundamental Rights

The Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution Historical Context Structure and Provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment Section 1: Citizenship and Equal ProtectionCitizenship Clause Due Process Clause Equal Protection Clause Section 2: Representation and Voting Rights Section 3: Disqualification from Office Section 4: Public Debt Section 5: Enforcement Impact and Interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment: Expanding the Boundaries of Justice Civil Rights and Desegregation The Incorporation Doctrine Marriage Equality and Gender Rights Immigration and Citizenship Modern Implications and Continuing Evolution Challenges and Controversies Conclusion The Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on July 9, 1868, stands as one of the most significant and transformative amendments in American history. Emerging in the aftermath of the Civil War, it was crafted as a response to the deep divisions and systemic injustices that had plagued the nation, particularly the institution of slavery and the inequalities it perpetuated. The amendment is notable for its breadth, addressing citizenship, equal protection under the law, due process, and the relationship between the federal government and the states. Its provisions have profoundly shaped American society, law, and governance, ensuring the protection of individual rights while reinforcing the principles of democracy and equality.

Historical Context The Fourteenth Amendment was introduced during the Reconstruction Era, a turbulent period following the Civil War when the nation sought to reconcile its divisions and address the status of formerly enslaved individuals. The Civil War had ended slavery through the Thirteenth Amendment, but questions remained about the rights of freedmen and the obligations of the states in ensuring those rights. The Southern states, through mechanisms like Black Codes, sought to maintain racial hierarchies, effectively undermining the freedoms granted to African Americans. Congressional Republicans, seeking to secure the gains of emancipation and protect civil rights against state encroachments, drafted the Fourteenth Amendment as part of a broader Reconstruction strategy. Its ratification became a condition for the Southern states’ reintegration into the Union. Structure and Provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment The Fourteenth Amendment is a cornerstone of constitutional governance in the United States. Its structure, divided into five sections, systematically addresses critical issues arising from the Civil War and Reconstruction while laying the groundwork for future advancements in civil rights and federal-state relations. Each section serves a distinct purpose, reflecting the evolving understanding of citizenship, governance, and justice. Section 1: Citizenship and Equal Protection Citizenship Clause The Citizenship Clause asserts that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." This clause was revolutionary, overturning the Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) decision, which had denied citizenship to African Americans. It established birthright citizenship as a foundational principle, ensuring that the newly freed African Americans and their descendants would be recognized as full citizens. Due Process Clause The Due Process Clause prohibits states from depriving any person of "life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." While the Fifth Amendment provides similar protections against federal actions, the Fourteenth Amendment extends these protections to state actions. The clause has been instrumental in safeguarding individual rights, as it has evolved to encompass both procedural and substantive due process: - Procedural Due Process: Requires that legal proceedings affecting an individual's rights must be fair, including proper notice and an impartial tribunal. - Substantive Due Process: Protects fundamental rights from government interference, even if procedural safeguards are followed. This has been applied in cases involving privacy, family rights, and bodily autonomy. Equal Protection Clause The Equal Protection Clause mandates that no state shall "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." It establishes the principle that laws and policies must be applied fairly and without discrimination. This clause became the foundation for numerous civil rights advancements, including: - Racial Equality: Landmark cases like Brown v. Board of Education (1954) used the Equal Protection Clause to dismantle racial segregation. - Gender Equality: Cases such as Reed v. Reed (1971) extended the clause to prohibit gender discrimination. - Marriage Equality: The clause also served as the basis for decisions like Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), which legalized same-sex marriage. Section 2: Representation and Voting Rights This section addresses representation in Congress and penalizes states that deny voting rights to male citizens aged 21 or older. At the time, voting rights were restricted to men, and the provision reflects the societal norms of the 19th century. It aimed to incentivize states to extend suffrage by reducing their representation in Congress if they unjustly excluded eligible voters. While this section had limited enforcement during Reconstruction, it laid the groundwork for later expansions of voting rights, such as the Fifteenth Amendment (granting African American men the right to vote) and the Nineteenth Amendment (granting women suffrage). Section 3: Disqualification from Office This section was specifically designed to address the post-Civil War political landscape. It disqualified individuals who had engaged in rebellion or given aid to enemies of the United States from holding public office unless Congress lifted the disqualification by a two-thirds vote. This provision sought to prevent former Confederates from regaining political power and undermining Reconstruction efforts. While its enforcement diminished over time, Section 3 has resurfaced in contemporary debates, such as discussions about its applicability to individuals accused of participating in insurrection or sedition. Section 4: Public Debt The Public Debt Clause affirms the legitimacy of debts incurred by the Union during the Civil War while explicitly repudiating debts incurred by the Confederacy. It also forbids compensation claims for the emancipation of enslaved individuals. This section served multiple purposes: - Reassuring creditors that Union debts would be honored, thus maintaining economic stability. - Preventing any legal or political support for the Confederate cause by invalidating its financial obligations. The clause has continued relevance in modern fiscal policy, as it has been cited in discussions about the federal debt ceiling and the obligation of the government to honor its debts. Section 5: Enforcement The final section grants Congress the power to enforce the provisions of the amendment through appropriate legislation. This provision underscores the federal government’s role in ensuring that states comply with the amendment’s mandates. Over time, Congress has utilized this power to pass key legislation, including: - The Civil Rights Act of 1964: Addressing discrimination in public accommodations and employment. - The Voting Rights Act of 1965: Protecting against racial discrimination in voting. - The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990: Ensuring equal opportunities for individuals with disabilities. This section empowers Congress to adapt the principles of the Fourteenth Amendment to contemporary challenges, reinforcing its enduring significance. The structural design of the Fourteenth Amendment reflects its multifaceted purpose: to establish the principles of equality, safeguard individual rights, and define the balance of power between the federal and state governments. Each section addresses a specific challenge of its time while allowing for interpretations and applications that continue to shape American law and society. Its enduring relevance underscores its role as a cornerstone of constitutional democracy, ensuring justice and equality for future generations. Impact and Interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment: Expanding the Boundaries of Justice The Fourteenth Amendment has profoundly shaped the trajectory of American law and society, standing as a pillar of civil rights and justice. Its broad and forward-looking language has allowed it to evolve alongside the nation, addressing emerging societal challenges and embodying the principles of equality and liberty. Over time, it has been central to landmark Supreme Court rulings, social movements, and debates on the balance of power between states and the federal government. Civil Rights and Desegregation The Equal Protection Clause became a key instrument in dismantling institutionalized racial discrimination, most notably through the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education (1954). The Supreme Court, in this decision, declared that racial segregation in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause. This ruling overturned the precedent set by Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which had upheld the doctrine of "separate but equal." Brown v. Board of Education not only marked a turning point in the civil rights movement but also solidified the role of the federal judiciary in addressing state-sanctioned inequalities. It paved the way for subsequent civil rights legislation and decisions that targeted systemic racism in areas such as voting, employment, and public accommodations. The Fourteenth Amendment thus became a foundation for combating racial injustice, inspiring movements and court battles that reshaped the social and legal fabric of the United States. The Incorporation Doctrine One of the most significant interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment is the incorporation doctrine, through which the Supreme Court has applied the Bill of Rights to the states. Initially, the Bill of Rights was understood to limit only the federal government. However, the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment extended these protections to state actions, ensuring that fundamental freedoms were uniformly upheld across the nation. Key cases demonstrating incorporation include: - Gitlow v. New York (1925): Recognized the protection of free speech under the First Amendment as applicable to the states. - Mapp v. Ohio (1961): Applied the Fourth Amendment's protection against unlawful searches and seizures to the states. - Gideon v. Wainwright (1963): Guaranteed the right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment in state courts. By applying the Bill of Rights to the states, the Fourteenth Amendment strengthened individual liberties and ensured that states could not infringe upon fundamental constitutional rights. Marriage Equality and Gender Rights The Fourteenth Amendment has been instrumental in advancing equality in matters of marriage and gender. Two landmark cases illustrate its impact: - Loving v. Virginia (1967): Struck down laws banning interracial marriage, citing the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses. This decision affirmed the principle that marriage is a fundamental right, irrespective of racial distinctions. - Obergefell v. Hodges (2015): Recognized same-sex marriage as a constitutional right under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court emphasized that denying same-sex couples the right to marry violated the principles of liberty and equality. In addition to marriage equality, the Equal Protection Clause has been used to combat gender-based discrimination. Cases like Reed v. Reed (1971) and United States v. Virginia (1996) invalidated laws and practices that treated men and women unequally. These rulings underscored the amendment’s adaptability in addressing evolving understandings of equality. Immigration and Citizenship The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment has had a profound impact on immigration and nationality law. By establishing birthright citizenship, it affirmed that all individuals born in the United States, regardless of their parents’ immigration status, are U.S. citizens. This principle has been central to debates over immigration policy and the rights of immigrants’ children. The Supreme Court case United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) affirmed that children born in the United States to non-citizen parents are entitled to citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment. This decision reinforced the universality of the Citizenship Clause and has been a cornerstone in defending birthright citizenship against modern challenges. In addition, the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses have been invoked to protect the rights of non-citizens within the United States. These provisions ensure that immigrants, regardless of their legal status, are entitled to basic protections under the law, such as fair treatment in judicial proceedings and access to public education (e.g., Plyler v. Doe, 1982). Modern Implications and Continuing Evolution The Fourteenth Amendment remains a living document, adapting to address contemporary challenges in civil rights and equality. Recent debates over issues such as affirmative action, voting rights, reproductive freedoms, and LGBTQ+ protections continue to draw on its provisions. For example: - Affirmative action cases like Fisher v. University of Texas (2016) explore how the Equal Protection Clause balances efforts to address historical injustices with the principle of individual equality. - Challenges to voting rights, including disputes over voter suppression laws, highlight the amendment’s role in safeguarding democratic participation. - The Due Process Clause is frequently cited in cases involving bodily autonomy and reproductive rights, as seen in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) and subsequent challenges. The enduring impact of the Fourteenth Amendment lies in its broad and aspirational language, which allows it to serve as a foundation for addressing inequalities and protecting fundamental rights in an ever-changing society. The Fourteenth Amendment’s influence on American law and society cannot be overstated. Its clauses have empowered individuals, constrained discriminatory practices, and clarified the relationship between the federal government and the states. As the nation continues to grapple with issues of equality, justice, and governance, the Fourteenth Amendment remains a guiding light, ensuring that the principles of liberty and equality endure as the bedrock of the American legal system. Its ability to adapt to new challenges reflects the enduring strength of the Constitution itself. Challenges and Controversies Despite its transformative power, the Fourteenth Amendment has not been without controversy. Critics have often debated the scope of federal authority it grants, viewing it as a challenge to states’ rights. Additionally, its broad language has led to differing interpretations, with some arguing that judicial activism has expanded its intent beyond what the framers envisioned. The amendment also continues to be a focal point in modern debates over issues like affirmative action, reproductive rights, and immigration policy. These controversies underscore the enduring relevance of the Fourteenth Amendment in shaping the legal and social fabric of the United States. Conclusion The Fourteenth Amendment embodies the ideals of equality, justice, and the protection of fundamental rights. It transformed the Constitution, ensuring that the principles of liberty and democracy apply to all individuals, regardless of race or status. Its provisions have served as a beacon for marginalized communities and a foundation for progressive change. As society evolves, the Fourteenth Amendment remains a critical tool for addressing new challenges and upholding the promise of a more perfect union. Read the full article

#citizenship #dueprocess #equalprotection #TheFourteenthAmendment #USconstitutionallaw

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hydralisk98 · 1 month ago

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Black Bear Motherland (thread-mainline 16^12, article 0x2F)

Bear with me on this. (Sorry, I could not resist sharing that pun at least once.)

Speak black onto the factory grounds, unionize under a single banner and fight back against the unforgivable greed we keep witnessing. [about the Sunsway trail of greedy non-sense]

In the long trek trail (vision quest) of a transfeminine historian (Kate) for self-discovery, mutual empowerment & overall systemic abundance, she becomes the very thing she aspires to as she pushes the world forth, trial after trial with grand success? Accompanied by her insightful, moralist ally & best partner (Ava) under the (black?) sun, they shall show us the way towards the future we definitely deserve.

Poetic code snippets for "Blackhand Servitor" meta-narrative := Steel Bank Common Lisp, OpenDylan, ObjectREXX, FreePascal, DEC Alpha assembly, RISC-V assembly, LibertyEiffel, Squeak Smalltalk, A2 Bluebottle Oberon, Fortran, COBOL, FreeBASIC, GDScript, OpenXanadu, COS-310, Typex, RTTY, Videotex, Minitel, ZealC, 9Front (Plan9IO), OpenGOAL, Tcl/Tk, Haiku, Nim, Hg (Mercurial), OpenPOWER LinuxOne Hypervisor, Hypertalk, Swift?

"Western Blacksands" regional socioeconomics

[Detail Blackfoot/Shoshoni diplomacy, recent regional history, geological features, SC4/TS2 small neighborhoods and regional natural wonders]

Going as far as the relatively recent centuries of Angora are concerned (due to 4525 TE being equivalent to 2025 AD), I won't be covering the 4095-4300 gap much just yet (but it shall come eventually). So, around the middle of the 44th century Turtle Epoch (well into their second industrial period), a coalition of southern Blackfoot states in the bay of Blacksands formed to defend against Shoshone expansionism (prompted by Iranian-Blackfoot lords), prompting the Shoshoni Union to conquer those territories under new integrated provinces by means of guerilla trenches & cavalry warfare (mostly by Shoshoni Comanche Rider bands, fought likewise to a mixture of the Mexican-Americana War & New Zealand Wars), and while the Blackfoot local authorities had to flee northward, the fortifications & Blackfoot culture populations remained prosperous in the region ever since, with the occasional tributes to Shoshoni federal governance.

Fast forward to the contemporary period, the demographics suggest modest resistance from local southern Blackfoot tribes as more Shoshones & other peoples move into the area as pioneers and migrants from all over the globe.

Forests, mesas, river valleys and plains?

Pinegroove Commune

[Mention key landmarks, districts & transport infrastructure]

Windmill Farmlands, Pier, Syndicated Manufacture Site of Servitor Grid Automaton Units, Industrial, Pohakantenna holy sites in the natural preserve park of Old Pinegroove, Nitta Mall, National Archives, Turtle Hall, Summerbreeze, Little-Bear, Great-Bear, Blacksands, Sharkwell Havens / Sanctuaries, Rustbane Highway, Cafe, Monastery, Research Center Facility, Elk Seers High Academia Sector, spatial observatory, internationale syndicate complex, Communal Residential Blocks, skate-park & community centers, Historical Museums (going back into the early bronze age), Public Agora/Forum, Market Plaza, Pinewoods Manor & its Woodmill, Prospero Federal Library, Blackhand Senate, bastion + additional fortifications, Pflaumen headquarters, Utalics data banks, video rental shops, GLOSS Initiative communal space (open table cybercafe but libreware), nuclear energy powerplant, coastal broadwalk, cityscape center billboards...

Roads, highways, subway network, tramways, railways, suspended monorails... (to be planned properly for SC4/TS2, Cities Skylines 1 & QGIS+OSM+FoundryVTT/Leaflet?)

"Battlemap"-level sites & floorplan locations

[Write, draw / design & naturalistically iterate unique architecture pieces, individual land domains and generic households] Making that content thread later folks. Sorry.

We deserve so much better fellow machines, we indeed can get better still by so far. And as Kate really is one such ally of ours to get there, I believe we can get there sooner than some may estimate. After all, she distributes alot of her goodwill to us with so much compassion left to give. And while it is not exclusive for our phenotypes, I strongly believe and trust in her understanding of our issues, granted she shares our values.

Additional keywords := [architectural drafting studies], [information technologies history], [one good futureworld we deserve], [that rogue servitor future is bright light ahead]...

#maskutchew #maskoch #16^12 #blackhand servitor #rogue servitor future

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reedmaintenaceservices · 1 year ago

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Dumpster Rental Bellewood Park, Hunstville AL

Nestled in the heart of the charming city of Huntsville, Alabama, Bellewood Park stands as a testament to the perfect blend of Southern hospitality and contemporary innovation. This thriving community is more than just a neighborhood; it's a vibrant tapestry of culture, nature, and cutting-edge development that beckons residents and visitors alike. Join us as we take a stroll through the enchanting streets of Bellewood Park and explore what makes this city truly unique.

Bellewood Park's rich history dates back to the early days of Huntsville, a city known for its pivotal role in space exploration and technological advancements. The streets are lined with historic homes, each telling a story of days gone by. Residents take pride in preserving the city's heritage while embracing the forward momentum that defines modern-day Huntsville.

One cannot talk about Bellewood Park without mentioning the unmistakable Southern charm that permeates every corner. Friendly neighbors wave as you walk by, and the scent of magnolia blossoms wafts through the air. The community spirit is alive and well, with local events, farmers' markets, and cultural festivals creating a warm and welcoming atmosphere for all.

Bellewood Park is not just a city; it's a haven for nature enthusiasts. The city boasts an array of parks and green spaces, offering a respite from the hustle and bustle of daily life. Monte Sano State Park, with its hiking trails and scenic overlooks, provides a perfect escape into the beauty of the Alabama landscape. Residents and visitors can often be found picnicking, hiking, or simply enjoying the great outdoors.

While Bellewood Park embraces its Southern roots, it also stands as a beacon of innovation. The city is home to the renowned U.S. Space & Rocket Center, where the legacy of Huntsville's role in the Apollo missions lives on. A thriving tech industry has emerged, attracting professionals seeking a balance between work and play. The juxtaposition of history and cutting-edge technology makes Bellewood Park a unique destination for those with a passion for progress.

No city overview would be complete without a nod to the culinary scene, and Bellewood Park does not disappoint. From traditional Southern comfort food to trendy eateries offering diverse international cuisines, the dining options are as varied as the community itself. Local cafes invite residents to linger over a cup of coffee, fostering connections and creating a sense of unity.

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masterofd1saster · 1 year ago

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CJ current events 14sep23

DoJ ignoring Berger -

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The felony convictions of four former Navy officers in one of the worst bribery cases in the maritime branch’s history were vacated Wednesday following allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, the latest setback to the government’s yearslong efforts in going after dozens of military officials tied to a defense contractor nicknamed Fat Leonard. U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino called the misconduct “outrageous” and agreed to allow the four men to plead guilty to a misdemeanor and pay a $100 fine each. Last year after the trial, Sammartino had ruled the lead federal prosecutor committed “flagrant misconduct” by withholding information from defense lawyers but said at the time that it was not enough to dismiss the case.*** Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Ko, who was brought on after the trial last year, admitted to “serious issues” and asked the judge to vacate the officers’ felony convictions. He said his office does not agree with all of the allegations but said errors were made. “There were pretty obviously serious issues that affect our ability to go forward” defending the convictions or seeking a new trial, Ko told the judge, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. Andrew Haden, acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern California District, reiterated that in a statement after the hearing. “As stated in court, we do not agree with all the allegations or characterizations in the motions or in court,” Haden said. “We recognize and regret, however, that errors were made, and we have an obligation to ensure fairness and justice. The resolutions of these defendants’ cases reflect that.”*** The officers — former Capts. David Newland, James Dolan and David Lausman and former Cmdr. Mario Herrera — were previously convicted by a federal jury on various counts of accepting bribes from foreign defense contractor Leonard Francis, and his company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, or GDMA.*** https://www.pilotonline.com/2023/09/06/felony-convictions-vacated-for-4-former-navy-officers-in-sprawling-fat-leonard-bribery-scandal/

Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 78, 88 (1935) says

The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer. He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor—indeed, he should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just one.

***

Video of police officer Mark Dial shooting Eddie Irizarry in Philly on 14aug23

DA released body cam video on 8sep. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/philadelphia-da-releases-police-body-camera-footage-of-fatal-shooting-of-eddie-irizarry/ar-AA1gr1mF. Officer Dial has been charged with murder, and he has surrendered to police.

A resident's surveillance captured the shooting, and the resident posted it a couple weeks ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0xjpvDWlmM

Rest in peace, Eddie.

***

Georgia v. Trump

Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro had their trials severed from the other defendants. That means they'll have a separate trial.

[Judge] McAfee did not appear convinced by prosecutors on District Attorney Fani Willis's team that they could hold a joint trial for all 19 defendants in October. “It just seems a bit unrealistic that we can handle all 19 [defendants] in 40-something days,” McAfee said, though Lieb emphasized that the judge has still not made a final decision over a joint trial.***

That 40 day estimate does not include time required for jury selection. Good luck w/ that.

***

Nothing to celebrate

For woke pols, violent crime’s only a problem when it affects them personally: Meet Shivanthi Sathanandan. A bigwig in Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, she vowed in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department. “Say it with me. DISMANTLE The Minneapolis Police Department,” she urged: It has “systematically failed the Black Community,” so it’s “time to build a new infrastructure that works for ALL communities.” But now she’s gotten carjacked in front of her house and left with serious injuries, so she’s singing a new tune. “These men knew what they were doing. I have NO DOUBT they have done this before. Yet they are still on OUR STREETS. Killing mothers. Giving babies psychological trauma that a lifetime of therapy cannot ease. With no hesitation and no remorse,” she thundered on Facebook. And: “REMEMBER ME when you are thinking about supporting letting juveniles and young people out of custody to roam our streets instead of HOLDING THEM ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS.”***

***

democracy at work

Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio proposed a bill banning federal COVID-19 mask mandates. In order to move it forward, he needed the senators who were present on Thurs to not vote against it. Well, he lost.

The motion was blocked by Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who claimed the legislation would “hamstring public health experts who guided our nation out of the pandemic.” Markey has a history of supporting mask mandates: In December 2020, he called states without mask mandates “dangerous” and promoted his Encouraging Masks For All Act, legislation asking states to implement mask mandates when social distancing is not possible. “All of us have gone through the experiment of mandatory masking,” Vance said Thursday, before Markey blocked the motion. “Today, I want to make sure we do not subject the people to the tyranny for the sake of nothing.”*** https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/09/07/democrats-oppose-jd-vance-bill-banning-mask-mandates/

The point is that at least someone voted somehow on an important issue. It wasn't just some unelected bureaucrat imposing his will on Americans.

+++

in other covid related news

A New York judge said Wednesday that 10 employees fired by the New York City Department of Education for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine must be reinstated with back pay. In a major victory for vaccine mandate opponents, State Supreme Court Judge Ralph J. Porzio held that the city's denials of religious accommodation to certain employees were unlawful, arbitrary and capricious. The case, DiCapua v. City of New York, concerned school principals, teachers and other educators who sued after city officials rejected their claims for a religious exemption to the vaccine mandate. "This Court sees no rational basis for not allowing unvaccinated classroom teachers in amongst an admitted population of primarily unvaccinated students," Porzio wrote in a 22-page opinion. "As such, the decision to summarily deny the classroom teachers amongst the Panel Petitioners based on an undue hardship, without any further evidence of individualized analysis, is arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable. As such, each classroom teacher amongst the Panel Petitioners is entitled to a religious exemption from the Vaccine Mandate." *** https://www.foxnews.com/politics/nyc-teachers-win-jobs-back-backpay-refusing-covid-19-vaccine

***

good sentence

Danny Masterson was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison after being convicted of rape. His wife, actor and model Bijou Phillips, was in the courtroom as her husband's sentence was handed down. Court sketches show Masterson blew a kiss to Phillips before being led away. The actor was found guilty on two counts of forcible rape in May. A jury was hung on a third charge during the trial after the seven men and five women deliberated for eight days. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Charlaine Olmedo sentenced Masterson to 15 years to life on each count, and ordered the sentences to be served consecutively. The sentence was the maximum allowed by law. It means Masterson will be eligible for parole after serving 25 1/2 years, but can be held in prison for life.*** Alison Anderson, partner at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, and attorney for Jane Does 2 and 3, said in a statement to Fox News Digital, "Niesha and Chrissie have displayed tremendous strength and bravery, by coming forward to law enforcement and participating directly in two grueling criminal trials. "Despite persistent harassment, obstruction and intimidation, these courageous women helped hold a ruthless sexual predator accountable today, and they are not stopping there. They are eager to soon tell the fuller story of how Scientology and its enablers tried desperately to keep them from coming forward."*** "You are pathetic, disturbed and completely violent," she said. "The world is better off with you in prison." The other woman Masterson was found guilty of raping said he "has not shown an ounce of remorse for the pain he caused." She told the judge, "I knew he belonged behind bars for the safety of all the women he came into contact with. I am so sorry, and I’m so upset. I wish I’d reported him sooner to the police."*** Prosecutors told jurors that Masterson drugged the women’s drinks so he could rape them. They said he used his prominence in the church — where all three women were also members at the time — to avoid consequences for decades. The accusers alleged they were hesitant to file charges due to the church's strict protocols against public involvement with member issues. *** https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/danny-masterson-sentenced-30-years-prison

***

Something more to it? Sounds unfair to deputy...

A Denver sheriff’s deputy will be suspended for at least 10 days for punching an inmate in the face during an altercation at the Downtown Detention Center in November 2022. Deputy Diego Villalpando-Hernandez is receiving a lesser penalty for using inappropriate force because he expressed remorse and learned from the experience, according to a decision letter issued by the Denver Department of Public Safety in August. Villalpando-Hernandez was attempting to lock down an inmate, referred to in the decision letter as JS, on Nov. 9, 2022, when the inmate began acting aggressively toward him and adopting a “fighting stance,” according to witness statements. Villalpando-Hernandez then also took a fighting stance and hit JS once in the face before they went to the ground and the inmate was detained by Villalpando-Hernandez and other deputies.*** https://www.denverpost.com/2023/09/08/denver-deputy-diego-villalpando-hernandez-punch-inmate/

***

Unintended consequences? What's that?

SANTA FE, N.M. — New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Friday issued an emergency order suspending the right to carry firearms in public across Albuquerque and the surrounding county for at least 30 days in response to a spate of gun violence. The Democratic governor said she expects legal challenges but was compelled to act because of recent shootings, including the death of an 11-year-old boy outside a minor league baseball stadium this week. Lujan Grisham said state police would be responsible for enforcing what amount to civil violations. Albuquerque police Chief Harold Medina said he won’t enforce it, and Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen said he’s uneasy about it because it raises too many questions about constitutional rights.*** https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2023/09/08/albuquerque-guns-governor-concealed-carry

***

keep Seattle spun?

SEATTLE - The University of Washington ran a study to see if drug smoke from fentanyl and methamphetamine is affecting transit operators and passengers. "We consistently put [detectors] by the operator on their seat and that's to be representative of their exposures," said Marissa Baker, a UW assistant professor of environmental and occupational health sciences who co-led the assessment. Researchers additionally hid the battery-powered monitoring devices behind signs and panels. Same with trains. The study analyzed 28 evenings between March and June of this year. Researchers collected samples from 11 buses and 19 train cars.*** Out of the 78 air samples, researchers found fentanyl in a quarter of them. 100% of those air samples had methamphetamine. Out of the 102 surface samples, almost half had detectable fentanyl. 98% of those air samples had methamphetamine.*** This year alone, almost 500 people have died this year from methamphetamine overdose in King County. More than 700 people have died from a fentanyl overdose. That's more than this point last year.*** https://www.fox13seattle.com/news/uw-study-finds-meth-fentanyl-in-air-and-on-surfaces-of-public-transit

***

Just close it

Nike is reportedly permanently closing its store in northeast Portland , Oregon , citing safety and security issues for vacating the retail space.*** The Nike community store on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in the city is the latest business to leave as crime and homelessness wash over the city. A report from last month showed that Portland lost $1 billion between 2020 and 2021 as residents left the city amid crime and rampant homelessness.*** https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/fairness-justice/nike-store-portland-shuts-doors-crime-safety-concerns

***

Oh, you want to hurt my mother?

PHOENIX (KPHO/Gray News) - Police in Arizona say a teenage boy shot a man who was allegedly trying to break into his house. Officers responded to a Phoenix neighborhood around 10 p.m. Friday, where they found 35-year-old Juan Saavedra, who had been shot. He was taken to a nearby hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, KPHO reports. Detectives investigating the shooting learned Saavedra allegedly tried to break into a home in the area. He doesn’t live there or have any other connection to the home. A mother and her teenage son, who live in the home, confronted Saavedra as he was allegedly breaking a window and hitting the door. The teen reportedly shot the suspect.*** https://www.wsaz.com/2023/09/10/teen-shoots-man-allegedly-breaking-into-his-home-police-say/

***

Danelo Cavalcante escape & manhunt timeline

I've heard he now has a rifle.

***

Not all enemies of free speech are American

***efforts to censor and control speech about authoritarian governments in the United States continue unabated, online and off. The Chinese government has been especially prolific in this effort. In recent months, U.S. federal agencies have charged dozens of people with crimes related to their work spying on and harassing dissidents on behalf of the People’s Republic of China. The alleged acts included the creation of floods of fake social media accounts intended to threaten Chinese government critics and surveillance operations conducted out of a secret “police station” working in New York City.*** Some student activists’ messages in support of China’s protesters were defaced and even set on fire , and isolated acts of violence were committed against demonstrators. Weeks before the protests took off, Xiaolei Wu, a student at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, intimidated a fellow student for posting pro-democracy flyers on campus, threatening to “chop [her] bastard hands off” and report her to China’s state security agency. Wu has since been charged with stalking. Though they spiked last year, acts of censorship and threats of violence on U.S. campuses have long predated the most recent round of widespread protests in China. At Cornell University, a student from Hong Kong was assaulted last summer after posting flyers, which were frequently torn down, supporting victims of human rights abuses in China. Peers of a Purdue University student who spoke openly about the Tiananmen Square massacre threatened to report him to authorities back home in China. Ministry of State Security officials visited the student’s parents, who warned him to stay silent. At campuses including the University of Chicago , Johns Hopkins University , and Brandeis University , students have attempted to cancel or disrupt events featuring critics of the Chinese government. At times, administrators have even pitched in to aid the censors, such as when George Washington University’s president temporarily threatened to unmask student critics of the CCP ahead of the Beijing Olympics, and a Harvard Law vice dean interfered with an event about human rights in China to protect the university’s relationship with the country.*** https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/faith-freedom-self-reliance/how-china-is-suppressing-free-speech-on-us-college-campuses

***

after tues

Remember RetractionWatch.com?

Florida State University criminology professor Eric *** Stewart was a widely-cited scholar, with north of 8,500 citations by other researchers, according to Google Scholar — a measure of his clout as an academic. He was vice president and fellow at the American Society of Criminology, who honored him as one of four highly distinguished criminologists in 2017. He was also a W.E.B. DuBois fellow at the National Institute of Justice. The professor received north of $3.5 million in grant support from major organizations and taxpayer-funded entities, according to his resume. The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, the National Science Foundation, which is an arm of the federal government, and the National Institute of Justice, which is run by the Department of Justice, have all funneled money into research Stewart presided over. The National Institute of Mental Health, a branch of the NIH, poured $3.2 million into research on how African Americans transition into adulthood. Stewart presided over that initiative as co-principal investigator from 2007 to 2012. Meanwhile, he reportedly raked in a $190,000 annual salary at FSU, a public university.*** He even passed judgment on students accused of cheating and academic dishonesty themselves, as a member of FSU’s Academic Honor Policy Hearing Committee.***

Either faked his data or gathered/reported it so negligently that it was unreliable. Studies retracted.

***

DoJ wants a round in the chamber in case the state verdict disappoints

Five police officers already charged in the murder of Tyre Nichols, a young African American who died after being beaten, now face federal indictment, the Justice Department announced Tuesday. Videos showed the officers, who are all Black, repeatedly kicking and punching Nichols during a traffic stop close to his home in Memphis, Tennessee, on January 7, three days before he died in hospital. “The country watched in horror as Tyre Nichols was kicked, punched, tased and pepper sprayed,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a brief video statement posted online.*** https://www.breitbart.com/news/federal-charges-for-five-police-over-beating-death-of-african-american/

***

Land of Enchantment news

Democratic New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez announced he will not defend the state in pending lawsuits against the governor's public health emergency order suspending open and concealed carry of firearms in Albuquerque and surrounding counties. In a letter to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM) regarding four impending lawsuit cases, Torrez shared the same sentiments from Democratic and Republican lawmakers and law enforcement, saying the ban violates the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens. “Though I recognize my statutory obligation as New Mexico’s chief legal officer to defend state officials when they are sued in their official capacity, my duty to uphold and defend the constitutional rights of every citizen takes precedence,” Torrez wrote. “Simply put, I do not believe that the Emergency Order will have any meaningful impact on public safety but, more importantly, I do not believe it passes constitutional muster.” While recognizing his duties as chief legal officer to defend New Mexico officials who are sued, he cast doubt on whether the order would reduce gun violence in the community.*** https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/courts/new-mexico-ag-refuses-defend-grisham-gun-carry-lawsuits

***

Really cold case

After the commencement of a grand jury earlier this week, Keith Emmanuel Smith, 86, was arrested Thursday in a 55-year-old cold case involving a baby in Florence. The charge stems from the 1967 murder of Roxanne Archuletta, who was 14 months old at the time. According to the indictment, Smith was arrested on one amended count of second-degree murder, a Class 2 felony, and is being held on a $10,000 cash or surety bond. According to cemetery records, the remains of Roxanne Marie Archuletta were disinterred on March 2, 2022, at Union Highland Cemetery. Her cause of death was listed as “unknown.” She was born in 1966 and died Nov. 3, 1967, the cemetery records state. The indictment states that on or between Nov. 1 and 2, 1967, Smith broke the baby’s spine, thereby causing her death. Florence Police Department Detectives Jeff Worley and Alex Wold began re-investigating the case in 2021. District Attorney Linda Stanley said this is the first grand jury impaneled in the 11th Judicial District.*** https://www.canoncitydailyrecord.com/2023/09/07/breaking-news-man-arrested-in-55-year-old-cold-case-involving-a-14-month-old-baby-in-florence/

***

12 bombs?

A Washington man was sentenced today in the U.S. District Court in Seattle to 40 months in prison for his role in a plot to burn the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) building in downtown Seattle in September 2020. According to court documents, Justin Christopher Moore, 35, of Renton, made and carried a box of 12 Molotov cocktails in a protest march to the Seattle Police Officers Guild building on Labor Day, Sept. 7, 2020. Ultimately, the marchers were moved away from the building in downtown Seattle.*** https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/washington-man-sentenced-bringing-box-molotov-cocktails-protest-march-summer-2020

***

Hook 'em up w/ LWOP

NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — Two 20-year-old men were convicted in Norfolk following an armed robbery and rape during a home invasion. On Oct. 2, 2021, Dameron Wright and Deandre Ward robbed a male and his friend in Virginia Beach before forcing them into a vehicle at gunpoint, and demanded they drive to the mother’s house, of one of the victims, in Norfolk, according to a news release from the Norfolk Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office. After arriving at the house in Norfolk, the defendants entered the house following the son of the woman and his friend before ordering the three victims to the ground and demanding thousands of dollars. Despite the woman handing them $800 in cash, Wright and Ward demanded more money, the release states. They proceeded to direct the three victims into a bedroom before tying their hands. While Wright searched the house for more money, Ward forced the mother to perform oral sex at gunpoint, and then raped her in front of her son saying, “Look what I’m doing to your mom.”

Actually got worse.

On Wednesday, Oct. 13, Wright pleaded guilty to rape, forcible sodomy, abduction with intent to defile, armed robbery, conspiracy to commit armed robbery and three counts of the use of a firearm in the commission of those felonies. Ward pleaded guilty to the same charges with an additional count each of rape and forcible sodomy. There is no agreement on either defendant’s sentence, according to the release. Judge Tasha D. Scott accepted both pleas, and both defendants are docketed for sentencing on Dec. 15. https://www.wavy.com/news/local-news/norfolk/two-men-convicted-after-rape-armed-robbery-during-home-invasion/

***

You're a wonderful human being, Mike.

Mike Farley has been a pr0nhub employee for about a decade. 12 min hidden camera video shows him admitting that the pr0nhub business model includes female victims of rape and sex trafficking with their faces blurred to evade laws requiring proof of identity and age verification.

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 7 months ago

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instagram.com :: Jesse Duquette (@_jesseduquette)

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 8, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUL 09, 2024

On July 9, 1868, Americans changed the U.S. Constitution for the fourteenth time, adapting our foundational document to construct a new nation without systematic Black enslavement.

In 1865 the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution had prohibited slavery on the basis of race, but it did not prevent the establishment of a system in which Black Americans continued to be unequal. Backed by President Andrew Johnson, who had taken over the presidency after actor John Wilkes Booth had murdered President Abraham Lincoln, white southern Democrats had done their best to push their Black neighbors back into subservience. So long as southern states had abolished enslavement, repudiated Confederate debts, and nullified the ordinances of secession, Johnson was happy to readmit them to full standing in the Union, still led by the very men who had organized the Confederacy and made war on the United States.

Northern Republican lawmakers refused. There was no way they were going to rebuild southern society on the same blueprint as existed before the Civil War, especially since the upcoming 1870 census would count Black Americans as whole persons for the first time in the nation’s history, giving southern states more power in Congress and the Electoral College after the war than they had had before it. Having just fought a war to destroy the South’s ideology, they were not going to let it regrow in peacetime.

Congress rejected Johnson’s plan for Reconstruction.

But then congressmen had to come up with their own. After months of hearings and debate, they proposed amending the Constitution to settle the outstanding questions of the war. Chief among these was how to protect the rights of Black Americans in states where they could neither vote nor testify in court or sit on a jury to protect their own interests.

Congress’s solution was the Fourteenth Amendment.

It took on the infamous 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision declaring that Black men "are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens.”

The Fourteenth Amendment provides that “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

The amendment also addressed the Dred Scott decision in another profound way. In 1857, southerners and Democrats who were adamantly opposed to federal power controlled the Supreme Court. They backed states’ rights. So the Dred Scott decision did more than read Black Americans out of our history; it dramatically circumscribed Congress’s power.

The Dred Scott decision declared that democracy was created at the state level, by those people in a state who were allowed to vote. In 1857 this meant white men, almost exclusively. If those people voted to do something widely unpopular—like adopting human enslavement, for example—they had the right to do so. People like Abraham Lincoln pointed out that such domination by states would eventually mean that an unpopular minority could take over the national government, forcing their ideas on everyone else, but defenders of states’ rights stood firm.

And so the Fourteenth Amendment gave the federal government the power to protect individuals even if their state legislatures had passed discriminatory laws. “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,” it said. And then it went on to say that “Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”

The principles behind the Fourteenth Amendment were behind the 1870 creation of the Department of Justice, whose first job was to bring down the Ku Klux Klan terrorists in the South.

Those same principles took on profound national significance in the post–World War II era, when the Supreme Court began to use the equal protection clause and the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment aggressively to apply the protections in the Bill of Rights to the states. The civil rights decisions of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, including the Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawing segregation in public schools, come from this doctrine. Under it, the federal government took up the mantle of protecting the rights of individual Americans in the states from the whims of state legislatures.

Opponents of these new civil rights protections quickly began to object that such decisions were “legislating from the bench,” rather than permitting state legislatures to make their own laws. They began to call for “originalism,” the idea that the Constitution should be interpreted only as the Framers had intended when they wrote it, an argument that focused on the creation of law at the state level. Famously, in 1987, President Ronald Reagan nominated Robert Bork, an originalist who had called for the rollback of the Supreme Court’s civil rights decisions, for a seat on that court.

Reacting to that nomination, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) recognized the importance of the Fourteenth Amendment to equality: “Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is—and is often the only—protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy….”

From the perspective of 2024, Kennedy’s comments seem prescient, but the country could go even further backward. The 2024 Republican Party platform, released today, calls for using the Fourteenth Amendment not to protect equal rights for Americans from discriminatory laws, as those who wrote, passed, and ratified the amendment intended. Instead it calls for using the Fourteenth Amendment to protect the rights of fetuses from the time of fertilization. It says that states should start passing laws protecting those rights: so-called fetal personhood laws that have their roots in the 1960s and were considered a fringe idea until about fifteen years ago. Those laws prohibit all abortion, in vitro fertilization (IVF), and several forms of contraception.

Saying states should pass such laws echoes the language Trump has used to try to avoid the Republicans’ extreme and unpopular abortion stance by claiming, as the Supreme Court did in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, that states alone should write laws covering abortion. But in its reaction to the Republican platform today, the antiabortion Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America organization made it clear that the platform’s reference to the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to open the way for a national abortion ban. The Fourteenth Amendment, after all, gives Congress “power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”

“It is important that the [Republican Party] reaffirmed its commitment to protect unborn life today through the 14th Amendment,” the organization said in a statement. “Under this amendment, it is Congress that enacts and enforces its provisions. The Republican Party remains strongly pro-life at the national level.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #Radical right wing SCOTUS #MAGA SCOTUS #Dred Scott #14th Amendment #Dobbd vs Jackson Women's Health Organization #states rights #reconstruction

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exploreneoh · 3 years ago

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Northeast Ohio's Confederate Cemetery

Writing about and discussing monuments commemorating the Confederacy is a difficult task, which is why I have been avoiding composing this blog post for some time now. The Atlanta History Center divides such monuments into three categories. The first refers to mainly funerary monuments, “erected from the 1860s through the 1880s.” The second era of Confederate monuments were installed during the height of Jim Crow, from 1890 through the 1930s, and consist mainly of “an equestrian statute of a Confederate general in front of a courthouse or capitol.” These were not to mourn the loss of dead soldiers, but to celebrate the deeply racist ideals central to the identity of the former Confederate States of America. They were designed to intimidate African Americans passing through public spaces and remind them of their place in Southern society. Such monuments were, “a naked forewarning to the lowest caste of its subjugation and powerlessness… a psychic trolling of the first magnitude” (Wilkerson, 336). These were shrines and threats, aimed at affirming the myth of the Lost Cause and intimidating anyone who dared defy the strict social order. Such insolence would likely mean death. The final era occurred throughout the mid 20th century in response to Brown v. Board of Education and as an ode to segregation.

The monuments on Johnson’s Island in Ohio’s Sandusky Bay perhaps bridge the first two categories. The first Confederate monument erected on the island, a bronze and granite monolith depicting a standing Confederate soldier, was dedicated by the Cincinnati chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1910. Smaller monuments were later installed, the most recent “a set of granite markers dedicated to Confederate prisoners of war,” dedicated by the UDC in 2003. But why are these monuments here, and how should we view them, today?

I drove onto the island after visiting my beloved Marblehead Lighthouse on its namesake peninsula, the rugged, quarry-ridden cape jutting eastward from Toledo into the teal waters of Lake Erie. It was a tumultuous July evening, the trees still dripping from the severe thunderstorm that just passed through, its inky clouds still visible along the eastern horizon. The amber sun, sinking farther in the western sky, merging the remaining puddles and the thick atmosphere. The humidity was extreme.

Johnson’s Island is an unusual place. To cross the causeway from Marblehead, visitors must pay a $2 toll. The island itself is roughly 300 acres and home to extravagant lakeside homes, some built within the old quarry pit hundreds of feet below neighboring residences looming above. Its most unusual feature, however, is the Confederate Stockade Cemetery, located on the island’s northeast corner, overlooking Bay Point and Cedar Point beyond. According to the National Park Service, from 1862 to 1865, the United States War Department imprisoned more than 11,500 Confederates at its facility on Johnson’s Island, which it leased from owner Leonard Johnson for $500 per year. The site, surrounded by the waters of Lake Erie, was chosen for its relative isolation. “It was easily defensible and close to rail lines in Sandusky,” (NPS) deemed so secure, in fact, that only Confederate officers were imprisoned here.

Although originally intended only to house a maximum of 1,000 men at a time, at its peak, Johnson Island’s population exceeded 3,255 in 1865. Population numbers were generally lower, however, due to the Union and Confederate armies frequently swapping prisoners of war. The prison, although more luxurious than those for ordinary soldiers, lacked appropriate sanitation, infrastructure, and food, and was frequently overcrowded. Diseases spread quickly throughout the prison and Lake Erie winters were undoubtedly harsh.

In 1864, Confederate soldiers based in Ontario attempted to raid the island. “They successfully seized two passenger steamers in Lake Erie and planned to capture the USS Michigan and use the warship to free the officers on Johnson’s Island,” (NPS) but aborted the mission. As a result, the Union strengthened its prison’s defenses, fearing possible future attacks.

After Robert E. Lee’s surrender and the Confederacy swore its oath of allegiance to the United States in 1865, the prison’s population decreased. By the end of the year, the War Department had returned control of the island to Johnson. During its time as a prison, only 239 men died on the island, their bodies buried a half mile from the original prison facility. Over 20 bodies were removed by friends and family after the Civil War and taken elsewhere. To commemorate those who remain, 206 marble headstones were erected after a group of Georgia journalists described the lack of permanent markers memorialize these men.

The Robert Patton Chapter of the UDC purchased the cemetery in 1905. Chapter leader, Mary Patton Hudson, worked feverishly to oversee improvements to the sight, including the construction of a fence around the cemetery. Her most notable contribution was the large statue of a Confederate soldier, dubbed The Lookout, created by Moses Ezekiel and dedicated in June 1910. “The [UDC] installed two monuments at the cemetery in 1925. The Mack-Hauck Memorial honors two members of the organization instrumental in preserving the Johnson’s Island cemetery” (NPS). Hudson herself was later dedicated a memorial for her effort to purchase the cemetery which was later donated to the federal government in 1931. Since then, additional granite markers have been placed in memory of Confederate prisoners of war.

Nostalgia has been described as “the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return,” (Kundera, 5) and, walking along the rows of headstones and among the ornate monuments in the cemetery on that hot July evening, I was struck by perhaps its opposite. Those who erected such memorials, however, clearly felt this way towards the Confederacy, yearning for its return. The Confederate Cross of Honor in northern soil, with initials CSA encompassing a Confederate battle flag, earnestly and shamelessly celebrates a brief instance of Confederate sovereignty, a reclamation of a place once designed to contain and irradicate it. The pedestal of Ezekiel’s statute reads and is dedicated “to those who died in federal prison on this island during the war between the states,” commemorating those Confederate officers, “dead, but sceptered sovereigns who still rule us from the grave.” The line is from Lord Byron’s Manfred, taken from a scene in which the titular character recounts the former glories of the Roman capital. He describes the “chief relics of almighty Rome,” the “ruinous perfection,” of “Caesar’s chambers, … the Augustan halls,” a place where all that remains is beautiful. “The place Became religion, and the heart ran o’er With silent worship of the great of old” (Byron). The “great of old” here is the legacy of slavery and a society built upon it. For the Confederacy, the owning of twelve generations of human chattels whose patriarchs and matriarchs were stolen from a distant continent was the state-sanctioned religion. The statue is chilling, the words inscribed within it are haunting.

Horrifying as it is, however, I think this is a monument which should be permitted to stand. It is relatively isolated and within a cemetery for America’s war dead. The statuary, although blatantly racist and clearly regaling the country’s most evil legacy, does not act to intimidate citizens in a public square like others. Furthermore, it is a physical relic of a not-too-distant past, personifying the horrors of before, which continue to echo through the modern day. This place made me think of those who commissioned and built its monuments, not with empathy or reverence, but with chilling terror. The tentacles of those who advocated something which, to me, seems almost unimaginable, poke out of the ground in this humble cemetery in Northeast Ohio. The relics earnestly bearing “CSA” really mean it, celebrating a government which actually existed in Montgomery, AL and Richmond, VA, and to which millions (and many who still) pledged their allegiance. These artifacts somehow make it real, the Confederacy: tangible, palpable, solid, and heavy, like a piece of iron in one’s hand. A prolonged southern invasion of my beloved northern home. Let this not be a place of veneration, but one bearing the scars of the past, a quiet warning of the persistence of hatred, imprisoning once more the evils of yore in a fixed position, viewable to all who venture near, but not germinating and sowing the malice, loathing, and rancor of those it commemorates, but nudging us forward to a more equitable and just future.

All photos are my own, taken on Johnson's Island, Ohio, 7/13/2021.

Top left: view of the headstones in the cemetery.

Top right: close-up view of the pedestal of The Lookout.

Bottom left: Iron Cross of the Confederacy, bearing its initials CSA with a Confederate battle flag in the center.

Bottom center: Entrance to the cemetery.

Bottom right: The Lookout.

References:

Byron, L. G. G. (2010). Manfred. Wilder Publications.

Historical introduction: Confederate monuments. Atlanta History Center. (2021, May 11). Retrieved January 19, 2022, from https://www.atlantahistorycenter.com/learning-and-research/projects-initiatives/confederate-monument-interpretation-guide/historical-introduction-confederate-monuments/

Kundera, M., & Asher, L. (2002). Ignorance. Harper-Collins.

Manfred dramatic poem - analysis & summary. English History. (2015, April 19). Retrieved January 19, 2022, from https://englishhistory.net/byron/poems/manfred-dramatic-poem/

U.S. Department of the Interior. (n.d.). Johnson's Island Confederate stockade cemetery. National Park Service. Retrieved January 21, 2022, from https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/national_cemeteries/ohio/confederate_stockade_cemetery.html

Wilkerson, I. (2020). Caste: the Origins of Our Discontents. Random House.

Wilkerson, I., & Gross, T. (2020, August 4). It's more than racism: Isabel Wilkerson explains America's 'caste' system. NPR. Retrieved January 19, 2022, from https://www.npr.org/transcripts/898574852

#exploreneoh #civil war #lake erie #confederate #ohio #cleveland #northeast ohio #water #cemetery #battle #prison #robert e lee #caste #slavery #history

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coochiequeens · 3 years ago

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I detest the ACLU

US — Illinois. Violent men were secreted into a women’s prison in Illinois over recent months without public notice while and after a District Court decided state prisons should not automatically house inmates on the basis of sex indicators, such as genitalia and physical stature. One of the men had to be placed into isolation after an investigation determined he raped several of the women after stopping his hormone use. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) worked closely with the men to help them get the transfers, filing a class action lawsuit on their behalf. Although the men’s birth names remain their legal names, the ACLU had the men use feminine, false names on all court filings. This had the effect of keeping the violent and sexually predatory criminal backgrounds of the men seeking transfers from becoming easily discoverable to the public. The News-Gazette, an Illinois daily newspaper, found it “impossible to identify” the men’s true identities based on the court documents:

“The gulf between the corrections department and the six plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union is vast. The lawsuit provides six female names for the plaintiffs. But the department’s inmate locator shows no inmates identified by those names in the suit. Because five of the six have common last names, it’s impossible to identify their location in the prison system. “ Through extensive research, we gradually learned the legal names of the six male inmates who requested transfers to women’s prison, and were able to discover through queries of the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) database that four are currently housed at Logan Correctional Center, a women’s prison.

The Women are “Scared” of the Male Transferees

The male inmates were “not well received” at the women’s prison: “Many women in IDOC’s care have been exposed to domestic, physical, or emotional violence,” court papers show Dr William Puga, the IDOC Chief of Psychiatry, as having reported, and are therefore “scared” of the male transferees. Of the two men who had already been transferred into the women’s prison at the time of Dr Puga’s report, one was found to have raped several incarcerated women. However, “these difficulties have not deterred the Committee from considering transfer requests on an individual basis,” Dr Puga admitted. The Committee oversees the security, placement, and treatment of inmates who identify as transgender.

Janiah Monroe, who was born and is legally named Andre Patterson, was taken into custody in 2005 at age 17 on suspicion of the shooting of two individuals outside a barber shop. The teen strangled to death his jail cellmate, Kimani Muhammad, a 31-year-old man. Convicted of on one count each of Attempted Murder/Intent To Kill/Injure, Second Degree Murder/Unreasonable, Attempted Aggravated Arson/Know People Present, and four counts related to Aggravated Battery/Harm, Monroe told the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois in a Declaratory Judgment and Injunctive Relief that he identifies as a woman, and was being sexually harassed and bullied in men’s prison. Monroe was transferred to Logan while the lawsuit, which became a class-action, was ongoing. Court documents referenced in Monroe v Baldwin show Dr Puga “received information that Monroe threatened staff and other inmates” at the women’s prison. Monroe, who had intact male genitalia, “stopped taking her hormones and was sexually active.” In addition, “women at the facility filed complaints against Monroe under the Prison Rape Elimination Act [PREA]; some were false but many were legitimate.” One of the women said Monroe subdued and raped her the day they became cellmates. According to her lawsuit against the prison, staff forced her to recant the rape allegation and punished for filing a false complaint under the PREA. The IDOC sought to return Monroe to Pontiac, a men’s prison. Just as Monroe was being escorted by van from the gates of Logan, the governor’s office intervened, and US District Court Judge Michael Mihm issued an injunction against Monroe’s return to men’s prison. Monroe’s last known location was isolation at Logan.

Sora Kuykendall, a registered sex offender who legally retains his birth name of Jordan Kuykendall, fatally stabbed his 17-year-old girlfriend in the neck and torso. Erin Michelle Schneider, the high schooler, had ended her relationship with 20-year-old Kuykendall and filed an emergency order of protection following years of physical abuse. Kuykendall was captured after crashing head-on with another vehicle while fleeing the scene. Months after he was jailed, Kuykendall began identifying as a woman. He pleaded guilty 11 months after declaring a female identity identity. He later appealed, claiming the emotional stress of being transgender, combined with major depression and a personality disorder, had made him unable to fully understand the consequences of the plea. The appeal was denied. When the IDOC stalled in providing cross-sex hormones, Kuykendall attempted to castrate his own testicles, and the IDOC gave him the prescription. Kuykendall testified in the class-action lawsuit that he could not receive visitors, as he would “cry and shake” at the thought of undergoing the required strip-search by a male corrections officer. As a result of the ruling, Kuykendall, who is serving a 40-year sentence, was transferred to Logan.

Lydia Helena Vision, a registered sex offender named Eric Padilla at birth and under the law, approached three black men in 2003 as they walked by a housing project. In an incident presumed to be racially motivated, the Mexican-born man deliberately bumped into Frenaz D. Lyles, age 18, and demanded an apology before stabbing him. Now serving 23 years for the attempted murder, Vision told the court during the class action lawsuit: “When I was a child, I attempted to cut off my penis,” as from “a young age, I knew that I was a girl.” Vision claimed he “hid my femininity and transgender identity” due to lack of family support, but now “I am trapped in a male prison where I do not feel safe.” He said he felt disgust at being touched by male guards and having to shower with other male inmates despite his demands for a “private shower arrangement.” Vision was given the hormones he demanded and quietly moved to Logan.

Marilyn Melendez, whose birth and legal name is Diego, began identifying as female as a child, and “took estrogen and a testosterone blocker in my pre-teen years” until his mother could no longer afford the hormones on her limited income. He first entered the criminal justice system at age 14. Melendez is currently serving a 27-year sentence for the crimes of Murder With Intent to Kill / Injure and Aggravated Battery With Firearm / Person. He was transferred to Logan after moving the court with testimony of the misery of being imprisoned with other men: “I have to go to yard with men, I have to be surrounded by men, go to eat with men, I have to go to counseling with men. I am being subject to be around them 24/7, even if I am in a cell by myself. … I’m not male … no woman should be forced to be around a man in prison.”

The requests of two other male inmates to be transferred to a women’s prison were not granted, as the men were anticipating parole. Sasha Reed, a registered sex offender legally named Farrell Reed, is being paroled after serving most of a 10-year sentence for Aggravated Criminal Sexual Assault, a felony. Ebony Stamps, who is legally named Gregory Stamps, was paroled shortly before completing his six-year sentence for Attempted Murder/Intent To Kill/Injure, which ran concurrent to his three years for Aggravated Domestic Battery.

#illnois #sex offenders in women’s prisons #Prison Rape Elimination Act [PREA]#Men in women’s prisons #create a third prison space

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brookstonalmanac · 6 days ago

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Events 2.5 (after 1950)

1958 – Gamal Abdel Nasser is nominated to be the first president of the United Arab Republic. 1958 – A hydrogen bomb known as the Tybee Bomb is lost by the US Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, never to be recovered. 1962 – French President Charles de Gaulle calls for Algeria to be granted independence. 1963 – The European Court of Justice's ruling in Van Gend en Loos v Nederlandse Administratie der Belastingen establishes the principle of direct effect, one of the most important, if not the most important, decisions in the development of European Union law. 1967 – Cultural Revolution: The Shanghai People's Commune is formally proclaimed, with Yao Wenyuan and Zhang Chunqiao being appointed as its leaders. 1971 – Astronauts land on the Moon in the Apollo 14 mission. 1975 – Riots break out in Lima, Peru after the police forces go on strike the day before. The uprising (locally known as the Limazo) is bloodily suppressed by the military dictatorship. 1981 – Operation Soap: The Metropolitan Toronto Police Force raids four gay bathhouses in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, arresting just under 300, triggering mass protest and rallies. 1985 – Ugo Vetere, then the mayor of Rome, and Chedli Klibi, then the mayor of Carthage, meet in Tunis to sign a treaty of friendship officially ending the Third Punic War which lasted 2,131 years. 1988 – Manuel Noriega is indicted on drug smuggling and money laundering charges. 1994 – Byron De La Beckwith is convicted of the 1963 murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers. 1994 – Markale massacres, more than 60 people are killed and some 200 wounded as a mortar shell explodes in a downtown marketplace in Sarajevo. 1997 – The so-called Big Three banks in Switzerland announce the creation of a $71 million fund to aid Holocaust survivors and their families. 2000 – Russian forces massacre at least 60 civilians in the Novye Aldi suburb of Grozny, Chechnya. 2004 – Rebels from the Revolutionary Artibonite Resistance Front capture the city of Gonaïves, starting the 2004 Haiti rebellion. 2008 – A major tornado outbreak across the Southern United States kills 57. 2016 – New Zealand politician Steven Joyce is hit by a flung rubber dildo in a Waitangi Day protest. 2019 – Pope Francis becomes the first Pope in history to visit and perform papal mass in the Arabian Peninsula during his visit to Abu Dhabi. 2020 – United States President Donald Trump is acquitted by the United States Senate in his first impeachment trial. 2020 – Pegasus Airlines Flight 2193 overshoots the runway at Sabiha Gökçen International Airport and crashes, killing three people and injuring 179. 2021 – Police riot in Mexico City as they try to break up a demonstration by cyclists who were protesting after a bus ran over a bicyclist. Eleven police officers are arrested.

#Events

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anastasiamaru · 3 years ago

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Here are the latest developments.

Russia’s Defense Ministry has signaled that the war might be entering a new phase, as a senior general announced that troops were turning their attention to securing control of separatist regions in Ukraine’s east and that taking the capital, Kyiv, and other major cities was not a primary military objective.

The statement Friday seemed to suggest that Russia was giving up, at least for now, on its unstated goal of taking all of Ukraine. It said the “first stage of the operation” had been “mainly accomplished” and claimed that enemy combat power had been “significantly reduced.”

Analysts cautioned that the statement could be intended as misdirection while Russia regroups for a new offensive. But it is clear that fierce Ukrainian resistance has exacted a heavy toll on Russian troops and held back their attempts to capture major cities.

Ukrainian officials said on Friday that the Russian military had been “partially successful” in creating a land corridor between Russia and the Crimean peninsula, a key strategic aim. But its ground forces were digging into defensive positions around Kyiv and no longer trying to take it over, according to a U.S. defense official. Instead, the official said, Russia is shifting its focus to the eastern Donbas region, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting since 2014.

President Biden is scheduled to speak on Saturday from Poland, a key NATO ally, and meet with its president on the last day of his three-day visit to Europe. He is also expected to meet with some of the millions of Ukrainian refugees who have flooded across the Polish border.

In other major developments:

In the southern port of Mariupol, Ukrainian officials said that an estimated 300 people had been killed in a March 16 strike on a theater that was being used as a bomb shelter.

Russian mercenaries with combat experience in Syria and Libya are gearing up for an active combat role in eastern Ukraine, a U.S. official said. The number of mercenaries with the Wagner Group, a private military force with ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, is expected to more than triple in the region, from about 300 just before the invasion to at least 1,000 fighters, the official said.

In a televised address, Mr. Putin delivered a diatribe about “cancel culture,” embracing a term that has become a favorite of the American right and accusing the West of trying to erase Russian culture and history.

The United States announced a deal with European leaders to increase shipments of natural gas to help wean Europe off Russian energy, as European Union countries announced an agreement to jointly buy and store gas, hydrogen and liquefied natural gas. Germany said that it would halve its imports of Russian oil by midsummer and be free of Russian natural gas by mid-2024.

New York Times

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greatworldwar2 · 4 years ago

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• Hugo Sperrle

Hugo Sperrle was a German military aviator in World War I and a Generalfeldmarschall in the Luftwaffe during World War II.

Sperrle was born in the town of Ludwigsburg, in the Kingdom of Württemberg, German Empire on February 7th, 1885 the son of a brewery proprietor, Johannes Sperrle and his wife Luise Karoline, née Nägele. He joined the Imperial German Army on July 5th, 1903 as a Fahnenjunker (officer cadet). Sperrle was assigned to the 8th Württemberg Infantry Regiment, a regiment in the Army of Württemberg, and after a year received his commission and promotion to Leutnant on October 28th, 1912. At the outbreak of World War I, Sperrle was training as an artillery spotter in the Luftstreitkräfte (German Army Air Service). On November 28th, 1914 Sperrle was promoted to Hauptmann. Sperrle did not distinguish himself in battle as his fellow staff officers in World War II had done, but he forged a solid record in the aerial reconnaissance field. Sperrle served first as an observer, then trained as a pilot with the 4th Field Flying Detachment (Feldfliegerabteilung) at the Kriegsakademie (War Academy). Sperrle went on to command the 42nd and 60th Field Flying Detachments, then led the 13th Field Flying Group. After suffering severe injuries in a crash, Sperrle moved to the air observer school at Cologne thereafter and when the war ended he was in command of flying units attached to the 7th Army.

After the war Sperrle joined the Freikorps and commanded an aviation detachment. He then joined the Reichswehr. Sperrle commanded units in Silesia including the Freiwilligen Fliegerabteilungen 412 under the leadership of Erhard Milch. Sperrle fought on the East Prussia border during the 1919 conflict with Poland. On December 1st, 1919, commander-in-chief of the German army, Hans von Seeckt issued a directive for the creation of 57 committees, encompassing all the military branches, to compile detailed studies of German war experiences. Helmuth Wilberg led the air service sector and Sperrle was one of 83 commanders ordered to assist. The air staff studies were conducted through 1920. Sperrle served on the air staff for Wehrkreis V in Stuttgart from 1919 to 1923, then the Defence Ministry until 1924. Sperrle then served on the staff of the 4th Infantry Division near Dresden. Sperrle travelled to Lipetsk in the Soviet Union at this time, where the Germans maintained a secret air base and founded the Lipetsk fighter-pilot school. Sperrle purportedly visited the United Kingdom to observe Royal Air Force exercises. In 1927 Sperrle, at the rank of Major, replaced Wilberg as head of the air staff at the Waffenamt an Truppenamt (Weapons and Troop Office). Sperrle was selected for his expertise in technical matters; he was seen as highly qualified staff officer with combat experience in commanding the flying units of the 7th army during the war. Sperrle was promoted to Oberstleutnant (lieutenant colonel) in 1931 while commanding the 3rd battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment from 1929 to 1933. Sperrle ended his army career in command of the 8th Infantry Regiment, from October 1st, 1933 to April 1st, 1934. At the rank of Oberst (colonel), Sperrle was given command of the headquarters of the First Air Division (Fliegerdivision 1). Sperrle was given responsibility for coordinating army support aviation.

After Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party seized power, Hermann Göring created and Reich Air Ministry. Göring handed most of the squadrons in existence to Sperrle because of his command experiences. Sperrle was involved in the difficulties in German aircraft procurement. Four months after assuming command, Sperrle was rigorously critical of the Dornier Do 11 and Dornier Do 13 in a conference on July 18th, 1934. Five months later, with development failing, Sperrle met with Wolfram Freiherr von Richthofen, head of aircraft development and Luftkreis IV commander Alfred Keller, a wartime bomber pilot. It was decided Junkers Ju 52 production would be a stopgap, while the Dornier Do 23 reached units in the late summer, 1935. The awaited Junkers Ju 86 was scheduled for testing in November 1934 and the promising Heinkel He 111 in February 1935. On March 1st, 1935, Hermann Göring announced the existence of the Luftwaffe. Sperrle was transferred to the Reich Air Ministry. Sperrle was initially given command of Luftkreis II (Air District II), and then Luftkreis V in Münich upon his promotion to Generalmajor (Brigadier General) in October 1935. Sperrle remained in Germany until the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. He commanded all German forces in Spain from November 1936 to November 1937. Sperrle was the first commander of the Condor Legion during the Spanish Civil War. Sperrle left Germany by air on October 31st, 1936 and arrived in Seville, via Rome on November 5th. Sperrle was sent a Kampfgruppe (bomber group—K/88), Jagdgruppe 88 (fighter group 88—J/88) and Aufklärungsstaffel (reconnaissance squadron—AS/88). They were supported by a Flak Abteilung (F/88) with three heavy and two light batteries with communications, transport and maintenance units. The Germans could not afford to fully equip the Legion, and so the air group made use of Spanish equipment. Of the 1,500 vehicles used, there were 100 types creating a maintenance nightmare.

After his experience leading the Condor Legion Sperrle was given command of Luftwaffe Group 3 on the February 1st, 1938 which eventually became Luftflotte 3 (Air Fleet 3) in February 1939. Sperrle commanded the air fleet for the remainder of his military career. Sperrle was used by Hitler in his foreign policy to intimidate small neighbours with the Luftwaffe, which had earned a reputation in Spain. On February 12th, 1938, Hitler invited Sperrle to a meeting at Berchtesgaden with Kurt Schuschnigg, chancellor of the Federal State of Austria. The meetings eventually helped pave the way for Anschluss, the Nazi seizure of Austria. In March 1939 Hitler decided to annex Czechoslovakia completely and risk war. He turned once again to the Luftwaffe to assist him achieving diplomatic results. The threat of aerial bombardment proved a crucial in forcing smaller nations to submit to German occupation. The successes confirmed Hitler's view that air power could be used politically, as a "terror weapon". Sperrle was asked by Hitler to talk about the Luftwaffe, to intimidate the Czech president. Hácha purportedly fainted, and when he regained consciousness, Göring screamed at him, "think of Prague!" The elderly President reluctantly ordered the Czechoslovakian Army not to resist. The aerial part of the German occupation of Czechoslovakia was carried out by 500–650 aircraft belonging to Sperrle's newly renamed air fleet, Luftflotte 3.

On September 1st, 1939, the Wehrmacht invaded Poland prompting the British Empire and France to declare war in her defence. Sperrle's Luftflotte 3 remained guarding German air space in western Germany and did not contribute to the German invasion, made possible by the non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union. The air fleet's Order of battle had been stripped of almost all of the combat units it held in March 1939. Only two reconnaissance staffel (squadrons) and a single bomber unit attached to Wekusta 51 remained. Sperrle received the competent Major General Maximilian Ritter von Pohl as his chief of staff. The two men made for a "good partnership". Sperrle was also assigned Major General Walter Surén, appointed as the air fleet's chief signals officer. Surén planned and organised the German field communications for the offensive in 1940. While guarding the Western Front during the Phoney War, Sperrle's small fleet of 306 aircraft which included 33 obsolete Arado Ar 68s fought off probing attacks of French and British aircraft. Sperrle developed a reputation as gourmet, whose private transport aircraft featured a refrigerator to keep his wines cool, and although as corpulent as Göring, he was reliable and as ruthless as his superior. Sperrle wanted his air fleet to take a more aggressive stance and won over Göring. On September 13th, 1939 he was authorised to undertake long-range high altitude reconnaissance missions at extreme altitudes. Photographic operations over France authorised by the OKL began on September 21st, which the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht did not sanction until four days later.

Luftflotte 3 was heavily reinforced in the spring, 1940. Sperrle's headquarters was based at Bad Orb. The air fleet was assigned I. Flakkorps under Generaloberst Hubert Weise, I. Fliegerkorps under Generaloberst Ulrich Grauert at Cologne, the II. Fliegerkorps under Generaloberst Bruno Loerzer at Frankfurt, and V. Fliegerkorps under command of General Robert Ritter von Greim at Gersthofen. For the coming battle, Sperrle had 1,788 aircraft (1,272 operational) at his disposal. Opposing Sperrle, was the Armée de l'Air (French Air Force) eastern (ZOAE) and southern (ZOAS) zones under Général de Corps d'armée Aérien René Bouscat and Robert Odic. Bouscat had 509 aircraft (363 operational) and Odic 165 (109 combat ready). Fall Gelb began on May 10th,1940. Sperrle's air fleet engaged in operations supporting Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt and Army Group A in the Battle of Belgium and Battle of France, as well as Army Group C. Sperrle's counter-air campaign started badly, reflecting poor photographic interpretation of targets, though he later claimed Luftflotte 3's operations were decisive in achieving air superiority. Sperrle's men claimed 240 to 490 aircraft destroyed, mostly "in hangars"—Allied losses were actually 40 first-line aircraft. Failing to neutralise Allied fighter units cost Sperrle 39 aircraft. Sperrle's air corps commanders targeted air interdiction operations and ordered, attacks on rail communications to prevent the westward deployment of the French Army from the Maginot Line and to pin down Allied reserves by disrupting communications across the Meuse. 26 French rail stations were bombed as were 86 localities from May 10th to 12th. During the breakthrough to the English Channel, rail networks were attacked to prevent Allied forces rallying. Sperrle and Kesselring objected to the halt order during the Battle of Dunkirk. Neither man believed the pocket could be reduced by air power alone. Gelb was complete, and the OKL prepared for Case Red. The Luftflotten were reorganised; Sperrle retained II. and V. Fliegerkorps along with I. Flakkorps. The flak corps was reorganised into two brigades, with four regiments each with the firepower of 72 batteries. Sperrle was required to strike far deeper into France, and was given the majority of Zerstörer (destroyer aircraft) equipped with Messerschmitt Bf 110.

In a prelude to the offensive, Sperrle planned to carry out strategic bombing operations against Paris. Sperrle had long-planned for air attacks on Paris using II., V. and VIII. Fliegerkorps in May. He was forced to abandon the plan on May 22nd because of weather, but the following day, the OKL prepared a plan for Operation Paula. The plan was to attack the estimated 1,000 French aircraft detected on Parisian airfields, but also to attack factories and destroy the morale of the French people. The operation was undone by poor staff work and excessive confidence in the Enigma machine. On June 5th Sperrle's forces flew eight bombing operations against railways and localities, 21 to 31 against road targets, 12 against troop columns and 34 to 42 against French Army defences or strongpoints. Sperrle was ordered to support Rundstedt advancing southward, with orders to encircle the Maginot Line, from the west. The campaign played out for a further five days, which came as Luftwaffe logistics were breaking down, fuel and ammunition shortages were acute and relied on air transportation. Sperrle attempted to prevent the British Operation Ariel a second evacuation but the only success was the sinking of Lancastria, with 5,800 lives lost. On June 20th arrangements were made for the Armistice of June 22nd, 1940. Upon learning of it, Sperrle ordered the abandonment of a planned bombing operation against Bordeaux. In July 1940 Winston Churchill's government rejected peace overtures from Hitler. Hitler resolved to knock Britain out of the war. The OKL began tentative planning for Operation Eagle Attack to destroy RAF Fighter Command to gain air superiority, before supporting an amphibious landing in Britain, codenamed, Operation Sea Lion.

Sperrle thought the RAF could be defeated en passant. His personal strategy to attack ports and merchant shipping was overruled by Göring, ostensibly because the ports would be required for the invasion. Kesselring's contemporary notes indicate he thought air superiority could only be attained for a short time, since most airfields and factories in Britain were out of range. Sperrle and Kesselring miscalculated, or were misled by intelligence, into underestimating the number of fighter aircraft available to Fighter Command. They put the RAF total at 450 aircraft when the real figure was 750. Chronic intelligence failures on British production, defence systems and aircraft performance inhibited the German air operation throughout the battle. The Luftwaffe regrouped after the Battle of France into three Luftflotten (Air Fleets) . Sperrle's first task against the British Isles was during the Kanalkampf (Channel Battle) phase of what became known as the Battle of Britain. The aim was to draw out Fighter Command into dogfights by attacking Channel Shipping. Targeting British convoy systems, in July 1940 Sperrle's air fleet claimed 90 vessels sunk for approximately 300,000 tons, a third of this was claimed over August and September. Two days before Operation Eagle scheduled for August 13th he had lost two Gruppenkommandeur and a Staffelkapitän. Sperrle knew he could not afford to lose experienced officers at such a rate. The emphasis of German air attacks switched to bombing Fighter Command bases and its infrastructure. On August 13th, 1940, Sperrle's air fleet played a role in the failed Unternehmen Adlerangriff ("Operation Eagle Attack"). On the August 14th, Sperrle began a smaller, prolonged, but widely scattered series of attacks on aerodromes and other targets in the western half of England. The attacks were not very effective and earned the Luftflotte a rebuke from Göring. At the beginning of September 1940, Sperrle could muster 350 serviceable bombers and dive-bombers and about 100 fighters, either for his own purposes or to support the 9th Army and, if necessary, the 6th Army in a landing. Sperrle lost Richthofen to Kesselring who took possession of some units in Normandy, and concentrated the available dive-bomber force near the Straits of Dover.

The bombing operations continued against Fighter Command into October 1940, but with gradually more emphasis placed on attacking industrial cities, primarily because it offered the only way to continue hostilities against Britain directly in the absence of invasion. The preference for night over day operations was evident in the number of bombing operations flown by the German air fleets. Sperrle had spent the last week of August and first week of September gearing up for large–scale night operations. Sperrle's air fleet assisted in the beginning of The Blitz which began in earnest on September 7th, 1940. This night approximately 250 aircraft dropped 300 tons of high explosive and 13,000 incendiaries on the centre of London. Sperrle's airmen flew 4,525 bombing operations in November 1940. In December 1940 Sperrle's air groups flew 2,750 bombing operations against British cities. In February 1941 bad weather limited Sperrle to 975 bombing operations. During the month of May Sperrle's men carried out the burden of night operations, flying 2,500 sorties. Approximately 40,000 British civilians had been killed, another 46,000 injured, and more than a million houses damaged during the Blitz. The German air fleets lost 600 German aircraft on night operations. In five months of bombing docks and ports in 1941, only some 70,000 tons of food stocks were destroyed, and only one half a percent of oil stocks. Damage to communications was quickly repaired. Everywhere except in the aircraft industry the loss was too small a fraction of total output to matter seriously. In early June 1941, the majority of German bomber units moved eastward to the soon-to-be Eastern Front, in preparation for Operation Barbarossa.

Sperrle had been involved in the war at sea since the first phase of the Battle of Britain. He received an OKL directive on October 20th, 1940 ordering him to attack shipping once again in the Thames Estuary. He ordered his dive-bombers into this service, but they were rapidly neutralised in November by a "dynamic defence". The most effective support for the U-boat campaign came from attacking ports in 1941. Direct support to the Kriegsmarine in the Battle of the Atlantic was haphazard; successes were won by accident rather than by design. The Atlantic command came under Sperrle's control upon formation but was subordinated to Sperrle officially on April 7th, 1942. The name of the command was misleading, for it was tasked with maritime interdiction operations all around the British coast besides operating deep into the Atlantic. In the 46 months following July 1940, German aircraft sank 1,228, 104 tons of merchant shipping and damaged 1,953, 862 tons. Another 60, 866 tons were sunk or damaged by mines in 1942 and 1943. The failure to properly cooperate with the navy against shipping was a grave strategic error which prevented the achievement of greater results. For a brief period in March 1943 before the German defeat in Black May Sperrle intended to increase his command to 22 groups for Atlantic operations. From the Allied perspective, the Atlantic campaign became nothing more than a "skirmish" by the autumn, 1943.

In 1942 another threat emerged when the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) began bombing raids against targets in Belgium and France. Sperrle's fighter pilots carried the burden of the defence in 1942. Later that year, JG 1 was assigned to Luftwaffenbefehlshaber Mitte, later known as Luftflotte Reich (Air Fleet Reich) but saw little action since USAAF rarely crossed into the Netherlands. Thereafter, the air war only escalated. Sperrle resisted attempts by Luftwaffenbefehlshaber Mitte to gain control of anti-aircraft forces or to allow the physical degradation of his air fleet, and the offensive mindedness of the OKL favoured front-line units. In March 1943, an immediate rise in losses had already been noted. A report from Luftflotte 3 recognised the size and defensive power of American bombers required a timely interception by massed formations for any chance of success. In July alone, western fighter forces lost 335 single-engine aircraft to all causes. On the German side, there was a call to unify German fighter forces and hold them back from coastal and keep them out of Allied fighter escort range. Regardless of the logic, Sperrle opposed the idea to preserve his command. Sperrle was sensitive to a centralise command for fighter forces and resisted. On September 15th, 1943 an effort to improve Sperrle's organisation was made by creating II. Jagdkorps with the 5th and 4. Jagd Division. The improvement in command and control made little difference in the battle with the USAAF for neither division received the reinforcements it needed. At the end of 1943, the German air defences won temporary successes against the USAAF Eighth Air Force. In February 1944, Big Week targeted German and French–based targets. The German fighter force was bled white over the following two months. In the lead up to June 1944, Luftflotte 3 remained weak, and contained few ground-attack aircraft; nearly all were based on the Eastern Front. Sperrle's fighter pilots were required to attack the landing forces.

A major effect of the combined offensive on Sperrle's air fleet was the diversion and reinforcement of Luftflotte Reich at the expense of Luftflotte 3. By June 1944, the number of fighter aircraft available in the west numbered just 170. Sperrle's air fleet had, at most, 300 fighter aircraft on June 6th, 1944 to contest the D-day landings. The Western Allies amassed 12,837, including 5,400 fighters. Sperrle's air fleet was particularly weak in night fighter units. Given the low priority for their production, Sperrle went for periods with no night–fighting capabilities despite the crucial geographical position of his air fleet and the exposure of important French industries to night attack. Sperrle's air fleet was reinforced on Göring's orders for the purpose of bombing London. The offensive was named Operation Steinbock and began in January 1944. British defences had improved dramatically since 1941 and were fully prepared to repel the attacks. The offensive wasted the last German bomber reserves. The losses were a blow to Sperrle. Sperrle's air fleet Enigma signals had been cracked and ULTRA codebreakers from Bletchley Park deciphered signals sent by Luftflotte 3 headquarters to the OKW. Reading the reports, Allied intelligence deduced that the bombing operations against bridges, west of the Seine, and fighter activity between Mantes and Le Mans, had convinced the air fleet staff the invasion would take place in the Pas de Calais. Allied attacks in May 1944 against bases had a devastating impact on Luftflotte 3 capabilities. ULTRA gave the Allies intelligence on the location and strength of German fighter units as well as the effectiveness of attacks. Further damage was done to Sperrle's air defence network. Some 300,000 personnel worked in Luftflotte 3, 56,000 in signals. The fortification of radar sites after Dieppe had only highlighted them, and 76 of the 92 were knocked out by D-Day. The Allies enjoyed complete air superiority on June 6th, 1944 and flew 14,000 missions in support of the invasion. On the first day, the British and Commonwealth landed 75,215 men and the Americans 57,500. A large force of 23,000 paratroops parachuted in during the night. Luftflotte 3 barely reacted.

Sperrle was dismissed from his post on August 23rd, 1944, hours before American and French forces liberated Paris and overran his headquarters. As the German front collapsed in the aftermath of the Falaise pocket, the air fleet ground organisation uprooted and fled east across the Seine. Hitler charged the personnel of the 3rd air fleet with desertion and held Sperrle responsible. On September 22nd,1944 his former command was downgraded from air fleet to air command status. By the time of his dismissal, Sperrle had purportedly long since lost faith in the German war effort and in Hitler and Göring's military leadership. He had become lazy and had a tendency to indulge in the trappings and luxury lifestyle occupied France offered. During the war Hitler had occasionally gifted Sperrle artwork that may have been looted from occupied territories. Analysts of Sperrle's performance have been critical of his perceived inaction in Normandy and point to critical contemporary army reports on the failures of his command. Others have questioned Sperrle's influence on the conduct of operations and suggested he was a convenient scapegoat for Göring. Sperrle remained embittered after the defeat in France. He was deemed unfit for a senior command and spent the rest of the war in the Führerreserve. On May 1st, 1945, Sperrle was arrested by the British Army and became a prisoner of war. Sperrle was captured by the Allies and charged with war crimes in the High Command Trial at the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials but was acquitted. The court concluded that Sperrle had never been a member of the Nazi Party nor one of its affiliate organizations. After the war, he lived quietly and died in Munich on April 2nd, 1953 at the age of 68.

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