#if her being a prosecutor running against a felon

[vaguelyaperson]

actually Kamala Harris promising to sign codified abortion rights into law, as the first female president, would be pretty damn metal

[ms-hells-bells]

Because senator Kamala Harris is a prosecutor and I am a felon, I have been following her political rise, with the same focus that my younger son tracks Steph Curry threes. Before it was in vogue to criticize prosecutors, my friends and I were exchanging tales of being railroaded by them. Shackled in oversized green jail scrubs, I listened to a prosecutor in a Fairfax County, Va., courtroom tell a judge that in one night I’d single-handedly changed suburban shopping forever. Everything the prosecutor said I did was true — I carried a pistol, carjacked a man, tried to rob two women. “He needs a long penitentiary sentence,” the prosecutor told the judge. I faced life in prison for carjacking the man. I pleaded guilty to that, to having a gun, to an attempted robbery. I was 16 years old. The old heads in prison would call me lucky for walking away with only a nine-year sentence.

I’d been locked up for about 15 months when I entered Virginia’s Southampton Correctional Center in 1998, the year I should have graduated from high school. In that prison, there were probably about a dozen other teenagers. Most of us had lengthy sentences — 30, 40, 50 years — all for violent felonies. Public talk of mass incarceration has centered on the war on drugs, wrongful convictions and Kafkaesque sentences for nonviolent charges, while circumventing the robberies, home invasions, murders and rape cases that brought us to prison.

The most difficult discussion to have about criminal-justice reform has always been about violence and accountability. You could release everyone from prison who currently has a drug offense and the United States would still outpace nearly every other country when it comes to incarceration. According to the Prison Policy Institute, of the nearly 1.3 million people incarcerated in state prisons, 183,000 are incarcerated for murder; 17,000 for manslaughter; 165,000 for sexual assault; 169,000 for robbery; and 136,000 for assault. That’s more than half of the state prison population.

When Harris decided to run for president, I thought the country might take the opportunity to grapple with the injustice of mass incarceration in a way that didn’t lose sight of what violence, and the sorrow it creates, does to families and communities. Instead, many progressives tried to turn the basic fact of Harris’s profession into an indictment against her. Shorthand for her career became: “She’s a cop,” meaning, her allegiance was with a system that conspires, through prison and policing, to harm Black people in America.

In the past decade or so, we have certainly seen ample evidence of how corrupt the system can be: Michelle Alexander’s best-selling book, “The New Jim Crow,” which argues that the war on drugs marked the return of America’s racist system of segregation and legal discrimination; Ava DuVernay’s “When They See Us,” a series about the wrongful convictions of the Central Park Five, and her documentary “13th,” which delves into mass incarceration more broadly; and “Just Mercy,” a book by Bryan Stevenson, a public interest lawyer, that has also been made into a film, chronicling his pursuit of justice for a man on death row, who is eventually exonerated. All of these describe the destructive force of prosecutors, giving a lot of run to the belief that anyone who works within a system responsible for such carnage warrants public shame.

My mother had an experience that gave her a different perspective on prosecutors — though I didn’t know about it until I came home from prison on March 4, 2005, when I was 24. That day, she sat me down and said, “I need to tell you something.” We were in her bedroom in the townhouse in Suitland, Md., that had been my childhood home, where as a kid she’d call me to bring her a glass of water. I expected her to tell me that despite my years in prison, everything was good now. But instead she told me about something that happened nearly a decade earlier, just weeks after my arrest. She left for work before the sun rose, as she always did, heading to the federal agency that had employed her my entire life. She stood at a bus stop 100 feet from my high school, awaiting the bus that would take her to the train that would take her to a stop near her job in the nation’s capital. But on that morning, a man yanked her into a secluded space, placed a gun to her head and raped her. When she could escape, she ran wildly into the 6 a.m. traffic.

My mother’s words turned me into a mumbling and incoherent mess, unable to grasp how this could have happened to her. I knew she kept this secret to protect me. I turned to Google and searched the word “rape” along with my hometown and was wrecked by the violence against women that I found. My mother told me her rapist was a Black man. And I thought he should spend the rest of his years staring at the pockmarked walls of prison cells that I knew so well.

The prosecutor’s job, unlike the defense attorney’s or judge’s, is to do justice. What does that mean when you are asked by some to dole out retribution measured in years served, but blamed by others for the damage incarceration can do? The outrage at this country’s criminal-justice system is loud today, but it hasn’t led us to develop better ways of confronting my mother’s world from nearly a quarter-century ago: weekends visiting her son in a prison in Virginia; weekdays attending the trial of the man who sexually assaulted her.

We said goodbye to my grandmother in the same Baptist church that, in June 2019, Senator Kamala Harris, still pursuing the Democratic nomination for president, went to give a major speech about why she became a prosecutor. I hadn’t been inside Brookland Baptist Church for a decade, and returning reminded me of Grandma Mary and the eight years of letters she mailed to me in prison. The occasion for Harris’s speech was the annual Freedom Fund dinner of the South Carolina State Conference of the N.A.A.C.P. The evening began with the Black national anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” and at the opening chord nearly everyone in the room stood. There to write about the senator, I had been standing already and mouthed the words of the first verse before realizing I’d never sung any further.

Each table in the banquet hall was filled with folks dressed in their Sunday best. Servers brought plates of food and pitchers of iced tea to the tables. Nearly everyone was Black. The room was too loud for me to do more than crouch beside guests at their tables and scribble notes about why they attended. Speakers talked about the chapter’s long history in the civil rights movement. One called for the current generation of young rappers to tell a different story about sacrifice. The youngest speaker of the night said he just wanted to be safe. I didn’t hear anyone mention mass incarceration. And I knew in a different decade, my grandmother might have been in that audience, taking in the same arguments about personal agency and responsibility, all the while wondering why her grandbaby was still locked away. If Harris couldn’t persuade that audience that her experiences as a Black woman in America justified her decision to become a prosecutor, I knew there were few people in this country who could be moved.

Describing her upbringing in a family of civil rights activists, Harris argued that the ongoing struggle for equality needed to include both prosecuting criminal defendants who had victimized Black people and protecting the rights of Black criminal defendants. “I was cleareyed that prosecutors were largely not people who looked like me,” she said. This mattered for Harris because of the “prosecutors that refused to seat Black jurors, refused to prosecute lynchings, disproportionately condemned young Black men to death row and looked the other way in the face of police brutality.” When she became a prosecutor in 1990, she was one of only a handful of Black people in her office. When she was elected district attorney of San Francisco in 2003, she recalled, she was one of just three Black D.A.s nationwide. And when she was elected California attorney general in 2010, there were no other Black attorneys general in the country. At these words, the crowd around me clapped. “I knew the unilateral power that prosecutors had with the stroke of a pen to make a decision about someone else’s life or death,” she said.

Harris offered a pair of stories as evidence of the importance of a Black woman’s doing this work. Once, ear hustling, she listened to colleagues discussing ways to prove criminal defendants were gang-affiliated. If a racial-profiling manual existed, their signals would certainly be included: baggy pants, the place of arrest and the rap music blaring from vehicles. She said that she’d told her colleagues: “So, you know that neighborhood you were talking about? Well, I got family members and friends who live in that neighborhood. You know the way you were talking about how folks were dressed? Well, that’s actually stylish in my community.” She continued: “You know that music you were talking about? Well, I got a tape of that music in my car right now.”

The second example was about the mothers of murdered children. She told the audience about the women who had come to her office when she was San Francisco’s D.A. — women who wanted to speak with her, and her alone, about their sons. “The mothers came, I believe, because they knew I would see them,” Harris said. ��And I mean literally see them. See their grief. See their anguish.” They complained to Harris that the police were not investigating. “My son is being treated like a statistic,” they would say. Everyone in that Southern Baptist church knew that the mothers and their dead sons were Black. Harris outlined the classic dilemma of Black people in this country: being simultaneously overpoliced and underprotected. Harris told the audience that all communities deserved to be safe.

Among the guests in the room that night whom I talked to, no one had an issue with her work as a prosecutor. A lot of them seemed to believe that only people doing dirt had issues with prosecutors. I thought of myself and my friends who have served long terms, knowing that in a way, Harris was talking about Black people’s needing protection from us — from the violence we perpetrated to earn those years in a series of cells.

Harris came up as a prosecutor in the 1990s, when both the political culture and popular culture were developing a story about crime and violence that made incarceration feel like a moral response. Back then, films by Black directors — “New Jack City,” “Menace II Society,” “Boyz n the Hood” — turned Black violence into a genre where murder and crack-dealing were as ever-present as Black fathers were absent. Those were the years when Representative Charlie Rangel, a Democrat, argued that “we should not allow people to distribute this poison without fear that they might be arrested” and “go to jail for the rest of their natural life.” Those were the years when President Clinton signed legislation that ended federal parole for people with three violent crime convictions and encouraged states to essentially eliminate parole; made it more difficult for defendants to challenge their convictions in court; and made it nearly impossible to challenge prison conditions.

Back then, it felt like I was just one of an entire generation of young Black men learning the logic of count time and lockdown. With me were Anthony Winn and Terell Kelly and a dozen others, all lost to prison during those years. Terell was sentenced to 33 years for murdering a man when he was 17 — a neighborhood beef turned deadly. Home from college for two weeks, a 19-year-old Anthony robbed four convenience stores — he’d been carrying a pistol during three. After he was sentenced by four judges, he had a total of 36 years.

Most of us came into those cells with trauma, having witnessed or experienced brutality before committing our own. Prison, a factory of violence and despair, introduced us to more of the same. And though there were organizations working to get rid of the death penalty, end mandatory minimums, bring back parole and even abolish prisons, there were few ways for us to know that they existed. We suffered. And we felt alone. Because of this, sometimes I reduce my friends’ stories to the cruelty of doing time. I forget that Terell and I walked prison yards as teenagers, discussing Malcolm X and searching for mentors in the men around us. I forget that Anthony and I talked about the poetry of Sonia Sanchez the way others praised DMX. He taught me the meaning of the word “patina” and introduced me to the music of Bill Withers. There were Luke and Fats; and Juvie, who could give you the sharpest edge-up in America with just a razor and comb.

When I left prison in 2005, they all had decades left. Then I went to law school and believed I owed it to them to work on their cases and help them get out. I’ve persuaded lawyers to represent friends pro bono. Put together parole packets — basically job applications for freedom: letters of recommendation and support from family and friends; copies of certificates attesting to vocational training; the record of college credits. We always return to the crimes to provide explanation and context. We argue that today each one little resembles the teenager who pulled a gun. And I write a letter — which is less from a lawyer and more from a man remembering what it means to want to go home to his mother. I write, struggling to condense decades of life in prison into a 10-page case for freedom. Then I find my way to the parole board’s office in Richmond, Va., and try to persuade the members to let my friends see a sunrise for the first time.

Juvie and Luke have made parole; Fats, represented by the Innocence Project at the University of Virginia School of Law, was granted a conditional pardon by Virginia’s governor, Ralph Northam. All three are home now, released just as a pandemic would come to threaten the lives of so many others still inside. Now free, they’ve sent me text messages with videos of themselves hugging their mothers for the first time in decades, casting fishing lines from boats drifting along rivers they didn’t expect to see again, enjoying a cold beer that isn’t contraband.

In February, after 25 years, Virginia passed a bill making people incarcerated for at least 20 years for crimes they committed before their 18th birthdays eligible for parole. Men who imagined they would die in prison now may see daylight. Terell will be eligible. These years later, he’s the mentor we searched for, helping to organize, from the inside, community events for children, and he’s spoken publicly about learning to view his crimes through the eyes of his victim’s family. My man Anthony was 19 when he committed his crime. In the last few years, he’s organized poetry readings, book clubs and fatherhood classes. When Gregory Fairchild, a professor at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, began an entrepreneurship program at Dillwyn Correctional Center, Anthony was among the graduates, earning all three of the certificates that it offered. He worked to have me invited as the commencement speaker, and what I remember most is watching him share a meal with his parents for the first time since his arrest. But he must pray that the governor grants him a conditional pardon, as he did for Fats.

I tell myself that my friends are unique, that I wouldn’t fight so hard for just anybody. But maybe there is little particularly distinct about any of us — beyond that we’d served enough time in prison. There was a skinny light-skinned 15-year-old kid who came into prison during the years that we were there. The rumor was that he’d broken into the house of an older woman and sexually assaulted her. We all knew he had three life sentences. Someone stole his shoes. People threatened him. He’d had to break a man’s jaw with a lock in a sock to prove he’d fight if pushed. As a teenager, he was experiencing the worst of prison. And I know that had he been my cellmate, had I known him the way I know my friends, if he reached out to me today, I’d probably be arguing that he should be free.

But I know that on the other end of our prison sentences was always someone weeping. During the middle of Harris’s presidential campaign, a friend referred me to a woman with a story about Senator Harris that she felt I needed to hear. Years ago, this woman’s sister had been missing for days, and the police had done little. Happenstance gave this woman an audience with then-Attorney General Harris. A coordinated multicity search followed. The sister had been murdered; her body was found in a ravine. The woman told me that “Kamala understands the politics of victimization as well as anyone who has been in the system, which is that this kind of case — a 50-year-old Black woman gone missing or found dead — ordinarily does not get any resources put toward it.” They caught the man who murdered her sister, and he was sentenced to 131 years. I think about the man who assaulted my mother, a serial rapist, because his case makes me struggle with questions of violence and vengeance and justice. And I stop thinking about it. I am inconsistent. I want my friends out, but I know there is no one who can convince me that this man shouldn’t spend the rest of his life in prison.

My mother purchased her first single-family home just before I was released from prison. One version of this story is that she purchased the house so that I wouldn’t spend a single night more than necessary in the childhood home I walked away from in handcuffs. A truer account is that by leaving Suitland, my mother meant to burn the place from memory.

I imagined that I had singularly introduced my mother to the pain of the courts. I was wrong. The first time she missed work to attend court proceedings was to witness the prosecution of a kid the same age as I was when I robbed a man. He was probably from Suitland, and he’d attempted to rob my mother at gunpoint. The second time, my mother attended a series of court dates involving me, dressed in her best work clothes to remind the prosecutor and judge and those in the courtroom that the child facing a life sentence had a mother who loved him. The third time, my mother took off days from work to go to court alone and witness the trial of the man who raped her and two other women. A prosecutor’s subpoena forced her to testify, and her solace came from knowing that prison would prevent him from attacking others.

After my mother told me what had happened to her, we didn’t mention it to each other again for more than a decade. But then in 2018, she and I were interviewed on the podcast “Death, Sex & Money.” The host asked my mother about going to court for her son’s trial when he was facing life. “I was raped by gunpoint,” my mother said. “It happened just before he was sentenced. So when I was going to court for Dwayne, I was also going for a court trial for myself.” I hadn’t forgotten what happened, but having my mother say it aloud to a stranger made it far more devastating.

On the last day of the trial of the man who raped her, my mother told me, the judge accepted his guilty plea. She remembers only that he didn’t get enough time. She says her nose began to bleed. When I asked her what she would have wanted to happen to her attacker, she replied, “That I’d taken the deputy’s gun and shot him.”

Harris has studied crime-scene and autopsy photos of the dead. She has confronted men in court who have sexually assaulted their children, sexually assaulted the elderly, scalped their lovers. In her 2009 book, “Smart on Crime,” Harris praised the work of Sunny Schwartz — creator of the Resolve to Stop the Violence Project, the first restorative-justice program in the country to offer services to offenders and victims, which began at a jail in San Francisco. It aims to help inmates who have committed violent crimes by giving them tools to de-escalate confrontations. Harris wrote a bill with a state senator to ensure that children who witness violence can receive mental health treatment. And she argued that safety is a civil right, and that a 60-year sentence for a series of restaurant armed robberies, where some victims were bound or locked in freezers, “should tell anyone considering viciously preying on citizens and businesses that they will be caught, convicted and sent to prison — for a very long time.”

Politicians and the public acknowledge mass incarceration is a problem, but the lengthy prison sentences of men and women incarcerated during the 1990s have largely not been revisited. While the evidence of any prosecutor doing work on this front is slim, as a politician arguing for basic systemic reforms, Harris has noted the need to “unravel the decades-long effort to make sentencing guidelines excessively harsh, to the point of being inhumane”; criticized the bail system; and called for an end to private prisons and criticized the companies that charge absurd rates for phone calls and electronic-monitoring services.

In June, months into the Covid-19 pandemic, and before she was tapped as the vice-presidential nominee, I had the opportunity to interview Harris by phone. A police officer’s knee on the neck of George Floyd, choking the life out of him as he called for help, had been captured on video. Each night, thousands around the world protested. During our conversation, Harris told me that as the only Black woman in the United States Senate “in the midst of the killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery,” countless people had asked for stories about her experiences with racism. Harris said that she was not about to start telling them “about my world for a number of reasons, including you should know about the issue that affects this country as part of the greatest stain on this country.” Exhausted, she no longer answered the questions. I imagined she believes, as Toni Morrison once said, that “the very serious function of racism” is “distraction. It keeps you from doing your work.”

But these days, even in the conversations that I hear my children having, race suffuses so much. I tell Harris that my 12-year-old son, Micah, told his classmates and teachers: “As you all know, my dad went to jail. Shouldn’t the police who killed Floyd go to jail?” My son wanted to know why prison seemed to be reserved for Black people and wondered whose violence demanded a prison cell.

“In the criminal-justice system,” Harris replied, “the irony, and, frankly, the hypocrisy is that whenever we use the words ‘accountability’ and ‘consequence,’ it’s always about the individual who was arrested.” Again, she began to make a case that would be familiar to any progressive about the need to make the system accountable. And while I found myself agreeing, I began to fear that the point was just to find ways to treat officers in the same brutal way that we treat everyone else. I thought about the men I’d represented in parole hearings — and the friends I’d be representing soon. And wondered out loud to Harris: How do we get to their freedom?

“We need to reimagine what public safety looks like,” the senator told me, noting that she would talk about a public health model. “Are we looking at the fact that if you focus on issues like education and preventive things, then you don’t have a system that’s reactive?” The list of those things becomes long: affordable housing, job-skills development, education funding, homeownership. She remembered how during the early 2000s, when she was the San Francisco district attorney and started Back on Track (a re-entry program that sought to reduce future incarceration by building the skills of the men facing drug charges), many people were critical. “ ‘You’re a D.A. You’re supposed to be putting people in jail, not letting them out,’” she said people told her.

It always returns to this for me — who should be in prison, and for how long? I know that American prisons do little to address violence. If anything, they exacerbate it. If my friends walk out of prison changed from the boys who walked in, it will be because they’ve fought with the system — with themselves and sometimes with the men around them — to be different. Most violent crimes go unsolved, and the pain they cause is nearly always unresolved. And those who are convicted — many, maybe all — do far too much time in prison.

And yet, I imagine what I would do if the Maryland Parole Commission contacted my mother, informing her that the man who assaulted her is eligible for parole. I’m certain I’d write a letter explaining how one morning my mother didn’t go to work because she was in a hospital; tell the board that the memory of a gun pointed at her head has never left; explain how when I came home, my mother told me the story. Some violence changes everything.

The thing that makes you suited for a conversation in America might be the very thing that precludes you from having it. Terell, Anthony, Fats, Luke and Juvie have taught me that the best indicator of whether I believe they should be free is our friendship. Learning that a Black man in the city I called home raped my mother taught me that the pain and anger for a family member can be unfathomable. It makes me wonder if parole agencies should contact me at all — if they should ever contact victims and their families.

Perhaps if Harris becomes the vice president we can have a national conversation about our contradictory impulses around crime and punishment. For three decades, as a line prosecutor, a district attorney, an attorney general and now a senator, her work has allowed her to witness many of them. Prosecutors make a convenient target. But if the system is broken, it is because our flaws more than our virtues animate it. Confronting why so many of us believe prisons must exist may force us to admit that we have no adequate response to some violence. Still, I hope that Harris reminds the country that simply acknowledging the problem of mass incarceration does not address it — any more than keeping my friends in prison is a solution to the violence and trauma that landed them there.

In light of Harris being endorsed by Biden and highly likely to be the Democratic Party candidate, I thought I would share this balanced, understanding of both sides, article in regard to Harris and her career as a prosecutor, as I know that will be something dragged out by bad actors and useful idiots (you have a bunch of people stating 'Kamala is a cop', which is completely false, and also factless and misleading statements about 'mass incarceration' under her). I'm not saying she doesn't deserve to be criticised or that there is nothing about her career that can be criticised, but it should at least be representative of the truth and understanding of the complexities of the legal system.

[asm5129]

Concerning Biden dropping out: I don’t think we’re doomed.

To be clear: I don’t think this was good, and AOC said it was mainly because democrats were caving to donors. I believe her.

But also—better to have a candidate the Democratic Party can unite behind than someone they’re actively calling to step away who refuses to.

I think having a nominee most elected democrats don’t support is probably one of the worst possible scenarios going into such a high stakes election.

Kamala is most likely to be the immediate pick, particularly if there’s a plan already in place which is likely, but despite the chaos part of me does hope that we have an open election.

Just cuz a big part of the issue with Biden is people felt trapped. They had no other real options.

So part of me feels like giving their base choices for who they have faith in is not the worst idea. I very much doubt there will be an open election though, we don’t have much time so chances are the plan is for Kamala to step in, and the more I think about it the more I think she might actually have a chance.

For one thing, Trump won’t be able to help himself from being blatantly racist and sexist towards her, which will hopefully alienate more potential voters.

And for another, it could build a lot of confidence if the democratic nominee is capable of essentially prosecuting trump on the world stage.

If it is Kamala, there’s three key things that need to be considered:

One, she’s got a long history of being a prosecutor. There’s legitimate reasons not to like her track record there but it’s not horrible experience for a candidate to have when running against a convicted felon.

Two, she needs a very strong VP pick.

three: she needs to fix one of Biden’s biggest flaws—she needs to fight the narratives being spread by Trump and Trump loyalists. Biden rarely communicated to the American public throughout his presidency, which let a lot of narratives take root

[mikeysbride]

Election 2024: The Aftermath

Last week was hard. It has taken me this long to be able to fully formulate my thoughts on how the election for President of United States ended. It did not end as the majority of the people that I know would have liked. It was Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump — literally good versus evil, authoritarianism versus democracy, humanity versus inhumanity. As a prosecutor, Kamala Harris made a career of putting men like Donald Trump in jail. And yet, evil won… Or so it would seem.

It was a devastating blow to democracy. Now, twice in my daughters’ young lives, they have had to witness their country choose the most mediocre of men over a woman of merit who is far more qualified — first, Hillary Clinton in 2016 and now Kamala Harris in 2024. As teenagers, they are now more engaged and aware of what is happening and what all this means. We have all shed many tears and had to regroup.

It has to be said that I’m not wholly convinced Trump actually won. After all, he said months ago that he didn’t need people to vote because he had all the votes he needed, plenty of votes. WTAF was that supposed to mean? Not only that, but after record turnout and new registrations, there were somehow fewer votes? There have been reports of votes that weren’t counted as well. And we are supposed to believe that someone so vile swept every one of the swing states? Let’s also not forget the unfounded bomb threats called in to many democratic-leaning voting precincts. The math isn’t mathing. I feel that Donald Trump stole this election the way he claimed that Joe Biden did in 2020. The difference is that Joe Biden did no such thing and also that, unlike Trump, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are decent humans who will not encourage an insurrection to dispute the election results. That is exactly what he was counting on. Now he and his dictator friends like Putin have the U.S. exactly where they want us, in danger of losing the very freedoms we are supposed to stand for.

So much was on the line in this election. Reproductive rights for women, protection for the gay and trans community, immigration, and income tax and cost of living relief for middle class families are all up for grabs now. If Trump did not orchestrate all this and did actually win, it’s perhaps an even scarier scenario. That means that our country really is filled with people who chose a conman, felon, rapist, liar, and racist over a woman - yet again - who has more than enough experience in all three branches of government to lead this country and to do so with compassion and grace. Frankly, it’s damn embarrassing to be an American right now. The rest of the world has to be looking at us as if we have lost our collective minds, and who can blame them? We had the opportunity to move forward in a big way and then threw it all away.

Once again, the U.S. has shown that women (and especially Black women) are held to a higher standard to the point that she can be an ideal candidate and still fall short to patriarchy, misogyny, and racism even when running against the poorest excuse for a human we’ve seen in quite some time. But he’s a man. A rich white man. And somehow in this country that still carries more weight than being even the most capable woman of any race. That’s a hard pill to swallow, especially for someone like me who is a Black woman raising her daughters to be strong and to believe they can do anything they put their minds to. Can they? I absolutely still believe they can, but recent history shows that being the President may not be included in that dream. There should be a disclaimer that says results may vary.

In the coming weeks, months, and even years, there will be much said about where the Harris campaign went wrong and what she should’ve done differently. But if we are honest, we have to acknowledge that all of that speculation is bullshit. Truth be told, she ran a flawless campaign. It was perfectly executed from start to finish, and she had so much momentum behind her. There were people voting for her who had never voted for a Democrat before. Even longtime Republican leaders were rallying behind her. I have no time or energy for talking heads who want to lay blame as to where she fell short. She did not. It wasn’t the campaign that missed the mark. The bottom line is that this country’s history of racism and misogyny is still alive and well, and until that is dealt with, this is where we will be.

Still, none of this means it’s time to give up the fight for justice. No, instead it means that we have to rail even harder against the forces that would conspire to bring us down. To be silent is to be compliant. We will not go quietly. I have to believe that there’s still enough genuinely good-hearted people in the world that when we join forces good will overcome evil. To live without hope is to not live at all. We must keep fighting for what is right, fighting for our rights, and fighting against all odds because none of us are free until all of us are free.

[sa7abnews]

Harris set to name VP pick ahead of swing state tour

New Post has been published on https://sa7ab.info/2024/08/06/harris-set-to-name-vp-pick-ahead-of-swing-state-tour/

Harris set to name VP pick ahead of swing state tour

Kamala Harris was closing in on her vice-presidential pick on Monday, with an announcement expected within 24 hours as she scrambles to introduce herself to the American public with a tour of battleground states just three months out from the election.

All paths to the White House run through a handful of swing states, and Harris will kick off her five-day run on Tuesday in the largest – Pennsylvania – as she builds momentum for her showdown with Republican Donald Trump on 5 November.

“This election is a fight for our country, our future, and our most fundamental freedoms and rights,” she posted on social media platform X on Monday.

“We believe in the promise of America – and we’re in this fight because we know what’s at stake.”

Fresh from winning enough delegate votes to secure the Democratic nomination, the country’s first female, Black, and South Asian vice president heads into the national convention in Chicago in two weeks in total control of her party.

The 59-year-old former prosecutor has obliterated fundraising records, attracted huge crowds, and dominated social media on her way to erasing the polling leads Trump had built before President Joe Biden quit the race.

Next on the agenda is a vice presidential pick, with an announcement expected on Tuesday, before her evening rally alongside the mystery nominee in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s largest city.

The Keystone State is the most prized real estate among the closely fought battlegrounds that decide the Electoral College system.

It is part of the “blue wall” that carried Biden to the White House in 2020, alongside Michigan and Wisconsin – two states where Harris is due to woo crowds on Wednesday.

Pennsylvania is governed by 51-year-old Democrat Josh Shapiro, a frontrunner in the so-called “veepstakes” shortlist that also includes fellow state governors Tim Walz and Andy Beshear, as well as Arizona Senator Mark Kelly and US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

‘Freedom’

Later in the week, Harris will tour the more racially diverse Sun Belt and southern states of Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina, as she seeks to shore up the Black and Hispanic vote that had been peeling away from the Democrats.

Just a month ago, Trump was in cruise control, having opened a significant lead in swing state polling after a dismal debate performance by Biden, with the Republican tycoon keeping the country in suspense over his own vice-presidential pick.

Trump’s White House bid was upended on 21 July when 81-year-old Biden, facing growing concerns about his age and lagging polling numbers, exited the race and backed Harris.

Energetic and two decades younger than 78-year-old Trump, the vice president has made a fast start, raising $310 million in July, according to her campaign – more than double Trump’s haul.

While Biden made high-minded appeals for a return to civility and the preservation of democracy, Harris has focused on the future, making voters’ hard-fought “freedom” the touchstone of her campaign.

She and her allies have also been more aggressive than the Biden camp – mocking Trump for reneging on his commitment to a 10 September debate and characterising the convicted felon as an elderly crook and “weird”.

While she has disavowed some of the leftist positions she took during her ill-fated 2020 primary campaign, Harris hasn’t given a wide-ranging interview since jumping into the race, and rally-goers will look for more detail on her plans for the country.

Meanwhile, Trump and his Republicans have struggled to adapt to their new adversary and hone their attacks against Harris – at first messaging that she was dangerously liberal on immigration and crime, before suggesting she was lying about being Black.

[bllsbailey]

Kamala Wants to Frame Campaign As Prosecutor Versus Felon: That’s Not Good … for Her

The fledgling campaign for Kamala Harris is reportedly seeking to frame the 2024 presidential election as a prosecutor versus convicted felon narrative.

The initial observation here is that the “felon” in this story is actually not the bad guy.

If the vice president wants to push her record as district attorney in San Francisco and later as California attorney general, she does so at her peril.

Doing so would expose her as an inept investigator, a champion of jailing poor minorities, and an avid supporter of defunding the police while funding criminals.

Let’s take a look, shall we? We’ll start with her issues struggling to connect with minority communities, something Democrats are relying on in making headway in the race against Donald Trump.

A video from an appearance at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco in 2010 shows Harris gleefully relaying a story about threatening parents with jail time if their kids skipped school.

“I believe a child growing without an education is tantamount to a crime,” Harris told the crowd in attendance. “So I decided I was going to start prosecuting parents for truancy.”

The video shows a smiling and laughing Harris sharing this story, noting that she had the political capital to try and “get those kids in school” by threatening their parents.

Critics were quick to point out that those most vulnerable to Harris’s over-zealous prosecution of parents were low-income minority families.

Harris, in another clip, can be heard describing how she tried intimidating a single homeless mother of three kids.

The Democrat can be seen laughing about sending her office’s homicide and gang prosecutors to school to meet with the struggling woman. 

“When you go over there, look really mean,” she recalled.

Harris would later suggest she was simply trying to connect parents to the resources they needed. Then, the charges would be dropped.

Kamala Harris Is Clearly Burdened by What Has Been

HOT TAKES: California Weighs In on a Potential Kamala Harris Presidency

Another sticking point for minority voters has been Harris's history of expanding convictions of marijuana users in California.

As California attorney general, Harris oversaw thousands of marijuana-related convictions. Critics argue that these convictions disproportionately affected black and brown communities and that Harris's office fought against efforts to reduce sentences or expunge records.

Harris later came under additional fire for that prosecutorial record when she claimed she smoked weed in high school, with some branding her a hypocrite.

While Kamala has little in the way of street cred due to her record as a malicious prosecutor, Trump’s own street cred has been amplified by being the victim of malicious prosecutors.

Craig Scott, who described himself as a "Black Robinhood" in a Newsweek op-ed, argued “Trump’s repeated run-ins with the law, and what seems like an unfair obsession with catching him and punishing him disproportionately for his so-called ‘crimes,’ reminds a lot of us of what was done to us” in the black community.

“He’s literally been in my shoes. No other president can brag on that,” Scott said. “And believe me, he will brag about it.”

Harris doesn’t have near the cachet with certain voting blocs that Democrats hope she does. Bring on the prosecutor v. felon push from her campaign.

When she wasn’t targeting poor minorities in the Golden State, Harris was failing women in her own office. As Attorney General, Harris ignored an accusation and lawsuit alleging sexual harassment by a top aide in her office.

That complaint involved “gender harassment” perpetrated against her aide’s former executive assistant, along with allegations that she was forced into “demeaning behavior.”

The case ultimately led to a $400,000 settlement and the resignation of that aide who had been described as one of Harris’s closest professional confidantes. The then-AG feigned ignorance of the whole accusation and lawsuit despite it being reported years earlier.

Only an inept prosecutor would completely miss a harassment case in her own office. But then, ineptitude defines Kamala.

In 2006, she granted probation to a man who went on to murder two people. At the height of the 2020 race riots, Harris encouraged people to contribute to a bail fund to free violent rioters. One of those freed ended up being charged with murder.

She continues to raise money for that bail fund.

When she isn’t jailing people for minor offenses and bailing out those with violent criminal records, Harris has been a vocal supporter of defunding the police.

She supported the movement and said we need to "reimagine" public safety, even applauding the Los Angeles Mayor for slashing police funding by $150 million as the riots were ongoing.

Kamala Harris Championed California's Sanctuary State Policies and People Are Dead As a Result

Think the Border Crisis Is Bad Now? Experts Say a Harris Presidency Would Make It Even Worse

Harris also backed abolishing ICE, the agency that arrests and deports dangerous criminals, insisting that “we need to probably be thinking about starting from scratch.”

You read that right. The woman Joe Biden tapped as border czar wanted to abolish the one enforcement mechanism for prosecuting criminal illegal aliens.

Kamala Harris was never qualified to be San Francisco DA. She was even less qualified to be California’s AG. It’s not even a question when it comes to the White House.

Even on the heels of one of the most incompetent presidencies in history, Harris's history as a prosecutor and the very few things she was tasked with as Veep illustrates she’s not exactly an upgrade over Biden.

[nodynasty4us]

The risks of running Harris are different than the risks of running Biden again, but I am not convinced that they are larger. In fact, it’s hard to argue that Harris is the weaker candidate at this stage. She is part of an administration that has accomplished a great deal, and she’s the most visible member of that administration who is capable of talking about abortion, the one issue Democrats are strongest on.... She has enough distance from Biden on foreign policy that she may be able to avoid being totally hamstrung by the Israel/Gaza issue.... Her weaknesses in 2020—primarily her history as a tough-on-crime prosecutor, which was summed up by the leftist jeer of “Kamala is a cop”—were specific to an extremely odd election year, and look a whole lot more like assets in a 2024 race against a convicted felon. ... There is little doubt Republicans will challenge her candidacy in court—it should tell you something that many of them want Biden, not Harris, as the Democratic presidential nominee—but the fact that she’s already running with Biden certainly makes any replacement of him a simpler financial proposition.

Jill Filipovic, Biden news: Why I support—but fear—a Kamala Harris presidential run, in Slate

[waywardrose-archive]

Hello! How about C and O for Flip??? You're amazing!!!!

I’m not the only amazing one here! 😘 Thank you so much for prompting me! I hope you enjoy, honey.

pairing: flip zimmerman x reader

rating: teen

warning/tags: past physical-abuse mention, brief injury description, off-screen murder, period-typical sexism

Comfort - How would they help their s/o when they feel down/have a panic attack etc.?

On Cloud Nine - What are they like when they are in love? Is it obvious for others? How do they express their feelings?

Prompts from the Fluff Alphabet

-

IT’S TOO LATE TO TURN BACK NOW

The first time Flip saw you, you were bruised and cuffed. The scuttlebutt around the precinct was you had run over and murdered your abusive ex-boyfriend. Some of the officers thought you were unhinged and should be thrown in the looney bin.

Flip did not agree. And neither did the judge. Your bail was set comically low.

He surreptitiously read through your case file and then your ex’s. The ex, while relatively young, had a rap sheet as long as Flip’s leg. How you got involved with him was beyond Flip.

Your trial was cut and dry. You were charged with vehicular homicide, fined $800, and sentenced to two-years probation. Which was better than a five-year prison sentence with a chance of parole at three. Unfortunately, now that you were a felon, you lost your job. The only place that would even talk to you was the little 24-hour diner by the airfield.

Flip didn’t know why he was so interested or why he kept track of you. He chalked it up to being curious. And maybe a little attracted. You were smart, knew when to stay quiet, which lawyer to hire. Your eyes had snapped at the gall of the state when the prosecutor had tried to paint you as just another crazy girl. When the judge had looked at you, you had stared right back and shook your head.

Your lip had still been busted then. Your left eye ringed. Handprints around your neck. You hadn’t hidden behind strategic makeup. You had worn your hair back for all the world to see what your ex had done to you.

Flip had been proud of your chutzpah from his place at the back of the closed courtroom. He was glad that piece of shit was dead. Afterwards, he found out who your probation officer would be. He suggested the community service part of your probation be completed at his precinct.

The officer had snorted, but agreed.

-

Today was the second day of community service. You examined your face in the mirror. The bruising had finally faded. You looked almost normal, but you knew you’d never be able to see your reflection without remembering everything. That deranged look in his eyes, the hard thump against the hood of your car, the crazing of the windshield when he hit.

Your mother called for you from the living room. It had been collectively agreed upon that your ruined car would be sold for parts and you would move back in until your probation was over. That left you feeling like a child.

A child with almost $1000 in debt and a probation officer.

However, in some ways, it made it all easier. Your mother took most of the domestic duties while you had a regulated schedule and kept your head down. You worked part-time at Bo’s Diner during the day. In the evenings, you filed reports and typed inner-office communiques at the police department down the street from your favorite library. At night, you read and went to bed early.

Your mother dropped you off with a reserved grin and a wish for a good evening. She hadn’t been the same since posting your bail. You father, on the other hand, refused to speak with you beyond greetings and orders. He’d gotten you a lawyer for the trial, though, and had moved your bedroom furniture into your old room with the rest going into the basement. You supposed that was something.

You thanked her, got out of the vehicle, and walked into the precinct like you weren’t a convicted felon. You checked in at the front desk and were walked back to the records room. The glass-walled workspace on your left was unoccupied save for a lone detective.

The detective had black shaggy hair, creamy skin, and a cigarette between his full lips. He was handsome in a way you didn’t expect a policeman to be. Your eyes met for a second, and something about his formidable demeanor startled you into a faster pace.

You weren’t scared, you knew that much. No one scared you like him. A dark voice reminded you that you’d killed him, too. There was nothing to be scared of now.

The clerk in the records room gave you the tasks for the shift. There were multiple stacks of files to put away and announcements to be proofread/typed/distributed. You had to use the dreaded mimeo, but, you reminded yourself, it was better than being in jail.

The clerk clocked out after an hour and told you if you had any problems, to take them to the detective in charge. You glanced out the open door to see the detective’s broad back.

-

Without your face beat to shit, you were stunning. He got the impression you would be, but he was not prepared. His palms wouldn’t stop sweating. He could barely concentrate on the report he was trying to finish.

And he couldn’t even see you. You couldn’t really see him, either. He didn’t know what the hell his problem was.

It had been so stupid to take the evening shift for the next two weeks. He had wanted to make sure you settled in fine and no one gave you any crap, though. He was mother-hen-ing a person who didn’t even know he existed. You didn’t need protection, anyway. You were capable and clearly handling your situation just fine.

A quick rap on the open door jolted him from his thoughts. He looked up to see you. Without even thinking about it, he jumped to his feet. Of course it was you. His chair squeaked as it rolled back a few inches.

“Sorry for disturbing you, Detective.” You held up a stack of paper and shrugged. “Memo for tomorrow.”

Oh shit. Holy shit. Fucking shit.

Your voice. So much different than it had been during the trial. Maybe it was acoustics. Whatever it was, whatever the reason, he liked your voice.

Then he realized he’d been staring for too long. He shook himself out of it, wiped his damp hand on his jeans, and held it out as he introduced himself. You shuffled the stack in your arms and shook his hand, offering your name.

“Call me Flip,” he offered. “Can I help?”

“Oh! Uh…” You studied the stack. “Sure, thanks. I hope that’s okay.”

“‘Course it is.”

He took the top half of the papers and began distributing them on the cluttered desks around him. He watched you move to the other side of the bullpen. You didn’t scurry like a frightened mouse, like he expected you to. He tried not to stare at the way your hips swayed as you walked.

“How’re you settling in?” he asked to break the silence.

“I’m okay—all things considered.”

He feigned ignorance. “Oh?” He didn’t want you to know how much he knew.

“I’m sure you’ve heard,” you said as you paused by Myers’ desk.

“I’ve heard a lot of things.”

You grinned. “Seeing as you’re a detective.”

He huffed a little laugh and shrugged.

“I’m okay,” you answered. “Everyone’s been… nice?”

“With a question at the end.”

“I mean, I didn’t expect a party.”

“Of course.”

“But considering my conviction, I expected…”

“Disrespect?” he offered.

You nodded. “Disrespect.”

“Well, if anyone gives you any, you can come to me.”

“Thank you, Detective.”

He corrected, “Flip.”

“Flip,” you said with a smile. Your voice was warmer than it had been.

He absolutely did not feel butterflies in his stomach.

-

A knock on the open records-room door drew you away from filing. It was Flip, of course. It was only the two of you at the back of the building. Somehow, that didn’t make you nervous in the slightest. Though he was tall and broad-shouldered—obviously strong—and had a gun in his shoulder holster, you felt safe around him. Flip wasn’t anything like him.

“Can I buy you a coffee from our gracious break-room?” he asked.

That was code for a half-hour smoke break in the courtyard. It had become routine over the past week or so. You would join him and talk about whatever. Sometimes it was office gossip, or the news, or what you’d been reading. Whatever the topic, that half an hour always flew by quickly.

You agreed to a coffee, and he disappeared from the doorway. You didn’t even have to tell him how you liked your coffee anymore. He remembered.

You waited for him by the outside door and held it open when he returned, since his hands were obviously occupied. He murmured a thanks as he passed.

The late-spring night was just warm enough to enjoy. The pale pea gravel crunched under your heels as you followed him to a bench. He took one end and set the mugs down in the middle. You sat on the opposite end with a tension-relieving sigh. It was nice to sit in the dim courtyard, away from all the reminders of your circumstances.

“I read your file,” Flip said as he put a cigarette between his lips.

You just had to think it, didn’t you? Well, so much for distancing yourself from your circumstances.

“So, you know.”

Now, he was going to admonish you like your father had. How could you date someone like him? What were you thinking? I thought you were smarter than that. You should’ve called the police, should’ve seen it coming.

Shoulda shoulda shoulda.

“Yeah, I read your ex’s, too.” The clink of Flip’s lighter opening punctuated the sentence. “I’m not saying I like what you did, but I understand.”

He lit the cigarette, the soft crackle of his first inhale splintered the tense silence.

You whispered, “I didn’t like it, either.”

“I wish you hadn’t had to do it.”

“He wouldn’t leave me alone after I left him. He called all hours of the night. He broke in and left a bouquet on the kitchen counter. I know he took something, too, but I never figured out what.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?”

“How could I prove it was him? Everyone would’ve thought it was a sweet gesture or something.” You picked up your coffee and took a sip. It was perfect. “I tried to have the landlord change the locks, but he wouldn’t unless I paid him half a month’s rent.”

“Seems a little steep.”

“The asshole didn’t want to drag his sorry ass across town is all.”

“Then it happened.”

“If you’ve read my case, then you know how it went down.”

“Yeah, I know.”

There was something about Flip’s tone, something soft, that made you finally look at him. He met your gaze. His downright pretty eyes glinted in the low light. If you were anyone else, if the circumstances were different, you would’ve leaned over to kiss him. He looked like he might be receptive.

Flip said, “I wanna dig him up and shoot him out of spite.”

You laughed at his unexpected comment. You threw your head back and laughed at the velvet night sky. Oh, how you would love to see Flip, covered in dirt, shooting at the closed casket with your dead ex inside. You’d be covered in dirt, too. You’d set that casket on fire at the end; roast marshmallows over that son-of-a-bitch’s grave.

Your breath stuttered between one chuckle and the next. Why couldn’t you have met Flip before this? You would’ve chosen him any day of the week.

You took a sip of coffee to loosen your suddenly tight throat. Yes, you would’ve picked Flip. But it was too late now. Your eyes flooded at the thought. You looked up and blinked back your tears.

“Hey,” Flip murmured.

You shook your head, and Flip said a gentle “hey” again. The bright cherry on his spent cigarette arched across the courtyard like a lost comet. He scooted closer and put a hand on top of your wrist. His hand was warm and huge and welcome.

“Talk to me.”

You croaked, “It’s too late for me.”

“Too late for what?”

For everything. For love. For avoiding pain. You were damaged goods now. You were a murderer, a felon, an idiot who didn’t see him for what he was. You couldn’t imagine anyone wanting you.

You tried to grin at Flip. “I wish I’d known you earlier.”

“You know me now.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Mind what?”

You wanted to protest, tell him he shouldn’t bother, that he should mind. He plucked the mug from your hand and set it on the bench. He took your hand in both of his and brought it to his lips to kiss. It was such a simple gesture. It made you feel as though it wasn’t too late.

Maybe it wasn’t.

-

tag list: @zaneholtzwrites  @bluesnowyangel  @tinyplanet-explorers  @isislockett  @makingtimemine  @adam-thotty   @nightkitchentarot  @strangesentimentalhuman  @itsthegreatestsworld  @spookynerdygalaxy  @softcrybabykid  @angelicaalien  @opehlia-alexander  @anni–hilation  @ohmagawd-life  @avatamriel  @accio-em  @artttrash  @driverficarchive  (comment or message me to be added)

[allakinwande]

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/Pat A. Robinson

CHASING DEMOCRACY:

The attack on the American voter.

BY: JB Hanna

_______________________________________________

"Now many of our Christians have what I call the 'goo-goo syndrome.' Good government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now. As a matter of fact our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

-Paul Weyrich 1968

TARRANT COUNTY TX.

In 1827, Edward E. Tarrant had established himself as a wealthy man, probably the wealthiest in all of Red River County. A veteran of the war of 1812, now a sheriff, he left his mark in Tarrant County Texas, the namesake of the former officer of the “fourth brigade.”

On September 29, 1843, Tarrant along with Texas state attorney general George Whitfield would draft The “Bird’s Fort Treaty.” Which surreptitiously states in Article XXIV, that; “The government of Texas has the right of working all mines that have been discovered or will be discovered on the territory of the Indians.”

Just as surreptitiously as the terms of Crystal Mason’s signed affidavit that stated she was not eligible to vote as a convicted felon, some hundred and seventy five years later in that same Tarrant County. Mason was on community service on November 8, 2016 for a her 2012 conviction on tax fraud. Only voting after the urging of her mother, Ms. Mason was sentenced to five years in prison on voter fraud charges, for a provisional ballet vote that was never counted.

Crystal Mason’s unfortunate miscarriage of justice is the oddity, not the model. The model being the strategy adopted by many incumbents on the right, while the left has historically supported voter registration initiatives, conservatives (since the voting rights act of 2013) have practiced down presser tactics with almost surgical precision. From good ol fashioned jerrymandring to voter caging and voter roll purges.

Stories like that of Crystal Mason, no matter how rare, are aggressively publicized and spun in efforts to paint a fanciful portrait of voter fraud gone wild. These trumped up horrors however, have never been substantiated.

Max Faulkner/Fort Worth Star-Telegram via Getty Images.

During the presidential campaign of 2016,

Vice President nominee, Mike Pence came under scrutiny from voter rights advocates when Indiana State police raided the voter registration office of Patriot Majority USA, in October of 2016. Indiana progressives called conspiracy on the would be VIce president.

The nonprofit Patriot Majority, had registered over 45,000 voters, mostly African American. Just one week from the voter registration deadline and 5,000 voters short of their 50,000 target at the time of the raid. Founded in 2005, PM was accused of registering voters twice, in addition to applications that had missing or unverified zip codes and addresses. This is often a problem with grassroots voter registration initiatives staffed by everyday citizens, the lack of experience, training, and in many cases, after work hours by constituents looking to supplement their income, have always bore such inconsistencies. Though well meaning, these efforts give way to questionable voter registration applications, that ones opponent will rightfully pounce.

When you open Patriot Majority’s web sight, the home page is striking. Waves of red and white stripes, the famous Washington crossing the Delaware painting emblazoned on the header. With the current political climate, rife with its suede patriotism and the far lefts deepening dive into a socialist creed, one might expect Patriot Majorities home page to spawn links to diatribes of pro gun advocacy and states rights. But PM claims to be a bipartisan movement. While it seems that the issue is the shotty work of some canvassers, Common Cause Indiana and the NAACP have filed a federal lawsuit against Marion County of Indian after the raid on charges of voter suppression by closing early voting in a sector with over 700,000 registered voters. Former Indiana governor mike Pence, now ironically, head of the Elections Integrity Commission, boasts “What is historic here is that our president-elect won 30 to 50 states. He won more counties than any candidate on our side.

The Georgia State showdown

Georgia’s Democratic candidate for governor Stacey Abrams finds herself in a historical yet tight race in Georgia’s gubernatorial midterms. The Gulfport native faces off against opponent Brian kemp, the self proclaimed “politically incorrect conservative.” The cautionary view in mid August was that Kemp could have a strong surge in the last two months leading to the peach state showdown, much like Nathan Deal in 2014. But as of reporting, the race is still in a dead heat. Kemp has been mocked for his ads that some on the left liken to a Dave Chapelle or SNL skit. But while democrats laugh, Brian Kemp is practicing more “politics as usual” than his campaign readaric may assert. Kemp’s influence on voter registration as Secretary of State should be no laughing matter to democrats.

The heat was on as the summer closed out in Randolph County Georgia, a sort of patient zero for the National attention to suspected voter suppression. The Georgia county quickly beat back a move to close seven of nine polling places in the historically black canton. But the victory, while sweet, is little to stop the suppression of voters in the rest of the state. Like Tarrant in Texas, Randolph county is named after another slave owning statesman, Ol’ John Randolph of Roanoke. A career politician who also served as prosecutor of the associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Samuel Chase on charges of impeachment. Chase would later be acquitted by the senate. Roanoke famously stated,

“The most delicious of all privileges, spending other people’s money.” Might be proud of his states insidious politico operandi.

Several groups, including the Georgia Democratic Party, Common Cause and the NAACP, have called on Kemp to step down from his position as secretary of state while he runs for Governor.

Greg Palast, the New York based investigative journalist and author of the compelling

The best democracy money can buy, has been hunting down Kemp and also, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach for the past several months. Armed with a Federal subpoena accusing Kobach of purging hundreds of thousands of Kansans from the voting rolls. Like his counterpart in Georgia, as Secretary of State, Kobach has oversight of the states voter rolls and similar to Brian Kemp of Georgia, Kobach has also successfully closed polling stations in low income counties as well.

As Carol Anderson of the New York Times put it, “Brian Kemp is a master of voter suppression.” For example, Kemp made a statement in 2014 regarding another lawsuit his office faced regarding over 40 thousand names of voters disappearing from the Georgia voting rolls. The Secretary of State emphasized that “The lawsuit filed by 3rd sector development, is frivolous and totally without merit. The claim that there are over forty thousand unprocessed voter registration applications, are false.” Kemp went on to contravene with the 6,525 voter applications his office found had issues of no longer being with us, had no valid date of birth, where convicted felons or provided no county or address. ( some states report day of birth instead of DOB, which substantially increases the chance of two records being reported for the same person.)

Kemp also provided a Potboiler about an application filled out by, Johnny B Cool, who’s city was listed as, Yo’ Town. While this smacks of incompetence of the registrating body or the voting applicant themselves, it seems a stretch to think that a political scenic, who would name themselves Johnny B Cool who Haile’s from Yo town would be a tactical move that any well minded voter fraud conspirator would employ. But the great voter fraud conspiracy rolls on. Kemp, by the way,

Was found to be guilty of voter suppression in 2014.

GETTY IMAGES

LOCKED AND LOADED

Prior to Shelby v Holder, (2013) Texas, along with the several other Jim Crow states had coordinated a preemptive lockout of minority, elderly and millennial prospective votes in anticipation of provisions 4 & 5 of the voting rights act being overturned. The first domino to fall was that unsuspecting, overlooked little Diddy called Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder, or the MUD case. The stories of out of town voters using the address of a local motel to vote illegally, harassment of MUD’s minority community and a strange cloud of mystery preceding the Shelby v. Holder decision, stains the “Municipal Utility District,” just north of Austin.

That was 2009, and four years later, Shelby county found it unconstitutional for the federal government to suppress their ability to molest the Hispanics, black, elderly and young voting populous. The Supreme Court would concede that, “voting discrimination still exists; no one doubts that.” But the 5-4 decision of the highest court in the land would contradict their own logic by wiping away the voting rights act protection of historically disenfranchised constituents, specifically articles 4 and 5.

But back in Tarrant Texas, and many other counties in the Lone star state, there’s been a battle raging to oppress voter turnout since voting became public freewill. Ted Cruz and Beto O’Rourke are in the mezzo of a 12 round barn burner as the country tumbles towards it’s midterms like a radioactive meteor with no direction. Could it be, the land of steers could finally be done with Ted Cruz? Or is Beto’s hype just that? Progressive turnout or conservative suffragist subterfuge may answer these questions.

And yet, one of the few cases of actual voter fraud, ironically in that same state of Texas, is more doleful than relevant. Crystal Mason began her five year sentence for voter fraud in September. After being walked through the provisional ballet process by a state appointed election official, she still stands condemned by adjudication. Alison Grinter, of Mason’s legal team explained, “the federal government has stepped over the state and found Crystal guilty of violating the law.”

In august an 11 year old child hacked a Florida electronic ballet in this years DEFCON 26,

The annual hacking convention held this year in sandy Las Vegas. Emmett Brewer and 30 other kids ranging in age from 8 - 16 years old where all able to hack Florida’s faulty system. The national association of Secretaries of State responded to DEFCON with one of many proclamations in their

(Long comment regarding a proposed Exemption under 17 U.S. code 1201)

The senate stated to ES&S, the countries largest supplier of voting machines;

“Currently there are significant barriers that prevent states from working with independent, qualified, good faith researchers to conduct cyber security on election systems.”

Now it seams, after the midterms, ES&S May have to deal with not just the Senate but the people.

But the talk is done. Bluster deflated. Red and Blue candidates enter November 6th like combatants on the world stage. Like heavyweight champions with the future of democracy on the line. I’ll be watching the fight on November 6th just like Crystal Mason.

Hoping the country does right by its future.

[yesjustcallmewes]

Police Pursuits

Like many of you, I watched transfixed last week as body-cam video of Las Vegas police officer William Umana shooting at a fleeing car THROUGH HIS PATROL CAR WINDSHIELD played out. I tried to imagine what would have happened to me if I or one of my officers had even tried such a stunt, no matter how tempted I might have been to do the same at times over the years chasing people through the streets of Baltimore.

Of course, this was no stunt. Officer Umana’s shots were directed at suspects Fidel Miranda and Rene Nunez as he pursued their stolen vehicle through downtown Las Vegas. According to the commentary accompanying the video, Umana was aware that Miranda and Nunez were suspected of shooting Thomas Romero several times at a Las Vegas carwash, killing him. They were also shooting at the officer as they fled.

Many people will automatically condemn the officer’s actions, of course, and even good people can and will have honest disagreements about this pursuit and shooting. However, here you have armed homicide suspects shooting at cops. If the police don’t mount a vehicle pursuit under these circumstances, then under what circumstances WOULD they pursue for?

As I watched, I more or less automatically reviewed what I knew about the incident to assess, in my own mind at least, the appropriateness of such an extreme response. Here’s how that went; first, I knew that the officer was pursuing armed homicide suspects. CHECK. Second, the suspects showed a total disregard for the extreme risk to the public resulting from their gunshots and reckless driving. CHECK. Third, the armed homicide suspects were still shooting, this time at pursuing officers. CHECKMATE!

My visceral reaction as a cop who didn’t care much for murderers of any sort, especially those trying to murder me, was to excuse the officer’s actions as entirely justified. Balancing known elements of this chase, I focused on the risks to the public (and to the officer) versus the rewards to the public of capturing these bad guys as opposed to just letting them go to live another day.

I took into consideration factors such as is it worth the very real risk of a stray round – the officer’s or the suspect’s, who were continuing to fire at him as they fled – hitting granny waiting in line to get into a casino, or a bullet striking little Sally while her mother walked her in her stroller? And what about the kids inside the elementary school the suspects eventually crashed into? Finally, what about any “innocent” passengers that may be in the car? These are all legitimate public safety concerns, evoking a question for society: Are the rewards in this incident - or others like it - worth the risks?

Is it more beneficial for society to let criminals get away because an innocent person MIGHT get hurt or killed when officers try to apprehend them? Many times, yes - perhaps most times. Obviously, it depends on the nature and severity of the violent crime involved. But what if letting the bad guys go means they are LIKELY to hurt or kill an innocent person while committing a future crime? Might or likely – that’s the conundrum – and only the first of many.

Do we ask, which hypothetical victim is more valuable? Do we prevent a possible victim now in exchange for likely future victims? Shouldn’t we consider what police actions are more likely to prevent future criminals from running from the cops in the first place? Shouldn’t this issue be a part of the discussion? Shouldn’t those in the criminal justice arena – police, courts, prosecutors, law-makers – take actions now to reduce the chances future criminals will run from the cops, setting up more scenarios just like this one?

If you were a bad guy, which would prevent you from attempting to elude the police? If you knew the cops WON'T chase you, or if you know for sure they WOULD chase you, catch you, and hold you accountable for every felony and misdemeanor crime, traffic violation, and other infraction you commit during your attempted escape, that you’ll receive a mandatory extra five-year enhancement on your sentence when they do catch you - assuming such a law existed in the local jurisdiction (this is where the law-makers come in)?

Things to consider when deciding whether to pursue or not are things like the possibility of the fleeing suspect being known to officers (if you know who he or she is, it’s easier to locate them later), the time of day, weather conditions, traffic congestion, road conditions, terrain, etc. Regardless of these considerations, the trend, especially in politically leftist-run cities, seems to be to just let the bad guys get away by use of a blanket prohibition of all chases.

This discussion is about balancing the risk-reward to society: capture vs. escape. What was the crime? If violent, does the escape put the public at imminent risk of harm? For example, if the bad guy just shot or killed somebody, what wouldn’t that person do to avoid capture? And keep in mind, the mere act of eluding the police is (or should be) a felony, and driving recklessly is a violent act. Is it worth the risk to the next person—man, woman, or child—who may cross the bad guy’s path?

Now, I’m of the school that it’s on the criminal if there are damages or injuries that happen while in pursuit of a dangerous felon who ran from the cops. And the punishment should be such that few would even contemplate putting the public at such risk by running from the police. But, they ain’t asking my opinion. I mean, what would a cop know about police work anyway, right?

So, there was quite a risk of innocents being hurt in the Vegas incident. But I suppose those future victims who are still uninjured or alive because those bad guys didn’t escape, so they couldn’t hurt or kill them, are good with it—even if they’ll never know it.

Many departments have adopted policies where officers are not allowed to use deadly force against a suspect where the vehicle is the only weapon (my department, Baltimore, has had a policy since before my rookie year - 1970 - that prohibited officers from firing at any moving vehicle in virtually any circumstance). In fact, some policies direct officers to move out of the way rather than fire on the guy who would have run them down if they hadn’t moved. This brings up some interesting considerations, eh? Think for a minute about this:

If a bad guy is in front of me pointing a gun at me, I can shoot him. If a bad guy is in front of me with a knife, within a certain distance, I can shoot him. The same goes for a bad guy with a rock, a club, or a bowling ball, if I can infer I’m about to sustain serious bodily harm, I can shoot him. Try to come at me with those things, and I could fire away at will.

But, according to these policies, if a bad guy is in front of me, revving the engine of his two-thousand-pound car, and he guns it and heads toward me with the clear intent to kill or seriously injure me, I cannot shoot him. Does that seem right?

Now, obviously, jumping out of the way should always be a part of the officer’s total strategy. But it certainly seems like a surefire loophole for bad guys to make it to their cars before they try to kill the cop. Kind of like home-base in a game of tag. You can’t get me! Perhaps, mayors and city councils can call it the 'sanctuary vehicle policy.'

Call me old school, but what is wrong with making the bad guys pay a higher price for their violent acts? You have bad guys running from the cops, shooting bystanders or killing or injuring them with cars, and the criminal justice system is changing its rules to make the cops more and more liable for the violent acts of criminals. Does this make sense?

[westallen-world]

“The Trial of The Flash” saw Barry Allen sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Clifford Devoe/The Thinker — a crime that he obviously didn’t commit. As a viewer, I knew it was coming, but that didn’t make it any easier to stomach.

For most of the trial, Barry sat unnerved as the prosecutor built an open-and-shut case against him. Knowing that he couldn’t explain away the mountain of evidence piling up against him without revealing his identity, Barry seemed to already have accepted his fate. Barry’s hopelessness was evident in his blank expression, which the judge interpreted as a lack remorse.

(I also believe that what little hope that Barry had left evaporated once Cecile turned out to be an awful attorney, but I digress.)

Iris West, on the other hand, was having a hard time keeping it together. From the jump, Iris has been written as Barry’s rock, but even she couldn’t withstand knowing that her husband could be wrongfully convicted in the same way his father had been.

Iris Reached Her Breaking Point

After a particularly theatrical testimony, Iris squared off in the hallway with Marlize Devoe, during which she failed to convince the wife of Barry’s newest enemy to do what was right. Iris then acted on her desperation and attempted to reveal to the judge that Barry was the Flash. She managed to get out “Barry Allen is…” before being thwarted by Barry at the last second, with a cool display of a new power. Somehow, Barry was able to move them both so fast that they could have a private conversation in the middle of the courtroom.

After sitting stoically for much of the hour, Barry softened only when Iris was on the brink of tears, but even as she cried, he explained to her that revealing his secret would put a target on both their backs. They would never be able to stop running. Reluctantly, she finally agreed to keep his identity a secret.

From the writers’ decision to finally allow Iris to make a selfish decision that would benefit only her and her relationship, to them reiterating once again that Iris shares a special connection to Barry and his powers that no one else does, I loved everything about this beautifully heart-wrenching scene. But I’d be lying if I said that my shipper’s heart didn’t break for them.

They’ve Faced Constant Tragedy

There isn’t a couple on TV, I’d argue, who’s experienced as much constant tragedy as these two have. Every time they come close to happiness, the writers snatch it away from them. Their weddings were crashed not once, but twice. First by Nazis, then by Felicity Smoak. This occurred less than two months after Barry had escaped from the speed force prison, which had housed him for six months. Now, Barry is a convicted felon, rotting away in Iron Heights for a crime he didn’t commit.

Anyone who’s ever watched television — specifically, superhero-based shows, know that there’s no way Barry Allen is actually going to live out his sentence, and he’s *probably not going to have to reveal his identity to prove his innocence either. As a viewer, this gives me peace, but this doesn’t change the fact that, to Barry and Iris, the sentence may as well be permanent. They don’t know that Barry will likely be out of jail within a few episodes.

They should be settling into life as a newly married couple and planning a family. Instead, they’ll probably be arranging prison visits, and looking up competent lawyers for future appeals. If this was one of the first obstacles they’d face, I wouldn’t harp on this, but Barry’s conviction is just another item on the long list of tragedies that they’ve faced together.

The writers seem to enjoy figuring out how to constantly traumatize them both. Season 1, Barry fell into a coma for nine months, after having been struck by lightning. Season 2, they had to grieve over the death of Barry’s father, and later, Iris’s mother. This was before they were even a couple. Soon after taking the plunge and getting together, Barry was thrust into the future where he saw Iris being murdered by Savitar, an evil version of his future self. Of course, Barry (and the viewers) had to relive that moment over and over again, as he continued to revisit that night to come up with a potential plan to stop Savitar.

Their Romantic Relationship Was Marked By Death

Having been dating only a couple of months, the beginning of their relationship as lovers was marked by death just as their childhood friendship had been.

Even after an entire season of trying to save Iris, Barry ultimately failed. It was only by HR’s sacrifice that Iris survived. Then, after HR’s funeral, in a moment of much-deserved solitude, the speed force prison went haywire because it needed an occupant to remain stable. Of course, Barry had to resign himself to the prison, much to the detriment of the team, but mostly Iris. After spending months not knowing whether she’d be brutally murdered on the street, she finally had a moment to breathe easy after Savitar was defeated, only to then lose her fiance for a second time that season.

(The writers first broke them up for an entire week just so they could reconcile during the musical episode because when you think your fiance is about to die, you obviously ask for time apart.)

I think I can speak for much of the fandom when I say that Barry and Iris need a break.

The strength of their love and devotion to each other has always been one of the building blocks of the show. After four seasons, there is no question whether or not Barry and Iris are meant to be together or the role they serve in each other’s lives. Barry and Iris love each unconditionally. It’s that love that’s given them both the strength to endure the laundry list of tragedies that have occurred in their lives over the years. If the viewers know nothing else, it’s that their love is unyielding to obstacles and roadblocks.

On a show where all of the characters are destined to suffer, it’s important to showcase this strength, but it’s just as important to let them revel in the good times as well. I get it — Barry and Iris have a love that can withstand almost anything but must the writers hone in on that fact repeatedly? Their bond and ability to survive under pressure have been demonstrated 10 times over, but what the viewers haven’t experienced enough are those moments between when the world isn’t being threatened, and when the thing that can be on the top of the list, for once, is each other.

Most Of Their Milestones Are Glossed Over

Every big milestone they’ve had has either been interrupted or glossed over altogether in favor of angst. Viewers have been denied a plethora of important moments in their relationship. We were denied their first time, their reunion, post-speed force sabbatical, their first dance as a married couple, their honeymoon — the list could go on and on. The only reason that they were allowed to get married, or enjoy their honeymoon (offscreen), is that those events played into the Thinker’s grand plan (which has yet to be revealed). Had he not wanted them to have two weeks of bliss on some tropical island, then you can bet that it would have been ruined as well.

Just going off of history, I doubt that once Barry is released from jail, the writers will give their reunion its just due either — unless, of course, it’s another situation which will eventually get interrupted.

Barry Allen/The Flash is destined to suffer, I know. Iris West, a living, breathing, extension of him is destined to suffer as well. But I argue that they shouldn’t have to suffer apart, but together, for starters. Can they stop being separated them before they even get a solid start together as a couple? But back to the inevitable suffering. In the midst of the suffering, we could allow them to genuinely enjoy the milestones in their relationship, no?

You may say that The Flash isn’t just about Barry and Iris’ romance, but when the writers have made it clear since day one that their love is the component that drives everything forward, I think its due more respect than it’s given. The constant trauma is getting old.

[orbemnews]

Watch now: Footage shows gunfire between suspect, Decatur police DECATUR — Dramatic body cam footage shows the moment Decatur police say one of their officers had to draw and fire his service firearm to defend himself from an armed suspect who had just shot at him. Both the suspect, 47-year-old Springfield man Gregory W. Lewis, and the policeman, third shift patrol officer Michael Lawary, emerged uninjured from the early Friday morning confrontation in a Decatur neighborhood. Lewis is currently held in the Macon County Jail on preliminary charges of aggravated discharge of a firearm at a peace officer and being a felon in possession of a weapon. He was also charged with possession of a stolen vehicle and his bail was set at $2.14 million. Details emerge of gunfire exchange between accused car thief and Decatur police Lawary, a 10-year department veteran, is currently on paid leave while the department conducts an internal inquiry into the circumstances of the shooting. Police Chief Jim Getz said Illinois law mandates an investigation by an outside agency in cases where the use of deadly force results in a death. He said the department, which calls on the Illinois State Police to conduct such inquiries, takes that a step further and calls in the state police in any use of force situations where a person is wounded. In the Lewis incident, where no injuries were involved and having already reviewed body cam footage, Getz said a careful internal investigation was sufficient to determine whether Lawary acted properly. “In this case I didn’t (use outside investigators) because it was on a body cam and it (the footage) supported the officer’s statement of events,” Getz added. Decatur man who denies beating girlfriend, now accused of drugging and raping her, police say The footage shows Lawary approaching Lewis after police responded to an address on West Cerro Gordo Street. Police said Lewis had fired his gun there earlier and a terrified resident had called in saying the man was trying to smash his way into their home. Lawary is heard yelling “Freeze! Police!” before the sound of gunshots and the officer rapidly returning fire. He then yells at Lewis repeatedly to get on the ground before Lewis eventually complies. Lewis can be heard crying “they shot me” but he was not wounded in the exchange of gunfire. Getz said the department has arranged for Lawary to have access to counseling because he said any time an officer is forced to draw and fire his service weapon results in tremendous mental stress. “That is a very traumatic event for an officer to go through and so we want to make sure they get counselling during their time off, just to make sure they are ready to come back to work,” Getz added. The police chief said that, in Decatur at least, it is still relatively rare for an officer to have to use deadly force. “We’ve got 30-year officers who have never had to shoot their firearm other than in training,” he added. “I’ve been here more than 21 years and, in that time, I’ve had to shoot a dog one time but, other than that, I’ve never had to use my firearm on duty.” Getz said the dog incident involved a pitbull that attacked him when he was a member of the SWAT team during a drug raid. “The dog wanted to take a chunk out of me but, even then, you feel bad about it because the dog is just protecting its property,” added Getz. Sworn affidavits about the arrest of Lewis said he was being sought by police after being accused of jumping into a running truck parked outside a gas station on Eldorado Street and driving off in the vehicle. Officers responded to that incident at 5:45 a.m. and, within minutes, got the call from the frightened homeowner on nearby West Cerro Gordo Street. Some 140 Decatur police officers were equipped with body cameras in a $300,000 program toward the end of 2020. Getz welcomed the camera deployment and, in a Herald & Review story from August, said: “Our goal is to be as transparent as possible. We’ve got nothing to hide.” Mugshots from the Herald & Review Aric L. Corsby Police said Aric L. Corsby of Decatur beat his girlfriend, pressed a gun to her head and shot at her. He was arrested on a preliminary charge of attempted murder April 22. READ THE STORY Dylan R. Bunch Jr. Police say Dylan R. Bunch Jr. was traveling around 60 mph under the influence of cannabis when he blew through a stop sign and smashed into another vehicle April 18, killing the other driver. READ THE STORY Randall R. Burrus Randall R. Burrus, 50, is charged with possession of a firearm by a felon and with being in possession of a firearm after having been convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence. He was arrested April 15. READ THE STORY Felipe K. Woodley-Underwood Felipe K. Woodley-Underwood was arrested April 10 in Wisconsin in connection with the shooting death of Bryston Musgrave, 24. READ THE STORY Tyler D. Jeffrey Tyler D. Jeffrey has pleaded not guilty to 14 charges of possessing and distributing child pornography involving children as young as 2, as well as four counts of failing to report annually as required by sex offender registration rules. READ THE STORY Bryant K. Bunch Bryant K. Bunch surrendered himself to the Macon County Sheriff’s Office on April 6 after a warrant was issued for his arrest on first-degree murder charges. He is accused of killing Devin Slater. READ THE STORY  Timothy W. Smith Timothy W. Smith pleaded not guilty April 1 to two charges of aggravated criminal sexual abuse involving a girl under the age of 15 and a charge of domestic battery involving physical contact against the same victim. READ THE STORY Bryan C. McGee Bryan C. McGee was sentenced to 18 months in prison for possession of a stolen handgun after accepting a plea deal. A judge dismissed one count of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon. READ THE STORY Justin D. Tate Police say Justin D. Tate picked up a runaway 14-year-old girl and force-fed her methamphetamine before making her perform sex acts and then raping her. He was arrested March 24. READ THE STORY Matthew L. Rice Matthew L. Rice was sentenced to four years in prison March 5 after he pleaded guilty to opening fire while a fight was going on in a crowded downtown Decatur parking lot. READ THE STORY Courtney Williams Courtney Williams was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges that he sexually exploited a child younger than 14. READ THE STORY Deonta M. Merriweather Deonta M. Merriweather was sentenced to two years in prison March 3 after apologizing in court to the family of the Decatur man he said he had to shoot to death to protect himself. READ THE STORY Atheree T. Chaney Atheree T. Chaney pleaded not guilty Feb. 26 to a charge of attempted murder after police said he inflicted multiple stab wounds to a Decatur man’s face and body. READ THE STORY Clarence A. Ballard Clarence A. Ballard pleaded not guilty Feb. 25 to kidnapping a girl under 13 and strangling, punching and repeatedly sexually assaulting the child. READ THE STORY Shaitan L. Cook Jr. Shaitan L. Cook Jr., was sentenced Feb. 24 to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to a single count of first-degree murder. He was the last of the convicted killers of Decatur woman Cesley Taylor to be sentenced. READ THE STORY Ricko R. Blaylock, Jr. Ricko R. Blaylock, Jr. was sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to drugs and weapons charges. Unrelated charges of terrorism/making a false threat and being a felon in possession of a weapon were dismissed. READ THE STORY Seth M. Nashland Seth M. Nashland, 31, pleaded not guilty to five counts of causing aggravated battery to a child resulting in permanent disability. He is accused of inflicting serious brain injuries on his 8-week-old son. READ THE STORY Angela M. Schmitt Angela M. Schmitt pleaded not guilty to charges that she stole more than $365,000 from the veterinary clinic where she worked as office manager. READ THE STORY Sidney J. Flinn Sidney J. Flinn was sentenced to five years Feb. 19 in prison for aggravated driving under the influence of alcohol causing the death of his girlfriend. READ THE STORY Tracy T. Cunningham Tracy T. Cunningham was charged with trying to stab his mother to death. READ THE STORY Nancy Finley Nancy Finley, the former Tower Hill treasurer accused of stealing more than $150,000 from village water and sewer bills, pleaded guilty Feb. 7 to three federal charges of wire fraud. READ THE STORY  Colby J. Park A judge is still waiting to see whether Colby J. Park is fit to stand trial in a 2018 case of predatory criminal sexual assault and aggravated criminal sexual abuse. READ THE STORY Cornelius T. Price, Jr. Cornelius T. Price, Jr. has pleaded not guilty to two charges of home invasion, one count of aggravated criminal sexual assault and one count of criminal sexual assault involving force. READ THE STORY Charles E. Gardner Charles E. Gardner has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Cody Drew in August 2018, and also has been charged with attempted murder in a case prosecutors described as similar to Drew’s stabbing death. READ THE STORY Tamajhe I. Adams Tamajhe I. Adams pleaded not guilty to multiple drug and weapons charges Feb. 5. READ THE STORY Aaron K. Greer Aaron K. Greer pleaded guilty Feb. 5 to a charge of criminal trespass. Prosecutors said he was a handyman who showed up drunk, broke into a potential client’s home, fell asleep on her couch and then threatened to kill her after she hit him with a golf club. READ THE STORY Blake A. Lunardi Blake A. Lunardi was sentenced to 20 years in prison after being found guilty of two counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault, and single counts of aggravated battery and aggravated unlawful restraint, and domestic battery and criminal damage. READ THE STORY Avery E. Drake Avery E. Drake pleaded not guilty to a charge of obstructing justice. He is accused of witnessing the shooting death of Jayson A. Goodbred in a Decatur motel. READ THE STORY Mark A. Marquis Mark A. Marquis of Decatur has pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of sexual assault against two children younger than 13. Marquis had been living in Florida since 2012, and was arrested on a warrant. Read more here. Rhonda G. Keech Rhonda G. Keech was placed on court supervision for a year after pleading guilty to one count of committing public indecency. Prosecutors said she was a private investigator caught performing oral sex inside the Macon County Jail on a prisoner for whom she had been hired to carry out an investigation. READ THE STORY Casey Wiley Casey Wiley, 30, was arrested on a preliminary charge of attempted murder after police say he fired multiple shots at his parents in their car following a high-speed chase. Read more. Jakaelin Gregory Jakaelin Gregory was sentenced to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to a charge of armed violence. Prosecutors said he had pointed a loaded gun at polcie officers. READ THE STORY Jacquez L. Jones Jacquez L. Jones has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder. He is accused of shooting another man to death Jan. 9. READ THE STORY  Alvin Bond Alvin Bond was arrested in June for arranging nearly two pounds of methamphetamine to be delivered to him from Mexico using the U.S. Postal Service, police said. READ MORE.  Jarquez A. Hobbs Jarquez A. Hobbs is facing charges after breaking into a Decatur home in August and sexually assaulting a girl under 13 years old. READ MORE Terrence L. Calhoun Terrence L. Calhoun was arrested Jan. 11 after police say he stabbed a woman twice in the chest with a kitchen knife. READ THE STORY Santonio Byars Sr. A Macon County Jury convicted Santonio Byars of second-degree murder in the stabbing death of 22-year-old Tobby J. Buhs. READ MORE Shane A. Lewis Shane A. Lewis, 41, has pleaded not guilty to two charges of possessing methamphetamine and two counts of resisting police. READ THE STORY Eric D. Currie Eric D. Currie pleaded not guilty to a charge he hit a glass counter window at a restaurant, causing flying glass shards to cut the chin and forearm of a female employee. READ THE STORY Leeandre M. Honorable Leeandre M. Honorable was chased down and arrested by Decatur Police after they said a patrol officer saw him open fire multiple times at a fleeing vehicle, causing it to crash. READ THE STORY Elijah K. Jones Elijah K. Jones has pleaded not guilty to two counts of the aggravated unlawful use of a weapon, as well as charges of aggravated domestic battery involving strangulation and vehicular invasion at a preliminary. READ THE STORY Norman L. Gates Norman L. Gates who refused to hand a 6-month-old baby left in his care back to its mother and at one point pretended he had left the baby outside to face the danger of freezing to death, was sent to prison for 18 months. READ THE STORY Jessica E. Bartimus Jessica E. Bartimus was arrested on a preliminary charge of aggravated domestic battery after police say she inflicted life-threatening stab wounds on her 31-year-old boyfriend. She told police she acted in self-defense. READ THE STORY Bruce A. Malone Bruce A. Malone, accused of stabbing his 68-year-old girlfriend after beating her and stomping on her face, pleaded guilty Oct. 19 to one charge of aggravated domestic battery. READ THE STORY Kronterial N. Bond Kronterial N. Bond, who shot a Decatur man to death, was sentenced to 16 years in prison after an agreement in which in pleaded guilty to a charge of second-degree murder. READ THE STORY Billiejo L. Soyster Billiejo L. Soyster has pleaded not guilty to murder in the stabbing death of her boyfriend on New Year’s Day in Decatur. Read more here. Scott L. Minix Scott L. Minix has pleaded not guilty to charges that he exposed himself to a mother and young children shopping in a Decatur Walmart. READ THE STORY Lester A. McDonald Lester A. McDonald was placed on probation and ordered to undergo sex offender treatment after pleading guilty to a charge of committing public indecency in Decatur. READ THE STORY Delahn L. Amos Delahn L. Amos pleaded not guilty to murder and attempted murder charges that accuse him of killing one Decatur man and almost killing another in a hail of bullets fired in back-to-back shootings on consecutive nights. READ THE STORY Chelsea Brown Chelsea Brown is among three people facing preliminary charges after a daughter of the convicted killer was attacked in a courthouse elevator while leaving her father’s sentencing hearing. READ THE STORY Chancellor C. Embry Chancellor C. Embry pleaded not guilty to kicking in the front door of a Decatur home belonging to a terrified woman and stealing from her at gunpoint. READ THE STORY  Joseph Luckee Vincent Williams Joseph Luckee Vincent Williams pleaded not guilty to two counts of attempted first degree murder in the Aug. 30 violence that erupted near the 700 block of East Clay Street. READ THE STORY Dante L. Wade Dante L. Wade was sentenced Oct. 7 to 60 years in prison for the Nov. 9, 2018, Decatur murder of Marcqui Apholone, 25. READ THE STORY Shawanda Apholone Shawanda Apholone, the aunt of a murdered Decatur man, is among three people facing preliminary charges after a daughter of the convicted killer was attacked in a courthouse elevator while leaving her father’s sentencing hearing. READ THE STORY Kevin Brown Kevin Brown is among three people facing preliminary charges after a daughter of the convicted killer was attacked in a courthouse elevator while leaving her father’s sentencing hearing. READ THE STORY Thomas J. Nall Thomas J. Nall, who put a 10-year-old boy through days of cruel punishment as if the child were at a military boot camp, was sentenced to 24 months probation and ordered to attend classes teaching him how to take care of children. READ THE STORY Derondi C. Warnsley Derondi C. Warnsley is pleading not guilty to four Class X felonies alleging home invasion and armed robbery and two Class 1 felonies alleging aggravated robbery and one count of residential burglary. READ THE STORY Levron K. Hines Levron K. Hines pleaded not guilty to a charge of attempted first-degree murder. He and Delahn L. Amos are accused of shooting a Decatur man who believed he was being hired to provide a member of Hines’ family with a tattoo. READ THE STORY Jamie L. Golladay Jamie L. Golladay denied charges he fed a 14-year-old girl cocaine on one occasion and gave her repeated cash gifts on others while sexually assaulting the child. READ THE STORY Regina M. Nall Regina M. Nall pleaded guilty to a charge of endangering the life or health of a child and was given 24 months probation, told to undergo a mental health evaluation and ordered to perform 30 hours of community service work. READ THE STORY Phillip M. E. Diggs Phillip M. E. Diggs told a judge Sept. 17 that he was not guilty of trying to solicit a 13-year-old Decatur boy for sex. READ THE STORY Daniel R. Blazich Daniel R. Blazich pleaded not guilty to charges that he tried to kill a Decatur man by hitting him in the head with a hammer and then holding on to the man while an accomplice shot the victim twice. READ THE STORY Matthew Anderson Jr. The Decatur murder trial of Matthew A. Anderson Jr. was halted before it could begin Sept. 14 after the defendant switched his story and said he had grounds for a case of self-defense. READ THE STORY Deoane A. Stone Deoane A. Stone pleaded not guilty to multiple charges of sexually assaulting a girl aged under 13. READ THE STORY Micaiah G. Barton Micaiah G. Barton, 18, was sent to prison for six years for driving drunk and smashing into the home of a Decatur great grandmother, sparking a fierce fire that killed her. READ THE STORY Jason C. Herendeen Jason C. Herendeen pleaded not guilty to burglary and pocketing more than $4,600 from the sale of gold bullion coins stolen in a Clinton burglary. READ THE STORY Blake E. Merli Blake E. Merli is pleading not guilty to two charges of possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver and being an armed habitual criminal. READ THE STORY Josh D. Longfellow Josh D. Longfellow, who performed Sunday morning burnouts with his sports car on a Mount Zion street and, holding a handgun out the window, asked onlookers who complained if they “wanted some of this?” was sentenced to 24 months’ probation. READ THE STORY Jeremiah D. Collins Jeremiah D. Collins is charged with five burglary charges, three counts of criminal damage, two counts of unlawful possession of a vehicle, one count of theft and one of arson. READ THE STORY Danielle M. Whitehead Danielle M. Whitehead, a Decatur woman who shot at a fleeing car, accepted a plea deal that sentenced her to 24 months probation. READ THE STORY Deonte D. Smith Deonte D. Smith pleaded not guilty to trying to shoot a man to death after hiring an Uber driver to take him to the crime scene. READ THE STORY Cory J. Marquis Cory J. Marquis, a Decatur man who shot at his former girlfriend, was sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to reckless discharge of a firearm. A more serious charge of being an armed habitual criminal was dismissed in a plea deal. READ THE STORY Gary L. Boyle Gary L. Boyle is accused of sexually assaulting a child younger than 13. He faces a preliminary charge of predatory criminal sexual assault, a Class X felony. Read more here. Carl E. Harvey II Carl E. Harvey II pleaded not guilty to charges he stole more than $100,000 in cash and went on a shopping spree with the loot. READ THE STORY Dessica N. Jackson Dessica N. Jackson has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder. Police said the 31-year-old victim was stabbed during a domestic dispute on July 19. READ THE STORY Ashley N. Jobe Ashley N. Jobe faces a preliminary charge of predatory criminal sexual assault of a child. Read more here. Lori J. Kramer Lori J. Kramer pleaded not guilty to charges she repeatedly slapped an autistic boy across the face so hard she split open his top lip. READ THE STORY Talmel T. Wilson, Jr. Talmel T. Wilson, Jr. pleaded not guilty to charges of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and being a felon in possession of a weapon. READ THE STORY Dana E. Bond, Jr. Dana E. Bond, Jr. pleaded not guilty to charges of being a felon in possession of ammunition. Bond’s June 9 arrest had sparked a tense confrontation between police and neighborhood residents. READ THE STORY Christopher L. Bailey Convicted sexual predator Christopher L. Bailey pleaded not guilty to 11 charges of possession and distribution of child pornography in Decatur. READ THE STORY Jennifer E. Bishop Jennifer E. Bishop pleaded not guilty to accidentally suffocating her baby son to death while drunk and sleeping in the same bed with him. READ THE STORY Paul M. Folks Paul M. Folks pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder after prosecutors accused of him of firing his revolver into the backs of a fleeing crowd and shooting a Decatur woman dead. READ THE STORY Cody M. Burries Cody M. Burries was sentenced to 18 years in prison for inflicting fatal gunshot wounds on a victim in the parking lot of a Decatur bar in April 2019. READ THE STORY Anthony J Dickey Anthony J Dickey pleaded not guilty to charges he held up and robbed a victim in a Decatur home at gunpoint. READ THE STORY Malik O. Lewis Malik O. Lewis was arrested in June on preliminary charges of causing an accident that resulted in injury and death and failing to report an accident involving a death. READ THE STORY Demetric J. Dixon Demetric J. Dixon is accused of being the driver who fled from the scene of a collision that resulted in the deaths of four passengers, having an estimated blood alcohol level almost three times the legal limit for driving and running a red light. He has pleaded not guilty. READ THE STORY Michelle R. Batman Michelle R. Batman, accused of helping herself at gunpoint to contents from a home she had previously moved out of, pleaded not guilty to a charge of residential burglary. READ THE STORY Seth D. Maxwell Seth D. Maxwell pleaded not guilty to charges he invaded his 81-year-old grandfather’s Decatur home before assaulting him and then dragged his mother out of the house by her hair when she intervened. READ THE STORY Contact Tony Reid at (217) 421-7977. Follow him on Twitter: @TonyJReid Source link Orbem News #Cam #Crime #Decatur #decaturpolice #firearm #footage #gregoryw.lewis #Gunfire #jimgetz #Law #michaellawary #military #Officer #Police #public-safety #Shows #Suspect #watch

[expatimes]

US House debates article of impeachment against Trump: Live

US House impeaches Trump for ‘incitement to insurrection’: Live

The US House of Representatives has impeached President Donald Trump for “incitement of insurrection” for his behaviour and remarks leading up to last Wednesday’s siege of the US Capitol.

Trump has become first president in US history to be impeached twice, with legislators voting 232 to 197.

Ten Republicans joined Democrats in voting for impeachment.

The move comes after Vice President Mike Pence said he would not invoke the 25th Amendment and declare Trump unable to perform duties.

Welcome to Al Jazeera’s coverage of US politics. This is Joseph Stepansky and Mersiha Gadzo.

4 mins ago (22:57 GMT)

Senate Intelligence Committee to hold hearing on Friday

The US Senate Intelligence Committee will hold a hearing on Friday on President-elect Joe Biden’s nomination of Avril Haines to be director of national intelligence, according to a statement.

24 mins ago (22:38 GMT)

Man with ‘Camp Auschwitz’ sweatshirt, Olympic swimmer charged over Capitol riots

A man clad in a ‘Camp Auschwitz’ sweatshirt, a gold medal-winning Olympic swimmer, and a Proud Boys supporter are among those arrested by the FBI in connection with the January 6 riots at the US Capitol, the Department of Justice has said.

Robert Keith Packer, a Virginia man identified as having worn the Nazi-linked shirt, was charged with unlawful entry and disorderly conduct, and allowed to be released following a virtual hearing in the US District Court in Norfolk.

In a separate case, prosecutors in New York charged Eduard Florea with being a felon in possession of a firearm after the FBI said he possessed more than 1,000 rounds of rifle ammunition, military combat knives, and shotgun rounds.

While Florea did not travel to the Capitol, prosecutors said he made verbal threats on the conservative social media platform Parler to carry out violence.

Florea was a supporter of the Proud Boys and had applied to become a member, the government said during his hearing.

31 mins ago (22:30 GMT)

Second impeachment historic, but conviction may be ‘bridge too far’

Shawn Zeller, editor of CQ Magazine, told Al Jazeera Trump’s second impeachment “is a historic moment”, but wondered what it means for the Republican party.

A record number of Republicans, 10, voted to impeach Trump, but Zeller said that’s “not enough for there to be any real consequences for Donald Trump, beyond just shaming him.”

Zeller noted 17 Republicans will be needed to convict, and then to bar Trump from holding office again.

“To get 17 Republicans to vote to convict after only 10 broke in the House, seems like a bridge too far,” Zeller said.

35 mins ago (22:27 GMT)

Democratic leader Schumer says Senate will act on impeachment

“Donald Trump has deservedly become the first president in American history to bear the stain of impeachment twice over,” Schumer said in a statement after the House vote.

“The Senate is required to act and will proceed with his trial and hold a vote on his conviction,” said Schumer who is poised to become the Senate’s majority leader after January 20.

“Make no mistake, there will be an impeachment trial in the United States Senate; there will be a vote on convicting the president for high crimes and misdemeanors; and if the president is convicted, there will be a vote on barring him from running again,” Schumer said.

39 mins ago (22:23 GMT)

Schumer says Senate could vote on barring Trump from running for office again

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer has said that if Trump is convicted at his Senate impeachment trial, the chamber will hold a separate vote on barring him from running for office again.

39 mins ago (22:22 GMT)

Parler CEO says social media app, favoured by Trump supporters, may not return

Social media platform Parler, which was cut off by major service providers that accused the app of failing to police violent content, may never get back online, its CEO John Matze has said.

As a procession of business vendors severed ties with the two-year-old site following the storming of the Capitol last week, Matze said in an interview with Reuters news agency that he does not know when or if it will return.

“It could be never,” he said. “We don’t know yet.”

The app said in a legal filing it has over 12 million users.

Amazon cut Parler, a platform which styles itself as a “free-speech” space and is favoured by supporters of Trump, off its servers this weekend for failing to effectively moderate violent content.

Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google also kicked Parler from their app stores.

55 mins ago (22:06 GMT)

Texas Republican fears future findings may put him ‘on wrong side’ of debate

The ten Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in the House set a record for lawmakers voting to impeach a president from their party.

None from Texas voted in support, but one legislator fears he might be in the wrong.

Texas Representative Michael McCaul, who represents the Texas’ southeastern 10th District, said in a statement he believed the House was “not given the time to truly look at the facts and evidence” before the vote was held.

McCaul, a former prosecutor, likened the vote to “attempting to indict a case before it’s been presented to the grand jury”.

But he “truly” fears “there may be more facts that come to light in the future that will put me on the wrong side of this debate”.

My full statement on impeachment: pic.twitter.com/dORsBNQxU3

— Michael McCaul (@RepMcCaul) January 13, 2021

58 mins ago (22:04 GMT)

McConnell says ‘there is simply no chance’ Senate trial will happen before Trump leaves office

Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell has said “there is simply no chance” that a Senate trial will happen before Trump leaves office on January 20.

“Given the rule, procedures, and Senate precedents that govern presidential impeachments trials, there is simply no chance that a fair or serious trial could conclude before President-elect Biden is sworn in next week,” he said in a statement.

He noted that previous Senate impeachment trials lasted 83, 37 and 21 days.

“In light of this reality, I believe it will best serve our nation if Congress and the executive branch spend the next seven days completely focused on facilitating a safe inauguration and an orderly transfer of power to the incoming Biden administration,” he said.

2 hours ago (21:31 GMT)

Trump impeached for second time

The US House voted to impeach President Trump for “inciting” the mob that stormed the US Capitol, making him the first president in US history to be impeached twice.

Ten Republicans bucked the president, joining House Democrats in agreeing that the president committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” with his actions and remarks leading up to last week’s riot.

The article of impeachment now heads to the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday that the earliest an impeachment trial will begin is January 19, a day before Trump’s final day in office,

That guarantees any Senate vote would take place after Trump is no longer president, something that has never happened in US history.

BREAKING: US lawmakers to vote on an article of impeachment against President Donald Trump over the violent siege of the US Capitol.

Read More: https://t.co/SsXVlvXOQ2 https://t.co/2hbL6k3U3P

— Al Jazeera News (@AJENews) January 13, 2021

2 hours ago (21:13 GMT)

Republican Meijer says he supports impeachment

Representative Peter Meijer of Michigan has become the seventh Republican indicate he will vote in favour of impeachment.

“This vote is not a victory. It isn’t a victory for my party, and it isn’t the victory the Democrats might think it is” Meijer said in a statement.

“With a heavy heart, I will vote to impeach President Donald J Trump.”

2 hours ago (20:54 GMT)

Debate concludes and legislators vote on impeachment

Two hours of debate have concluded, with Republican and Democratic legislators condemning the violence at the US Capitol, while disagreeing on how to move forward.

Democrats, and at least seven Republicans, have called for Trump to be impeached.

The majority of Republicans argued that the impeachment was rushed and would further divide the country.

2 hours ago (20:40 GMT)

Democrat Steny Hoyer gives closing statements

Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer gave closing statements, concluding two hours of debate.

He referenced Republican Representative Liz Cheney’s condemnation of Trump’s actions and her vow to vote to impeach.

“There has never been, she said, a greater betrayal by the president of the United States of this office, of his office and his oath to the constitution,” he said.

“This attack was not from abroad, it was, as Liz Cheney said, summoned, assembled, and inflamed by the president of the United States of America,” he said.

This will be no ordinary roll call,” he said of the upcoming voting. “This is about our country, our Constitution and our democracy. These votes will be inscribed on the scroll of history.”

US House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer gave closing statements in the two-hour debate preceding a vote on an article of impeachment against Trump

2 hours ago (20:37 GMT)

Republican Steve Scalise gives closing statements

In closing statements, Republican Representative Steve Scalise condemned the violence but said that impeachment would further divide.

“I’ve seen the dark evil of political violence first hand,” said Scalise, who was shot by a gunman at a charity baseball game in 2017.

“I oppose this rushed impeachment brought forward without a single hearing,” he said. “It will only serve to further divide a nation that is calling out for healing”.

National Guard members assemble in the Capitol Visitor’s Center on Capitol Hill on Wednesday

3 hours ago (20:12 GMT)

Trump ‘will try to remain in the spotlight’: Analyst

If Trump does get impeached and if it goes through to a trial in the Senate, Shawn Zeller of the Congressional Quarterly Magazine told Al Al Jazeera that he believes Trump “will try to remain in the spotlight”.

“He’s a fighter. That’s all he knows how to do, is to punch back. He is never conciliatory, he never apologises,” he said.

“I think he very much intends to stay in the political limelight to retain control over the Republican party as much as possible. I do not think he will resign,” Zeller said.

3 hours ago (19:47 GMT)

Podcast: We are asking, again, will the president be prosecuted?

In the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection on the United States Capitol, Al Jazeera’s The Take podcast asks what comes next?

https://art19.com/shows/4e4a1167-d88f-4ffb-ab1c-20ac555bd5f3/episodes/5ffad0ef-2e4c-4249-aed7-5fe71b66eaf9/embed?theme=dark-orange” style=”width: 100%; height: 200px; border: 0 none;” scrolling=”no”>iframe>

4 hours ago (19:26 GMT)

Republican Dan Newhouse says he will vote impeach Trump

Republican Representative Dan Newhouse has said in a tweet that he will vote impeach Trump.

The statement brings the number of House Republicans who have publicly said they will vote for impeachment six.

“A vote against this impeachment is a vote to validate the unacceptable violence we witnessed in our nation’s capital,” he said in a statement.

“It is also a vote condone Trump’s inaction,” Newhouse said. “He did not strongly condemn the attack nor did he call in reinforcements when our officers were overwhelmed.”

“Our country needed a leader, and President Trump failed to fulfill his oath of office,” he added.

My full statement on the House impeachment vote: pic.twitter.com/X74Sgq1Nqu

— Rep. Dan Newhouse (@RepNewhouse) January 13, 2021

4 hours ago (19:08 GMT)

Trump urges ‘NO violence’ at pre-inauguration protests

President Trump, in a statement released by the White House, has urged “NO” violence, lawbreaking and vandalism” at pre-inauguration demonstrations.

The statement comes days after an internal FBI bulletin warned against “armed” protests in all 50 states and the US capital in the days leading up to the January 20 inauguration.

“In light of reports of more demonstrations, I urge that there must be NO violence, NO lawbreaking and NO vandalism of any kind,” said Trump, who has been banned from all mainstream social media.

“That is not what I stand for, and it is not what America stands for. I call on ALL Americans to help ease tensions and calm tempers. Thank You,” he said.

The White House released the statement as the House debated an article of impeachment against. His ally, Representative Jim Jordan, read the statement during the proceedings.

President Donald Trump gave a fiery address to supporters shortly before rioters breached the US Capitol last week

4 hours ago (18:50 GMT)

Top House Republican: Trump ‘bears responsibility’ for Capitol riot, impeachment a ‘mistake’

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has said Trump’s “bears responsibility” for the deadly Capitol Hill riot, but called impeachment a “mistake”.

“Americans want durable bipartisan justice,” McCarthy said. “That path is still available, but is not the path we are on today.”

“That doesn’t mean the president is free from fault. The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters,” he said. “They should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding.”

McCarthy said he supports a Congressional fact finding commission.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy walks to the chamber at the Capitol in Washington

5 hours ago (18:21 GMT)

Google to stop selling political ads for foreseeable future

Alphabet Inc’s Google will stop selling political ads referencing US elections across its services until at least January 21, following last week’s violence at the Capitol, according to an email to advertisers seen by Reuters news agency.

The email said the action was taken “following the unprecedented events of the past week and ahead of the upcoming presidential inauguration,” which takes place on January 20.

In a statement, Google said it would “temporarily pause all political ads in addition to any ads referencing impeachment, the inauguration, or protests at the US Capitol.”

The move, to take effect on Thursday, will make no exceptions for news organizations or merchandisers running ads.

5 hours ago (18:11 GMT)

Senate will not convene this week amid Trump impeachment: McConnell spokesman

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell will not use emergency powers to immediately reconvene the chamber this week as the House moves forward with its vote on Trump’s impeachment, his spokesman said in a post on Twitter.

The House is expected to vote Wednesday on impeaching Trump following last week’s riot in the US Capitol, and House Democratic leaders have said they could send it to the Senate as soon as this week.

McConnell spoke to Democratic Minority leader Chuck Schumer to say he would not reconvene the Senate under emergency authorities, almost certainly pushing an impeachment trial for Trump until after he leaves office, his spokesman said.

Can confirm —> https://t.co/l2U1WlyQSF

— Doug Andres (@DougAndres) January 13, 2021

5 hours ago (18:05 GMT)

Schiff: Now is ‘moment’ to protect country

Representative Adam Schiff, a key figure in the first impeachment proceedings against Trump, said “this is one of those moments” for Americans to stand up and protect the country.

“America has been through a civil war, world wars, a great depression, pandemics, McCarthyism, and now a Trumpist and white nationalist insurrection,” he said.

“And yet, our democracy endures, it endures because at every juncture, every pivotal moment, when evil threatened to overtake, good patriotic Americans step forward to say, enough,” he said.

Representative Adam Schiff looks at his phone as he walks on Capitol Hill in Washington

5 hours ago (17:58 GMT)

McClintock: ‘What did Trump actually say?’

Republican Representative Tom McClintock argued that Trump’s speech before the Capitol Hill riot did not amount to inciting violence.

“What did he actually say?” McClintock said, noting that Trump at one point in the speech, said that his supporters would be protesting “peacefully”.

“If we impeached every politician who gave a fiery speech to a crowd of partisans this Capitol would be deserted,” he said. “That’s what the President did, that is all he did. He specifically told the crowd to protest peacefully and patriotically, and the vast majority of them did.”

5 hours ago (17:46 GMT)

Jordan says Dems motivated by ‘politics and the fact they want to cancel the president’

Representative Jim Jordan, the first Republican to speak during the debate on impeachment, accused Democrats of being motivated by “politics and the fact they want to cancel the president”.

Jordan portrayed the second attempt to impeach Trump as the continuation of a Democratic vendetta against the president that preceded the Capitol Hill violence.

“It’s always been about getting the president, no matter what,” he said. He added that Democrats have been obsessed with “cancelling the president and anyone that disagrees with them.”

“And now with just one week left, they’re still trying,” said Jordan who has been the most vocal defender of Trump in the House since the mob attack.

“In seven days, there will be a peaceful transfer of power just like there has been every other time in our country but Democrats are gonna impeach President Trump again. This doesn’t unite the country,” Jordan said.

Representative Jim Jordan, an ally of President Donald Trump, condemned Democrats attempts to impeach Trump

5 hours ago (17:38 GMT)

Pelosi opens debate on impeachment, says Trump ‘clear and present danger’

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has begun a two-hour period of debate proceeding a vote on an article of impeachment against Trump, calling the president a “clear and present danger” to the country.

“We know we experienced the insurrection that violated the sanctity of the People’s capital and attempted to overturn the duly recorded will of the American people,” Pelosi said. “And we know that the President of the United States incited this insurrection this armed rebellion against our common country.”

“He must go,” she said.

Pelosi called the rioters who breached the Capitol “domestic terrorists”.

“Those insurrectionists were not patriots. They were not part of a political base to be catered to. They were domestic terrorists and justice must prevail,” Pelosi said.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi of Calif., walks through Statuary Hall on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2021. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

6 hours ago (17:27 GMT)

US House to debate on impeaching Trump after procedural vote passes

The House has voted 221 to 203 to begin debating an article of impeachment against Trump.

Debate will be two hours equally divided between Democrats and Republican.

A final vote on the impeachment of Trump is expected this afternoon.

6 hours ago (17:15 GMT)

Uncertain if Biden wants to see impeachment move forward: Analyst

Matthew Mackowiak, chairman of Potomac Strategy Group told Al Jazeera that one has to consider how holding Trump to account for the riot that occurred on Wednesday could divide the country and bring about potential violence over the next week.

“I was talking to a Republican member of congress yesterday who told me that this week will be worse than last week in terms of violence. That is a really scary thought,” Mackowiak said.“I do believe the inauguration is going to be a very safe event but there could be violent riots at that event as well.

“These are the considerations you have to take into account. When you’re in a leadership position, you don’t get easy decisions,” he said. “I’m not sure if President-elect Joe Biden really wants to see this impeachment move forward.”

“I’m sure he does want to see the president be held accountable, and everyone involved in criminal activity last Wednesday held accountable, but he cannot possibly want additional violence, additional division and additional uncertainty against his administration just one week from today,” Mackowiak said.

President-elect Joe Biden will take office on January 20

6 hours ago (17:00 GMT)

Full text: Donald Trump impeachment resolution

The House is expected vote on an article of impeachment against Trump, accusing him of “incitement of insurrection” for his role in egging on supporters before the Capitol Hill riots.

If the House impeaches Trump, the article will be sent to the US Senate, which is required to hold a trial to determine whether Trump should remain in office or be prevented from holding office in the future.

Red the full text of the article of impeachment here.

Here is the article of impeachment I just introduced, along with 213 colleagues, against President Trump for Incitement of Insurrection.

Most important of all, I can report that we now have the votes to impeach. pic.twitter.com/RaJIjzQSvm

— David Cicilline (@davidcicilline) January 11, 2021

6 hours ago (16:36 GMT)

New York City to cut ties with Trump over incitement

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has said that New York City will cut ties with Trump’s company, citing his incitement of violence at the US Capitol last week.

“The President incited a rebellion against the United States government that killed five people and threatened to derail the constitutional transfer of power,” de Blasio said in a statement. “The City of New York will not be associated with those unforgivable acts in any shape, way or form, and we are immediately taking steps to terminate all Trump Organization contracts.”

Contracts between New York City and the Trump Organization bring the company $17 million a year, according to the Washington Post.

New York City doesn’t do business with insurrectionists.

We’re taking steps to TERMINATE agreements with the Trump Organization to operate the Central Park Carousel, Wollman and Lasker skating rinks, and the Ferry Point Golf Course.

— Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) January 13, 2021

7 hours ago (16:31 GMT)

Jordan says Cheney should be removed from role: Report

Representative Jim Jordan, who has remained a steadfast defender of Trump, told reporters on Capitol Hill that Representative Liz Cheney, a Republican, should be removed from her role as the party’s third highest ranking member in the chamber.

“I think she’s wrong,” Jordan said of Cheney, the highest ranking House Republican to publicly support impeachment, the Washington Post reported.

When asked about the possible removal of Cheney from the post, Jordan replied House Republicans “ought to vote on that”.

Representative Jamie Raskin talks with Representative Liz Cheney in the US Capitol

7 hours ago (16:08 GMT)

Tracking the business backlash against Trump after Capitol siege

From social media bans to cancelled golf tournaments and city contracts, the business backlash continues after supporters of United States President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol building last week.

The violent siege left at least five people dead and caused extensive damage. Now, Trump is facing a renewed impeachment drive as well as possible removal from office with only eight days to go before his term ends.

It’s a major blow for a reality TV star turned US president who has long boasted of his business acumen and styles himself as a master negotiator.

But Trump and his brand have become increasingly toxic as consumers demand that businesses, politicians, and other powerful figures take a stand against the outgoing US president and the assault on the democracy made in his name.

Here is a list of firms, institutions and cities cutting ties with Trump.

7 hours ago (16:03 GMT)

Airbnb to cancel DC bookings during Inauguration week

Home-sharing giant Airbnb and HotelTonight, which it bought in 2019, are blocking and cancelling all hotel reservations in the Washington DC Metro area during the week of President-elect Biden’s inauguration, it said on Wednesday.

“This decision was informed by inputs from our host community as well as local, state and federal officials,” Airbnb said in a brief statement.

Airbnb said it had banned from its platform some individuals who were found to have ties with hate groups or were involved in last week’s deadly storming of the US Capitol.

“We are aware of reports emerging yesterday afternoon regarding armed militias and known hate groups that are attempting to travel and disrupt the Inauguration,” Airbnb said.

The company did not immediately specify if its decision to block reservations was a result of a request from law enforcement agencies.

AirBnb has said it will cancel and block reservations in the Washington, DC metro area during inauguration week

7 hours ago (15:48 GMT)

House voting on rule preceding debate on article of impeachment

The House is currently voting on a procedural motion that, if passed, will open the chamber to debate on the article of impeachment against Trump.

If the rule vote passes, the House will debate the article of impeachment for two hours before a final vote.

7 hours ago (15:44 GMT)

Republican Representative argues impeachment ‘ignores due process’

Republican Representative Guy Reschenthaler argued on the House floor that impeaching Trump “ignores all precedent and ignores all due process”.

Reschenthaler added: “Trump’s words would not even meet the definition of incitement under criminal statutes.”

Members of the National Guard gather at the US Capitol as the House of Representatives prepares to vote to impeach Trump

7 hours ago (15:40 GMT)

Omar: ‘We cannot simply move past this or turn the page’

Speaking during a debate on rules preceding a debate on the article of impeachment introduced against Trump, Representative Ilhan Omar said of the Capitol Hill riot: “We cannot simply move past this or turn the page.”

“For us to be able to survive as a functioning democracy, there has to be accountability,” she said.

7 hours ago (15:35 GMT)

Hoyer tells reporters as many as 20 Republicans could vote to impeach

House Majority leader Steny Hoyer told reporters on Wednesday he expected between 10 and 20 House Republicans to vote in support of impeaching Trump.

So far, five House Republicans, including ranking member Liz Cheney, have said they intend to join Democrats.

Steny also said he expects the article of impeachment would be sent to the Senate as soon as its passed.

Members of the National Guard were deployed to the US Capitol as Congress debates impeaching Trump

8 hours ago (15:27 GMT)

Spirited impeachment debate underway

Supporters of Trump’s impeachment along with his defenders are taking to the floor of the US House as debate gets underway.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer argued, “There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath of Constitution – to the Constitution.”

“There is no doubt in my mind that the president of the United States broke his oath and incited this insurrection,” he added.

Ohio Representative Jim Jordan, a steadfast supporter of Trump, argued that Democrats’ accusations are unfair and moving to impeach Trump is “frightening for the country.”

“Democrats can raise bail for rioters and looters this summer, but somehow when Republicans condemn all the violence, the violence this summer, the violence last week, somehow we’re wrong,” Jordan said, citing the Black Lives Matters protests and looting that took place in some cities in the wake of those protests.

“I do not know where all this goes, and this is frightening for the country. We should defeat this rule and defeat the impeachment resolution when it comes up,” Jordan added.

House presiding officer: "All members are reminded to wear face coverings while on the floor."

Apparently, via @MEPFuller, this was directed at Rep. Jim Jordan.

Reminder: C-SPAN does not control cameras in the House chamber. pic.twitter.com/rHVUdYusaK

— Jeremy Art (@cspanJeremy) January 13, 2021

8 hours ago (15:20 GMT)

Some Republican legislators argue impeachment will further divide

While several House Republicans have indicated they support impeaching Trump, others have argued that doing so would further divide the country during the already fraught period.

“I can think of no action the House can take that is more likely to further divide the American people than the action we are contemplating today,” Republican Congressman Tom Cole said during debate on rules proceeding an expected debate on the impeachment article itself.

WATCH LIVE: US House of Representatives meet to consider an article of impeachment against President Donald Trump.

Read more: https://t.co/RPDFsLf6w5 https://t.co/prw4PYIejI

— Al Jazeera News (@AJENews) January 13, 2021

8 hours ago (15:15 GMT)

Debate on ‘rules’ begins ahead of impeachment vote

Debate proceeding a procedural vote, which will kick off debate on the impeachment article itself.

Legislators were expected to debate for one hour.

Opening the proceedings, Democratic Representative Jim McGovern, the chairman of the House Rules Committee, said: “We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the president of the United States.”

McGovern recounted as Congress met to certify the election results at “a rally a mile and-a-half down Pennsylvania Avenue, Donald Trump was stoking the anger of a violent mob.”

“He said Vice President Pence has to come through and told the mob to walk down to the Capitol,” he said.

“We can’t have unity without truth and without accountability,” he said.

8 hours ago (14:40 GMT)

John Kelly says Trump suffering from a ‘manhood’ issue

Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly has said the president cannot admit to making a mistake because “his manhood is at issue here”.

“I don’t understand it, although I had to deal with it every day,” said Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, during an event in Des Moines on Tuesday, the Des Moines Register reported.

Trump made his first public appearance on Tuesday, but refused to take responsibility for allegedly egging on rioters before Capitol violence.

“People thought that what I said was totally appropriate,” Trump said.

8 hours ago (14:35 GMT)

Congresswoman accuses colleagues of giving ‘reconnaissance’ tours before Capitol breach

Representative Mikie Sherrill has said she saw members of Congress leading “groups” through the Capitol on January 5, a day before rioters breached the complex, calling it “reconnaissance for the next day”, New Jersey newspaper the Bergen Record reported.

Sherill made the statement during a Tuesday night Facebook live event, adding, “I’m going to see they are held accountable, and if necessary, ensure that they don’t serve in Congress.”

Sherill did not specify if the groups in question were Trump supporters who had come to the Capitol as Congress met to certify the vote.

Pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol Building on January 6

9 hours ago (14:20 GMT)

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: ‘I thought was going to die’

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive Democrat, has recounted when rioters breached the US Capitol last week, saying “I thought I was going to die.”

Cortez, in a video posted on her Instagram, said: “I did not know if I was going to make it to the end of that day alive … “Not just in a general sense, but in a very, very specific sense.”

Cortez said she could not further explain her statement, citing “security concerns”, but said firmly “I thought I was going to die”.

9 hours ago (14:05 GMT)

US House opens Trump impeachment session

The Democrat-controlled US House of Representatives on Wednesday opened debate on an historic second impeachment of President Donald Trump over his supporters’ attack of the Capitol that left five dead.

Lawmakers in the lower chamber are expected to vote for impeachment around 3pm (20:00 GMT) – marking the formal opening of proceedings against Trump.

The president is expected to be impeached with bipartisan support.

Alia Chughtai/Al Jazeera

#world Read full article: https://expatimes.com/?p=16740&feed_id=28299 #news #unitedstates #usampcanada #uselections2020

[rdcharny]

Another article on The Honorable Amy Barret

From Reuters on October 12, 2020

U.S. Supreme Court nominee Barrett has proven steadfastly conservative By 

Andrew Chung & Lawrence Hurley

6 MIN READ

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trump’s U.S. Supreme Court nominee, has staked out conservative positions on key hot-button issues including abortion and gun rights as a federal appellate judge and legal scholar.

Abortion rights groups have voiced concern that Barrett, picked by Trump on Sept. 26 to replace the late liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, would vote to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide if confirmed by the Senate.

While a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, a Catholic institution in Indiana, Barrett in 2006 signed on to an advertisement in an Indiana newspaper calling for Roe v. Wade to be overturned.

“It’s time to put an end to the barbaric legacy of Roe v. Wade and restore law that protects the lives of unborn children,” the advertisement, purchased by an anti-abortion organization called St. Joseph County Right to Life, stated.

Barrett, whose Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing is scheduled to run from Monday through Thursday, is a devout Roman Catholic and a favorite of religious conservatives. Trump in 2016 promised to appoint justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade.

Barrett, 48, was appointed by Trump to the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2017. She has proven reliably conservative in that post, voting in favor of one of Trump’s hardline immigration policies and showing support for expansive gun rights. She also authored a ruling making it easier for college students accused of campus sexual assaults to sue their institutions.

She has not yet ruled directly on abortion. But Barrett twice signaled opposition to rulings that struck down Republican-backed Indiana abortion-related restrictions - one in 2018 requiring fetal remains to be buried or cremated after an abortion, the other in 2019 involving parental notification for minors seeking an abortion - voting to have those decisions reconsidered.

In 2019, Barrett joined a ruling that upheld a Chicago measure that places limits on anti-abortion activists gathered outside abortion clinics. The ruling, written by Judge Diane Sykes, said the court had to apply Supreme Court precedent.

In a 1998 law journal article, she and another author said that Catholic judges who are faithful to their church’s teachings are morally precluded from enforcing the death penalty and should recuse themselves in certain cases. Barrett also has spoken publicly about her conviction that life begins at conception, according to a 2013 article in Notre Dame Magazine.

Barrett faced queries during her 2017 Senate confirmation hearing on her current judgeship over whether her Catholic faith would sway her decisions on the bench, a line of questioning that her defenders said revealed religious bigotry by Democrats.

Senator Dianne Feinstein told Barrett at the time: “The dogma lives loudly within you.” Barrett said her religious faith would not affect her judicial decisions.

GUN RIGHTS

Barrett indicated support for gun rights in a 2019 dissent when she objected to the court ruling that a nonviolent felon could be permanently prohibited from possessing a firearm, writing: “Founding-era legislatures did not strip felons of the right to bear arms simply because of their status as felons.”

She authored a ruling that revived a lawsuit by a male student who had been suspended from Purdue University in Indiana after being accused of sexual assault. He accused the school of discriminating against him on the basis of his gender. It was plausible, Barrett wrote, that Purdue officials chose to believe the female accuser “because she is a woman” and to disbelieve the male student accused “because he is a man.”

Barrett two decades ago served as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a stalwart conservative who died in 2016, and said “the lessons I learned still resonate.”

“His judicial philosophy is mine too: A judge must apply the law as written. Judges are not policymakers, and they must be resolute in setting aside any policy views they might hold,” Barrett said at the White House ceremony where Trump announced her nomination.

Barrett is married to Jesse Barrett, a lawyer in private practice and a former federal prosecutor in Indiana. They have seven children, two of whom were adopted from Haiti. Barrett and her family have been members of a Christian religious group called People of Praise, according to other members.

Craig Lent, the group’s overall coordinator, said in 2018 that the organization, whose membership is mostly Catholic, centers on close Christian bonds and looking out for one another. The group’s members also share a preference for charismatic worship, which can involve speaking in tongues.

Certain leadership positions are reserved for men. And while married men receive spiritual and other advice from other male group members, married women depend on their husbands for the same advice, Lent said.

“We’re not unaware that could be misunderstood. Every member is free and responsible for their own decisions. No one should be servile, no one should be domineering,” Lent said.

Some women in leadership positions used to be called handmaids, but now are referred to as “women leaders,” Lent said, to avoid the perception of servility.

Reporting by Andrew Chung and Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Téa Kvetenadze; Editing by Will Dunham

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

[ballbubble3-blog]

Expression of Freedom

By Alexandra Wagner Jones

Russell Craig stands in his Fairmount art studio, a few floors up in a brownstone church. It’s a little messy—there are buckets of paint stacked against the walls and acrylic paint tubes scattered between plastic tubs and paintbrushes on the floor—but he isn’t embarrassed by the chaos.

“This is the process,” he says.

Craig is a self-taught artist who was incarcerated for nearly 10 years on a nonviolent drug offense, for dealing cocaine.

After being released, Craig came to know another artist who had just finished time for cocaine-dealing charges, Jesse Krimes. The two met at the Restorative Justice Guild, an apprenticeship program that teaches former inmates hands-on skills like carpentry, landscaping, and mural and mosaic creation. Krimes, who holds a bachelors in Studio Art from Millersville, had just been released from prison after nearly six years.

After looking through a few large rolls of paper, Craig picks out one and spreads it flat on the floor. It’s a portrait he’s done of a smiling man in a green shirt. He has warm eyes, a tight-cropped haircut and a chin strap beard. It’s one of Craig’s art students. He and Krimes are now teachers with the Guild, helping its cohorts with art projects that support returning citizens.

By early October, Craig had painted 17 of his students’ portraits, and after having them photographed and blown up onto slabs of vinyl,  all 17 faces were then  wrapped around the base of the Municipal Services Building, just across from City Hall. They’ll remain there until December. 

A large-scale outdoor exhibit, the project is called “Portraits of Justice,” and its central location is meant to encourage all Philadelphians to discuss problems within the criminal justice system. It serves as a backdrop for participatory public art, with past performances from formerly incarcerated artists with Mural Arts Philadelphia. 

The massive portraits will eventually all but disappear. The mural was designed so that people can wipe the bricks away and write in potential fixes for the reentry system with paint markers. The wall’s erasure, Krimes says, will symbolize that the system can be dismantled. 

From what he has gathered from reactions to his previous projects, Krimes says most people have no idea that incarceration rates are so high.

“People really don’t have a good understanding of what the criminal justice system entails,” he says. “Or how unjust it actually is.”

A Country of Prisoners

In November 2017, lifelong civil rights lawyer Larry Krasner rose to give his victory speech after being elected as the city’s district attorney by an overwhelming majority.

“We believe it’s time to end mass incarceration,” he shouted into a microphone to a cheering crowd. This was the crux of the campaign, a pledge to radically reform the city’s criminal justice system.

“Mass incarceration and other civil rights issues are arguably the biggest issues of our time, and they require a mass movement to change,” Krasner says, when speaking with Grid in a recent phone interview. “We’re the most incarcerated country in the world, and that is an outrage in the country claiming to be the land of freedom.”

Holding more than 2.3 million inmates in its prisons and jails, the United States has the largest prison population in the world.  The U.S. makes up about 4.28 percent of the world population, but about 22 percent of the world prison population. 

“I think it’s outrageous and an affront to all people who care about justice and healing society,” Krasner says.

Over-incarceration is an unfortunate pattern across the country, but Philadelphia holds the dubious distinction among the United States’ largest cities of having the highest per capita incarceration rate, a distinction many hope is on its way out.

This past  February, Krasner sent a memo to his staff detailing policies designed to “end mass incarcerations and bring balance back to sentencing.” 

As Krasner describes it, working on criminal justice reform is a lot like tuning a car.

“What I mean by that is, every time you improve one part of the system, you are improving other parts of the system,” he says. In the same way a car will pollute less, be quieter, and accelerate more quickly when it’s properly tuned, when the criminal justice system is adjusted, the benefits will be many. 

“So it doesn’t take forever to get to trial. So people are not in jail when they shouldn’t be. So fines and costs are not excessive. So immigrants are not marginalized,” Krasner says. “The whole system works better.”

Using this line of thought, Krasner’s new policies instruct prosecutors to stop prosecuting marijuana possession, regardless of weight, end cash bail for low-level charges and requests judges to limit probation after incarceration to no more than 12 months maximum.

Although at least one police union responded to these reforms by labeling Krasner “anti-law enforcement,” the district attorney’s new policies are meant to address the fact that most of Philadelphia’s 5,200 inmates are in jail for nonviolent offenses.

 The city’s prisoners are typically a majority mix of accused persons held pretrial, convicts serving less than two years and parole violators.

These are the kind of offenses, Krasner says, that didn’t usually land someone behind bars 40 years ago. 

“Certain types of offenses were crimes, but they weren’t serious enough for the offender to go to jail,” Krasner says. “There were other ways to hold an offender accountable. Somehow we lost track of that, and we started locking up people for all kinds of nonviolent offenses who did not need to be there.”

According to Krasner’s calculations, each inmate costs the city between $42,000 and $60,000 a year. All together, that’s around $218 million.

Numbers on Display

When Sean Kelley took a program directing job with Eastern State Penitentiary in 1995, he knew almost nothing about the criminal justice system. 

Twenty-three years later, as he weaves in and out of cell corridors, the now director of interpretation talks in-depth about every exhibit on the old prison grounds. He can rattle off stories about inmates who lived at Eastern State in the 1800s, describing how they were kept in complete isolation in cells for 23 hours a day.

For those who think of Eastern State as an historic site, it may be surprising that Kelley’s excitement becomes most palpable when he talks about a more recent exhibit he led the curation of, “Prisons Today.” The exhibit has little to do with Eastern State’s dark past. Instead, it focuses heavily on imprisonment policies and practices that have emerged since the prison closed in 1970: the age of mass incarceration.

“We are the closest thing America has to a national prison museum,” Kelley claims proudly, pointing at the ground. “There is no other place where people are really talking about mass incarceration.”

When visitors walk into “Prisons Today,” they’re met with the booming recorded voices of public officials, from both ends of the political spectrum, promising that mass incarceration will lower violent crime rates.

“Let’s double the penalty for two-time felons and put three-time losers behind bars for life. It’s time to turn career criminals into career inmates,” a crackly voice rings out.

The problem, Kelley explains, is that the promise doesn’t ring true. Looking at data compiled by U. S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, it’s clear that violent crime rates have remained steady as the War on Crime, three strikes you’re out and minimum-sentencing policies have increased the number of prisoners by more than 700 percent since 1970.

Later, visitors are faced with a large wall of handwritten criminal confessions, some of which are from formerly incarcerated individuals while others are from visitors. Light-up buttons underneath the messages indicate which messages are which, a demonstration of how arbitrary punishment can be. 

After that, a breakdown of which states still let ex-convicts vote and which ban them for life. (In Pennsylvania you can vote after you’re released from prison, even while on parole.)

Kelley, who came to the museum as “a white kid from the suburbs,” readily admits that he was against putting this exhibit up for a long time. 

“Every time we tried to talk about what happened we couldn’t find the words—it felt awkward,” he says. They worried it would seem non-neutral, like they were driving some kind of a political agenda.

But after talking to visitors in 2012 and 2013, the museum began to shift its programming to ensure visitors left with some contemporary knowledge of what the prison system is like today.

“For our audience, it actually made more sense to start with statistics and say, ‘Just forget about individuals—just look at the pattern,’ ” Kelley says, referring to the museums “mostly white” visitors.

Since the exhibit opened in May 2016, just a handful of people have complained about its contents.

“The pattern is there are dramatically more people in prison,” he continues, “and the racial disparities are growing worse.”

Kelley thinks statistics offer a perspective that individual stories cannot. No one person’s story can describe a generational shift in values that led to mass incarceration, but the numbers can.

People to the Power

There are more than 70 million people in this country with criminal records. Courtney Bowles and her friend Mark Strandquist are two of them. 

Both white, the pair say their racial and economic privileges allow them to do things many with criminal backgrounds struggle to do, like teach at a university and own a home. 

Aware of their privilege, Bowels says, and frustrated by inequality, she and Strandquist co-direct the Reentry Think Tank, an initiative that works with citizens reentering society to shift  negative perceptions surrounding incarceration. In 2015, the Think Tank began running three-month fellowship programs with a dozen or so formerly incarcerated individuals twice a year.

Strandquist compares Reentry Think Tank to the U.S. Congress of reentry organizations. The applicants are carefully nominated and selected by reentry organizations around the city. When the chosen representatives meet, they discuss ways to tear down the barriers society puts in place for reentering citizens.

Participants create movies, poems and artwork that present their personal stories about reentry and the effects incarceration has on returning citizens, and then assemble these pieces into mobile exhibits. Although many exhibitions are pop-ups, to date, they’ve set up permanent installations at the Mayor’s Office of Reintegration Services and the Institute for Community Justice.

The mobile exhibit has also been displayed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but museums aren’t the only place the Think Tank displays its work. 

Because museums have self-selecting audiences, viewers often already agree that mass incarceration needs to be dismantled. That’s why a mobile exhibition is appealing to him. It can engage a wide variety of audiences by traveling between government buildings, city streets, churches, legal clinics and galleries. Even political meetings. In October, the Think Tank fellows brought an exhibition to a “Ban the Box” City Council hearing to discuss how universities prevent former inmates from reintegrating into society by asking about criminal record history.

“It allows us to bring art into spaces that have historically and systematically kept these voices, experiences and perspectives excluded from the conversation,” he explains. “It’s really important that we’re making sure that we’re using this project as a Trojan horse or as a bridge to connect the voices, dreams and demands of those in our project with those in power.”

For both Strandquist and Bowles, the hope is that when people see the mobile exhibits, it becomes impossible not to see returning citizens as human beings with complex histories. It’s the kind of empathy, he says, that invites viewers to not only to imagine a more just world, but to try to build it.

Source: http://www.gridphilly.com/grid-magazine/2018/11/14/expression-of-freedom

[fullspectrum-cbd-oil]

Trump and 2020 Democrats Brand Themselves Criminal Justice Reformers

Donald Trump and the Democrats hoping to unseat him as president all say they want to reform the criminal justice system in the United States, which held 2.3 million people behind bars in 2019

Here is a look at the criminal justice platforms for leading Democrats running for the presidential nomination as well as Trump’s record during his first term in office.

DONALD TRUMP

The Republican president signed into law the First Step Act, which reduced mandatory minimum sentences, required officials to try to place inmates in prisons near family, expanded drug treatment programs for prisoners and parolees, and allowed some federal prisoners to finish their sentences early with good behavior.

The measure expanded a 2010 law that reduced higher penalties for possession of crack cocaine, a drug used more by the poor and minorities, than for powder cocaine, used more by the wealthy.

Still, Democrats accuse the Trump administration of lax oversight over local police departments accused of civil rights violations and criticize Trump’s endorsement of the death penalty and other policies that disproportionately affect minorities.

Trump has also sought to re-start executions of federal death row inmates, but the request was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in December.

JOE BIDEN

Biden, who served as vice president under former U.S. President Barack Obama, proposed eliminating prison sentences for drug use, decriminalizing marijuana and eliminating sentencing disparities for offenses involving crack and powder cocaine.

He also would eliminate the death penalty. He promises to end mandatory sentencing that takes discretion away from judges, eliminate private prisons and end the federal system of cash bail, under which defendants who cannot afford to pay must await trial in jail.

Biden also has pledged to reform the juvenile justice system, including keeping youths from being incarcerated with adults. He plans efforts to eliminate barriers for felons re-entering society from prison, including restrictions on allowing them to receive food stamps, educational Pell grants and housing support.

BERNIE SANDERS

Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, wants to ban for-profit prisons, abolish the death penalty and tighten rules and penalties for police misconduct.

His plan would end 1990s-era “three strikes and you’re out” laws, which mandated life sentences for people convicted of more than two felonies, even if the third crime is a minor offense.

Sanders says he will change the way police officers are trained and deployed, bringing in social workers or conflict negotiators to defuse dangerous situations and mandating criminal charges against officers who engage in misconduct that violates someone’s civil rights.

ELIZABETH WARREN

Warren, a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, says the United States has “criminalized too many things.” She calls for increasing social services that help young people stay out of prison, decriminalizing truancy and relying on counselors and teachers rather than police officers in schools.

Warren has vowed to push to repeal the 1994 crime bill, which imposed harsh sentences on major and minor crimes alike and removed much of the discretion judges have in deciding who should be incarcerated and for how long. She would also legalize marijuana at the federal level and erase past convictions for use of the drug.

PETE BUTTIGIEG

Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, focuses his criminal justice plan on the system’s disproportionate impact on African Americans.

His proposal would end prison sentences for drug possession and expand diversion programs aimed at keeping people with mental health and addiction problems out of the criminal justice system.

Buttigieg has pledged to improve rehabilitation services for inmates re-entering society. He also opposes imprisoning people or suspending their drivers’ licenses for failing to pay fines and court costs. He has promised $100 million to states that replace youth prisons with support services, and has proposed additional investment in black communities disproportionately hit by imprisonment.

AMY KLOBUCHAR

Klobuchar, a former prosecutor and a U.S. senator from Minnesota, built her criminal justice proposals around a call for providing mental health rather than law enforcement interventions when appropriate, and creating a clemency board to review long sentences and consider releasing many offenders.

She was a co-sponsor of the First Step Act, which eased harsh sentences for many nonviolent crimes. As president, Klobuchar would also further reform the system of requiring mandatory minimum sentences for many crimes, including first-time drug offenses.

MICHAEL BLOOMBERG

Bloomberg, a former mayor of New York City, has been criticized by supporters of criminal justice reform for his onetime embrace of a policy known as stop-and-frisk, which allowed police to detain and search people on the street and disproportionately affected communities of color. Bloomberg in November apologized for the program and called it a mistake, although it was for years an accepted practice during his administration.

In December, Bloomberg decried mass incarceration and vowed to seek alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent defendants awaiting trial and to cut in half the number of juveniles behind bars.

ANDREW YANG

Yang, a businessman, would end the use of for-profit prisons. He would review sentencing laws to bring prison terms in line with what data shows are effective. He also has vowed to investigate racial disparities in the criminal justice system and to better fund programs aimed at reducing recidivism and aiding re-entry to society for people who have completed their terms.

TOM STEYER

Steyer, a billionaire former hedge fund manager and political activist, reflects the views of most progressive Democrats on criminal justice. He decries the prison system as racist and promises to work to eliminate private prisons, end cash bail and reduce the prison population.

He would create incentives for states to repeal “stand your ground” laws, which allow people to use deadly force for self-defense, even when retreating from the situation would also keep them safe.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt and Sharon Bernstein; Editing by James Oliphant and Daniel Wallis)

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