#judicial conduct

[studylaws]

Article 121 of the Indian Constitution: Restrictions on Discussion in Parliament

The Indian Constitution is a comprehensive document that lays down the fundamental principles and framework for governance in the country. Among its many provisions, Article 121 addresses the restrictions on the discussion of certain matters in the Parliament. This article focuses on a specific aspect of Article 121, which pertains to the discussion regarding the conduct of judges in the…

[boasamishipper]

I was rereading Judicial Impropriety tonight (seriously so very hyped for Harry's POV!!) and I decided to go through your dan x harry tag and I saw that you mentioned a "they both raise abby" AU in one of the posts about slow burn but not really - is this another one of your WIPs because it sounds amazing! :D

hi nonny! it may please you to know that i've just posted the first chapter of Code of Conduct, aka harry's pov of how he and dan get together in Judicial Impropriety. hope you enjoy! 😄

to answer your question, the 'dan and harry raise abby' idea is an au that my dear friend @bornforastorm and i plotted together over discord one afternoon. will i ever write it? never say never. for now though it lives in my head rent free. here's the gist:

in the early 2000s, harry discovers that he actually Does Not Like living upstate and wants to move back to the city. gina wants to stay in skaneateles. they end up divorcing and harry gets full custody of abby - yay! except real estate in the city is So Expensive. luckily for harry, dan (who was widowed around a year before harry got divorced) has a spare bedroom and is more than willing to indefinitely put up his best friend / unrequited crush and his best friend / unrequited crush's precocious tween daughter.

harry is so busy trying to find a job (and so torn up about his marriage ending) that dan ends up taking abby out a lot. except he has no idea what to do with kids so they end up seeing r-rated horror movies together and throwing rocks at pigeons in the park and scamming people at fancy restaurants and toy stores by telling them that abby has six months to live.

abby may be perky and sweet but (like harry) she has no qualms about roasting dan like a melange of seasonal vegetables

abby: look at my dad's high-waisted roommate, he's got feminine hips! dan: no!! that's the thing i'm sensitive about!!

alternatively: dan: my hips are VERY manly excuse you!! tell her harry harry, so horny he's going to die: they're fine

turns out!! harry might have a thing for dan. a small, tiny, miniscule thing that he's pretty sure started the minute they shook hands in his chambers. this small tiny miniscule thing is not helped by the fact that harry now has to spend 24 hours a day in a two bedroom apartment with his unrequited crush of over a decade.

speaking of the two bedroom apartment thing. so abby takes the spare bedroom. obviously. that makes sense. harry crashes on the foldout sofa for about a week. then he learns one night that dan still has nightmares about the plane crash, so out of the goodness of his heart, he offers to stay with dan in dan's room until he falls asleep. and then they both fall asleep. and then the next night they fall asleep in the same bed. and the next night. and the next night. and every single night for the next year they platonically share a bed.

at the one year mark sleeping together becomes sleeping together. neither of them have gone out with or slept with anyone else in all that time. neither of them admit that they are in love with each other. after all having sex with each other is still totally platonic since they don't kiss.

they go to each other's work events and abby's parent teacher conferences as each other's completely platonic date.

harry: this is my best friend and platonic co-parent slash roommate dan: also bedmate harry: right that too abby: you sound like a yuppie harry: You Take That Back

abby: are you and dan dating harry: what!!!!!!!! no!!!!!!!!!!!!! why would you think that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! abby: you share a bed harry: to save space so you can have your own room!!!!! also because he has nightmares from almost dying and i have nightmares about him dying so it makes sense we sleep together!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! abby: wow you need help

abby: i can snort chocolate milk out of my nose, want to see dan: that's disgusting and also impossible abby: no it's not. i bet you could do it. here, drink some dan: [drinks] abby: are you in love with my dad dan: [snorts chocolate milk out of his nose] abby: [covered in milk and snot] i knew it 😈😈😈

the second she figures out they're both in love with each other abby tries to matchmake dan and harry. the subtle approach does not work since they're both idiots, so she stages a hunger strike until dan and harry kiss.

dan: [kisses harry on the cheek] abby: pathetic

this all culminates with abby telling dan that she and harry found a new place to live (they didn't) and dan runs to harry's office at columbia like Do Not Move Out, Live With Me Forever, I Love You (but if you don't feel the same way ignore that last part)

harry, extremely confused: i love you too????????? student taking a makeup exam in harry's office: i'm just gonna head out

harry and dan, who have been having sex for over a year but have yet to actually kiss, spend the next four hours making out on harry's desk

harry: i feel like i'm forgetting something dan: it's probably not important if you can't remember harry: you're right abby: [standing in the pouring rain at soccer practice] 😈 i'm gonna get so much mileage out of this 😈

things about abby stone-fielding:

she is the queen of Wait Til My Fathers Hear About This

she threatens people with I'll See You In Court every time something does not go her way

she takes after her fathers in that she is a very intense dork and a fiscal conservative and flirts like a fiend but is terrible at it

she pulls the 'if you do this for me you'll be my favorite father' trick on harry and dan constantly and they fall for it every time

she also calls dan and harry both 'dad' and expects everyone (including dan and harry) to figure out who she's talking about

she tells everyone she has a secret third dad named reinhold and dan threatens to emancipate her when he finds out harry, sliding her twenty dollars: keep it up

abby's teacher: so abby told the class her goal is to go to law school so she can sue the government and take over the country dan: she gets her ambition from me 🥰 abby's teacher: she then proceeded to put an apple in her mouth and played the flute with her nose harry: [crying] that's my girl

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THE HUFFINGTON POST

[anistarrose]

Please don't tune out when you get to the non-partisan section of your ballot this November. First off, where state Supreme Court justices are elected, Republicans are trying their darndest to elect candidates who will destroy reproductive freedom, gut voting rights, and do everything in their power to give "contested" elections to Republicans. Contrast Wisconsin electing a justice in 2023 who helped rule two partisan gerrymanders unconstitutional, versus North Carolina electing a conservative majority in 2022, who upheld a racist voter ID law and a partisan gerrymander that liberal justices had previously struck down both of.

Second, local judicial offices will make infinitely more of an impact on your community than a divided state or federal legislature will. District and circuit courts, especially, are where criminalization of homelessness and poverty play out, and where electing a progressive judge with a commitment to criminal justice reform can make an immediate difference in people's lives.

It's a premier example of buying people time, and doing profound-short-term good, while we work to eventually change the system. You might not think there will be any such progressive justices running in your district, but you won't know unless you do your research. (More on "research" in a moment.)

The candidates you elect to your non-partisan city council will determine whether those laws criminalizing homelessness get passed, how many blank checks the police get to surveil and oppress, and whether lifesaving harm reduction programs, like needle exchanges and even fentanyl test strips, are legal in your municipality. Your non-partisan school board might need your vote to fend off Moms for Liberty candidates and their ilk, who want to ban every book with a queer person or acknowledgement of racism in it.

Of course, this begs the question — if these candidates are non-partisan, and often hyper-local, then how do I research them? There's so much less information and press about them, so how do I make an informed decision?

I'm not an expert, myself. But I do think/hope I have enough tips to consist of a useful conclusion to this post:

Plan ahead. If you vote in person, figure out what's on your ballot before you show up and get jumpscared by names you don't know. Find out what's on your ballot beforehand, and bring notes with you when you vote. Your city website should have a sample ballot, and if they drop the ball, go to Ballotpedia.

Ballotpedia in general, speaking of which. Candidates often answer Ballotpedia's interviews, and if you're lucky, you'll also get all the dirt on who's donating to their campaign.

Check endorsements. Usually candidates are very vocal about these on their websites. If local/state progressive leaders and a couple unions (not counting police unions lol) are endorsing a candidate, then that's not the end of my personal research process per se, but it usually speeds things up.

Check the back of the ballot. That's where non-partisan races usually bleed over to. This is the other reason why notes are helpful, because they can confirm you're not missing anything.

I've seen some misconceptions in the reblogs, so an addendum to my point about bringing notes on the candidates: I strongly suggest making those notes a physical list that you bring polling place with you. Many states do allow phones at the polling place, but several states explicitly don't — Nevada, Maryland, and Texas all ban phones, and that may not be an exhaustive list. There may also be states that allow individual city clerks to set policies.

You should also pause and think before you take a photo of your ballot, because even some states that don't ban phones still ban ballot photographs. But whether it's a photo, or just having your phone in general — in an environment as high-risk for voter suppression as the current one, you don't want even a little bit of ambiguity about your conduct. Physical notes are your friends.

[lawtoppers]

Punjab and Haryana High Court Quashes FIR Against YouTuber Elvish Yadav

[legalattorneyblog]

NBA President Condemns Conflicting Court Orders on Emir of Kano Stool, Calls for Scrutiny of Legal Conduct

Distinguished Colleagues, The President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Mr. Yakubu Chonoko Maikyau, OON, SAN, has stated that the ” conducts of counsel and the courts in the handling of the proceedings that culminated in the orders issued by the Federal High Court, the Kano State High Court, and again the Federal High Court, in the circus, have brought utter disgrace and shame to the…

[funamblrist]

'making russian a state language' all 15 languages of the union republics were 'state languages.' russian was taught in schools alongside respective native tongues as it wouldn't make much logistical sense to have a union of near 300 million people, comprising dozens of ethno-linguistic groups, where no one understands each other. if russian wasn't the most widely-spoken language something else would have been picked for convenience.

i'm always curious what exactly people suppose a more 'just' alternative: that every soviet citizen know at minimum 15 different languages? that the government pick latvian or kirghiz as the universal language? at the end of the day a lot of people never even learned russian, because they didn't need it.

germany is gonna defend israel in the icj what do you think about that

I wish the Red Army had razed the entirety of Germany to the ground

[timesofocean]

Donald Trump Arraignment Judge Under Scrutiny

New Post has been published on https://www.timesofocean.com/donald-trump-arraignment-judge-under-scrutiny/

Donald Trump Arraignment Judge Under Scrutiny

New York (The Times Groupe) – Former U.S. Donald Trump’s hush money case in New York is being scrutinized by Judge Juan Merchan over a $35 payment he made to Biden’s administration. BIDEN

The information had raised questions about Merchan’s impartiality as he has come under attack by the former president as a “Trump-hating judge.”

According to reports, the New York Judge donated $15 to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign as part of his donations to Democrats in 2020.

Elie Honig, a CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor, explained the significance of the revelation.

“While the amounts here are minimal, it’s surprising that a sitting judge would make political donations of any size to a partisan candidate or cause,” Honig said.

In July 2020, Merchan donated three times through ActBlue, an internet fundraising tool for Democrat candidates and causes.

The judge had been made $15 to the Biden campaign and two other $10 donations, one to the Progressive Turnout Project, a group that encourages voter turnout, and the other to Stop Republicans, a group that is affiliated with the Progressive Turnout Project.

According to Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at New York University, New York has adopted language from the American Bar Association Model Code of Judicial Conduct that forbids judges from “soliciting funds for, paying an assessment to, or making a contribution to a political organization or candidate.”

“The contribution to Biden and possibly the one to ‘Stop Republicans’ would be forbidden unless there is some other explanation that would allow them,” Gillers said.

According to the professor, given the minimal sums, the donations “would be viewed as trivial.” He claimed that the state’s Commission on Judicial Conduct would remind the judge of the guidelines in the event of a complaint.

As a result, allies of the former president are urging the judge to recuse himself from the case as a result of the contributions.

[boasamishipper]

🌹🌹🌹 (I'm tryna get a paragraph)

Dan looks flabbergasted. It’s not a word Harry has ever had cause to use, mostly because he’s never seen anyone look it. He’s seen astounded, stunned, shocked, even incredulous—all expressions directed at him on a regular basis—but never flabbergasted. Not until now. “You like me?”

[evilwickedme]

It's so clear to me that so many so called "anti Zionists" - especially the non Palestinian goyim - have no idea how the Israeli election system works, and how bibi remains in power, and why we had five elections in like, three years, despite elections supposedly being every four years - because he couldn't keep a government stable enough to stay in power. Bibi netanyahu is MASSIVELY unpopular, and his approval rate has tanked even more since the war started, even among likud voters, the people who vote for HIS party (although their approval rates ranked less than the rest of the population). He has an extreme right wing government because if he didn't cooperate with right wing extremists and haredim he straight up wouldn't have the majority he needs to be our prime minister in the first place. He's been on trial for corruption for years at this point, and tried to completely restructure the judicial system just to avoid prison - leading to nearly a full year of protests until Oct 7. Luckily it didn't end up passing.

If elections were held at any point in the last five months since this war started, not only would he not be PM, we'd straight up have a center-left government. My recent transformation into a Yair Golan stan account is a joke but also 100% real - according to polls from the last three months or so, if he does what he's campaigning to do, leading a combined avoda and meretz party, he'd get enough votes to have an actual influential left wing party in the government for the first time in decades. An unbelievable amount of Israelis are calling for bibi to resign, many of them not calling for it to happen after the war ends, but right now.

I am sourcing this information from polls conducted by channels 11 (kan), 12, and 13, as well as by the Israeli democracy foundation, all but one of our important news channels - channel 14, the last channel, is our equivalent of fox news, and despite their numbers often being extremely different due to what is in my opinion biased reporting and flawed methodology, even they at times have had to admit that gantz is currently leading in the polls.

(Disclaimer that I work for a company that provides subtitles for channel 13, but i do not directly work for channel 13. Channel 13 leans mostly center left, and employs several (self identified) Arab Israelis in front of the camera, including Lucy Aharish, who makes considerable effort to bring Palestinian and Bedouin perspectives to her show. It also employs at least one massive racist though.)

I write this post because I keep seeing an unsourced claim by goyim that there's a poll showing a high rate of approval - 88%! - of the destruction and/or deaths Israel and the IDF are causing in Gaza. I went down a rabbit hole and simply couldn't find a poll asking about approval of deaths or destruction, although maybe I was looking up the wrong keywords? As a result I have just... So many questions. Because with the information I have from trustworthy local news sources, from the news channels I mentioned above and papers such as yediot aharonot/ynet and Haaretz, it doesn't fit with current public opinion, including many recent protests for more efforts towards a ceasefire. So my questions are thus -

Who conducted this poll? Was it a think tank, a government agency, a paper, a news channel? If so, which one? Are they left leaning, right leaning? Was it conducted by an Israeli or foreign institution?

Who did they ask? Was it a sample of likud voters; all Israeli adults; did they include only Jewish Israelis or also Arab citizens (approx. 1.5 million out of our 8 million population), Bedouins, and other minorities?

When was the poll conducted? Was it in October, immediately after the Oct 7 massacre, before the death toll in Gaza grew? Was it conducted more recently?

What, exactly, did they ask? Did they ask about destruction in general, or about the death toll in particular? Did they ask about the attempts to rescue hostages with military means, or all military actions? Did they ask about the number of Hamas operatives dead, about their estimated ratio of Hamas to civilians, about the total deaths?

What was the size of the pool surveyed? Was it conducted on a few dozen, a few hundred, or a few thousand people?

Because without this information, that one, sole statistic is essentially useless. As Mark Twain said, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Always look at the source and ask: who asked the questions, who got asked, and what the questions were.

More specific statistics and sources under the cut.

I did find one survey by the Israel democracy foundation that asked if the IDF should take the Gazan suffering into account - an entirely different question, although it did still have a horrific 89% Jewish Israelis and 14% Arab Israelis and Palestinian citizens who said they shouldn't. That said, the pool they were drawing from was not very large - 500 of the interviews were conducted in Hebrew, 100 were conducted in Arabic. Also, of the people who supposedly said that they shouldn't, a little more than half of both populations said they should "somewhat" take it into account - that is, they didn't say they shouldn't take it into account at all, just not make it their first priority. This survey was conducted mid December.

In another survey by the same source with a slight larger sample size (a little over 600 Jewish Israelis and a little over 150 Arab Israelis), an insanely low 15% still wanted Bibi to be the PM, with the only candidate who received more than 6.5% being the center candidate Benny Gantz, who historically has tried to cooperate with center and left parties, with a whopping 23% of the votes. The survey included 10 candidates, as well as five other non candidate options. 4% voted "just not Bibi", and an actually insane 30.5% voted they were undecided. Only a quarter of those surveyed believed Bibi would manage to maintain a coalition after the war, a number that includes more extreme right wing voters, and only the ultra Orthodox haredi population had a majority of people (60%) who believed he can. This survey was conducted in January.

The channel 13 news survey from early March - barely over a week ago! - covered more specifically which parties would manage to get into the government and how many seats they would get, as under a certain amount of votes you simply do not get seats. Not all seats get into a coalition. According to their poll, the amount of seats the likud would get is halved, from 32 to 17, while gantz's the state camp would grow from 12 to 39. While currently meretz gets 4 seats and haavodah do not get enough votes to get a seat at the table so to speak, a combined haavodah and meretz under Yair Golan gets 9 mandates. In total, the right wing only get 47 mandates, well short of the amount of mandates necessary to create a government.

Channel 12's corresponding poll from January shows 35 mandates for gantz, and bibi had 18 mandates. Channel 11, in the same month, gave gantz 33 mandates and bibi 20.

I also sources an English Jerusalem post article which reports on channel 14's polls; jpost is a right wing biased paper, and yet even they report 36 mandates for gantz and 18 for bibi as of February.

Sources

The Israel democracy institute: 1 (English), 2 (Hebrew), 3 (Hebrew)

Haaretz: 1 (English) (paywalled)

Channel 13: 1 (Hebrew)

Ma'ariv: 1 (Hebrew) (reporting on channel 12)

Podcast which summarizes the above article: 1 (English) (includes transcript)

Kan 11: 1 (Hebrew)

Jpost: 1 (Hebrew)

[my-castles-crumbling]

hey I love your work!! you seem like such a gorgeous, thoughtful person.

I had a question, and you seem trustworthy—Cas have you seen the new ao3 privacy policy? the one with another checkbox? what’s that about? I’m a little scared especially with recent events and the actual documentation seems a little vague. what do you think? I live in the states

I have, and I come armed with research!

For those of you who don't know, the new policy states:

By checking this box, you consent to the processing of your personal data in the United States and other jurisdictions in connection with our provision of AO3 and its related services to you. You acknowledge that the data privacy laws of such jurisdictions may differ from those provided in your jurisdiction. For more information about how your personal data will be processed, please refer to our Privacy Policy.

To translate, this means you are consenting to your personal information (IE: e-mail address and IP address) being shared according to US privacy laws, not the laws of whatever country you live in or happen to currently be reading from. This is because AO3 is US-based.

This sounds scary.

However, if you delve deeper into AO3 privacy policies, it says:

We may share Personal Information if we:

are legally compelled to do so;

have a good-faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with a current judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on the OTW; or

are cooperating with law enforcement authorities.

We will cooperate with all investigations conducted by law enforcement authorities within the United States when legally required to do so. Cooperation with law enforcement authorities from other countries and cooperation when it is not legally required are at our sole discretion. Our discretion looks favorably on freedom and justice, and unfavorably on oppression and violence.

Basically this means they'll share your info if they're told to by law enforcement, which has ALWAYS been a law. This isn't a change. I think they just added this to say "Hey, remember if you live outside the US, just know that we as a website have to comply with US-based laws because we live here, and things suck here right now!"

The last part of their statement is also really telling. The creators of ao3 believe in free expression and are not trying to get you in trouble or censor your work. You're not going to get in trouble for posting/reading gay fanfics. It's not illegal to do so. (If that changes, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it).

I think the most important thing now is to advocate for the necessity of websites like ao3, because some people don't like websites like that. I think this shows that there will be probably more opponents to websites like this in the future. But I don't think the FBI is going to come and knock on the doors of everyone who reads bedtime stories on ao3.

Honestly, Ao3 is more transparent about this info than most people. all websites can share any personal info you put in if legally compelled to do so.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Some Law-Related Vocabulary

for your poem/story (pt. 1/4)

Acquiescence - acceptance, compliance, or submitting tacitly or passively

Act of God - an extraordinary natural event (as a flood or earthquake) that cannot be reasonably foreseen or prevented

Amicus curiae - friend of the court

Bad faith - intentional deception, dishonesty, or failure to meet an obligation or duty

Bill of pains and penalties - a legislative act formerly permitted that imposed a punishment less severe than death without benefit of a judicial trial

Blackacre - a fictitious piece of real property

Causa mortis - made or done in contemplation of one's impending death

Cool state of blood - an emotional condition in which a person's anger or passion is not great enough to overcome his or her faculties or ability to reason—often used in statutory definitions of murder

Depraved-heart murder - a murder that is the result of an act which is dangerous to others and shows that the perpetrator has a depraved mind and no regard for human life

Dereliction - an intentional abandonment

Executrix - a woman who is an executor

Expunge - to cancel out or destroy completely

Extraordinary remedy - a procedure for obtaining judicial relief allowed when no other method is available, appropriate, or useful

Ferae naturae - wild by nature; not usually tamed

Fighting words - words which by their very utterance are likely to inflict harm on or provoke a breach of the peace by the average person to whom they are directed

Fifth degree - the grade sometimes given to the least serious form of a crime

Fruit of the poisonous tree - evidence that is inadmissible under an evidentiary exclusionary rule because it was derived from or gathered during an illegal action

Gift causa mortis - a gift of especially personal property made in contemplation of impending death that is delivered with the intent that the gift take effect only in the event of the donor's death and that it be revoked in the event of survival

Hot blood - heat of passion; an agitated state of mind (as anger or terror) prompted by provocation sufficient to overcome the ability of a reasonable person to reflect on and control his or her actions

Inveigle - to lure by false representations or other deceit

Lucri causa - intent to obtain a gain

Mystic will - in the civil law of Louisiana; a will signed, sealed, witnessed, and notarized according to statutory procedure; called also mystic testament, secret testament

Naked promise - gratuitous promise

Obligor - one who is bound by an obligation to another

Penumbra - an area within which distinction or resolution is difficult or uncertain

Quaere - question—usually used to introduce a question

Recusant - refusing to submit to authority

Solatium - compensation for grief or wounded feelings (as from the wrongful death of a relative)

Third degree - the grade given to the third most serious forms of crimes

Uberrimae fidei - of the utmost or perfect good faith

Vitiate - to make ineffective

Word of art - a word having a particular meaning in a field; also called "term of art"

X - a mark used in place of a signature when the maker is incapable of signing his or her name (as because of illiteracy or a physical ailment)

Year-and-a-day rule - a common-law rule that relieves a defendant of responsibility for homicide if the victim lives for more than one year and one day after being injured (Note: This rule dates from at least 1278, and is frequently criticized as anachronistic since modern medicine makes pinpointing cause of death easier than it was formerly. However, the rule still exists or is reflected in the law of some jurisdictions.)

Zone of danger - the area within which one is in actual physical peril from the negligent conduct of another person

If any of these words make their way into your next poem/story, please tag me, or leave a link in the replies. I would love to read them!

More: Law-Related Words ⚜ Word Lists

[reasonsforhope]

"“Always ask yourself: Why is this lying bastard lying to me?” Perhaps these blunt words of advice for journalists interviewing politicians, attributed to the late foreign correspondent Louis Heren, have endured because they are seen as self-evidently true. That politicians lie is viewed as established fact. 

Public confidence in lawmakers plunged to a record low last year in the wake of Partygate and other scandals: only 9% of British adults polled by Ipsos said that they trust politicians to tell the truth. Without trust, says Jennifer Nadel of the thinktank Compassion in Politics, faith in democracy is undermined. “If we can’t trust what politicians are saying, how can we decide who to vote for? We need to be able to rely on our politicians to tell the truth,” she explains. 

Compassion in Politics has long been campaigning to introduce criminal penalties for political lying, with a petition launched in 2019 attracting more than 200,000 signatures. In a surprise move two days before the UK’s general election, the Welsh government committed to passing legislation that would make lying illegal for Senedd members and candidates, having previously opposed the measure. Under the plans, those found guilty of deliberate deception by an independent judicial process would be disqualified from office. 

“We’re excited and optimistic,” Nadel says. “It’s unprecedented that the government has agreed to take this measure forward.” Although some countries have limited penalties for politicians who lie during election campaigning or when giving evidence to committees, Wales is the first in the world to propose legislation that would apply more broadly to lawmakers and candidates. 

Compassion in Politics’ next challenge is to persuade Westminster to follow suit by banning MPs and parliamentary candidates from lying.  

The campaign sprung from concern at the rapid normalisation of lies in politics. “We are slipping at an alarming speed into a post-truth era,” says Nadel. “We only have to look at what is happening in the United States.”

Fact-checkers at the Washington Post found that Donald Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims during his presidency, averaging about 21 a day. “America is a warning of what can happen if this problem is allowed to go unchecked,” Nadel believes. “[Our proposals] are designed to stop [the UK] from getting to that stage.” 

Polling shows wide public approval for the measure, with 72% backing criminal penalties for politicians found guilty of deliberate lying in an Opinium survey conducted for Compassion in Politics in May. Though it is not yet clear whether Wales would make lying a criminal offence, Nadel says: “If the same goal of disqualifying politicians who deliberately misrepresent the facts can be achieved through using the civil law, then we’re happy.” 

A private member’s bill to ban lying in Westminster, introduced by Plaid Cymru MP Liz Saville Roberts in 2022, had cross-party support. “We will be looking to build [on that] and win the support of the Labour government to introduce the measure,” Nadel says... 

“I think it’s important to signal a different set of norms, and try to arrest a slide towards the acceptability of attempts to deceive in public life.” 

For Compassion in Politics, another challenge is persuading doubters that banning lying in politics is even possible. “There’s this belief that it’s too complex to stop,” says Nadel, who qualified as a barrister. “But the law prevents fraudulent misrepresentation in other walks of life. This is something that courts adjudicate on all the time. Why shouldn’t it apply to politicians?”"

-via Positive.News, July 26, 2024

[wilwheaton]

Republicans simply don’t have a big positive (in the narrow sense of the term) legislative agenda. They’re a status quo, minoritarian party. They want to block things. Their real focus is on tax cuts and judicial appointments. And, helpfully, the filibuster doesn’t apply to either of those because of budget reconciliation and the judicial confirmation carve-out. It’s no big mystery why Republicans support the filibuster. It doesn’t require any commitment to principle over interest to explain it. If you review Project 2025, the second Trump term blueprint, which rightly horrifies Democrats and all upstanding Americans, what’s remarkable is how little legislation it envisions. It is overwhelmingly focused on executive orders and the conduct of executive power.

Would Republicans Toss the Filibuster for Trump?

Josh thinks no, but I think they’ll do whatever he tells them to do because that’s all they have ever done.

[zvaigzdelasas]

[BBC is UK State Media]

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has funded politically-motivated assassinations in Yemen, a BBC investigation has found, exacerbating a conflict involving the Yemeni government and warring factions which has recently returned to the international spotlight following attacks on ships in the Red Sea.

Counter-terrorism training provided by American mercenaries to Emirati officers in Yemen has been used to train locals who can work under a lower profile - sparking a major uptick in political assassinations, a whistleblower told BBC Arabic Investigations.

The BBC has also found that despite the American mercenaries' stated aim to eliminate the jihadist groups al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS) in southern Yemen, in fact the UAE has gone on to recruit former al-Qaeda members for a security force it has created on the ground in Yemen to fight the Houthi rebel movement and other armed factions.

The UAE government has denied the allegations in our investigation - that it had assassinated those without links to terrorism - saying they were "false and without merit".

These are largely between the two parts of the "real" "legitimate" "internationally recognized" coalition govt of Yemen you've been scolded so much about over the last month btw [22 Jan 24]

Continued after the cut

The killing spree in Yemen - more than 100 assassinations in a three-year period - is just one element of an ongoing bitter internecine conflict pitting several international powers against each other in the Middle East's poorest country.[...]

In 2015, the US and the UK supported a coalition of mostly Arab states led by Saudi Arabia - with the UAE as a key partner - to fight back. The coalition invaded Yemen with the aim of reinstating the exiled Yemeni government and fighting terrorism. The UAE was given charge of security in the south, and became the US's key ally on counter-terrorism in the region - al-Qaeda had long been a presence in the south and was now gaining territory.[...]

Under international law, any killing of civilians without due process would be counted as extra-judicial.

The majority of those assassinated were members of Islah - the Yemeni branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. It [...] has never been classified by the US as a terror organisation, but is banned in several Arab countries - including the UAE where its political activism and support for elections is seen by the country's royal family as a threat to their rule.

Leaked drone footage of the first assassination mission gave me a starting point from which to investigate these mysterious killings. It was dated December 2015 and was traced to members of a private US security company called Spear Operations Group.[...]

Isaac Gilmore, a former US Navy Seal who later became chief operating officer of Spear, was one of several Americans who say they were hired to carry out assassinations in Yemen by the UAE.

He refused to talk about anyone who was on the "kill list" provided to Spear by the UAE - other than the target of their first mission: Ansaf Mayo, a Yemeni MP who is the leader of Islah in the southern port city of Aden, the government's temporary capital since 2015.[...]

Mr Gilmore, and another Spear employee in Yemen at the time - Dale Comstock - told me that the mission they conducted ended in 2016. But the assassinations in southern Yemen continued. In fact they became more frequent, according to investigators from the human rights group Reprieve.

They investigated 160 killings carried out in Yemen between 2015 and 2018. They said the majority happened from 2016 and only 23 of the 160 people killed had links to terrorism. All the killings had been carried out using the same tactics that Spear had employed - the detonation of an improvised explosive device (IED) as a distraction, followed by a targeted shooting. The most recent political assassination in Yemen, according to Yemeni human rights lawyer Huda al-Sarari, happened just last month - of an imam killed in Lahj by the same method.[...]

Mr Gilmore, Mr Comstock, and two other mercenaries from Spear who asked not to be named, said that Spear had been involved in training Emirati officers in the UAE military base in Aden. A journalist who asked to remain anonymous also told us he had seen footage of such training.

As the mercenaries' profile had made them conspicuous in Aden and vulnerable to exposure, their brief had been changed to training Emirati officers, "who in turn trained local Yemenis to do the targeting", the Yemeni military officer told me.

Through the course of the investigation, we also spoke to more than a dozen other Yemeni sources who said this had been the case. They included two men who said they had carried out assassinations which were not terror-related, after being trained to do so by Emirati soldiers - and one man who said he had been offered release from a UAE prison in exchange for the assassination of a senior Yemeni political figure, a mission he did not accept.

Getting Yemenis to conduct the assassinations meant it was harder for the killings to be traced back to the UAE.

By 2017, the UAE had helped build a paramilitary force, part of the Emirati-funded Southern Transitional Council (STC), a security organisation that runs a network of armed groups across southern Yemen.

The force operated in southern Yemen independently of the Yemeni government, and would only take orders from the UAE. The fighters were not just trained to fight on active front lines. One particular unit, the elite Counter Terrorism Unit, was trained to conduct assassinations, our whistleblower told us.

The whistleblower sent a document with 11 names of former al-Qaeda members now working in the STC, some of whose identities we were able to verify ourselves.

During our investigation we also came across the name Nasser al-Shiba. Once a high-ranking al-Qaeda operative, he was jailed for terrorism but later released. A Yemeni government minister we spoke to told us al-Shiba was a known suspect in the attack on the US warship USS Cole, which killed 17 American sailors in October 2000. Multiple sources told us that he is now the commander of one of the STC military units. Lawyer Huda al-Sarari has been investigating human rights abuses committed by these UAE-backed forces on the ground. As a result of her work, she would frequently receive death threats. But it was her 18-year-old son Mohsen who paid the ultimate price.

He was shot in the chest in March 2019 while on a trip to a local petrol station, and died a month later.[...]

A subsequent investigation by Aden's public prosecutor found that Mohsen was killed by a member of the UAE-backed Counter Terrorism Unit, but the authorities have never pursued a prosecution.

Members of the prosecutor's office - who we cannot name for safety reasons - told us that the widespread assassinations have created a climate of fear that means even they are too afraid to pursue justice in cases involving forces backed by the UAE.

Reprieve has received a leaked UAE document that shows Spear was still being paid in 2020, though it is not clear in what capacity.