Overall, the citizens of the US are a compassionate group. We have been forced into positions where we have to work too hard and live with blinders on in order to focus on our immediate crisis.... Food, shelter, clothing, etc for ourselves and our families. That often draws a larger picture that we only care about ourselves but in my eyes it is an unfair painting. We are forced to do it. We are still compassionate.

In my own life I have completely forgiven people for some pretty heinous acts. I mean fully forgiven. What did each one of those people do? Admitted their sins, asked for forgiveness, and at least made an attempt to change.

Mr. Judge. Admit your sins and ask for forgiveness to those you have harmed. I’m sure through your treatment you have already seen an abundance of forgiveness. I think you will be surprised if you come clean, admit your sins, and ask for forgiveness. I will support you in that journey as will many of your loved ones.

Mr. Judge, a part of your hiding is probably based in feelings of guilt. That shows conscience, if I’m accurate. Give us the chance to forgive you. Put your demons to rest.

Washington (CNN)Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has agreed to speak with House Republicans about his reported comments discussing wearing a wire to talk to President Donald Trump and recruiting Cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from office, according to sources familiar with the matter.

House Republican leaders struck an agreement with House Freedom Caucus leaders for Rosenstein to appear to explain his comments, staving off a potential bid to try to force an impeachment vote against the deputy attorney general.

Politico first reported the plan to call Rosenstein in for a closed meeting.

The meeting with Rosenstein will not be a formal hearing with a transcribed interview, but a background meeting, according to a Justice Department official.

CNN

Most U.S. colleges -- 89% -- reported zero incidents of rape in 2015, according to American Association of University Women (AAUW) analysis of data provided by schools to the U.S. Department of Education.

Reported is the key word. Just because a school had no rape reports doesn't mean no rapes happened.

AAUW's findings very likely do not reflect the true state of sexual violence among college students, since a majority of incidents go unreported. In fact, a 2014 report by the U.S. Department of Justice estimated that 80% of student victims don't report their rape or sexual assault to police, based on data from 1995–2013.

Still, the 2015 AAUW report isn't as rosy as the previous year's. In 2014, 91% of schools reported zero rapes, based on annual crime data disclosed by more than 11,000 colleges and universities.

USA Today

I hate to make such serious issues into a circus but it seems we have already arrived. Republicans have set precedence by hiring an assistant to question Dr. Ford. I think Democrats should hire Avenatti as an assistant to question Kav for them.

ok. Back to your next nonsensical item of the day.

Since being “blacklisted” by Hollywood after her infamous photo with a bloody Donald Trump head, Kathy Griffin has made a remarkable comeback, selling out Carnegie Hall in a single day, planning a national tour, and now teaming up with another of Trump’s most famous, and camera-friendly, antagonists. At Politicon in Los Angeles next month, Griffin will sit down for a conversation with Michael Avenatti, the ever-present lawyer for Stormy Daniels.

Griffin and Avenatti will be headliners at Politicon, described as an “unconventional political convention,” where guests will include everyone from Ann Coulter to Henry Winkler. Griffin, who met and took a photo with Avenatti at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner this past spring (where she said she was busy picking fights with every Cabinet member she could), said she’s been a fan from the start. And so has her fanbase.

Vanity Fair

Politicon Oct 20 & 21

What We Know About Rachel Mitchell, the Arizona Prosecutor Set to Question Kavanaugh’s First Accuser

In her own words

In an interview with FrontLine Magazine, the journal of Foundations Baptist Fellowship International, published in 2012, Ms. Mitchell said she first became familiar with issues around child sex crimes when she was paired up with a senior attorney who was working a case involving a youth choir director accused of misconduct.

“It was different than anything that I would have ever imagined it being,” she said.“It intrigued me, and I continued to do other work with that bureau chief. It struck me how innocent and vulnerable the victims of these cases really were.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/us/rachel-mitchell-bio-facts.html

Interview Between Mitchell and Frontline

https://www.proclaimanddefend.org/2012/03/19/interview-with-rachel-mitchell-part-1/

Who is Rachel Mitchell, the Arizona prosecutor chosen to question Kavanaugh and his accuser?



https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/09/26/who-is-rachel-mitchell-the-arizona-prosecutor-chosen-to-question-kavanaugh-and-his-accuser/?utm_term=.6642e6fc5c99

The greatest thing about HBCUs are the toiling students fighting for justice on these campuses. Not the college presidents, boards of trustees, the administrators, teachers, or coaches. It is the students who, under adversity of both institutional racism and the duplicity of some who minister to them, claiming to be role models, perennially rise above nonsense and develop a historical awareness of the dynamics of empowerment and self-reliance.

HBCUs like to market themselves as having produced the student activists that formed the modern Black freedom movement. This is a patriotic and conservative discourse in post-civil rights America. This obscures how historically HBCUs have repressed students and calls for democratic accountability on their own campuses. Students have grown to understand, in their historical rebellions against Black college presidents and administrators, that as a social class, these are not role models or heroic people. Instead they are agents of subordination and degradation. HBCUs often reproduce elites to collaborate with institutional racism and keep everyday Blacks down and disoriented.

One elder chair of a Black Studies department once told me, “there are many things you can do in terms of political education and organizing at a historically Black college. The one thing you will not be permitted to do is oppose the Black college president.” And yet, any struggle for democracy (majority rule) must strive to take away power from the minority who rules above institutions and society, or such organizing is merely a cultural decoration that makes those who rule yawn and maintain the disposition of mild amusement.

At their origin, HBCUs were created with two contradictory purposes. After Reconstruction (1865-1877) HBCUs produced a Black political class to contain the grassroots and popular mobilization of Black sharecroppers and domestic servants that continue to disorient Black toilers. HBCUs also were created by sincere Black church-folk with a faith-based mission genuinely concerned with self-reliance.

Black Agenda Report Dr. Matthew Quest

First posted this in the General Discussion Forum. As I'm making my way around DU I found this forum. Hope it is ok to post it in both places.

The greatest thing about HBCUs are the toiling students fighting for justice on these campuses. Not the college presidents, boards of trustees, the administrators, teachers, or coaches. It is the students who, under adversity of both institutional racism and the duplicity of some who minister to them, claiming to be role models, perennially rise above nonsense and develop a historical awareness of the dynamics of empowerment and self-reliance.

HBCUs like to market themselves as having produced the student activists that formed the modern Black freedom movement. This is a patriotic and conservative discourse in post-civil rights America. This obscures how historically HBCUs have repressed students and calls for democratic accountability on their own campuses. Students have grown to understand, in their historical rebellions against Black college presidents and administrators, that as a social class, these are not role models or heroic people. Instead they are agents of subordination and degradation. HBCUs often reproduce elites to collaborate with institutional racism and keep everyday Blacks down and disoriented.

One elder chair of a Black Studies department once told me, “there are many things you can do in terms of political education and organizing at a historically Black college. The one thing you will not be permitted to do is oppose the Black college president.” And yet, any struggle for democracy (majority rule) must strive to take away power from the minority who rules above institutions and society, or such organizing is merely a cultural decoration that makes those who rule yawn and maintain the disposition of mild amusement.

At their origin, HBCUs were created with two contradictory purposes. After Reconstruction (1865-1877) HBCUs produced a Black political class to contain the grassroots and popular mobilization of Black sharecroppers and domestic servants that continue to disorient Black toilers. HBCUs also were created by sincere Black church-folk with a faith-based mission genuinely concerned with self-reliance.

Black Agenda Report Dr. Matthew Quest