April 19, 2021

How the Supreme Court Gave Cops a License to Kill

Really good piece, please read the whole thing.

"As it is, Chauvin’s attorneys have taken to citing the 1989 Supreme Court case Graham v. Connor—and doing it so frequently that you’d think a man named Graham V. Connor told Chauvin he could get away with murder. In a way, that’s exactly what the case did. Graham v. Connor changed the use-of-force guidelines for police all across the country, allowing them to be more violent and homicidal.

To understand how one case has authorized brutality, you have to appreciate that our only real constitutional protection from police violence is the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on “unreasonable search and seizure.” “Unreasonable” was, naturally, poorly defined by the collection of white men who wrote and ratified the Constitution and determined that things such as slavery and genocide were totally “reasonable” uses of state power. Still, for most of American history, the Fourth Amendment followed a “reasonable [white] man” standard: The actions of the government, or its agents, were judged through the lens of what an average person would find reasonable.

In practice, this allowed for plenty of abuse. Victims of police brutality had to show that officers acted “unreasonably” and with malicious intent. As one can imagine, it was always hard for victims (or their surviving family members) to prove that a violently homicidal police officer intended to kill them. Before camera phones, it was nearly impossible to get white people to believe the cops acted like Black people have always said they do.

Graham v. Connor took this loophole and made it so big that whole police forces could simply saunter right through it. Instead of limiting police use of force to what a reasonable person might expect, the Supreme Court said that force could only be judged against what a reasonable “officer on the scene” would do. In the actual Graham v. Connor case, that meant the court found that a “reasonable officer” could slam Dethorne Graham’s head into his car and break his foot, because Graham was resisting arrest, never mind that he was a diabetic going into shock who was being detained on the suspicion that he stole some orange juice—which he did not."
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/chauvin-supreme-court/

April 9, 2021

Tucker Carlson gives passionate defense of "white replacement theory"

Is anyone more toxic and evil than this guy?

Video at the link
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/tucker-carlson-gives-passionate-defense-white-replacement-theory

TUCKER CARLSON: I'm laughing because this is one of about 10 stories that I know you have covered where the government shows preference to people who have shown absolute contempt for our customs, our laws, our system itself and they are being treated better than American citizens. Now, I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term "replacement," if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World. But they become hysterical because that's what's happening actually. Let's just say it: That's true.

...

If you change the population, you dilute the political power of the people who live there. So every time they import a new voter, I become disenfranchised as a current voter. So I don't understand what we don't understand cause, I mean, everyone wants to make a racial issue out of it. Oh, you know, the white replacement theory? No, no, no. This is a voting right question. I have less political power because they are importing a brand new electorate. Why should I sit back and take that? The power that I have as an American guaranteed at birth is one man, one vote, and they are diluting it. No, they are not allowed to do it. Why are we putting up with this?

April 7, 2021

Trump's sad, incoherent baseball ravings

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1379521435350228999?s=20

https://www.thebiglead.com/posts/donald-trump-baseball-boycott-mlb-channels-yankees-01f2m9yr36j0

"You want to find a game. It's on every channel, and yet you can't find anything. It's the weirdest thing"

He's seriously senile.

April 1, 2021

Anyone have a good article explaining HR1 (the voting rights bill)?

I saw this one posted on FB but I have some issues with it. It also doesn't seem very comprehensive. I'm interested in pluses and minuses that could be used to sell it versus criticize it.

The only thing I found useful here was that it explained that The John Lewis Voting Rights Act is a different bill-- HR4, when I thought HR1 was The John Lewis Voting Rights Act.

https://elections-daily.com/2021/03/25/h-r-1-the-good-the-bad-and-the-wtf/