ICE Hit & Run vs Members of the Tohono O’odham Nation

There’s a relatively slow-motion hit-and-run occurring on Tohono O’odham Nation land that’s been recorded and now viewed several hundred thousand times. It’s bad enough, though the victim Paulo Remes is reported to be recovering reasonably well by Tuscon.com. The SUV that hit Remes was an Immigration & Customs Enforcement vehicle that drove down the road approaching Remes’ house, turned around, then came back toward Remes who had just walked across the road and was still on the edge of it when struck. This has all the makings of a felony:

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Bill Maher Gets One Right

RawStory is saying that Maher did a segment on police brutality tonight (Friday). In it he said:

“We need to stop saying most cops are good like we know that to be true,” Maher said. “I hope that’s true, but I need some evidence—unlike cops.”

I think that the most troubling thing about this is how few of these incidents come to light through police body cams. With so many interactions recorded on body cam, how is it that the majority of brutality incidents reach the public eye through the video taken by some witness pulling out a cell phone?

I don’t think that the majority of cops have committed unnecessary and illegal violence. I think the majority have certainly committed unnecessary violence, though, and I think that the ratio of bystander videos to body cam videos in these situations shows that law enforcement as an institution is engaged in a massive coverup. What does it mean to be a “good cop” when so many of these incidents are covered up by cops? Can you still be a “good cop” while ignoring the problems too big to change by yourself? How would that square with arresting a murderer when you know you don’t have the skills to prosecute them?

The definition of “good cop” is going to vary from person to person, but from testilying to state certification boards to allowing corrupt cops to resign to avoid investigation & punishment so they can hop over to a job in the next jurisdiction, I think there’s more than enough evidence that a huge percentage of cops are corruptly ignoring the problems in their own departments even if they are decent and trying to do good when they go out on the streets. Some of those cops *might* be good if we didn’t ask them to work in corrupt agencies. But how many? It’s impossible to tell.

So, yeah: maybe most cops are good, but at this point they’re going to need to step up with some evidence.

 

 

Don’t Be This Wrong: Salon Spreads Serious Misinformation

In an article criticizing trump as a Sadist, Salon writer Chauncey DeVega writes a supposedly-factual introduction to what is later a very opinionated piece in such a way as to screw up a very, very important basic fact:

The United States Constitution grants President Donald Trump many powers. They include being the Chief Executive, Chief Legislator and Commander-in-Chief of the military. Not to be content with such powers, Donald Trump has also taken on other roles as well. Donald Trump is the Sadist-in-Chief of the United States of America. Cruelty and meanness are his modus operandi.

Did you catch it? DeVega would have you believe that Trump is constitutionally empowered to be the United States’ “Chief Legislator”.

No. That’s just wrong. It’s so very, very wrong it’s hard to communicate. If you’re from the US or went to grade school here (or even if you just know how to read between the lines of subtle slogans like “No More Kings”), you know that placing primary legislative powers in the hands of the chief executive is exactly what the constitutional framers did not want.

The President cannot set the congressional schedule or call a committee to order. The President cannot introduce a bill before congress or propose language revisions for an existing bill. The President cannot vote in either the House or the Senate. The President cannot amend or authoritatively interpret legislation. The president cannot employ a veto to reject parts of a bill while retaining the effectiveness of other parts: the president must accept all of a legislative act or none of it.

The President is not a legislator and Congress is not a parliament.

We are sufficiently Freuded already without giving Trump even more power. Don’t for a moment concede that the constitution gives Trump any kind of legislative power.

Don’t Start Reading The Story In The Middle

Or things get … weird:

At the touch of his lips it swelled and lengthened. His expert skills left me gasping. I couldn’t tear my eyes away as he ensorcelled me with pinches and tugs, and especially the rapid rotation of his wrist. And then, two minutes later, it was over. There was nothing left but the mess on his face, in his hair, clinging electrically to his clothes. I cried knowing I had exploded the best balloon giraffe I would ever see and threw the sewing needle away in shame.

 

Credit Due

Pat Parker is a particularly awesome poet, although it’s true that we all tend to value most highly those things we can’t do ourselves, and whatever talent I have with language, it certainly doesn’t include a gift for brevity. So maybe I overvalue Parker because she’s able to make a point much more succinctly than I?

Hmm. Let’s see:

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Loving Day

Well, I missed it by two days, but let’s do this anyway: Fifty-one years ago on Tuesday, a mere 99 years, 11 months and 3 days after we passed a constitutional amendment requiring states to stop with the racial discrimination already, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that yes, Virginia, there are limits to constitutional violations and stop Freuding persecuting the Lovings already, okay?

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Dana Loesch Sends A Love Letter to Richard Dawkins

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the author of the recent book Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions among others, was brought on the Daily Show to be interviewed by host Trevor Noah. It’s a good interview, and you should watch it. Here, let me make it easy for you:

So did you notice the extremist horror about 2/3rds of the way through? That’s right, the part where Noah asks about generous gestures that, through chivalry, have been entwined with sexism and specifies holding open doors as an example? And then Adichie goes completely off the rails, saying

gestures like holding the door shouldn’t be gender-based. I think it’s a lovely thing to hold the door but we should hold the door for everyone. …[T]he idea of someone holding the door for a woman because she’s a woman…I have trouble with it.

I’m quite happy for people to hold the door for me. But I hope they’re not doing it because of this sort of idea of chivalry. Because chivalry is really about the idea that women are somehow weak and need protecting.

Adichie, how could you? Well, at least Fox & Friends had Dana Loesch on hand to nip the budding tip before the petals surrounding the reproductive bits can open:

With all due respect to her [Adichie] — and I’m familiar with her — I think it’s a luxury of third-wave feminism to complain about holding doors open for people where her country, Nigeria, it ranks top in the world for female genital mutilation, which I think if far more of a disservice to women and far more suppressive than someone courteously opening the door for someone else.

Dear Dawkinsima: when Loesch is your fellow traveler, perhaps it’s time to rethink your destination.

 

 

 

 

 

Police Handle Creepy Woman-in-a-Suitcase Situation Correctly

So, a couple days ago cops in Portland, Oregon did the right thing in a rare situation. It was immortalized on the PPD twitter feed:

 

 

Now, I’m all for consensual fun, and if you wanna ride around in a suitcase, you do you, right? But I also get why this was reported. If you do a google search for “portland police alert woman suitcase” you get some seriously not okay stuff all over the first page. Worse, it’s not just multiple reports of the same case, you get links to reports of separate, unrelated incidents. (People with multiple treatment resistant faith in humanity can have it cured right there on that google page.)

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Fox News On The Most Persecuted People In America: The Dukes Of Hazard

Oh, my. This really is too much. “Bo Duke” actor John Schneider just served 5 hours in jail for repeatedly failing to pay back alimony and child support. He was scheduled to serve 3 days, but the Los Angeles jails were overcrowded. To what does he attribute his good luck horrible persecution? Fox News will tell ya:

Schneider alleged that his conservative values may have hurt him in court, adding that it’s time for more of his fellow Hollywood stars to “come out of the Republican closet.”

“I do think there’s a bias against conservatives, Republicans, in Hollywood, but I think if you let that alter how you are, then I question how you are,” he said. “If you believe it, speak it, live it.”

Aww. I feel so bad for the 58-year old wealthy white guy. But wait! If that didn’t jerk you around by your heartstrings, check this out:

“Going to jail was nothing like I ever imagined it was going to be,” Schneider told us. “First of all, I was given no preferential treatment at all except they didn’t detain me with the general population.

“I was arrested, I was searched, I was handcuffed, I had my wallet and my phone and they took my belt and shoelaces and it was put into a plastic bag,” the 58-year-old recalled.

“It was totally life-changing,” he added.

What. The. Freud.

Seriously, white conservative guys, you need to catch some clues. As I understand it, there are a bunch of clues running loose in the Antarctic circumpolar current: you should head down there right now.

 

 

It has happened

I’ve been analyzing and critiquing conceptions of free expression since the 1990s when anti-domestic violence shelters started asking me about how it might be possible to construct policies that support trans* participants in shelter programs without punishing non-trans* participants for the everyday anti-trans hostility that most weren’t equipped to recognize. I’ve done it from multiple perspectives – activist, ethicist, and law student – and from a US focus to a Canadian focus to an international comparative frame. So I’ve seen this one coming for a while now. We’ve been close before, but now we’re there. Not just an enemy of the state, but the biggest, most threatening enemy of the state is freedom of expression, especially expression that is distributed through the power of the press.

Donald John Trump tweeted this this morning:

So funny to watch the Fake News, especially NBC and CNN. They are fighting hard to downplay the deal with North Korea. 500 days ago they would have “begged” for this deal-looked like war would break out. Our Country’s biggest enemy is the Fake News so easily promulgated by fools!

Expect the US based Peterson and Harris fanboys and other general Freeze Peaches to celebrate or ignore this statement. For people that care about our rights and freedoms, however, this is the second worst statement the president could issue. For now, he identifies “our country’s biggest enemy” in the context of a call for mockery. The step from there to identifying “our country’s biggest enemy” in the context of a call for punishment is so dangerously small, I think few will recognize it when it happens.