Former NFL quarterback Fran Tarkenton rips into black players who took the knee and says conservatives in America are being denied a voice
During a wide-ranging interview with USA Today last week, NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Fran Tarkenton ripped into Colin Kaepernick and the other black NFL players who refused to stand for the National Anthem. The 77-year-old former Minnesota Vikings and New York Giants quarterback made it quite clear that the protests were unforgivable. Tarkenton said:
“Do I think they should be able to demonstrate? I do. But when they play the national anthem and that flag is up there, if we cannot respect that, what do we respect in America?”
Tarkenton also complained that conservatives in America are being denied a voice. He said:
“We're silent because if you're not a Democrat, progressive liberal and you disagree with the progressive liberal's viewpoint, then you're going to be spit at, hit, ridiculed and booed. So you know what we do? We don't talk. We're a silent majority.”
The Hall of Famer also slammed Saturday Night Live for ridiculing President Trump.
Tarkenton may be 77-years old, but his brains haven’t been scrambled like so many other former NFL players his age.
Wednesday, January 31, 2018
WHOOPS. THE WHOOPS WASN'T A WHOOPS AFTER ALL
by Bob Walsh
It seems that the "accidental" incoming missile alert in Hawaii was in fact sent deliberately and not accidentally. The operator who hit the button did not notice that all the messages were marked that they were in fact tests and asserted that he was not clued in that they were doing internal testing of the "this is not a test" messages at the facility. There were five people in the room when this happened and it seems that none of the other operators in the room noticed that the guy sent the OMG RUN FOR YOUR LIVES message. I guess they don't talk much there.
The guy who hit the button has been fired and the head of the Hawaii emergency response system has offered his resignation.
Whoops.
It seems that the "accidental" incoming missile alert in Hawaii was in fact sent deliberately and not accidentally. The operator who hit the button did not notice that all the messages were marked that they were in fact tests and asserted that he was not clued in that they were doing internal testing of the "this is not a test" messages at the facility. There were five people in the room when this happened and it seems that none of the other operators in the room noticed that the guy sent the OMG RUN FOR YOUR LIVES message. I guess they don't talk much there.
The guy who hit the button has been fired and the head of the Hawaii emergency response system has offered his resignation.
Whoops.
MANDATORY "THIS SHIT WILL KILL YOU" LABEL UNDER FURTHER REVIEW
by Bob Walsh
Back in 2015 the Board of Stupidvisors of the People's Republic of San Francisco unanimously voted to require a "THIS SHIT WILL KILL YOU" warning label on sugared soda sold within the City and County of San Francisco. It was originally supposed to kick in July 2016, but was put on hold by the federal courts. It was then flat-ass barred by the court on the basis that it was one-sided, misleading and fucking stupid.
The same court, the 9th U. S. Circuit, has just granted a rehearing to the city before a full 11 member panel of the court.
Big Brother knows what's good for you.
As an aside, Tyson Foods just bought a SF based research operation that is working to grow food protein in vats without the need of actually having animals to product beef, chicken, kangaroo, cat, etc. I think the organization was originally called Soylent Green but they changed the name to something less radioactive. I wonder how the commie bastards that run S. F. will react to that?
Back in 2015 the Board of Stupidvisors of the People's Republic of San Francisco unanimously voted to require a "THIS SHIT WILL KILL YOU" warning label on sugared soda sold within the City and County of San Francisco. It was originally supposed to kick in July 2016, but was put on hold by the federal courts. It was then flat-ass barred by the court on the basis that it was one-sided, misleading and fucking stupid.
The same court, the 9th U. S. Circuit, has just granted a rehearing to the city before a full 11 member panel of the court.
Big Brother knows what's good for you.
As an aside, Tyson Foods just bought a SF based research operation that is working to grow food protein in vats without the need of actually having animals to product beef, chicken, kangaroo, cat, etc. I think the organization was originally called Soylent Green but they changed the name to something less radioactive. I wonder how the commie bastards that run S. F. will react to that?
NO FREEBIE MOUTHPIECE FOR ILLEGAL ALIEN RUGRATS
by Bob Walsh
The Ninth U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the most liberal court in this fair land, has ruled that minor illegal aliens facing deportation are NOT entitled to a government funded lawyer as the Immigration Court Judge can adequately address their rights and the fairness of their hearing. The ruling of the panel was 3-0. Providing this service to illegal alien rugrats would run about $250 million plus.
The Ninth U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the most liberal court in this fair land, has ruled that minor illegal aliens facing deportation are NOT entitled to a government funded lawyer as the Immigration Court Judge can adequately address their rights and the fairness of their hearing. The ruling of the panel was 3-0. Providing this service to illegal alien rugrats would run about $250 million plus.
BILLIONAIRE TOM STEYER, WHOOPI GOLDBERG AND OTHER FAR-LEFT CELEBS CALL FOR IMPEACHMENT OF TRUMP AT NY RALLY
LOL: Out of Touch Celebs Gather to REMOVE President Trump
By Amy Moreno
Truthfeed
January 30, 2018
Celebrities gathered in “protest” over President Trump’s upcoming “State of The Union” address, to show their “PATRIOTISM” by calling for the removal of a dully elected president.
Celebrities and activists gathered in New York City Monday night for the star-studded “People’s State of the Union,” a public rally meant to serve as counter-programming to President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address on Tuesday.
Actors Mark Ruffalo, Alyssa Milano, John Leguizamo, Cynthia Nixon, Amy Schumer, Kathy Najimy, Patricia Arquette, Rosie Perez, and Gina Gershon were joined by Whoopi Goldberg, billionaire left-wing mega-donor Tom Steyer, musicians Common and Andra Day, and documentary filmmakers Michael Moore and Fisher Stevens for the event, which was held at Manhattan’s Town Hall Theater and live-streamed online.
Other speakers included immigration activists and other members of the anti-Trump “Resistance” movement, many of whom wore T-shirts with the phrase, “We are all Dreamers.”
Ruffalo, a frequent and outspoken critic of the Trump administration, served as the night’s de facto emcee.
“We’re going to set our sights to continue that work in the next year, and strengthen our bonds and commitments to each other, for long after the Trump era comes to its rightful end,” said Ruffalo. “We ain’t stopping with Trump, okay?”
Stars and activists alike urged attendees to vote in November’s midterm elections.
Moore, who released an anti-Trump documentary during the 2016 campaign and later mounted an anti-Trump Broadway play, worked himself into a frenzy as he issued a “to-do list” for 2018, beginning with what he called the “widespread massive removal of Republicans from the House and Senate the likes of which this country has never seen.”
“The need to remove him — and also any Democrat who is in the way of removing him — that is, at this point, a moral imperative for each and every one of us,” he added. “Removing him, and Pence, and the whole disgusting lot of them… still won’t be enough. We must remove and replace the system and the culture that gave us Trump in the first place.”
“As we seek to rid ourselves of Trump, we must also cleanse our American soul of our white male privilege,” Moore continued.
Nixon, star of HBO’s Sex and the City, said 2017 had been a “dark year for America” and blamed Russian interference for “shifting the election” to Trump.
“First and foremost, we need to make sure that Robert Mueller is able to conduct a thorough and unimpeded investigation,” Nixon said, adding that if Trump interferes in the Special Counsel’s probe, “we must take to the streets as never before.”
Amy Schumer introduced comedian Wanda Sykes, who spoke briefly about the “ugly underbelly” of the country that emerged in 2016 to elect Trump.
Musical entertainment was provided by Common and Andra Day, who performed their Grammy- and Oscar-nominated song “Stand Up for Something,” and by Rufus Wainwright, who performed the song, “Hallelujah” to a slideshow featuring images of immigration activists and Resistance marches from the previous year.
Steyer, who has spent millions of dollars on an advertising campaign calling for Trump’s impeachment, slammed what he called the administration’s “systematic attempt to take away the rights and dignities of Americans.”
“What we’re seeing.. this is the heart of democracy. This is the heart of patriotism. The people in this room are American patriots, standing up for basic American values,” Steyer said. “This is right and wrong. And we don’t compromise on the rights and dignities of Americans.”
The three-hour public event — sponsored by left-wing organizations including Planned Parenthood and MoveOn.org — came as President Trump prepares to deliver his first State of the Union Tuesday amid a booming U.S. economy but stagnant approval ratings.
Many of the celebrities at Monday night’s event joined anti-Trump Women’s Marches across the country earlier this month on the first anniversary of the president’s inauguration.
EDITOR’S NOTE: They are all just a bunch of sore losers who cannot get over the fact that Trump is now sitting where they were sure their beloved Hildebeast would be enthroned.
By Amy Moreno
Truthfeed
January 30, 2018
Celebrities gathered in “protest” over President Trump’s upcoming “State of The Union” address, to show their “PATRIOTISM” by calling for the removal of a dully elected president.
Celebrities and activists gathered in New York City Monday night for the star-studded “People’s State of the Union,” a public rally meant to serve as counter-programming to President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address on Tuesday.
Actors Mark Ruffalo, Alyssa Milano, John Leguizamo, Cynthia Nixon, Amy Schumer, Kathy Najimy, Patricia Arquette, Rosie Perez, and Gina Gershon were joined by Whoopi Goldberg, billionaire left-wing mega-donor Tom Steyer, musicians Common and Andra Day, and documentary filmmakers Michael Moore and Fisher Stevens for the event, which was held at Manhattan’s Town Hall Theater and live-streamed online.
Other speakers included immigration activists and other members of the anti-Trump “Resistance” movement, many of whom wore T-shirts with the phrase, “We are all Dreamers.”
Ruffalo, a frequent and outspoken critic of the Trump administration, served as the night’s de facto emcee.
“We’re going to set our sights to continue that work in the next year, and strengthen our bonds and commitments to each other, for long after the Trump era comes to its rightful end,” said Ruffalo. “We ain’t stopping with Trump, okay?”
Stars and activists alike urged attendees to vote in November’s midterm elections.
Moore, who released an anti-Trump documentary during the 2016 campaign and later mounted an anti-Trump Broadway play, worked himself into a frenzy as he issued a “to-do list” for 2018, beginning with what he called the “widespread massive removal of Republicans from the House and Senate the likes of which this country has never seen.”
“The need to remove him — and also any Democrat who is in the way of removing him — that is, at this point, a moral imperative for each and every one of us,” he added. “Removing him, and Pence, and the whole disgusting lot of them… still won’t be enough. We must remove and replace the system and the culture that gave us Trump in the first place.”
“As we seek to rid ourselves of Trump, we must also cleanse our American soul of our white male privilege,” Moore continued.
Nixon, star of HBO’s Sex and the City, said 2017 had been a “dark year for America” and blamed Russian interference for “shifting the election” to Trump.
“First and foremost, we need to make sure that Robert Mueller is able to conduct a thorough and unimpeded investigation,” Nixon said, adding that if Trump interferes in the Special Counsel’s probe, “we must take to the streets as never before.”
Amy Schumer introduced comedian Wanda Sykes, who spoke briefly about the “ugly underbelly” of the country that emerged in 2016 to elect Trump.
Musical entertainment was provided by Common and Andra Day, who performed their Grammy- and Oscar-nominated song “Stand Up for Something,” and by Rufus Wainwright, who performed the song, “Hallelujah” to a slideshow featuring images of immigration activists and Resistance marches from the previous year.
Steyer, who has spent millions of dollars on an advertising campaign calling for Trump’s impeachment, slammed what he called the administration’s “systematic attempt to take away the rights and dignities of Americans.”
“What we’re seeing.. this is the heart of democracy. This is the heart of patriotism. The people in this room are American patriots, standing up for basic American values,” Steyer said. “This is right and wrong. And we don’t compromise on the rights and dignities of Americans.”
The three-hour public event — sponsored by left-wing organizations including Planned Parenthood and MoveOn.org — came as President Trump prepares to deliver his first State of the Union Tuesday amid a booming U.S. economy but stagnant approval ratings.
Many of the celebrities at Monday night’s event joined anti-Trump Women’s Marches across the country earlier this month on the first anniversary of the president’s inauguration.
EDITOR’S NOTE: They are all just a bunch of sore losers who cannot get over the fact that Trump is now sitting where they were sure their beloved Hildebeast would be enthroned.
‘SEEKING SEX FROM MARRIED MEN’ CRAIGLIST AD LANDS WIFE OF CHEATING HUSBAND IN TROUBLE
Houston woman trolled her husband's mistress by 'posting an ad on Craigslist about her seeking sex from married men'
By Emily Crane
Daily Mail
January 30, 2018
A Houston woman has been charged after she trolled her husband's mistress by posting an ad on Craigslist in her name that said she was seeking sex from married men.
Tamantha Johnson, 48, is accused of posing as her husband's girlfriend and posting the advertisement online in July last year.
It read that she was requesting 'married men come over and service her on a regular basis' and also included her name, age and photo.
The woman allegedly received more than 100 calls and messages from people in response to the ad.
She also was sent unwanted nude photos from some men, according to court documents.
Johnson initially denied having anything to do with the Craigslist ad, but investigators allegedly linked her to the posting.
Authorities said the ad was traced back to a computer where Johnson worked.
She allegedly later admitted that she was trying to get the woman to admit to having an affair with Johnson's husband.
Johnson and her husband, who works as a divorce attorney, filed for divorce in April last year.
The victim had been represented by Johnson's husband in her own divorce.
Johnson has been charged with online harassment and impersonation.
She is also facing other charges of harassment for a separate incident in which she threatened the same woman via text message back in August.
By Emily Crane
Daily Mail
January 30, 2018
A Houston woman has been charged after she trolled her husband's mistress by posting an ad on Craigslist in her name that said she was seeking sex from married men.
Tamantha Johnson, 48, is accused of posing as her husband's girlfriend and posting the advertisement online in July last year.
It read that she was requesting 'married men come over and service her on a regular basis' and also included her name, age and photo.
The woman allegedly received more than 100 calls and messages from people in response to the ad.
She also was sent unwanted nude photos from some men, according to court documents.
Johnson initially denied having anything to do with the Craigslist ad, but investigators allegedly linked her to the posting.
Authorities said the ad was traced back to a computer where Johnson worked.
She allegedly later admitted that she was trying to get the woman to admit to having an affair with Johnson's husband.
Johnson and her husband, who works as a divorce attorney, filed for divorce in April last year.
The victim had been represented by Johnson's husband in her own divorce.
Johnson has been charged with online harassment and impersonation.
She is also facing other charges of harassment for a separate incident in which she threatened the same woman via text message back in August.
HOW TO NOT WIN FRIENDS AND HOW TO INFLUENCE PEOPLE TO HATE COPS
Georgia cops killed pet dog and then forced the distraught owner to saw off his pooch's HEAD with a knife or be arrested, lawsuit claims
By Emily Crane
Daily Mail
January 30, 2018
Two Georgia police officers killed a pet dog and then allegedly forced the owner to saw off the animal's head with a knife or risk being arrested, a new lawsuit claims.
Joe Goodwin and his girlfriend Tosha Dacon filed a lawsuit last week after their two-year-old pitbull cross Big Boy was shot dead outside their home in Crawford County two months ago.
The couple claim Crawford County sheriff's deputy Wesley Andrew Neesmith killed their beloved pooch after going to their home on December 1 to investigate reports the dog had bitten a neighbor.
The lawsuit claims fellow deputy James Hollis then ordered a distraught Goodwin to behead the dog with a knife.
'Under extreme emotional duress and distress, and under threat of incarceration and physical harm, Plaintiff Goodwin was forced to decapitate the dog with a knife,' the lawsuit reads.
After he was forced to decapitate Big Boy, the two officers allegedly ordered Goodwin to take the animal's head to the Crawford County Health Department.
The lawsuit says that Goodwin was too 'emotionally and mentally distraught to comply' so his partner Dacon had to do it.
Goodwin, who had filmed part of the confrontation and posted it on Facebook at the time, claimed that the officers told him the dog had been shot after it lunged at a deputy.
He said the officers claimed that the dog's head had to be removed to be tested for rabies - even though Big Boy was fully vaccinated against the deadly disease.
Testing for rabies can only be done via a brain autopsy.
Goodwin claims that when he initially refused to remove his dog's head, the officers threatened to have him arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.
They allegedly would not let him leave to retrieve the dog's vaccination paperwork.
At one point while he was filming, Hollis can be heard saying: 'We asked you to remove the dog's head. And you're refusing, right?'
Goodwin, who still appeared to be in shock, replied: 'I ain't got a... knife to cut the head off'.
He claims the officers gave him the option to call a vet and pay for the head to be removed, but he said he couldn't afford to do that procedure.
Goodwin said he complied because he feared he would be shot otherwise.
Once he finally reluctantly agreed, his girlfriend had to go and retrieve a kitchen knife to carry out the horrific task.
Goodwin was then allegedly forced to saw and hack away at his pet's neck with the small knife until he could remove his head.
The lawsuit claims he and his girlfriend continue to endure 'great physical and mental pain and suffering' and it has required counseling.
Goodwin claims he lost his job as a result of the stress caused by the incident.
Hollis was placed on paid administrative leave while an investigation was carried out. Neesmith resigned from his position in mid-January.
In addition to Hollis and Neesmith, the lawsuit also names Sheriff Lewis Walker.
The couple are suing them for $75,000 as compensation for their pain and suffering.
EDITOR’S NOTE: In all my years as a cop and criminal justice professor, I’ve never heard of anything like this. What in the fuck were those cops thinking? The shooting of the dog may or may not have been justified, but ordering the man to sever his pet’s head? Holy shit!
By Emily Crane
Daily Mail
January 30, 2018
Two Georgia police officers killed a pet dog and then allegedly forced the owner to saw off the animal's head with a knife or risk being arrested, a new lawsuit claims.
Joe Goodwin and his girlfriend Tosha Dacon filed a lawsuit last week after their two-year-old pitbull cross Big Boy was shot dead outside their home in Crawford County two months ago.
The couple claim Crawford County sheriff's deputy Wesley Andrew Neesmith killed their beloved pooch after going to their home on December 1 to investigate reports the dog had bitten a neighbor.
The lawsuit claims fellow deputy James Hollis then ordered a distraught Goodwin to behead the dog with a knife.
'Under extreme emotional duress and distress, and under threat of incarceration and physical harm, Plaintiff Goodwin was forced to decapitate the dog with a knife,' the lawsuit reads.
After he was forced to decapitate Big Boy, the two officers allegedly ordered Goodwin to take the animal's head to the Crawford County Health Department.
The lawsuit says that Goodwin was too 'emotionally and mentally distraught to comply' so his partner Dacon had to do it.
Goodwin, who had filmed part of the confrontation and posted it on Facebook at the time, claimed that the officers told him the dog had been shot after it lunged at a deputy.
He said the officers claimed that the dog's head had to be removed to be tested for rabies - even though Big Boy was fully vaccinated against the deadly disease.
Testing for rabies can only be done via a brain autopsy.
Goodwin claims that when he initially refused to remove his dog's head, the officers threatened to have him arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.
They allegedly would not let him leave to retrieve the dog's vaccination paperwork.
At one point while he was filming, Hollis can be heard saying: 'We asked you to remove the dog's head. And you're refusing, right?'
Goodwin, who still appeared to be in shock, replied: 'I ain't got a... knife to cut the head off'.
He claims the officers gave him the option to call a vet and pay for the head to be removed, but he said he couldn't afford to do that procedure.
Goodwin said he complied because he feared he would be shot otherwise.
Once he finally reluctantly agreed, his girlfriend had to go and retrieve a kitchen knife to carry out the horrific task.
Goodwin was then allegedly forced to saw and hack away at his pet's neck with the small knife until he could remove his head.
The lawsuit claims he and his girlfriend continue to endure 'great physical and mental pain and suffering' and it has required counseling.
Goodwin claims he lost his job as a result of the stress caused by the incident.
Hollis was placed on paid administrative leave while an investigation was carried out. Neesmith resigned from his position in mid-January.
In addition to Hollis and Neesmith, the lawsuit also names Sheriff Lewis Walker.
The couple are suing them for $75,000 as compensation for their pain and suffering.
EDITOR’S NOTE: In all my years as a cop and criminal justice professor, I’ve never heard of anything like this. What in the fuck were those cops thinking? The shooting of the dog may or may not have been justified, but ordering the man to sever his pet’s head? Holy shit!
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
GOOD NIGHT TO CHECK OUT THE MOON.
by Bob Walsh
Early Wednesday there is supposed to be a "super blue blood moon" visible shortly before dawn on the West Coast. This is a convergance of a blue moon, a super moon and a lunar eclipse. It hasn't happened in 152 years.
A blue moon is simply a second full moon in the same calendar month. No big deal. It happens every 30 moths or so. A super moon occurs when the moon is full when it is also at it's closest to earth. Also not a big deal. Happens every 14 or 15 months, The super moon appears to be about 7% larger than a "standard" full moon. The combination of the two, along with the lunar eclipse that will take place, is indeed rare.
If you happen to be up around 0400 Wednesday and the sky isn't overcast, check it out.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Yes, by all means get up and look at the moon. But as a lie-member of the Flat Earth Society, I can tell you the so-called moon landings were a hoax. The moon is made out of cheese. Every once in a while it gets moldy, and that accounts for the blue color.
Early Wednesday there is supposed to be a "super blue blood moon" visible shortly before dawn on the West Coast. This is a convergance of a blue moon, a super moon and a lunar eclipse. It hasn't happened in 152 years.
A blue moon is simply a second full moon in the same calendar month. No big deal. It happens every 30 moths or so. A super moon occurs when the moon is full when it is also at it's closest to earth. Also not a big deal. Happens every 14 or 15 months, The super moon appears to be about 7% larger than a "standard" full moon. The combination of the two, along with the lunar eclipse that will take place, is indeed rare.
If you happen to be up around 0400 Wednesday and the sky isn't overcast, check it out.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Yes, by all means get up and look at the moon. But as a lie-member of the Flat Earth Society, I can tell you the so-called moon landings were a hoax. The moon is made out of cheese. Every once in a while it gets moldy, and that accounts for the blue color.
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT
by Bob Walsh
Early Sunday a large sign appeared over the top of the Yerba Buena Tunnel where the Bay Bridge heads for San Francisco. The sign said DANGER SANCTUARY CITY AHEAD IDENTITY EVROPA.
The Identity Evropa is (allegedly) a White Supremacist group. The sign was quickly removed, though it isn't quite clear who removed it.
Early Sunday a large sign appeared over the top of the Yerba Buena Tunnel where the Bay Bridge heads for San Francisco. The sign said DANGER SANCTUARY CITY AHEAD IDENTITY EVROPA.
The Identity Evropa is (allegedly) a White Supremacist group. The sign was quickly removed, though it isn't quite clear who removed it.
THERE MAY ACTUALLY BE SOMETHING TO THE SECRET MEMO
by Bob Walsh
There is a secret memorandum floating around D.C. It has been view by a couple hundred members of congress. Interestingly enough, it has NOT leaked. Not even a little bit.
Andrew McCabe is, or maybe was, the Deputy Director of the FBI. He had already announced plans to retired later this year. He is, allegedly, named specifically as a major bad actor in this secret memo. It has now been announced that he is leaving immediately. This happened one business day after his boss was granted access to this memorandum by the house intelligence committee.
I am usually disinclined to believe political hyperbole about secret memos. It is very much like a stupid game played by nine-year olds. This, however, may be different. I think that because it HASN'T leaked. Why hasn't it? I suspect that is because leaking it will NOT hurt Trump. Maybe very much the reverse. Maybe Trump is right. Maybe the memorandum points out pretty clearly that the intelligence community in general and the FBI in particular has in fact been acting directly in a political capacity in an effort to torpedo Trump and got caught at it.
Maybe that bullshit Trump Dossier was in fact used as gospel to get a FISA warrant to allow surveillance of Trump and his people. Maybe they can now prove it. Maybe, just maybe, there have been crimes committed, they were NOT committed by Trump but rather by the pro-Hillary deep state actors, and it can now be proven, or at least clearly demonstrated.
In any event the memorandum is likely to be formally released (not leaked) in the next week or so. Then we will all know what the fuck is going on.
There is a secret memorandum floating around D.C. It has been view by a couple hundred members of congress. Interestingly enough, it has NOT leaked. Not even a little bit.
Andrew McCabe is, or maybe was, the Deputy Director of the FBI. He had already announced plans to retired later this year. He is, allegedly, named specifically as a major bad actor in this secret memo. It has now been announced that he is leaving immediately. This happened one business day after his boss was granted access to this memorandum by the house intelligence committee.
I am usually disinclined to believe political hyperbole about secret memos. It is very much like a stupid game played by nine-year olds. This, however, may be different. I think that because it HASN'T leaked. Why hasn't it? I suspect that is because leaking it will NOT hurt Trump. Maybe very much the reverse. Maybe Trump is right. Maybe the memorandum points out pretty clearly that the intelligence community in general and the FBI in particular has in fact been acting directly in a political capacity in an effort to torpedo Trump and got caught at it.
Maybe that bullshit Trump Dossier was in fact used as gospel to get a FISA warrant to allow surveillance of Trump and his people. Maybe they can now prove it. Maybe, just maybe, there have been crimes committed, they were NOT committed by Trump but rather by the pro-Hillary deep state actors, and it can now be proven, or at least clearly demonstrated.
In any event the memorandum is likely to be formally released (not leaked) in the next week or so. Then we will all know what the fuck is going on.
CHEATING IS VERY MUCH UNGOOD
Even the Appearance of Cheating Is Bad
by Bob Walsh
Jeff Isaacs used to be an Assistant Chief for CalFire out of the Fresno unit. A bit more than a year ago CalFire very nearly ashcanned the whole new Batallion Chief's exam, given in November of 2016. They were going to dump the entire hiring list because it appeared as though Jeff Isaacs helped a home boy cheat on the test.
Isaacs did have a 23 minute phone conversation with a former subordinate shortly after Isaacs learned that he was on the promotion panel. The Candidate, Scott Philips, told an investigator that Isaacs recommended certain areas of study to him in preparation for the upcoming test. Isaacs, now 44, denied it happened.
Phillips was promoted to Captain in 2005. He took the Batallion Chief's test in 2014 and failed. Badly.
There have since been alleged scoring errors attributed to the November 2016 test. People who were told they passed big time were later told that information was in error.
In any event Isaacs was forced to resign last month. Recriminations are still flying.
by Bob Walsh
Jeff Isaacs used to be an Assistant Chief for CalFire out of the Fresno unit. A bit more than a year ago CalFire very nearly ashcanned the whole new Batallion Chief's exam, given in November of 2016. They were going to dump the entire hiring list because it appeared as though Jeff Isaacs helped a home boy cheat on the test.
Isaacs did have a 23 minute phone conversation with a former subordinate shortly after Isaacs learned that he was on the promotion panel. The Candidate, Scott Philips, told an investigator that Isaacs recommended certain areas of study to him in preparation for the upcoming test. Isaacs, now 44, denied it happened.
Phillips was promoted to Captain in 2005. He took the Batallion Chief's test in 2014 and failed. Badly.
There have since been alleged scoring errors attributed to the November 2016 test. People who were told they passed big time were later told that information was in error.
In any event Isaacs was forced to resign last month. Recriminations are still flying.
ANTI-TRUMP TRASH AT THE GRAMMYS
Several recording artists and Hillary Clinton read passages from Michael Wolff’s Trump-trashing book
UN Ambassador Nikki Haley took aim at the Grammys for politicizing the music award show with anti-Trump trash.
The award show had a segment in which several recording artists and Hillary Clinton read passages from Michael Wolff’s book “Fire and Fury.” Wolff’s book was an obvious attempt to destroy the Trump presidency.
Hillary’s passage, which she personally chose to read, was:
“He [Trump] had a longtime fear of being poisoned. One reason why he liked to eat at McDonalds. No one knew he was coming and the food was safely pre-made.”.
The whole Grammy Awards show seemed to have an anti-Trump theme. Trump’s immigration stance was a repeated target.
Referring to the reading from Wolff’s book, Haley tweeted:
“I have always loved the Grammys but to have artists read the Fire and Fury book killed it. Don’t ruin great music with trash. Some of us love music without the politics thrown in it.”
Haley already had a beef with Wolff because near the end of the book he hinted that she had an affair with Trump, something she vehemently denies.
The Trump-trashing at the Grammys just goes to show how obsessed Hollywood and the music industry are with their desire to dump Trump.
UN Ambassador Nikki Haley took aim at the Grammys for politicizing the music award show with anti-Trump trash.
The award show had a segment in which several recording artists and Hillary Clinton read passages from Michael Wolff’s book “Fire and Fury.” Wolff’s book was an obvious attempt to destroy the Trump presidency.
Hillary’s passage, which she personally chose to read, was:
“He [Trump] had a longtime fear of being poisoned. One reason why he liked to eat at McDonalds. No one knew he was coming and the food was safely pre-made.”.
The whole Grammy Awards show seemed to have an anti-Trump theme. Trump’s immigration stance was a repeated target.
Referring to the reading from Wolff’s book, Haley tweeted:
“I have always loved the Grammys but to have artists read the Fire and Fury book killed it. Don’t ruin great music with trash. Some of us love music without the politics thrown in it.”
Haley already had a beef with Wolff because near the end of the book he hinted that she had an affair with Trump, something she vehemently denies.
The Trump-trashing at the Grammys just goes to show how obsessed Hollywood and the music industry are with their desire to dump Trump.
IMPRISONED FOR MURDER, PAROLED, MURDERS AGAIN, ABOUT TO MEET HIS MAKER
Texas set to execute man, 64, who killed his ex-girlfriend and stabbed her 11-year-old son while he was out on parole for murdering his wife
Associated Press and Ashley Collman
Daily Mail
January 29, 2018
Carol Lynn Thomas Hall knew William Rayford had spent time in prison for killing his estranged wife but defended her own relationship with him, telling relatives she believed it was her Christian duty to give the parolee a second chance.
The Dallas woman who ran Sunday school at her church became Rayford's second murder victim in an attack eerily similar to his first killing.
Rayford, 64, is now set to die Tuesday for Hall's 1999 slaying. He will be the nation's second inmate executed this year, both in Texas. Another is set for Thursday in Texas as well.
Attorneys for Rayford are trying to halt his execution, arguing to the U.S. Supreme Court that his death sentence was tainted because his lawyer, while questioning a prison expert during the punishment phase of Rayford's trial in 2000, was deficient for introducing the subject of race and whether race is a factor in prison violence.
The witness also was wrong in testifying the racial makeup of a prison 'is linked to the amount of violence within that unit, and by obvious implication, that people like Mr. Rayford - a black man - are the cause of the violence,' Nadia Wood, a Dallas-based federal public defender, told the high court.
Lawyers also argued in an appeal to a federal judge in Dallas that a federal court earlier improperly denied money for his appeals, that Hall's slaying may not have qualified for a capital murder charge and that Rayford suffered brain damage from lead poisoning because he grew up near a toxic site and carries lead residue from old gunshot wounds.
Prosecutors said arguments about race in the appeal mischaracterized the trial testimony, drew conclusions not supported in the trial record and did not encourage jurors to consider Rayford's race when considering his punishment.
Evidence 'more than established' Rayford kidnapped Hall while trying to kill her, supporting the capital murder charge, and arguments about lead poisoning were based on a 'vague, general and nebulous conclusion' by a defense expert, Jay Clendenin, an assistant Texas attorney general, said in a court filing.
Evidence showed Hall, who knew Rayford since they both grew up in a Dallas housing project, had broken up with him two months earlier. He entered her home in the Oak Cliff area of south Dallas on November 16, 1999, using a key she didn't know he had. Their subsequent argument turned violent. Her son, Benjamin, then 11, was hit on the head and suffered a punctured lung from the stab wound.
Benjamin testified at Rayford's trial how his mother had run from the home with Rayford in pursuit, how Rayford stabbed him in the back while he tried to protect his mom and how he watched as she was carried by Rayford toward the drainage pipe where her body eventually was found.
Benjamin said he was able to find a neighbor.
'I asked her, "could I please go to her house because a man stabbed me,"' he told jurors. 'I couldn't hardly breathe.'
Evidence showed Hall, 44, was beaten, stabbed repeatedly and strangled. Her body was found 300 feet inside the drainage pipe behind her home.
Police responding to a call about the attack arrested Rayford at the scene. His clothing and face was splattered with Hall's blood. He told an officer Hall could be found 'in the hole ... up in the sewer, in the water.'
Rayford in 1986 was convicted of murder for fatally stabbing his estranged wife, Gail Rayford, in front of their four children. She'd obtained a court order four days earlier to keep him away.
Rayford was sentenced to 23 years in prison for her slaying but was released after eight years under a then Texas law that allowed release of some prisoners as the state struggled with prison crowding. He'd been on parole for five years when Hall was killed.
Texas is also slated to executive 62-year-old John David Battaglia on Thursday fo rthe May 2001 shooting deaths of his six- and nine-year-old daughters.
Associated Press and Ashley Collman
Daily Mail
January 29, 2018
Carol Lynn Thomas Hall knew William Rayford had spent time in prison for killing his estranged wife but defended her own relationship with him, telling relatives she believed it was her Christian duty to give the parolee a second chance.
The Dallas woman who ran Sunday school at her church became Rayford's second murder victim in an attack eerily similar to his first killing.
Rayford, 64, is now set to die Tuesday for Hall's 1999 slaying. He will be the nation's second inmate executed this year, both in Texas. Another is set for Thursday in Texas as well.
Attorneys for Rayford are trying to halt his execution, arguing to the U.S. Supreme Court that his death sentence was tainted because his lawyer, while questioning a prison expert during the punishment phase of Rayford's trial in 2000, was deficient for introducing the subject of race and whether race is a factor in prison violence.
The witness also was wrong in testifying the racial makeup of a prison 'is linked to the amount of violence within that unit, and by obvious implication, that people like Mr. Rayford - a black man - are the cause of the violence,' Nadia Wood, a Dallas-based federal public defender, told the high court.
Lawyers also argued in an appeal to a federal judge in Dallas that a federal court earlier improperly denied money for his appeals, that Hall's slaying may not have qualified for a capital murder charge and that Rayford suffered brain damage from lead poisoning because he grew up near a toxic site and carries lead residue from old gunshot wounds.
Prosecutors said arguments about race in the appeal mischaracterized the trial testimony, drew conclusions not supported in the trial record and did not encourage jurors to consider Rayford's race when considering his punishment.
Evidence 'more than established' Rayford kidnapped Hall while trying to kill her, supporting the capital murder charge, and arguments about lead poisoning were based on a 'vague, general and nebulous conclusion' by a defense expert, Jay Clendenin, an assistant Texas attorney general, said in a court filing.
Evidence showed Hall, who knew Rayford since they both grew up in a Dallas housing project, had broken up with him two months earlier. He entered her home in the Oak Cliff area of south Dallas on November 16, 1999, using a key she didn't know he had. Their subsequent argument turned violent. Her son, Benjamin, then 11, was hit on the head and suffered a punctured lung from the stab wound.
Benjamin testified at Rayford's trial how his mother had run from the home with Rayford in pursuit, how Rayford stabbed him in the back while he tried to protect his mom and how he watched as she was carried by Rayford toward the drainage pipe where her body eventually was found.
Benjamin said he was able to find a neighbor.
'I asked her, "could I please go to her house because a man stabbed me,"' he told jurors. 'I couldn't hardly breathe.'
Evidence showed Hall, 44, was beaten, stabbed repeatedly and strangled. Her body was found 300 feet inside the drainage pipe behind her home.
Police responding to a call about the attack arrested Rayford at the scene. His clothing and face was splattered with Hall's blood. He told an officer Hall could be found 'in the hole ... up in the sewer, in the water.'
Rayford in 1986 was convicted of murder for fatally stabbing his estranged wife, Gail Rayford, in front of their four children. She'd obtained a court order four days earlier to keep him away.
Rayford was sentenced to 23 years in prison for her slaying but was released after eight years under a then Texas law that allowed release of some prisoners as the state struggled with prison crowding. He'd been on parole for five years when Hall was killed.
Texas is also slated to executive 62-year-old John David Battaglia on Thursday fo rthe May 2001 shooting deaths of his six- and nine-year-old daughters.
THE PRISON CULTURE THAT IS INGRAINED WITHIN AN INMATE MAKES IT DIFFICULTY FOR HIM TO FUNCTION IN FREE SOCIETY AFTER HE IS RELEASED
California may up its rehab efforts to keep ex-inmates from returning to prison
By Sophia Bollag, CALmatters
Los Angeles Daily News
January 26, 2018
Gov. Jerry Brown wants to add millions in new spending on programs to help former inmates stay out of jail—a proposal generating bipartisan praise because of concern they are returning to prison in large numbers. But some say it still isn’t enough.
The proposed $50 million would expand job training for prisoners and assist them in finding jobs once they are released, such as training them to become firefighters.
The governor’s budget plan also includes $106 million for an existing incentive program that rewards counties for reducing recidivism.
Many supporters say California must invest more to ensure the state’s criminal justice overhaul—which reduced state prison overcrowding by transferring low-level offenders to county jails and local supervision—achieves its goal of keeping ex-inmates from returning to prison.
“The old way of locking people up and throwing away the key clearly hasn’t worked. It’s just led to a lot of costs but not a lot of results,” said Assemblyman Phil Ting, a San Francisco Democrat who chairs the Assembly’s budget committee. But he wants to see more money spent on efforts to prevent people who’ve served their time from committing crimes again, although he declined to give a specific amount.
“What we would love to see this year is perhaps a longer-term investment that may actually help reduce the population because they’re not recidivating anymore,” he said. “It’s an area that we’ve talked a lot about, but I don’t think that we’ve done enough or taken a harder look at what’s working and what’s not working.”
Perhaps the most troubling evidence of what’s not working: Of some 36,000 state inmates released in the most recent year for which state data is available, 46 percent were convicted of crimes again within three years.
“That’s a very miserable number. It indicates that the efforts, as currently constituted, are not being as successful as they need to be,” said Assemblyman Tom Lackey, a Palmdale Republican. He said he was happy to see the governor proposing new spending on anti-recidivism efforts, but plans to introduce legislation to audit rehabilitation programs to determine which are successful.
Experts say it’s difficult to directly compare recidivism rates among states, but California’s rate is considered high, said Mia Bird, a research fellow at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. California’s state prison population is about 130,000. The state’s incarceration rate had been higher than the national average in the past, but it has fallen sharply: Last year California had 334 state inmates for every 100,000 residents.
Part of that dramatic decline was driven by a policy known as realignment, which moved offenders determined to be less serious from state prisons to local jails or back into the community under supervision. Lawmakers made that major switch in 2011 after federal courts ruled California prisons were too overcrowded to provide inmates adequate health care.
Supporters promoted realignment as a way to keep former inmates from reoffending by shifting more responsibility to county officials, who theoretically would understand better than the state what programs their communities need.
But a recent study by Bird and her colleagues found realignment had mixed effects
“Recidivism rates didn’t change much after realignment, so everyone can breathe a sigh of relief that they didn’t go up dramatically,” Bird said. But she acknowledged that recidivism levels are still high and have been for a long time. “In the short run, we might need to spend a bit more money in order to have some long-run gains.”
After realignment kicked in, voters approved two initiatives to further lower incarceration rates by reducing punishment for low-level offenders: Proposition 47 in 2014 and Proposition 57 in 2016. But neither realignment nor the other changes have resulted in the crime reductions or savings supporters promised, said Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert.
Prop. 47, which lessened penalties for lower-level crimes, including some types of theft and illegal drug use, “wreaked havoc” in California, she said, citing what she described as “rampant” and underreported retail theft as evidence the punishments under the law are too lenient to deter crime.
And although realignment successfully reduced the state prison population, it also placed new strain on counties. They’ve received several billion dollars to cover the increased costs to house and supervise more people, but critics say it still isn’t enough to fund needed rehabilitative services.
“We need more resources,” Schubert said. “It’s not a cheap process to help get people back on track, but we have to be willing to invest.”
Brown proposes to spend about $12 billion—9 percent of the state’s general fund—for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in the fiscal year that begins in July. The budget includes more than $130 million to fix roofs, remove mold and update other aspects of aging infrastructure.
Although it’s important for prison facilities to be maintained, money could be better spent on services for former inmates after they leave prison, said John Bauters of Californians for Safety and Justice, a group that advocates for criminal justice reform. The governor’s budget doesn’t make any “dramatic” changes to money spent on rehabilitation programs for inmates, which need to be matched by programs to help people when they re-enter society, Bauters said.
“We’ve got so much money that is being spent right now on prison programs and the reality is that if we actually invest in proven prevention methods and rehabilitative programs, we won’t have the same need to spend that kind of money in the future,” he said.
Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer, who chairs the Assembly Public Safety Committee, also is advocating greater accountability—saying he’ll request a review of rehabilitation programs to ensure the state is investing in ones that work. The Los Angeles Democrat praised the investment in community incentives to lower recidivism rates, saying “I think it’s definitely going to be one of his legacy pieces.”
Prison reform has been a key goal of Brown’s throughout his current term as governor. He championed realignment and Proposition 57, which expands the portion of inmates eligible for parole.
“He’s been telling me for years that he really, really wanted to work on the overcrowding in our prisons,” Jones-Sawyer said. “He really felt for California to have one of the highest incarceration rates in the country, it really bothered him.”
Some have criticized Brown’s approach policies as too soft on crime. State Sen. Jeff Stone blames realignment and other policy changes for what he characterizes as high crime rates in the state. “We are letting too many people out of jail and we aren’t putting enough people in jail or prison,” the Temecula Republican said. “We’re not holding people accountable for their crimes.”
Between now and June, Brown and Democrats who run the Legislature will negotiate a final budget deal. Although the state is expecting a $6 billion surplus this year, Brown has repeated his usual caution to Democratic lawmakers, who typically push for more spending, to save much of that money for a future recession.
But Ting says he sees a key opportunity this year to invest in efforts to stop recidivism. It’s Brown’s final year in office and therefore his last chance to solidify the criminal justice policy changes he oversaw.
“Our hope is that we can find significant common ground in this area,” Ting said. “We want to ensure that every individual who’s in the system, we’re doing everything possible to work with them so they don’t come back.”
CALmatters is a nonpartisan, nonprofit journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters.
By Sophia Bollag, CALmatters
Los Angeles Daily News
January 26, 2018
Gov. Jerry Brown wants to add millions in new spending on programs to help former inmates stay out of jail—a proposal generating bipartisan praise because of concern they are returning to prison in large numbers. But some say it still isn’t enough.
The proposed $50 million would expand job training for prisoners and assist them in finding jobs once they are released, such as training them to become firefighters.
The governor’s budget plan also includes $106 million for an existing incentive program that rewards counties for reducing recidivism.
Many supporters say California must invest more to ensure the state’s criminal justice overhaul—which reduced state prison overcrowding by transferring low-level offenders to county jails and local supervision—achieves its goal of keeping ex-inmates from returning to prison.
“The old way of locking people up and throwing away the key clearly hasn’t worked. It’s just led to a lot of costs but not a lot of results,” said Assemblyman Phil Ting, a San Francisco Democrat who chairs the Assembly’s budget committee. But he wants to see more money spent on efforts to prevent people who’ve served their time from committing crimes again, although he declined to give a specific amount.
“What we would love to see this year is perhaps a longer-term investment that may actually help reduce the population because they’re not recidivating anymore,” he said. “It’s an area that we’ve talked a lot about, but I don’t think that we’ve done enough or taken a harder look at what’s working and what’s not working.”
Perhaps the most troubling evidence of what’s not working: Of some 36,000 state inmates released in the most recent year for which state data is available, 46 percent were convicted of crimes again within three years.
“That’s a very miserable number. It indicates that the efforts, as currently constituted, are not being as successful as they need to be,” said Assemblyman Tom Lackey, a Palmdale Republican. He said he was happy to see the governor proposing new spending on anti-recidivism efforts, but plans to introduce legislation to audit rehabilitation programs to determine which are successful.
Experts say it’s difficult to directly compare recidivism rates among states, but California’s rate is considered high, said Mia Bird, a research fellow at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. California’s state prison population is about 130,000. The state’s incarceration rate had been higher than the national average in the past, but it has fallen sharply: Last year California had 334 state inmates for every 100,000 residents.
Part of that dramatic decline was driven by a policy known as realignment, which moved offenders determined to be less serious from state prisons to local jails or back into the community under supervision. Lawmakers made that major switch in 2011 after federal courts ruled California prisons were too overcrowded to provide inmates adequate health care.
Supporters promoted realignment as a way to keep former inmates from reoffending by shifting more responsibility to county officials, who theoretically would understand better than the state what programs their communities need.
But a recent study by Bird and her colleagues found realignment had mixed effects
“Recidivism rates didn’t change much after realignment, so everyone can breathe a sigh of relief that they didn’t go up dramatically,” Bird said. But she acknowledged that recidivism levels are still high and have been for a long time. “In the short run, we might need to spend a bit more money in order to have some long-run gains.”
After realignment kicked in, voters approved two initiatives to further lower incarceration rates by reducing punishment for low-level offenders: Proposition 47 in 2014 and Proposition 57 in 2016. But neither realignment nor the other changes have resulted in the crime reductions or savings supporters promised, said Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert.
Prop. 47, which lessened penalties for lower-level crimes, including some types of theft and illegal drug use, “wreaked havoc” in California, she said, citing what she described as “rampant” and underreported retail theft as evidence the punishments under the law are too lenient to deter crime.
And although realignment successfully reduced the state prison population, it also placed new strain on counties. They’ve received several billion dollars to cover the increased costs to house and supervise more people, but critics say it still isn’t enough to fund needed rehabilitative services.
“We need more resources,” Schubert said. “It’s not a cheap process to help get people back on track, but we have to be willing to invest.”
Brown proposes to spend about $12 billion—9 percent of the state’s general fund—for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in the fiscal year that begins in July. The budget includes more than $130 million to fix roofs, remove mold and update other aspects of aging infrastructure.
Although it’s important for prison facilities to be maintained, money could be better spent on services for former inmates after they leave prison, said John Bauters of Californians for Safety and Justice, a group that advocates for criminal justice reform. The governor’s budget doesn’t make any “dramatic” changes to money spent on rehabilitation programs for inmates, which need to be matched by programs to help people when they re-enter society, Bauters said.
“We’ve got so much money that is being spent right now on prison programs and the reality is that if we actually invest in proven prevention methods and rehabilitative programs, we won’t have the same need to spend that kind of money in the future,” he said.
Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer, who chairs the Assembly Public Safety Committee, also is advocating greater accountability—saying he’ll request a review of rehabilitation programs to ensure the state is investing in ones that work. The Los Angeles Democrat praised the investment in community incentives to lower recidivism rates, saying “I think it’s definitely going to be one of his legacy pieces.”
Prison reform has been a key goal of Brown’s throughout his current term as governor. He championed realignment and Proposition 57, which expands the portion of inmates eligible for parole.
“He’s been telling me for years that he really, really wanted to work on the overcrowding in our prisons,” Jones-Sawyer said. “He really felt for California to have one of the highest incarceration rates in the country, it really bothered him.”
Some have criticized Brown’s approach policies as too soft on crime. State Sen. Jeff Stone blames realignment and other policy changes for what he characterizes as high crime rates in the state. “We are letting too many people out of jail and we aren’t putting enough people in jail or prison,” the Temecula Republican said. “We’re not holding people accountable for their crimes.”
Between now and June, Brown and Democrats who run the Legislature will negotiate a final budget deal. Although the state is expecting a $6 billion surplus this year, Brown has repeated his usual caution to Democratic lawmakers, who typically push for more spending, to save much of that money for a future recession.
But Ting says he sees a key opportunity this year to invest in efforts to stop recidivism. It’s Brown’s final year in office and therefore his last chance to solidify the criminal justice policy changes he oversaw.
“Our hope is that we can find significant common ground in this area,” Ting said. “We want to ensure that every individual who’s in the system, we’re doing everything possible to work with them so they don’t come back.”
CALmatters is a nonpartisan, nonprofit journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters.
POLAND ACTIVELY AND WILLINGLY COLLABORATED WITH THE NAZIS
Polish legislation absolving Poland of Holocaust crimes sparks ire \\
By Eldad Beck, Shlomo Cesana and Gideon Allon
Israel Hayom
January 28, 2018
Israel on Saturday called on Poland to amend a bill approved this week by Polish lawmakers that would make it illegal to suggest Poland bore any responsibility for crimes against humanity committed by Nazi Germany on its soil.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he instructed his ambassador to meet with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki to express Israel's dismay at the bill, which would make using phrases like "Polish death camps" punishable by up to three years in prison.
"The law is baseless; I strongly oppose it. Poland cannot change history and the Holocaust cannot be denied. I have instructed Israel's ambassador to Poland to meet with the Polish prime minister this evening and express to him my strong position against the law," Netanyahu said in a statement.
President Reuven Rivlin, noting that exactly 73 years had passed since the Auschwitz death camp on Polish soil was liberated, quoted a former Polish president's remarks on how history could not be faked and the truth could not be hidden.
"The Jewish people, the State of Israel and the entire world must ensure that the Holocaust is recognized for its horrors and atrocities. Among the Polish people, there were those who aided the Nazis in their crimes. Every crime, every offense, must be condemned. They must be examined and exposed," Rivlin said.
The lower house of the Polish parliament on Friday passed the bill, but it still needs the approval from Poland's Senate and president. However, it marks a dramatic step by the country's current nationalist government to target anyone who tries to undermine its official stance that Poles were heroes during the war, not Nazi collaborators who committed heinous crimes.
Poland's Deputy Justice Minister Patryk Jaki, who authored the bill, also took to Twitter to say the legislation was not directed against Israel.
"Important Israeli politicians and media are attacking us for the bill ... On top of that they claim that Poles are 'co-responsible' for the Holocaust," he said, adding that "this is proof how necessary this bill is."
The Polish government said the bill did not aim to limit freedom to research or discuss the Holocaust or to restrict freedom of artistic activity related to the issue.
Poles have fought for years against the use of phrases like "Polish death camps," which suggest the Polish state was at least partly responsible for the camps where millions of people, mostly Jews, were killed by Nazi Germany. The camps were built and operated by the Nazis after they invaded Poland in 1939.
At Auschwitz, at a ceremony marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Israeli Ambassador to Poland Anna Azari abandoned a prepared speech to criticize the bill, saying that "everyone in Israel was revolted by this news."
But Morawiecki, who also spoke at the ceremony, stressed that Poles helped Jews while risking their own lives, noting that some 7,000 had been recognized by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. He further suggested that the Polish sacrifices have not been adequately acknowledged.
"Jews, Poles, and all victims should be guardians of the memory of all who were murdered by German Nazis. Auschwitz-Birkenau is not a Polish name, and Arbeit Macht Frei [work sets you free] is not a Polish phrase," Morawiecki said later on Twitter, referring to the slogan appearing on the gate at Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said the deputy Polish ambassador to Israel had been summoned for a clarification.
Netanyahu, who is acting foreign minister, has yet to decide whether to summon Azari back from Warsaw for consultations or take steps against Poland on the matter, a ministry official said.
In a sign of the sensitivities on both sides, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, the son of a survivor, got into a heated Twitter spat Saturday with the Polish Embassy in Israel.
"I utterly condemn the new Polish law which tries to deny Polish complicity in the Holocaust. It was conceived in Germany but hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered without ever meeting a German soldier. There were Polish death camps and no law can ever change that," Lapid wrote.
That sparked the embassy to respond: "Your unsupportable claims show how badly Holocaust education is needed, even here in Israel."
"My grandmother was murdered in Poland by Germans and Poles," Lapid retorted. "I don't need Holocaust education from you. We live with the consequences every day in our collective memory. Your embassy should offer an immediate apology."
To which the embassy responded: "Shameless."
Today's Poles have been raised on stories of their people's wartime suffering and heroism. Many react viscerally when confronted with the growing body of scholarship about Polish involvement in the killing of Jews.
The Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum said it opposed the bill, even though it said Poland was justified in objecting to the term "Polish death camps," which it called a misrepresentation.
"Restrictions on statements by scholars and others regarding the Polish people's direct or indirect complicity with the crimes committed on their land during the Holocaust are a serious distortion," Yad Vashem said.
For decades, Polish society avoided discussing the killing of Jews by civilians or denied that anti-Semitism motivated the slayings, blaming all atrocities on the Germans.
A turning point was the publication in 2000 of "Neighbors," a book by Polish-American sociologist Jan Tomasz Gross, which explored the murder of Jews by their Polish neighbors in the village of Jedwabne. The book resulted in widespread soul-searching and official state apologies.
But since the conservative and nationalistic Law and Justice party consolidated power in 2015, it has sought to stamp out discussions and research on the topic. It demonized Gross and investigated whether he had slandered Poland by asserting that Poles killed more Jews than they killed Germans during the war.
Holocaust researchers have collected ample evidence of Polish villagers who murdered Jews fleeing the Nazis. According to one scholar at Yad Vashem, of the 160,000 to 250,000 Jews who escaped and sought help from fellow Poles, only 10-20% survived. The rest were rejected, informed upon or killed by rural Poles, Tel Aviv University scholar Havi Dreifuss has found.
Polish government spokeswoman Joanna Kopcinska wrote on Twitter that the legislation aimed "to show the truth about the terrible crimes committed on Poles, Jews, and other nations that were in the 20th century victims of brutal totalitarian regimes - German Nazi regime and Soviet communism."
__________
POLISH ATROCITIES CANNOT BE ERASED
BY Chaim Kozienicki
Even 73 years removed from the war, the Poles, it seems, were and still are anti-Semites. I was 11 years old when the war broke out and at 12 I entered the Lodz Ghetto. The Poles would snitch to the Germans about who was Jewish, willingly pointing us out to turn us in to the German soldiers.
They had a sixth sense about who was Jewish or not. One night, I was waiting with my brother in the bread line. When I was second in line, one of the Poles called to a German soldier and pointed at me, he said "Jude!" in German. The soldier pulled me out of the line, kicked me in the behind and I returned home without bread. From the Lodz Ghetto we were transferred to Auschwitz and from there to the Stutthof concentration camp until our liberation.
The Polish law in question is preposterous. The Poles were full partners with the Nazis. Like former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said back in the day: The Poles suck anti-Semitism with their mothers' milk. Even in the first grade I remember my Polish classmates shouting "Jews to Palestine, Jews out."
The crime the Poles committed against the Jewish people cannot be erased with a stupid law. History recounts different facts. They took the Jews' property and belongings and the only thing they gave back after the war were the synagogues. The Poles were cruel to Jews who tried returning to their homes, many times killing them. That was after the war. Over 1,000 people were murdered at the hands of Poles after the war, completely irrespective of the German extermination camps.
I first heard about this ridiculous and demented law around a year and a half after the current Polish regime ascended to power. With or without the law, they cannot shed responsibility for their crimes – Poland actively, willingly collaborated with the Germans. People tend to associate Auschwitz with Germany because it was a Nazi concentration camp, but it was on Polish soil.
Today, as a living witness who tells his story to students, I often travel to Poland and feel the anti-Semitism. I know their language, I look like one of them, and they don't know I am Jewish. I hear their anti-Semitic undertones. To this day I can still hear the mother admonishing her son who doesn't want to eat: "I'll sell you to the Jews or the Gypsies." But I go back there, time and again, because giving testimony is important.
Despite their best efforts to bury their Nazi past – they cannot outrun history. Just last month I was at Yad Vashem speaking to Polish army colonels; I told them, in their own language, my life story and how we suffered from the anti-Semitism their country, about the wrongs done to us. They admitted it was all true. They bowed their heads. So now what, will these colonels be arrested? I delivered a similar speech in Poland in front of the mayor of Lodz. Will those who listened to me in humiliated silence now be arrested as well? It is absurd.
Because they won't ever be able to erase the horrors they perpetrated, not while Holocaust survivors are still alive, and not as long there are Jews in the world who can tell the story.
EDITOR’S NOTE: So, some 7,000 Poles have been recognized by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. My hat is off to the Poles who risked imprisonment by hiding Jews from the Nazis. But this fails to take into account that Poles by the tens-of-thousands eagerly pointed out Jews to the Nazis and helped the SS round them up for shipment to the Polish Death Camps. And Poland’s government collaborated with the Nazis by having its police assist in the roundup.
By Eldad Beck, Shlomo Cesana and Gideon Allon
Israel Hayom
January 28, 2018
Israel on Saturday called on Poland to amend a bill approved this week by Polish lawmakers that would make it illegal to suggest Poland bore any responsibility for crimes against humanity committed by Nazi Germany on its soil.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he instructed his ambassador to meet with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki to express Israel's dismay at the bill, which would make using phrases like "Polish death camps" punishable by up to three years in prison.
"The law is baseless; I strongly oppose it. Poland cannot change history and the Holocaust cannot be denied. I have instructed Israel's ambassador to Poland to meet with the Polish prime minister this evening and express to him my strong position against the law," Netanyahu said in a statement.
President Reuven Rivlin, noting that exactly 73 years had passed since the Auschwitz death camp on Polish soil was liberated, quoted a former Polish president's remarks on how history could not be faked and the truth could not be hidden.
"The Jewish people, the State of Israel and the entire world must ensure that the Holocaust is recognized for its horrors and atrocities. Among the Polish people, there were those who aided the Nazis in their crimes. Every crime, every offense, must be condemned. They must be examined and exposed," Rivlin said.
The lower house of the Polish parliament on Friday passed the bill, but it still needs the approval from Poland's Senate and president. However, it marks a dramatic step by the country's current nationalist government to target anyone who tries to undermine its official stance that Poles were heroes during the war, not Nazi collaborators who committed heinous crimes.
Poland's Deputy Justice Minister Patryk Jaki, who authored the bill, also took to Twitter to say the legislation was not directed against Israel.
"Important Israeli politicians and media are attacking us for the bill ... On top of that they claim that Poles are 'co-responsible' for the Holocaust," he said, adding that "this is proof how necessary this bill is."
The Polish government said the bill did not aim to limit freedom to research or discuss the Holocaust or to restrict freedom of artistic activity related to the issue.
Poles have fought for years against the use of phrases like "Polish death camps," which suggest the Polish state was at least partly responsible for the camps where millions of people, mostly Jews, were killed by Nazi Germany. The camps were built and operated by the Nazis after they invaded Poland in 1939.
At Auschwitz, at a ceremony marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Israeli Ambassador to Poland Anna Azari abandoned a prepared speech to criticize the bill, saying that "everyone in Israel was revolted by this news."
But Morawiecki, who also spoke at the ceremony, stressed that Poles helped Jews while risking their own lives, noting that some 7,000 had been recognized by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. He further suggested that the Polish sacrifices have not been adequately acknowledged.
"Jews, Poles, and all victims should be guardians of the memory of all who were murdered by German Nazis. Auschwitz-Birkenau is not a Polish name, and Arbeit Macht Frei [work sets you free] is not a Polish phrase," Morawiecki said later on Twitter, referring to the slogan appearing on the gate at Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said the deputy Polish ambassador to Israel had been summoned for a clarification.
Netanyahu, who is acting foreign minister, has yet to decide whether to summon Azari back from Warsaw for consultations or take steps against Poland on the matter, a ministry official said.
In a sign of the sensitivities on both sides, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, the son of a survivor, got into a heated Twitter spat Saturday with the Polish Embassy in Israel.
"I utterly condemn the new Polish law which tries to deny Polish complicity in the Holocaust. It was conceived in Germany but hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered without ever meeting a German soldier. There were Polish death camps and no law can ever change that," Lapid wrote.
That sparked the embassy to respond: "Your unsupportable claims show how badly Holocaust education is needed, even here in Israel."
"My grandmother was murdered in Poland by Germans and Poles," Lapid retorted. "I don't need Holocaust education from you. We live with the consequences every day in our collective memory. Your embassy should offer an immediate apology."
To which the embassy responded: "Shameless."
Today's Poles have been raised on stories of their people's wartime suffering and heroism. Many react viscerally when confronted with the growing body of scholarship about Polish involvement in the killing of Jews.
The Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum said it opposed the bill, even though it said Poland was justified in objecting to the term "Polish death camps," which it called a misrepresentation.
"Restrictions on statements by scholars and others regarding the Polish people's direct or indirect complicity with the crimes committed on their land during the Holocaust are a serious distortion," Yad Vashem said.
For decades, Polish society avoided discussing the killing of Jews by civilians or denied that anti-Semitism motivated the slayings, blaming all atrocities on the Germans.
A turning point was the publication in 2000 of "Neighbors," a book by Polish-American sociologist Jan Tomasz Gross, which explored the murder of Jews by their Polish neighbors in the village of Jedwabne. The book resulted in widespread soul-searching and official state apologies.
But since the conservative and nationalistic Law and Justice party consolidated power in 2015, it has sought to stamp out discussions and research on the topic. It demonized Gross and investigated whether he had slandered Poland by asserting that Poles killed more Jews than they killed Germans during the war.
Holocaust researchers have collected ample evidence of Polish villagers who murdered Jews fleeing the Nazis. According to one scholar at Yad Vashem, of the 160,000 to 250,000 Jews who escaped and sought help from fellow Poles, only 10-20% survived. The rest were rejected, informed upon or killed by rural Poles, Tel Aviv University scholar Havi Dreifuss has found.
Polish government spokeswoman Joanna Kopcinska wrote on Twitter that the legislation aimed "to show the truth about the terrible crimes committed on Poles, Jews, and other nations that were in the 20th century victims of brutal totalitarian regimes - German Nazi regime and Soviet communism."
__________
POLISH ATROCITIES CANNOT BE ERASED
BY Chaim Kozienicki
Even 73 years removed from the war, the Poles, it seems, were and still are anti-Semites. I was 11 years old when the war broke out and at 12 I entered the Lodz Ghetto. The Poles would snitch to the Germans about who was Jewish, willingly pointing us out to turn us in to the German soldiers.
They had a sixth sense about who was Jewish or not. One night, I was waiting with my brother in the bread line. When I was second in line, one of the Poles called to a German soldier and pointed at me, he said "Jude!" in German. The soldier pulled me out of the line, kicked me in the behind and I returned home without bread. From the Lodz Ghetto we were transferred to Auschwitz and from there to the Stutthof concentration camp until our liberation.
The Polish law in question is preposterous. The Poles were full partners with the Nazis. Like former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said back in the day: The Poles suck anti-Semitism with their mothers' milk. Even in the first grade I remember my Polish classmates shouting "Jews to Palestine, Jews out."
The crime the Poles committed against the Jewish people cannot be erased with a stupid law. History recounts different facts. They took the Jews' property and belongings and the only thing they gave back after the war were the synagogues. The Poles were cruel to Jews who tried returning to their homes, many times killing them. That was after the war. Over 1,000 people were murdered at the hands of Poles after the war, completely irrespective of the German extermination camps.
I first heard about this ridiculous and demented law around a year and a half after the current Polish regime ascended to power. With or without the law, they cannot shed responsibility for their crimes – Poland actively, willingly collaborated with the Germans. People tend to associate Auschwitz with Germany because it was a Nazi concentration camp, but it was on Polish soil.
Today, as a living witness who tells his story to students, I often travel to Poland and feel the anti-Semitism. I know their language, I look like one of them, and they don't know I am Jewish. I hear their anti-Semitic undertones. To this day I can still hear the mother admonishing her son who doesn't want to eat: "I'll sell you to the Jews or the Gypsies." But I go back there, time and again, because giving testimony is important.
Despite their best efforts to bury their Nazi past – they cannot outrun history. Just last month I was at Yad Vashem speaking to Polish army colonels; I told them, in their own language, my life story and how we suffered from the anti-Semitism their country, about the wrongs done to us. They admitted it was all true. They bowed their heads. So now what, will these colonels be arrested? I delivered a similar speech in Poland in front of the mayor of Lodz. Will those who listened to me in humiliated silence now be arrested as well? It is absurd.
Because they won't ever be able to erase the horrors they perpetrated, not while Holocaust survivors are still alive, and not as long there are Jews in the world who can tell the story.
EDITOR’S NOTE: So, some 7,000 Poles have been recognized by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. My hat is off to the Poles who risked imprisonment by hiding Jews from the Nazis. But this fails to take into account that Poles by the tens-of-thousands eagerly pointed out Jews to the Nazis and helped the SS round them up for shipment to the Polish Death Camps. And Poland’s government collaborated with the Nazis by having its police assist in the roundup.
Monday, January 29, 2018
HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE
by Bob Walsh
Robby Anderson, 24, is a receiver for the New York Jets. On Friday he was stopped by the cops doing 105 in a 45 zone and driving erratically. He was finally stopped and placed under arrest. He resisted being placed in the police car and informed the arresting officer that he was going to find his wife and "fuck her in the eye" as soon as he got out of jail. He made other threats towards the officer and his family. He also made a point of telling the officer how much money he had and how angry he was at the officer for "ruining his fun."
Last May Anderson was arrested for assaulting an officer at a music festival.
Anderson is facing several felony charges in this matter, including threating the officer's family, which is a crime in Florida. Considering his prior from last year I wonder how much bail he will face, and what, if anything, his employer will have to say.
Robby Anderson, 24, is a receiver for the New York Jets. On Friday he was stopped by the cops doing 105 in a 45 zone and driving erratically. He was finally stopped and placed under arrest. He resisted being placed in the police car and informed the arresting officer that he was going to find his wife and "fuck her in the eye" as soon as he got out of jail. He made other threats towards the officer and his family. He also made a point of telling the officer how much money he had and how angry he was at the officer for "ruining his fun."
Last May Anderson was arrested for assaulting an officer at a music festival.
Anderson is facing several felony charges in this matter, including threating the officer's family, which is a crime in Florida. Considering his prior from last year I wonder how much bail he will face, and what, if anything, his employer will have to say.
KEN STARR ARGUES TRUMP NOT OBSTRCTING JUSTICE
But the special counsel during the Clinton presidency considers lying to the American people by the president is a serious issue that has to be explored
Here is a transcript from Sunday’s ABC This Week in which host Martha Raddatz interviewed former special counsel Ken Starr and ABC’s chief legal analyst Dan Abrams:
RADDATZ: Now let's turn back to the Mueller investigation and bring in Ken Starr, who served as the independent counsel who investigated Bill Clinton, and ABC News chief legal analyst Dan Abrams.
I want to start with you, Mr. Starr. Do these revelations make an obstruction of justice charge more likely?
KEN STARR, FORMER INDEPENDENT COUNSEL: I don't think so. The president has every -- and Senator Graham said it very well. He can fire Jim Comey or he can ask for Mueller to be fired for any reason. I have a different view in terms of what would constitute obstruction of justice. The president's power is extremely broad, as long as he's not engaged in discrimination or accepting bribes and the like.
I have a very different perspective and much more robust view of presidential power than many of the folks who have been speaking to this. But that having been said, it would have been extremely unwise -- and Senator Graham once again hit the nail on the head.
It would have signaled all -- it would have been Armageddon. So I’m very glad that the president took Don McGhan’s -- if -- if -- if the story is true, took the advice. This -- the president is not just frustrated, as Senator Graham said, he’s a fighter. His instinct is to fight. If you’re an enemy -- and I’m afraid that’s the way he intends to view Mr. Mueller or at least some of the people around Mr. Mueller -- then he’s going to -- he’s going to fight. He’s going to lash out.
The question is does that really constitute a crime. And I don’t think so.
RADDATZ: OK, I know that the prosecutors would have to show corrupt intent, so I don’t understand why this doesn’t show that. Explain that.
STARR: He’s very open about it. I don’t like this guy. (inaudible) he just said (ph) look, he’s trying to ruin my presidency. I have the right to engage in self defense. I don’t see that as corrupt. I just don’t. Corruption -- in fact, no one’s suggested, to my knowledge, that Richard Nixon engaged in a crime by firing Archibald Cox. He did engage in crimes.
Obstruction of justice, but that had to do with hush money and the like. There’s no suggestion of that. We just have a Trump Tower set of ethics here and that is what we’re seeing in the president. I hope that he will control that more in the remaining years of his term. But I think we’re seeing here business tactics. I just don’t see the corruption. He’s so transparent. He tells everyone look, I want to get rid of this guy.
He’s a -- you know, he’s a thorn in my flesh.
RADDATZ: OK, Dan Abrams. I know you’re shaking your head. I -- I tend to think you don’t agree with that.
DAN ABRAMS, CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS ANCHOR, ABC NEWS: Yes. I mean, the question isn’t does firing Robert Mueller -- would firing Robert Mueller be a crime. That’s not the question. The question is would firing Robert Mueller -- does trying to fire Robert Mueller potentially become a piece in an obstruction case. You put that together, potentially, with the firing of James Comey.
Why? These conversations that he had with the director of the CIA, the director of National Intelligence, at the time, the director of the FBI. And if the goal in all of those cases was simply to end the investigation on him and his campaign, that’s a different issue. So I think to just simply say in a vacuum, "The president can fire or order the firing of Robert Mueller if he so chooses, that’s not a crime." That’s true but it’s also not the relevant question here.
RADDATZ: Mr. Starr, what about that pattern of behavior? We’ve been talking about that all morning.
STARR: I think the pattern is totally consistent with I don’t like the guy. He is in my face and I just don’t see that as corruption. And I don’t think that those who have been saying this is obstruction of justice have come forward with persuasive authority and have not addressed what I view as a fundamental question, the power of the presidency. Now, the power of the presidency has a huge check.
I don’t think it should be the criminal (ph) law unless there’s bribery and that sort of thing. It should be the Congress of the United States. We wildly over-criminalize and I just disagree. I have great respect for Dan, but I just disagree with this whole approach of let’s criminalize everything.
ABRAMS: But it’s not even about --
(CROSSTALK)
ABRAMS: It’s the same thing that you did when you were the independent counsel, right? I mean, you basically created articles of impeachment based on law. I’m not saying that should happen here. Right? We have to wait and see. But you basically created a series of articles of impeachment based on legal standards and you said, "This is where I think the law was violated."
So it’s inevitably combined when you’re talking about what the legal standard is and what the potential impact would be. And I think to simply suggest that the president can fire these people for whatever reason he wants isn’t the standard that you yourself would apply.
STARR: Dan, with all due respect, re-read the referral. I drafted no articles of impeachment, for starters. But the referral that we made with respect to President Clinton had to do with perjury and intimidating witnesses or encouraging witnesses to lie. Now, if we’re talking about encouraging witnesses to lie, then we have -- in (ph) a lawsuit. There’s been no lawsuit that I know about. This was an interference with exactly what Senator Graham was talking about.
Namely, the rule of law. I think what we’re talking about here is something entirely different. It’s a horse of a different color. And --
RADDATZ: Mr. Starr -- Mr. Starr, I want to -- I want to jump in, here. I want to ask you about -- you talked about lying, you talked about President Clinton. I want to ask you about President Trump’s public denial that he’d -- he had even thought of firing Robert Mueller.
One of the reasons you cited is grounds for impeachment against President Clinton was Clinton’s public denials of having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. You wrote the president made and caused to be made false statements to the American people about his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky by publicly and emphatically stating in January 1998 that I did not have sexual relations with that woman, and these allegations are false.
The president also effectively delayed a possible congressional inquiry. This represents substantial and credible (ph) information that may constitute grounds for an impeachment. If the reports are correct that President Trump sought to have Mueller fired, then his public denial would be false.
So would that be grounds for impeachment?
STARR: I think lying to the American people is a serious issue that has to be explored. I take lying to the American people very, very seriously. So absolutely, I think – what Dan was talking about was this effort to get rid of the investigation.
You’re now talking about something called lying to the American people, and I think that is something that Bob Mueller should look at.
RADDATZ: Dan, a final though?
ABRAMS: Yes, I mean I just can’t imagine that – that Mr. Starr doesn’t believe that there is some sort of investigation on a president that if that president wanted to end it, just for that reason, that he wouldn’t say that’s a potential legal slash potential impeachment problem.
There has to be a level which you can reach where you say the president isn’t allowed to just end investigations into him just because that’s presidential power.
RADDATZ: OK, we’re going to have to leave it there.
STARR: Dan – no, but Dan –
RADDATZ: Very quickly, go ahead.
STARR: Dan has made my point. Dan has made my point. We’re talking about impeachment, we’re not talking about the court house. That’s my distinction.
RADDATZ: OK, thanks very much to both of you.
Here is a transcript from Sunday’s ABC This Week in which host Martha Raddatz interviewed former special counsel Ken Starr and ABC’s chief legal analyst Dan Abrams:
RADDATZ: Now let's turn back to the Mueller investigation and bring in Ken Starr, who served as the independent counsel who investigated Bill Clinton, and ABC News chief legal analyst Dan Abrams.
I want to start with you, Mr. Starr. Do these revelations make an obstruction of justice charge more likely?
KEN STARR, FORMER INDEPENDENT COUNSEL: I don't think so. The president has every -- and Senator Graham said it very well. He can fire Jim Comey or he can ask for Mueller to be fired for any reason. I have a different view in terms of what would constitute obstruction of justice. The president's power is extremely broad, as long as he's not engaged in discrimination or accepting bribes and the like.
I have a very different perspective and much more robust view of presidential power than many of the folks who have been speaking to this. But that having been said, it would have been extremely unwise -- and Senator Graham once again hit the nail on the head.
It would have signaled all -- it would have been Armageddon. So I’m very glad that the president took Don McGhan’s -- if -- if -- if the story is true, took the advice. This -- the president is not just frustrated, as Senator Graham said, he’s a fighter. His instinct is to fight. If you’re an enemy -- and I’m afraid that’s the way he intends to view Mr. Mueller or at least some of the people around Mr. Mueller -- then he’s going to -- he’s going to fight. He’s going to lash out.
The question is does that really constitute a crime. And I don’t think so.
RADDATZ: OK, I know that the prosecutors would have to show corrupt intent, so I don’t understand why this doesn’t show that. Explain that.
STARR: He’s very open about it. I don’t like this guy. (inaudible) he just said (ph) look, he’s trying to ruin my presidency. I have the right to engage in self defense. I don’t see that as corrupt. I just don’t. Corruption -- in fact, no one’s suggested, to my knowledge, that Richard Nixon engaged in a crime by firing Archibald Cox. He did engage in crimes.
Obstruction of justice, but that had to do with hush money and the like. There’s no suggestion of that. We just have a Trump Tower set of ethics here and that is what we’re seeing in the president. I hope that he will control that more in the remaining years of his term. But I think we’re seeing here business tactics. I just don’t see the corruption. He’s so transparent. He tells everyone look, I want to get rid of this guy.
He’s a -- you know, he’s a thorn in my flesh.
RADDATZ: OK, Dan Abrams. I know you’re shaking your head. I -- I tend to think you don’t agree with that.
DAN ABRAMS, CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS ANCHOR, ABC NEWS: Yes. I mean, the question isn’t does firing Robert Mueller -- would firing Robert Mueller be a crime. That’s not the question. The question is would firing Robert Mueller -- does trying to fire Robert Mueller potentially become a piece in an obstruction case. You put that together, potentially, with the firing of James Comey.
Why? These conversations that he had with the director of the CIA, the director of National Intelligence, at the time, the director of the FBI. And if the goal in all of those cases was simply to end the investigation on him and his campaign, that’s a different issue. So I think to just simply say in a vacuum, "The president can fire or order the firing of Robert Mueller if he so chooses, that’s not a crime." That’s true but it’s also not the relevant question here.
RADDATZ: Mr. Starr, what about that pattern of behavior? We’ve been talking about that all morning.
STARR: I think the pattern is totally consistent with I don’t like the guy. He is in my face and I just don’t see that as corruption. And I don’t think that those who have been saying this is obstruction of justice have come forward with persuasive authority and have not addressed what I view as a fundamental question, the power of the presidency. Now, the power of the presidency has a huge check.
I don’t think it should be the criminal (ph) law unless there’s bribery and that sort of thing. It should be the Congress of the United States. We wildly over-criminalize and I just disagree. I have great respect for Dan, but I just disagree with this whole approach of let’s criminalize everything.
ABRAMS: But it’s not even about --
(CROSSTALK)
ABRAMS: It’s the same thing that you did when you were the independent counsel, right? I mean, you basically created articles of impeachment based on law. I’m not saying that should happen here. Right? We have to wait and see. But you basically created a series of articles of impeachment based on legal standards and you said, "This is where I think the law was violated."
So it’s inevitably combined when you’re talking about what the legal standard is and what the potential impact would be. And I think to simply suggest that the president can fire these people for whatever reason he wants isn’t the standard that you yourself would apply.
STARR: Dan, with all due respect, re-read the referral. I drafted no articles of impeachment, for starters. But the referral that we made with respect to President Clinton had to do with perjury and intimidating witnesses or encouraging witnesses to lie. Now, if we’re talking about encouraging witnesses to lie, then we have -- in (ph) a lawsuit. There’s been no lawsuit that I know about. This was an interference with exactly what Senator Graham was talking about.
Namely, the rule of law. I think what we’re talking about here is something entirely different. It’s a horse of a different color. And --
RADDATZ: Mr. Starr -- Mr. Starr, I want to -- I want to jump in, here. I want to ask you about -- you talked about lying, you talked about President Clinton. I want to ask you about President Trump’s public denial that he’d -- he had even thought of firing Robert Mueller.
One of the reasons you cited is grounds for impeachment against President Clinton was Clinton’s public denials of having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. You wrote the president made and caused to be made false statements to the American people about his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky by publicly and emphatically stating in January 1998 that I did not have sexual relations with that woman, and these allegations are false.
The president also effectively delayed a possible congressional inquiry. This represents substantial and credible (ph) information that may constitute grounds for an impeachment. If the reports are correct that President Trump sought to have Mueller fired, then his public denial would be false.
So would that be grounds for impeachment?
STARR: I think lying to the American people is a serious issue that has to be explored. I take lying to the American people very, very seriously. So absolutely, I think – what Dan was talking about was this effort to get rid of the investigation.
You’re now talking about something called lying to the American people, and I think that is something that Bob Mueller should look at.
RADDATZ: Dan, a final though?
ABRAMS: Yes, I mean I just can’t imagine that – that Mr. Starr doesn’t believe that there is some sort of investigation on a president that if that president wanted to end it, just for that reason, that he wouldn’t say that’s a potential legal slash potential impeachment problem.
There has to be a level which you can reach where you say the president isn’t allowed to just end investigations into him just because that’s presidential power.
RADDATZ: OK, we’re going to have to leave it there.
STARR: Dan – no, but Dan –
RADDATZ: Very quickly, go ahead.
STARR: Dan has made my point. Dan has made my point. We’re talking about impeachment, we’re not talking about the court house. That’s my distinction.
RADDATZ: OK, thanks very much to both of you.
PARENTS OUTRAGED BECAUSE COPS HANDCUFFED THEIR 7-YEAR-OLD SON
Miami schoolboy, 7, repeatedly attacked his teacher
WSVN
January 26, 2018
MIAMI -- Police took a 7-year-old boy away in handcuffs from a school in Miami after, they said, he attacked a teacher, leaving his parents distraught about the way authorities and school officials handled the situation.
Cellphone footage shows the child in handcuffs after the alleged attack. His mother was brought to tears at the sight.
“I feel like my heart is broken,” said the boy’s mother, Mercy Alvarez.
“I was in shock. Shock,” said his father, Rolando Fuentes.
School police said it all started at the Coral Way K-8 Center in Miami, Thursday morning.
The boy had been taken out of the cafeteria for playing with his food, and that’s when, according to the report, he “attacked the teacher by repeatedly punching her on her back, in the hallway.”
Once the child was restrained, the report said, the child continued to fight the female teacher with his fists and legs. The two then fell to the ground, but it didn’t end there.
The report said, while they were on the ground, the student continued to fight the teacher, “grabbing her hair and pulling it towards him” before he was restrained once again.
The child eventually calmed down and was taken to the principal’s office.
The teacher told police that she wanted to press charges.
“Says he’s a danger to society. I said, ‘What? Seven years old? A danger to society?'” said Fuentes.
The boy’s parents have a problem with what happened after incident.
They said they came to the school to talk to the principal and counselors and agreed that their son would be suspended for 10 days. However, the officer told them that she had to arrest the 7-year-old or take him in for psychiatric evaluation.
Speaking through a translator, Alvarez said it’s not a mental health issue or an issue with aggression.
This wasn’t her son’s first run-in with the officer. He was accused of kicking a teacher back in November, but it was resolved with the school.
Alvarez said a psychologist said her son was OK.
While the boy’s parents wait to see what happens next, they have continued to demand answers, because they believe the handcuffs crossed the line.
“We have to make justice,” said Fuentes.
In a statement, Miami-Dade Schools Police Ian Moffett said that similar incidents are rare, but, “This action was warranted to prevent his erratic and violent behavior from bringing further harm to others or himself. The manner in which he was transported to the receiving facility was done in accordance with Standard Operating Procedures.”
School police said this incident is under review.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I know it looks bad when the cops handcuff a young child, but all prisoners, regardless of age, should be handcuffed with their hands behind their backs before being placed in a patrol car.
WSVN
January 26, 2018
MIAMI -- Police took a 7-year-old boy away in handcuffs from a school in Miami after, they said, he attacked a teacher, leaving his parents distraught about the way authorities and school officials handled the situation.
Cellphone footage shows the child in handcuffs after the alleged attack. His mother was brought to tears at the sight.
“I feel like my heart is broken,” said the boy’s mother, Mercy Alvarez.
“I was in shock. Shock,” said his father, Rolando Fuentes.
School police said it all started at the Coral Way K-8 Center in Miami, Thursday morning.
The boy had been taken out of the cafeteria for playing with his food, and that’s when, according to the report, he “attacked the teacher by repeatedly punching her on her back, in the hallway.”
Once the child was restrained, the report said, the child continued to fight the female teacher with his fists and legs. The two then fell to the ground, but it didn’t end there.
The report said, while they were on the ground, the student continued to fight the teacher, “grabbing her hair and pulling it towards him” before he was restrained once again.
The child eventually calmed down and was taken to the principal’s office.
The teacher told police that she wanted to press charges.
“Says he’s a danger to society. I said, ‘What? Seven years old? A danger to society?'” said Fuentes.
The boy’s parents have a problem with what happened after incident.
They said they came to the school to talk to the principal and counselors and agreed that their son would be suspended for 10 days. However, the officer told them that she had to arrest the 7-year-old or take him in for psychiatric evaluation.
Speaking through a translator, Alvarez said it’s not a mental health issue or an issue with aggression.
This wasn’t her son’s first run-in with the officer. He was accused of kicking a teacher back in November, but it was resolved with the school.
Alvarez said a psychologist said her son was OK.
While the boy’s parents wait to see what happens next, they have continued to demand answers, because they believe the handcuffs crossed the line.
“We have to make justice,” said Fuentes.
In a statement, Miami-Dade Schools Police Ian Moffett said that similar incidents are rare, but, “This action was warranted to prevent his erratic and violent behavior from bringing further harm to others or himself. The manner in which he was transported to the receiving facility was done in accordance with Standard Operating Procedures.”
School police said this incident is under review.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I know it looks bad when the cops handcuff a young child, but all prisoners, regardless of age, should be handcuffed with their hands behind their backs before being placed in a patrol car.
CELEBRITIES, ATHLETES AND PEOPLE WHO THINK THEY ARE IMPORTANT
By Trey Rusk
Running Code 3
January 27, 2018
There are some actors and athletes who I admire for their craft. There is not one celebrity or athlete that I would take advice from on current events.
Whenever I hear an actor state his or her opinion on world affairs or politics, I take it with a grain of salt. Why? Because their opinion on anything other than their craft is useless.
I went to the grocery store yesterday and I didn't ask my butcher what he thought about religion, politics, abortion or racism. Why? My butcher is not an expert on any of these topics. He cuts and wraps meat. That's his job.
Had I been standing in line behind say, Henry Kissinger, I might have asked him his opinion about the U.S. Embassy being moved to Jerusalem. I consider Henry Kissinger an expert in the field of world affairs.
I also wouldn't consider Clint Eastwood or John Wayne to be experts on world affairs. In fact, I thought Clint Eastwood looked idiotic at the Republican Convention. Thus I wouldn't give a hoot in hell what their opinion would be on something other than acting or old western wear. I enjoyed most of their movies but just because I like their acting doesn't mean I am swayed by their comments on anything.
People like Rosie O'Donnell and Joyce Behar are in the same boat as far as I'm concerned. That's why I don't care what they have to say. When I hear someone get upset because an actor espouses his or her views on a hot button topic, I think to myself, the only person showing their ignorance is you. Why would anyone let a celebrity get under their skin about a topic they, the actor knows nothing about.
I don't Twitter or Instagram because I really don't care what people I don't know write about.
However, the media seems to care so I still get to hear what James Woods thinks about someone else and it irritates me. Not because James Woods twittered something, but because the media thinks his view is important enough to broadcast.
By the way, James Woods is one of my favorite actors, but he is not particularly smarter than my butcher on world affairs.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I think my barber is smart on world affairs and politics. That’s because I cut my own hair.
Running Code 3
January 27, 2018
There are some actors and athletes who I admire for their craft. There is not one celebrity or athlete that I would take advice from on current events.
Whenever I hear an actor state his or her opinion on world affairs or politics, I take it with a grain of salt. Why? Because their opinion on anything other than their craft is useless.
I went to the grocery store yesterday and I didn't ask my butcher what he thought about religion, politics, abortion or racism. Why? My butcher is not an expert on any of these topics. He cuts and wraps meat. That's his job.
Had I been standing in line behind say, Henry Kissinger, I might have asked him his opinion about the U.S. Embassy being moved to Jerusalem. I consider Henry Kissinger an expert in the field of world affairs.
I also wouldn't consider Clint Eastwood or John Wayne to be experts on world affairs. In fact, I thought Clint Eastwood looked idiotic at the Republican Convention. Thus I wouldn't give a hoot in hell what their opinion would be on something other than acting or old western wear. I enjoyed most of their movies but just because I like their acting doesn't mean I am swayed by their comments on anything.
People like Rosie O'Donnell and Joyce Behar are in the same boat as far as I'm concerned. That's why I don't care what they have to say. When I hear someone get upset because an actor espouses his or her views on a hot button topic, I think to myself, the only person showing their ignorance is you. Why would anyone let a celebrity get under their skin about a topic they, the actor knows nothing about.
I don't Twitter or Instagram because I really don't care what people I don't know write about.
However, the media seems to care so I still get to hear what James Woods thinks about someone else and it irritates me. Not because James Woods twittered something, but because the media thinks his view is important enough to broadcast.
By the way, James Woods is one of my favorite actors, but he is not particularly smarter than my butcher on world affairs.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I think my barber is smart on world affairs and politics. That’s because I cut my own hair.
THAT LITTLE DAMN JEW LIED TO THE KINDHEARTED CAMP DOCTOR
'I'd never lied in my life but I fooled the Angel of Death': Holocaust survivor reveals how he escaped Auschwitz gas chambers by outwitting Josef Mengele, one of Nazi Germany's most notorious sadists
By Jake Wallis Simons
Daily Mail
January 27, 2018
A Holocaust survivor has revealed how he escaped the Auschwitz gas chambers by outwitting Dr Josef Mengele, known as the ‘Angel of Death’.
Leslie Kleinman, 88, whose concentration camp number is still tattooed on his forearm, has told MailOnline for the first time about the heart-stopping encounter with one of Nazi Germany’s most notorious sadists in 1944.
A picture taken shortly before the war shows a happy family. By the end of the War, Mr Kleinman was the only survivor – and he managed it by fooling Mengele into the belief that he was older than he actually was.
‘Mengele was the man who carried out human experiments, including operating on twins without anaesthetic,’ he said. ‘I heard them screaming many times when I was in Auschwitz.
‘When we arrived, we had to line up in front of Mengele to be examined. He needed workers. If he thought we were strong enough to work, we would live. If not, we were sent to the gas chambers. Most of the women and the children were killed.’
While he was waiting in the queue, another inmate told him to pretend that he was 17 rather than 14. It was a difficult decision but Mr Kleinman made up his mind to lie to the Angel of Death.
‘It was the first time in my life that I told a proper lie, as I’d been brought up to be honest,’ he said. ‘My father always told me to tell the truth if you want people to believe you. But I decided that a small lie to save your life was worth it. Some things you have to do.’
When the Nazi sadist asked his age, he duly told him that he was 17. Mengele listened, then waved him to the line of people who had been selected to live.
‘I was 5ft 10in, a strong guy. I grew up in a poor family in the Carpathian Mountains and we were used to hard work,’ he said. ‘God was with me and Mengele believed that I was 17. That was the moment I could have lost my life.’
His mother, four sisters and three brothers were all sent to the other line and were gassed. His father had been taken to Auschwitz three weeks before where he also perished.
In total, 68 members of Mr Kleinman’s family were killed. They were among the many thousands of Jews and Roma that Mengele – the resident medic at Auschwitz from May 1943 until he fled the advancing Red Army in 1945 – sent to their deaths at the camp, where 1.1million people lost their lives.
Mengele was in charge of administering Zyklon B, the gas used by the Nazis for mass-murder. During the course of his experiments, the doctor injected chemicals into prisoners’ eyes to try to change their iris colour, pulled out healthy teeth, and sewed children together to create artificially conjoined twins.
In an effort to find scientific proof for Nazi claims of Aryan superiority, Mengele unnecessarily amputated limbs and infected children with typhus. On one occasion, he killed 14 twins in a single night by injecting chloroform into their hearts.
He even managed to escape justice. At the end of the war, the killer went on the run and found refuge in South America. He died in a swimming pool in Brazil in 1979.
Mr Kleinman, who survived by fooling Mengele, did not speak about his experiences for 60 years but now dedicates his life to telling his story. Last year he took groups to Auschwitz seven times with the charity JRoots, and over the years has covered 24,000miles telling his story around the world.
A picture taken in 1936 shows Mr Kleinman at the age of seven, posing with his parents and five brothers and sisters in their hometown of Abud in western Romania. Four years later, Romania was annexed by Hungary and occupied by the German army.
‘It got worse and worse,’ Mr Kleinman recalls. ‘they closed our shops and force us to wear a yellow band with a star. In 1944, they finally arrested us and took us to Auschwitz in cattle trucks.
‘It was a 300mile journey and we had only one bucket for a toilet between 110 people. When we arrived, the stench was unbelievable. We weren’t human any more.’
Among the many horrors he experienced in the camp was the time the man labouring with a pickaxe next to him was shot dead simply because he straightened his back.
Mr Kleinman was taken on a notorious Nazi ‘death march’ in January 1945 when Soviet troops closed in on the camp.
In temperatures of -20C, he and thousands of prisoners were forced to walk 500miles to Sachsenhausen in Germany and from there another 500miles to Dachau, wearing nothing but striped pyjamas, a blanket and wooden clogs. Some resorted to eating human flesh while Mr Kleinman kept himself alive by consuming grass. Any prisoner who failed to keep up was executed.
‘Of the 5,000 prisoners that started the march, fewer than 200 of us survived,’ Mr Kleinman recalls. ‘I was three-and-a-half stone when the Americans found me.’
The moment of freedom come on 23 April 1945. ‘We were marching along and suddenly everybody disappeared and I was left alone,’ he said. ‘I hid in a foxhole and a tank approached.
‘The driver got out and found me. He asked me in Yiddish if I was a Jew and I admitted it. Then he told me he too was Jewish – an American Jew from Brooklyn. He got an SS officer and forced him to give me his boots and take my clogs instead.’
Mr Kleinman was taken to hospital, where a short time later he was given an extraordinary opportunity for revenge.
‘An American soldier gave me a service revolver and told me I could keep it for four days and shoot any Nazi I recognised,’ he said.
‘I took the gun but I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t brought up with hate and killing people. We were brought up with kindness. We were very poor in my house, but there was a lot of love. I just couldn’t do it. It wasn’t gong to gain anything. I couldn’t get my family back, so what was the vengeance for?’
The revolver proved to be useful, however, when a few days later Mr Kleinman was taking shelter in a beer factory and was accused by some Russian soldiers of stealing alcohol.
‘I don’t even drink,’ he said. ‘I managed to get away by pointing the pistol at them. I was very lucky as I didn’t even know how to fire it.’
Mr Kleinman came to the United Kingdom in 1947, and now lives in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex. In another extraordinary twist, in 1956 married a non-Jewish German woman, Evelyn Holz, whom he had met at a dance in Kilburn, north London. They had two children together and after a long and happy marriage, Evelyn passed away in 2004.
Mr Kleinman remarried in 2011, at the age of 82. His new wife, Miriam, is 10 years younger than him.
But the memories of his past continue to haunt him. He still mourns his father Martin, a rabbi who was killed at the age of 35; mother Rachel, also 35; his four sisters, Gitta, 15, Olga, nine, Shandi, seven, and Sarah, five; and his three brothers, Herman, 12, Abraham, four, and Moses, two.
By Jake Wallis Simons
Daily Mail
January 27, 2018
A Holocaust survivor has revealed how he escaped the Auschwitz gas chambers by outwitting Dr Josef Mengele, known as the ‘Angel of Death’.
Leslie Kleinman, 88, whose concentration camp number is still tattooed on his forearm, has told MailOnline for the first time about the heart-stopping encounter with one of Nazi Germany’s most notorious sadists in 1944.
A picture taken shortly before the war shows a happy family. By the end of the War, Mr Kleinman was the only survivor – and he managed it by fooling Mengele into the belief that he was older than he actually was.
‘Mengele was the man who carried out human experiments, including operating on twins without anaesthetic,’ he said. ‘I heard them screaming many times when I was in Auschwitz.
‘When we arrived, we had to line up in front of Mengele to be examined. He needed workers. If he thought we were strong enough to work, we would live. If not, we were sent to the gas chambers. Most of the women and the children were killed.’
While he was waiting in the queue, another inmate told him to pretend that he was 17 rather than 14. It was a difficult decision but Mr Kleinman made up his mind to lie to the Angel of Death.
‘It was the first time in my life that I told a proper lie, as I’d been brought up to be honest,’ he said. ‘My father always told me to tell the truth if you want people to believe you. But I decided that a small lie to save your life was worth it. Some things you have to do.’
When the Nazi sadist asked his age, he duly told him that he was 17. Mengele listened, then waved him to the line of people who had been selected to live.
‘I was 5ft 10in, a strong guy. I grew up in a poor family in the Carpathian Mountains and we were used to hard work,’ he said. ‘God was with me and Mengele believed that I was 17. That was the moment I could have lost my life.’
His mother, four sisters and three brothers were all sent to the other line and were gassed. His father had been taken to Auschwitz three weeks before where he also perished.
In total, 68 members of Mr Kleinman’s family were killed. They were among the many thousands of Jews and Roma that Mengele – the resident medic at Auschwitz from May 1943 until he fled the advancing Red Army in 1945 – sent to their deaths at the camp, where 1.1million people lost their lives.
Mengele was in charge of administering Zyklon B, the gas used by the Nazis for mass-murder. During the course of his experiments, the doctor injected chemicals into prisoners’ eyes to try to change their iris colour, pulled out healthy teeth, and sewed children together to create artificially conjoined twins.
In an effort to find scientific proof for Nazi claims of Aryan superiority, Mengele unnecessarily amputated limbs and infected children with typhus. On one occasion, he killed 14 twins in a single night by injecting chloroform into their hearts.
He even managed to escape justice. At the end of the war, the killer went on the run and found refuge in South America. He died in a swimming pool in Brazil in 1979.
Mr Kleinman, who survived by fooling Mengele, did not speak about his experiences for 60 years but now dedicates his life to telling his story. Last year he took groups to Auschwitz seven times with the charity JRoots, and over the years has covered 24,000miles telling his story around the world.
A picture taken in 1936 shows Mr Kleinman at the age of seven, posing with his parents and five brothers and sisters in their hometown of Abud in western Romania. Four years later, Romania was annexed by Hungary and occupied by the German army.
‘It got worse and worse,’ Mr Kleinman recalls. ‘they closed our shops and force us to wear a yellow band with a star. In 1944, they finally arrested us and took us to Auschwitz in cattle trucks.
‘It was a 300mile journey and we had only one bucket for a toilet between 110 people. When we arrived, the stench was unbelievable. We weren’t human any more.’
Among the many horrors he experienced in the camp was the time the man labouring with a pickaxe next to him was shot dead simply because he straightened his back.
Mr Kleinman was taken on a notorious Nazi ‘death march’ in January 1945 when Soviet troops closed in on the camp.
In temperatures of -20C, he and thousands of prisoners were forced to walk 500miles to Sachsenhausen in Germany and from there another 500miles to Dachau, wearing nothing but striped pyjamas, a blanket and wooden clogs. Some resorted to eating human flesh while Mr Kleinman kept himself alive by consuming grass. Any prisoner who failed to keep up was executed.
‘Of the 5,000 prisoners that started the march, fewer than 200 of us survived,’ Mr Kleinman recalls. ‘I was three-and-a-half stone when the Americans found me.’
The moment of freedom come on 23 April 1945. ‘We were marching along and suddenly everybody disappeared and I was left alone,’ he said. ‘I hid in a foxhole and a tank approached.
‘The driver got out and found me. He asked me in Yiddish if I was a Jew and I admitted it. Then he told me he too was Jewish – an American Jew from Brooklyn. He got an SS officer and forced him to give me his boots and take my clogs instead.’
Mr Kleinman was taken to hospital, where a short time later he was given an extraordinary opportunity for revenge.
‘An American soldier gave me a service revolver and told me I could keep it for four days and shoot any Nazi I recognised,’ he said.
‘I took the gun but I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t brought up with hate and killing people. We were brought up with kindness. We were very poor in my house, but there was a lot of love. I just couldn’t do it. It wasn’t gong to gain anything. I couldn’t get my family back, so what was the vengeance for?’
The revolver proved to be useful, however, when a few days later Mr Kleinman was taking shelter in a beer factory and was accused by some Russian soldiers of stealing alcohol.
‘I don’t even drink,’ he said. ‘I managed to get away by pointing the pistol at them. I was very lucky as I didn’t even know how to fire it.’
Mr Kleinman came to the United Kingdom in 1947, and now lives in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex. In another extraordinary twist, in 1956 married a non-Jewish German woman, Evelyn Holz, whom he had met at a dance in Kilburn, north London. They had two children together and after a long and happy marriage, Evelyn passed away in 2004.
Mr Kleinman remarried in 2011, at the age of 82. His new wife, Miriam, is 10 years younger than him.
But the memories of his past continue to haunt him. He still mourns his father Martin, a rabbi who was killed at the age of 35; mother Rachel, also 35; his four sisters, Gitta, 15, Olga, nine, Shandi, seven, and Sarah, five; and his three brothers, Herman, 12, Abraham, four, and Moses, two.
Sunday, January 28, 2018
RED DAVID’S GALVESTON NEWS COLUMN SHOWS WHY HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN AND FINALLY GOT FIRED FROM COLLEGE OF THE MAINLAND
Packed full of falsehoods about Trump, this disgusting column by fired Marxist professor David Michael Smith AKA Red David makes the Galveston County Daily News not even worthy as a bird cage liner or fish wrapping.
MENTALLY UNSTABLE TRUMP MUST BE STOPPED
By David Michael Smith
The Galveston County Daily News
January 26, 2018
During his first year in office, Trump has proved to be the most brazen white supremacist, misogynistic, anti-working class and authoritarian U.S. president in decades.
He has praised Nazis in Charlottesville, encouraged police brutality, stopped federal oversight of murderous police departments, slandered African-American athletes, pardoned the anti-Hispanic former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, ended DACA, increased arrests of migrants, demanded a border wall, issued a Muslim travel ban and called African nations “shithole” countries.
Trump has stopped funding global family planning programs, appointed anti-choice federal judges, supported alleged child molester and Senate candidate Roy Moore, tried to drive transgender people out of the military, sought to gut legal protections for workers and consumers, supported a $1 trillion-plus reduction in taxes for capitalists, ended U.S. participation in the Paris climate accords, sent U.S. military forces to Syria, increased drone bombing in other countries and threatened to attack North Korea.
Trump’s actions have made unmistakably clear that he cares nothing for the vast majority of people at home and abroad. Most people do not care much for him, either. An Associated Press-NORC poll last month showed that only 32 percent of the public approves of Trump’s performance, making him “the least popular first-year president on record.” By Jan. 9, The Washington Post’s “Fact-Checker” had reported 2,001 lies or misleading statements by Trump since he became president.
Trump’s utter disregard for the truth and highly erratic behavior concern many mental health professionals. As John Gartner of Johns Hopkins University Medical School has pointed out, Trump is a “malignant narcissist.” And retired Harvard psychiatry professor Lance Dodes has concluded that Trump’s “sociopathic characteristics are undeniable.”
Gartner is right that Trump “evinces the most destructive and dangerous collection of psychiatric symptoms possible for a leader.” But the Trump presidency is a symptom of a far graver underlying social condition, which explains both his rise to power and the limitations of the “mainstream” opposition.
As Adam Serwer, Steve Phillips, and other analysts have emphasized, Trump was elected in large part because of many white people’s racist reactions to the first African-American president and “the browning of America.” Republicans have been exploiting racism to gain white voters since Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” in 1968, but done little to better their economic conditions. When Trump promised to “Make America Great Again,” he was voicing a commitment to “Make America White Again” and uplift “forgotten” white workers.
It is urgent that Trump be forced out of office. But most Democratic politicians do not support impeachment, and even if they regain control of Congress in November, a two-thirds vote to convict may not be forthcoming in the Senate. The prospect of millions of people stopping work, taking to the streets, and driving Trump out of the White House may seem far-fetched. But if the choice is between allowing a nuclear-armed and extremely dangerous white supremacist to remain as president — and supporting a mass popular uprising against him — I will see you in the streets.
EDITOR’S NOTE: When I talked to Red David he came across as a nice guy. But his brain has been addled by Marxist horseshit and he should never have been allowed to indoctrinate his naive students.
When Red David calls Trump mentally unstable, that’s sort of like the kettle calling the pot black.
When Red David says Trump praised Nazis in Charlottesville and encouraged police brutality, that’s an outright damn lie. When he called black NFL players Sons of Bitches for disrespecting our flag and country, Trump was not slandering them. And some of those African nations are shithole countries.
Trump did not increase arrests of migrants, he increased arrests of illegal aliens, especially those who had committed crimes while illegally in this country. And Joe Arpaio was not an anti-Hispanic sheriff, he was a no-nonsense law-and-order lawman of which, unfortunately, there aren’t many left.
“Murderous police departments”… Even Obama and Eric Holder never referred to the Ferguson PD or any other police department as murderous.
Red David cherry picked a nutjob psychiatrist who without ever having examined him, concludes that Trump “evinces the most destructive and dangerous collection of psychiatric symptoms possible for a leader.” That puts Trump right up there with Hitler, Stalin and Mao … Oops, I forgot that Mao is one of Red David’s heroes.
And in the end, Red David all but calls for an open insurrection against the Trump presidency.
MENTALLY UNSTABLE TRUMP MUST BE STOPPED
By David Michael Smith
The Galveston County Daily News
January 26, 2018
During his first year in office, Trump has proved to be the most brazen white supremacist, misogynistic, anti-working class and authoritarian U.S. president in decades.
He has praised Nazis in Charlottesville, encouraged police brutality, stopped federal oversight of murderous police departments, slandered African-American athletes, pardoned the anti-Hispanic former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, ended DACA, increased arrests of migrants, demanded a border wall, issued a Muslim travel ban and called African nations “shithole” countries.
Trump has stopped funding global family planning programs, appointed anti-choice federal judges, supported alleged child molester and Senate candidate Roy Moore, tried to drive transgender people out of the military, sought to gut legal protections for workers and consumers, supported a $1 trillion-plus reduction in taxes for capitalists, ended U.S. participation in the Paris climate accords, sent U.S. military forces to Syria, increased drone bombing in other countries and threatened to attack North Korea.
Trump’s actions have made unmistakably clear that he cares nothing for the vast majority of people at home and abroad. Most people do not care much for him, either. An Associated Press-NORC poll last month showed that only 32 percent of the public approves of Trump’s performance, making him “the least popular first-year president on record.” By Jan. 9, The Washington Post’s “Fact-Checker” had reported 2,001 lies or misleading statements by Trump since he became president.
Trump’s utter disregard for the truth and highly erratic behavior concern many mental health professionals. As John Gartner of Johns Hopkins University Medical School has pointed out, Trump is a “malignant narcissist.” And retired Harvard psychiatry professor Lance Dodes has concluded that Trump’s “sociopathic characteristics are undeniable.”
Gartner is right that Trump “evinces the most destructive and dangerous collection of psychiatric symptoms possible for a leader.” But the Trump presidency is a symptom of a far graver underlying social condition, which explains both his rise to power and the limitations of the “mainstream” opposition.
As Adam Serwer, Steve Phillips, and other analysts have emphasized, Trump was elected in large part because of many white people’s racist reactions to the first African-American president and “the browning of America.” Republicans have been exploiting racism to gain white voters since Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” in 1968, but done little to better their economic conditions. When Trump promised to “Make America Great Again,” he was voicing a commitment to “Make America White Again” and uplift “forgotten” white workers.
It is urgent that Trump be forced out of office. But most Democratic politicians do not support impeachment, and even if they regain control of Congress in November, a two-thirds vote to convict may not be forthcoming in the Senate. The prospect of millions of people stopping work, taking to the streets, and driving Trump out of the White House may seem far-fetched. But if the choice is between allowing a nuclear-armed and extremely dangerous white supremacist to remain as president — and supporting a mass popular uprising against him — I will see you in the streets.
EDITOR’S NOTE: When I talked to Red David he came across as a nice guy. But his brain has been addled by Marxist horseshit and he should never have been allowed to indoctrinate his naive students.
When Red David calls Trump mentally unstable, that’s sort of like the kettle calling the pot black.
When Red David says Trump praised Nazis in Charlottesville and encouraged police brutality, that’s an outright damn lie. When he called black NFL players Sons of Bitches for disrespecting our flag and country, Trump was not slandering them. And some of those African nations are shithole countries.
Trump did not increase arrests of migrants, he increased arrests of illegal aliens, especially those who had committed crimes while illegally in this country. And Joe Arpaio was not an anti-Hispanic sheriff, he was a no-nonsense law-and-order lawman of which, unfortunately, there aren’t many left.
“Murderous police departments”… Even Obama and Eric Holder never referred to the Ferguson PD or any other police department as murderous.
Red David cherry picked a nutjob psychiatrist who without ever having examined him, concludes that Trump “evinces the most destructive and dangerous collection of psychiatric symptoms possible for a leader.” That puts Trump right up there with Hitler, Stalin and Mao … Oops, I forgot that Mao is one of Red David’s heroes.
And in the end, Red David all but calls for an open insurrection against the Trump presidency.
IT'S HARD TO FIGHT THE BEEF WHEN YOU TAPED YOURSELF DOING IT
by Bob Walsh
Obdulia Sanchez is arguably both very unlucky and incredibly stupid. She wrecked her car while drunk driving several months ago in California's Merced County and was live-streaming herself while it happened. The wreck killed the 19-year old's 14-year-old sister and seriously injured the sister's friend. When tested 90 minutes after the crash she still blew a 0.106 on the breathalyzer.
Ms. Sanchez has just changed her plea from NOT GUILTY to NO CONTEST to a total of seven charges. Her mouthpiece is trying for probation but that almost certainly is not going to happen, though if she was an illegal she might have a real shot at it. Unfortunately for her she is not so she is looking at somewhere between 6 and 12 years, depending on how the judge is feeling that day.
Obdulia Sanchez is arguably both very unlucky and incredibly stupid. She wrecked her car while drunk driving several months ago in California's Merced County and was live-streaming herself while it happened. The wreck killed the 19-year old's 14-year-old sister and seriously injured the sister's friend. When tested 90 minutes after the crash she still blew a 0.106 on the breathalyzer.
Ms. Sanchez has just changed her plea from NOT GUILTY to NO CONTEST to a total of seven charges. Her mouthpiece is trying for probation but that almost certainly is not going to happen, though if she was an illegal she might have a real shot at it. Unfortunately for her she is not so she is looking at somewhere between 6 and 12 years, depending on how the judge is feeling that day.
IT'S EASY TO BE AN ASSHOLE IF SOMEBODY ELSE HAS TO PAY THE FREIGHT
by Bob Walsh
Over the last three years the formerly great state of California has paid out $25 million to settle sexual harassment beefs. Almost all of this is taxpayers money and much of it (though not all) is settled on the QT. A total of 92 cases are represented by this money.
The smallest award was $500 to a prison inmate. The larges was $10 million to four wards of what used to be called the California Youth Authority.
In perhaps the most egregious case a supervisor of the Cal. State Hospital System (nut farm) hid a video camera under a bathroom sink in a staff bathroom at the state prison hospital at Stockton. A total of 34 workers sued.
Initially the state fought it on the grounds that the invasion of privacy was not gender specific as both genders (or all three or four or five depending on how you count in CA) were taped in the unisex bathroom, but they eventually settled for a tad over $750,000. The supervisor was successfully prosecuted for several misdemeanor complaints.
Over the last three years the formerly great state of California has paid out $25 million to settle sexual harassment beefs. Almost all of this is taxpayers money and much of it (though not all) is settled on the QT. A total of 92 cases are represented by this money.
The smallest award was $500 to a prison inmate. The larges was $10 million to four wards of what used to be called the California Youth Authority.
In perhaps the most egregious case a supervisor of the Cal. State Hospital System (nut farm) hid a video camera under a bathroom sink in a staff bathroom at the state prison hospital at Stockton. A total of 34 workers sued.
Initially the state fought it on the grounds that the invasion of privacy was not gender specific as both genders (or all three or four or five depending on how you count in CA) were taped in the unisex bathroom, but they eventually settled for a tad over $750,000. The supervisor was successfully prosecuted for several misdemeanor complaints.
DAMN, THE DAMN DAM IS GETTING DAMN EXPENSIVE
by Bob Walsh
the bill for repairs to the spillways at the Oroville Dam is now at about $870 million and will certainly climb as the repair work to the main spillway will not be completed until much later this year. The real bummer is they KNEW 50 years ago when they were building it that three was a problem with the substrata under the main spillway and the cheap bastards at DWR wouldn't spend and extra $1.2 million to do it right. Something about "penny wise and pound foolish" comes to mind.
the bill for repairs to the spillways at the Oroville Dam is now at about $870 million and will certainly climb as the repair work to the main spillway will not be completed until much later this year. The real bummer is they KNEW 50 years ago when they were building it that three was a problem with the substrata under the main spillway and the cheap bastards at DWR wouldn't spend and extra $1.2 million to do it right. Something about "penny wise and pound foolish" comes to mind.
THE COPS HAD THE RIGHT TO ARREST THE SUSPECT INSIDE A CHURCH AND SHOULD HAVE BUSTED THE INTERFERING PASTOR
Pastor Intervenes as Suspect Arrested at Connecticut Church
New Haven Register
January 26, 2018
EAST HAVEN — The East Haven Police Department was dispatched to a home after being notified by firefighters that they were at the scene of a serious domestic violence assault.
When police arrived, officers learned that a 59-year-old woman had been assaulted by her son, police said in a news release. The son, later identified as Ryan Champlin, 34, then fled the residence. The victim told officers that she got into an argument with her son because he does not pay to live with the family.. The victim advised officers that while she was being assaulted by her son, she attempted to call 911, but was unable to do so because Champlin pushed her to the ground, police said.
The victim said she was able to run into her bedroom and lock the door, but Champlin kicked the door open, grabbed the cordless phone from her and struck her in the back of the head with it several times, breaking the phone, police said. He then fled the residence.
After speaking with officers, the victim was taken to the hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries.
After leaving the victim’s home, a search for Champlin began. While searching for Champlin, officers received a tip that the suspect had been dropped off at the Old Stone Church, 251 Main St., in East Haven. Officers spoke with church employees who were not sure if Champlin was inside, but invited them in to look for him, police said. As officers searched the church and attached day care facility, they found Champlin hiding in an upstairs office.
He was taken into custody without further incident, police said.
While on scene at the Old Stone Church, and with Champlin already in custody, a pastor arrived and blocked the police cruiser that Champlin was in and demanded officers release him to her custody. She advised officers they had no right to arrest him inside the church, even if it was for felony domestic violence charges, the release said.
Officers advised her Champlin was wanted for violent felony domestic violence charges and could not be released at that time. The pastor, who was extremely irate, proceeded to attempt to get in front of the police cruiser when an officer attempted to drive away with Champlin, but was stopped so by another officer on scene, the release said. During this, officers de-escalated the situation.
“While the East Haven Police Department respects the sanctity of a church, we also owe it to victims of domestic violence to apprehend suspects who commit violent felony assaults,” Lt. Joseph M. Murgo stated in the release. “Officers were also cognizant of the fact that children attending day care might have been exposed to a fleeing felony suspect within the interior of the church. We feel that the decision to enter the church was the correct one in this particular situation.”
Champlin was taken to the East Haven Police Department where he was charged with second-degree assault, interfering with an emergency call, disorderly conduct, and criminal mischief in the third degree. He is being held on a $25,000 bond and is scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday.
New Haven Register
January 26, 2018
EAST HAVEN — The East Haven Police Department was dispatched to a home after being notified by firefighters that they were at the scene of a serious domestic violence assault.
When police arrived, officers learned that a 59-year-old woman had been assaulted by her son, police said in a news release. The son, later identified as Ryan Champlin, 34, then fled the residence. The victim told officers that she got into an argument with her son because he does not pay to live with the family.. The victim advised officers that while she was being assaulted by her son, she attempted to call 911, but was unable to do so because Champlin pushed her to the ground, police said.
The victim said she was able to run into her bedroom and lock the door, but Champlin kicked the door open, grabbed the cordless phone from her and struck her in the back of the head with it several times, breaking the phone, police said. He then fled the residence.
After speaking with officers, the victim was taken to the hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries.
After leaving the victim’s home, a search for Champlin began. While searching for Champlin, officers received a tip that the suspect had been dropped off at the Old Stone Church, 251 Main St., in East Haven. Officers spoke with church employees who were not sure if Champlin was inside, but invited them in to look for him, police said. As officers searched the church and attached day care facility, they found Champlin hiding in an upstairs office.
He was taken into custody without further incident, police said.
While on scene at the Old Stone Church, and with Champlin already in custody, a pastor arrived and blocked the police cruiser that Champlin was in and demanded officers release him to her custody. She advised officers they had no right to arrest him inside the church, even if it was for felony domestic violence charges, the release said.
Officers advised her Champlin was wanted for violent felony domestic violence charges and could not be released at that time. The pastor, who was extremely irate, proceeded to attempt to get in front of the police cruiser when an officer attempted to drive away with Champlin, but was stopped so by another officer on scene, the release said. During this, officers de-escalated the situation.
“While the East Haven Police Department respects the sanctity of a church, we also owe it to victims of domestic violence to apprehend suspects who commit violent felony assaults,” Lt. Joseph M. Murgo stated in the release. “Officers were also cognizant of the fact that children attending day care might have been exposed to a fleeing felony suspect within the interior of the church. We feel that the decision to enter the church was the correct one in this particular situation.”
Champlin was taken to the East Haven Police Department where he was charged with second-degree assault, interfering with an emergency call, disorderly conduct, and criminal mischief in the third degree. He is being held on a $25,000 bond and is scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday.
IF ONLY THE EUROPEANS SAW THE PALESTINIANS THE TRUMP WAY
Trump, Haley Attack Palestinian Authority as Obstacle to Peace
Israel Today
January 26, 2018
While attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Thursday, US President Donald Trump again let loose on the Palestinian Authority (PA), accusing it of being the primary obstacle to peace.
"That money is not going to them unless they sit down and negotiate peace, because I can tell you that Israel does want to make peace, and they’re going to have to want to make peace, too, or we’re going to have nothing to do with it any longer," said Trump of the large amount of financial aid the US contributes annually to the PA and international organizations supporting it.
Trump criticized past administrations for not leveraging American aid to persuade the Palestinians to adhere to signed agreements and be more pliable regarding their red lines.
As for Jerusalem, Trump insisted that, at least for the time being, it's "off the table."
Meanwhile at the UN Security Council, US Ambassador Nikki Haley was busy accusing Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas as being either unwilling or unable to actually make peace with Israel.
"We will not chase after a Palestinian leadership that lacks what is needed to achieve peace," said Haley. "Peace will not be achieved without leaders with courage."
She went on to note that all Abbas has done of late is reject "any American role in peace talks. He insulted the American president. He called for suspending recognition of Israel... Hate-filled speeches and end-runs around negotiations take us nowhere."
Israel Today
January 26, 2018
While attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Thursday, US President Donald Trump again let loose on the Palestinian Authority (PA), accusing it of being the primary obstacle to peace.
"That money is not going to them unless they sit down and negotiate peace, because I can tell you that Israel does want to make peace, and they’re going to have to want to make peace, too, or we’re going to have nothing to do with it any longer," said Trump of the large amount of financial aid the US contributes annually to the PA and international organizations supporting it.
Trump criticized past administrations for not leveraging American aid to persuade the Palestinians to adhere to signed agreements and be more pliable regarding their red lines.
As for Jerusalem, Trump insisted that, at least for the time being, it's "off the table."
Meanwhile at the UN Security Council, US Ambassador Nikki Haley was busy accusing Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas as being either unwilling or unable to actually make peace with Israel.
"We will not chase after a Palestinian leadership that lacks what is needed to achieve peace," said Haley. "Peace will not be achieved without leaders with courage."
She went on to note that all Abbas has done of late is reject "any American role in peace talks. He insulted the American president. He called for suspending recognition of Israel... Hate-filled speeches and end-runs around negotiations take us nowhere."
HE HELPED SMUGGLE MORE THAN 27 TONS OF POT IN THREE NIGHTS
An interview with Kermit Schweidel, the author of 'Folly Cove: A Smuggler's True Tale of the Pot Rebellion.'
by Seth Ferranti
VICE News
January 26, 2018
Until snitches gave up the details to Boston’s federal prosecutors in 1980, a nearly 30-ton shipment of Colombian weed was the stuff of legend. Folly Cove, an inlet on the tip of Cape Ann, about an hour up the coast from Boston on the North Shore, was the site of the 1975 caper. Kermit Schweidel, an El Paso resident who was among the 42 individuals indicted in the audacious maneuver, remembers it well.
Folly Cove: A Smuggler's True Tale of the Pot Rebellion, a new book out February 20th from Cinco Puntos Press, is Schweidel's retelling of the operation. After a sudden decrease in the quality of the Mexican weed his El Paso crew had been moving over the border, buyers were desperate for better dope. Jack Stricklin, the leader of the contingent for five years, decided to take advantage of the market conditions and facilitate the massive operation.
Running his illicit enterprise like a publicly traded venture, Stricklin promised his investors— lawyers, bankers, doctors, waitresses, and barbers in El Paso—that he would pay them back three-to-one, and raised $400,000 in capital to finance a deal for Colombian product. “Stricklin had 50 people up and down the North Shore [of Massachusetts] working for him in various staging houses where the loads of weed would be stashed after being brought in on the smaller boats that rendezvoused with the mothership,” Schweidel told me over the phone.
It took the better part of three nights to move all of the weed, from getting it off of the boats to getting it out into the market. But by the third night, the first night's worth had hit the streets, paying back the investors and recouping costs. From there, it was pure profit. VICE reached out to Schweidel to find out how he kept a clear distinction between truth and tall tales in his new book.
VICE: Who was Jack Stricklin and how did you get to know him?
Kermit Schweidel: Jack Stricklin was a unique individual, really the definition of charisma. The thing about Jack was that he made every friend he had feel like his best friend, and there was nothing disingenuous about that. It was very real with him, because he was somebody who was very present. When he was with you, he was 100 percent with you. I was 12 years old when I met him, and he was four, five years older. I had two older sisters at the time, and that's kind of what brought Jack into my orbit there. But he took me seriously, and our relationship kind of built from there.
Why did you wait so long to tell his story?
Basically, it never was all my story to tell. It was a story that involved a lot of different stakeholders—Jack Stricklin and Mike Halliday being two of the biggest. Billy Russell is another one. I played an increasingly growing role once I got involved, but it really was their story. Jack Stricklin did 17 years consecutively, his last sentence. When he got out he convinced me that it was time. The way it ended up, there was barely enough time, because Jack died last November, but he lived to see the book completed. I deeply regret that he did not live to see the book published. Jack, Mike, and Billy all very much encouraged me to do it and played a role in it. It was time for us to tell our story.
What did Jack mean to the operation?
Jack just had this ability to inspire people that made everybody want to do things for him. He was the glue that held it all together. Mike Halliday was the guy that got the ball rolling. He found the big connection and was the smuggler. But Jack was the inspiration and the business mind, the entrepreneur kind of behind the whole thing. He did 24 years of his life in prison for pot, and the reason he did 24 years of his life in prison for pot is because Jack refused to roll over on anybody. He was offered deal after deal after deal. He could have got out in a fraction of that time, and all he would have had to do was turn snitch, but Jack wouldn't do that.
Smugglers are known to exaggerate. How did you kind of keep a clear distinction between the truth and tall tales in your book?
Boston was a big part of the book, and I was intimately involved in Boston. I knew the details. I feel really good about the veracity of the story, even after 40 years. The earlier stories from Jack, Mike, and Billy were stories I had heard all my life. I knew them to be true. The events that happened during that period of time were pretty clearly etched in our minds. An interesting thing about that would be Ralph Armendariz. Ralph is the guy that went to Colombia and got the load together and rode back on the boat. Forty years later, as I was writing the book, and I got Ralph's complete story, it was the first time any of us—me or Jack or Billy or Mike—had ever heard that side of the story, and it was the first time Ralph really ever heard about what was going on in Boston. This book kind of completes the story for everyone.
How did Jack and Mike end up smuggling so much pot?
It was really kind of trial-and-error and fits and starts as they got up to the 250-pound level. You've got to have a supplier, and when you get to that level, you've got to have a buyer, somebody that can distribute it. But once Mike made the connection in Mexico with La Nacha, who headed one of the big drug families of Northern Mexico, if not the biggest, they had access to a lot of pot.
Jack attracted buyers, and before they knew it, they were doing a truckload at a time, which was 750 to 800 pounds, and then two trucks at a time, and then two trucks, three or four times a week in the high season. Jack was the one that introduced airplanes to the equation. I would say they went from doing small Jeep loads, bringing it over on their backs, to doing truckloads and planeloads in a matter of six months. It just all happened really fast.
How did the drug trade evolve from the "pot rebellion," as you call it in your book, to the violent industry we have today?
The short answer is cocaine. Cocaine came along and ruined the pot business. In our day, the business of pot was really handled by the culture of pot. It was a culture of cooperation, a culture of trust. We would give people hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of pot on a handshake, and they would take it and we'd always get our money. But it was a really brief window between 1970 and 1975 when the culture of pot really dominated the business of pot. Cocaine comes along, which is a lot easier to smuggle, with a lot more money involved.
The money became too serious to ignore. [People] started shooting each other and killing each other and it got bigger than the pot culture could handle. Real, true pioneers like Jack, Mike, and Billy, didn't want to get into the cocaine business. They got into pot because they believed in the product. They used the product. They liked the product. They felt like there was nothing wrong, we knew we were breaking laws, but we didn't feel like we were breaking any big moral codes or doing anything evil or dangerous. Cocaine changed that. I think that kind of begat the violence that ended up just ripping the border apart.
Do you think the Folly Cove operation helped pave the way for legalization?
Well, we're not there yet, are we? Let me say that we were dumb enough, or naïve enough, to believe that we were going to win. Even back in the 70s, we thought this was going to go exactly the way of Prohibition, and the government was going to see the error of its ways and people were going to continue to use this stuff, and eventually it would be legalized or decriminalized. Well, here we are 40 years later and they're only now making those inroads. It's ridiculous to me that we haven't gone further, that we haven't legalized it on a national scale. The government fights it because, face it, drug enforcement is as big a business as drug distribution, and nobody wants to cut drug enforcement budgets—least of all drug enforcement. I think it's a fight that we'll continue to wage. But in the meantime, people continue to be prosecuted and jailed because of it, and that's the real crime to me.
EDITOR’S NOTE: No, no, the real crime is not that people continue to get prosecuted and jailed for pot. The real crime is that people continue to break the laws against pot.
by Seth Ferranti
VICE News
January 26, 2018
Until snitches gave up the details to Boston’s federal prosecutors in 1980, a nearly 30-ton shipment of Colombian weed was the stuff of legend. Folly Cove, an inlet on the tip of Cape Ann, about an hour up the coast from Boston on the North Shore, was the site of the 1975 caper. Kermit Schweidel, an El Paso resident who was among the 42 individuals indicted in the audacious maneuver, remembers it well.
Folly Cove: A Smuggler's True Tale of the Pot Rebellion, a new book out February 20th from Cinco Puntos Press, is Schweidel's retelling of the operation. After a sudden decrease in the quality of the Mexican weed his El Paso crew had been moving over the border, buyers were desperate for better dope. Jack Stricklin, the leader of the contingent for five years, decided to take advantage of the market conditions and facilitate the massive operation.
Running his illicit enterprise like a publicly traded venture, Stricklin promised his investors— lawyers, bankers, doctors, waitresses, and barbers in El Paso—that he would pay them back three-to-one, and raised $400,000 in capital to finance a deal for Colombian product. “Stricklin had 50 people up and down the North Shore [of Massachusetts] working for him in various staging houses where the loads of weed would be stashed after being brought in on the smaller boats that rendezvoused with the mothership,” Schweidel told me over the phone.
It took the better part of three nights to move all of the weed, from getting it off of the boats to getting it out into the market. But by the third night, the first night's worth had hit the streets, paying back the investors and recouping costs. From there, it was pure profit. VICE reached out to Schweidel to find out how he kept a clear distinction between truth and tall tales in his new book.
VICE: Who was Jack Stricklin and how did you get to know him?
Kermit Schweidel: Jack Stricklin was a unique individual, really the definition of charisma. The thing about Jack was that he made every friend he had feel like his best friend, and there was nothing disingenuous about that. It was very real with him, because he was somebody who was very present. When he was with you, he was 100 percent with you. I was 12 years old when I met him, and he was four, five years older. I had two older sisters at the time, and that's kind of what brought Jack into my orbit there. But he took me seriously, and our relationship kind of built from there.
Why did you wait so long to tell his story?
Basically, it never was all my story to tell. It was a story that involved a lot of different stakeholders—Jack Stricklin and Mike Halliday being two of the biggest. Billy Russell is another one. I played an increasingly growing role once I got involved, but it really was their story. Jack Stricklin did 17 years consecutively, his last sentence. When he got out he convinced me that it was time. The way it ended up, there was barely enough time, because Jack died last November, but he lived to see the book completed. I deeply regret that he did not live to see the book published. Jack, Mike, and Billy all very much encouraged me to do it and played a role in it. It was time for us to tell our story.
What did Jack mean to the operation?
Jack just had this ability to inspire people that made everybody want to do things for him. He was the glue that held it all together. Mike Halliday was the guy that got the ball rolling. He found the big connection and was the smuggler. But Jack was the inspiration and the business mind, the entrepreneur kind of behind the whole thing. He did 24 years of his life in prison for pot, and the reason he did 24 years of his life in prison for pot is because Jack refused to roll over on anybody. He was offered deal after deal after deal. He could have got out in a fraction of that time, and all he would have had to do was turn snitch, but Jack wouldn't do that.
Smugglers are known to exaggerate. How did you kind of keep a clear distinction between the truth and tall tales in your book?
Boston was a big part of the book, and I was intimately involved in Boston. I knew the details. I feel really good about the veracity of the story, even after 40 years. The earlier stories from Jack, Mike, and Billy were stories I had heard all my life. I knew them to be true. The events that happened during that period of time were pretty clearly etched in our minds. An interesting thing about that would be Ralph Armendariz. Ralph is the guy that went to Colombia and got the load together and rode back on the boat. Forty years later, as I was writing the book, and I got Ralph's complete story, it was the first time any of us—me or Jack or Billy or Mike—had ever heard that side of the story, and it was the first time Ralph really ever heard about what was going on in Boston. This book kind of completes the story for everyone.
How did Jack and Mike end up smuggling so much pot?
It was really kind of trial-and-error and fits and starts as they got up to the 250-pound level. You've got to have a supplier, and when you get to that level, you've got to have a buyer, somebody that can distribute it. But once Mike made the connection in Mexico with La Nacha, who headed one of the big drug families of Northern Mexico, if not the biggest, they had access to a lot of pot.
Jack attracted buyers, and before they knew it, they were doing a truckload at a time, which was 750 to 800 pounds, and then two trucks at a time, and then two trucks, three or four times a week in the high season. Jack was the one that introduced airplanes to the equation. I would say they went from doing small Jeep loads, bringing it over on their backs, to doing truckloads and planeloads in a matter of six months. It just all happened really fast.
How did the drug trade evolve from the "pot rebellion," as you call it in your book, to the violent industry we have today?
The short answer is cocaine. Cocaine came along and ruined the pot business. In our day, the business of pot was really handled by the culture of pot. It was a culture of cooperation, a culture of trust. We would give people hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of pot on a handshake, and they would take it and we'd always get our money. But it was a really brief window between 1970 and 1975 when the culture of pot really dominated the business of pot. Cocaine comes along, which is a lot easier to smuggle, with a lot more money involved.
The money became too serious to ignore. [People] started shooting each other and killing each other and it got bigger than the pot culture could handle. Real, true pioneers like Jack, Mike, and Billy, didn't want to get into the cocaine business. They got into pot because they believed in the product. They used the product. They liked the product. They felt like there was nothing wrong, we knew we were breaking laws, but we didn't feel like we were breaking any big moral codes or doing anything evil or dangerous. Cocaine changed that. I think that kind of begat the violence that ended up just ripping the border apart.
Do you think the Folly Cove operation helped pave the way for legalization?
Well, we're not there yet, are we? Let me say that we were dumb enough, or naïve enough, to believe that we were going to win. Even back in the 70s, we thought this was going to go exactly the way of Prohibition, and the government was going to see the error of its ways and people were going to continue to use this stuff, and eventually it would be legalized or decriminalized. Well, here we are 40 years later and they're only now making those inroads. It's ridiculous to me that we haven't gone further, that we haven't legalized it on a national scale. The government fights it because, face it, drug enforcement is as big a business as drug distribution, and nobody wants to cut drug enforcement budgets—least of all drug enforcement. I think it's a fight that we'll continue to wage. But in the meantime, people continue to be prosecuted and jailed because of it, and that's the real crime to me.
EDITOR’S NOTE: No, no, the real crime is not that people continue to get prosecuted and jailed for pot. The real crime is that people continue to break the laws against pot.
GUN OWNERSHIP ONLY FOR THE MILITARY AND POLICE?
Everything you think you know about the Second Amendment is WRONG says historian who claims Founding Fathers wanted a highly-trained militia, not an 'armed mob'
By Daniel Bates
Daily Mail
January 25, 2018
The original meaning of the Second Amendment has been twisted beyond recognition by an 'armed faith' promoted by gun advocates, a new book claims.
Groups such as the National Rifle Association (NRA) are wrongly claiming that protecting gun rights is the key to protecting all other forms of liberty, says the new book Armed in America: A History of Gun Rights from Colonial Militias to Concealed Carry.
But in fact, that bears no relationship to the original meaning of the Second Amendment which specifically linked gun ownership to membership of a well-regulated militia, claims its author.
Patrick J. Charles, a Marine veteran and historian, accuses NRA chairman Wayne LaPierre of 'rewriting history' and says the Founding Fathers would consider modern day gun owners to be an 'armed mob', in his book that was released Thursday.
Gun advocates like Sarah Palin, who owns a pink camouflage AR-15, are flat out wrong and are 'guided by political ideology more so than facts', he says in the book.
Charles writes: 'What is often characterized as the history of gun rights is not really history at all, at least as understood by historians.
'Rather it is a historically based narrative that is researched, written and disseminated...to reinforce the political and cultural views of the gun-rights community'.
The book is a harsh criticism of the gun lobby but Charles, who has spent a decade researching and writing about the history of gun rights, claims he is simply adhering to historical methodology and historical norms.
Charles is the historian of the 24th Special Operations Wing of the US Air Force, and says he is not 'anti-gun, anti-Second Amendment, associated with communism or socialism, unfamiliar with firearms'.
The Second Amendment of the Constitution, which was written in 1789, states: 'A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed'.
What Charles seeks to do is to place the amendment in the context in which it was understood at the time of its writing to show how far America has moved from what it originally meant.
In Charles' view, the well-regulated militia phrase of the Second Amendment has been deliberately overlooked by gun advocates because it undermines their main argument for looser gun control rules.
One of the key documents the Founders were inspired by when writing the Constitution was the 1689 Bill of Rights from England.
Article VII states: 'That the subjects which are protestants, may have arms for their defense suitable to their conditions, and as allowed by law'.
Charles argues that this meant Parliament could choose which persons could be armed - 'suitable to their condition' - and under what circumstances those arms could be borne - 'as allowed by the law'.
Gun ownership in England at the time was heavily controlled and depended on socioeconomic status, so Parliament was not sanctioning the widespread use of firearms.
As Charles sees it, Parliament had the authority to call forth the people as a militia - a group of civilians who could be called on to supplement the army in a crisis - to restore their own liberty and protect their government, nothing more.
This same principle was adopted by the Continental Congress in the US, Charles says. Another key principle, which Charles argues has been lost, is that this militia had to be 'well-regulated'.
In the book he says that 'every political and legal commentator from the Glorious Revolution through to the American Revolution agreed that the right to arms was useless, unless the militia was properly trained and disciplined'.
One unnamed mid 18th Century writer cited in the book summed up the dangers of a poorly trained militia.
He wrote: 'Should you take your Fire-Arms along with you, that John in the Rear will be firing his Piece into the Back-side of his Friend Tom in the Front or, which would still be worse, blow out the Brains of his noble Captain…
'...a Firelock, with Bayonet fixed on the End of it, is a very awkward Kind of Instrument, and that it requires more Dexterity than you may be aware of'.
According to Charles 'the belief in a well-regulated militia as the people's birthright and security permeated throughout the American revolution'.
He writes: 'Outlining the importance that the Founding Fathers placed on military discipline and training to effectuate a constitutional well-regulated militia is vital because there are many contemporary Americans who improperly equate a well-regulated militia as being one and the same with a mere armed citizenry.
'Nothing could be further from the truth. The Founding Fathers would have categorized such militias as ill-regulated, unregulated, or an armed mob'.
Charles says that the Constitution does not allow people to assemble as their own militias like the 'Oath Keepers' who have appeared at protests around the country in recent years to promote Second Amendment rights.
There were indeed some independent companies such as the Fairfax County Militia Association, but they were under the direction of colonial governments and later state and federal governments.
The Second Amendment was adopted in 1791 but the next year the Militia Acts were passed which made the states the organizers of militias.
It also effectively ended the idea of a national militia as the Founding Fathers envisaged it, due to squabbling between the federal and state governments.
During the 1840s compulsory militia service gave way to volunteer militia companies and gradually the idea of owning a gun became unlinked to military service.
By the time of the Civil War, the 'prevalence of the armed citizenry model over the civic republicanism model' had taken over.
The pro-gun lobby also began to form and the NRA was founded in 1871, named after an English rifle club of the same name.
Editorials began appearing in papers criticizing restrictions on armed carriage laws but in 1911 New York brought in the Sullivan Law, which required individuals to obtain a permit to purchase or carry handguns amid a moral panic about gang violence.
It sparked an intense backlash and led to a split between those who believed in the need for gun regulation to protect themselves and gun rights advocates who saw themselves as embodying 'true American ideals'.
During the 1930s the gun advocacy message began to pick up steam under the guidance of the NRA which created a 'cultural divide' to push their agenda, Charles charges.
Sportsmen, hunters and gun owners were cast as the patriotic defenders of the nation and were described as carrying on the arms-bearing tradition of the Founding Fathers.
For much of the 20th century the NRA was 'unwavering' in its belief that the Second Amendment guaranteed the right of an individual to own and use firearms for their own purposes.
But it was not until the 1970s that they had the legal arguments or academic theories to back them up, Charles argues.
The key texts which they have come to rely on, he writes, were known as the 'Standard Model Second Amendment', a series of originalist and individualistic interpretations of the Constitution, the most well known of which was by St Louis University Law Professor Don Kates.
An originalist approach involves reading the text as it was understood at the time, the technique Charles says he used on his book Armed in America.
Originalism's most prominent advocate on all clauses of the constitution was Justice Antonin Scalia, and Trump's Supreme Court pick Neil Gorsuch spoke in favor of such an approach at his confirmation hearing.
But Charles says that the key studies of the second amendment in the 1970s 'failed to adhere to even the most basic objectivity and methodology norms'.
He claims that they 'manufactured history as a means to advance Second Amendment rights' and that some of their claims were 'patently absurd'.
Charles admits that despite this, the Standard Model thinking became hugely influential and became received thinking among gun advocates.
When President George W Bush made longtime NRA member John Ashcroft his Attorney General, he changed the Department of Justice policy on firearms to be about the right of individuals to bear arms, not as part of a militia.
The influence was also felt through the courts and the NRA's biggest victory was the Supreme Court's 2008 decision in District of Columbia v Heller.
A majority of judges ruled for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individuals right to armed self defense in their home - a reading of the Constitution that was in line with Standard Model.
The Justices in the majority included Scalia. Charles writes that after the Heller ruling the 'political tone changed dramatically' in Washington.
Whilst Democrats continued to advocate for 'reasonable firearm controls' Republicans 'abandoned their support for gun control altogether'.
The reality is that appeasing the gun lobby is about 'appealing to a broader conservative political base that opposes liberal views, fears government overreach and views the Second Amendment as the last line of defense,' Charles says.
More recently there has been the development of what Charles calls an 'armed faith'. He describes this as the belief in 'unrestrained right to repel force with force and that any impediments to this right does society more harm than good'.
According to Charles this is a 'faith that [believes that] less restrictions on the access, ownership and use of firearms ensures democratic governance, protects all constitutional liberties, such as speech, religion and assembly, and as a matter of public policy is far better than any restrictive alternatives'.
It is also completely wrong, he argues. As Charles sees it, the US should heed the warnings of other countries that America's gun problem is out of control.
The US is first the world in arms ownership per capita and first among developed nations for firearm deaths and mass shootings.
Gun-related deaths happen so frequently that more people have died from them than all the major military conflicts in US history.
Despite this, the last time Congress passed a gun control bill was the assault weapons ban in 1994 - which expired in 2004.
In a searing opening chapter Charles seeks to debunk many NRA-promoted theories about why increased gun ownership is a good thing.
He criticizes the controversial 'Stand Your Ground' laws which were used by George Zimmerman in his defense for killing Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, in 2012.
In fact people living in the late 18th century were legally required to retreat before using deadly force, Charles writes.
Charles is tough on scholars who support the NRA's viewpoint and says they have been writing 'historical errors'.
He writes: 'The history of gun rights was not based on adhering to accepted historical principles such as historical objectivity, the search for the historical truth or a scholarly exchange of ideas.
'Rather, the history of gun rights was principled on legal advocacy, political activism and in the process expanding the meaning and scope of the Second Amendment as broadly as possible.'
Charles says the theory that 'more guns equals less crime' is 'specious'.
He says that out of 160 active shooter situations investigated by the FBI between 2000 and 2013 only 3.1 percent were ended by armed civilians.
More than four times that number, 13.1 percent, was ended by people without guns, according to his research.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Patrick Charles says the Second Amendment does not give us the right to own guns ….. Quick, git a rope!
By Daniel Bates
Daily Mail
January 25, 2018
The original meaning of the Second Amendment has been twisted beyond recognition by an 'armed faith' promoted by gun advocates, a new book claims.
Groups such as the National Rifle Association (NRA) are wrongly claiming that protecting gun rights is the key to protecting all other forms of liberty, says the new book Armed in America: A History of Gun Rights from Colonial Militias to Concealed Carry.
But in fact, that bears no relationship to the original meaning of the Second Amendment which specifically linked gun ownership to membership of a well-regulated militia, claims its author.
Patrick J. Charles, a Marine veteran and historian, accuses NRA chairman Wayne LaPierre of 'rewriting history' and says the Founding Fathers would consider modern day gun owners to be an 'armed mob', in his book that was released Thursday.
Gun advocates like Sarah Palin, who owns a pink camouflage AR-15, are flat out wrong and are 'guided by political ideology more so than facts', he says in the book.
Charles writes: 'What is often characterized as the history of gun rights is not really history at all, at least as understood by historians.
'Rather it is a historically based narrative that is researched, written and disseminated...to reinforce the political and cultural views of the gun-rights community'.
The book is a harsh criticism of the gun lobby but Charles, who has spent a decade researching and writing about the history of gun rights, claims he is simply adhering to historical methodology and historical norms.
Charles is the historian of the 24th Special Operations Wing of the US Air Force, and says he is not 'anti-gun, anti-Second Amendment, associated with communism or socialism, unfamiliar with firearms'.
The Second Amendment of the Constitution, which was written in 1789, states: 'A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed'.
What Charles seeks to do is to place the amendment in the context in which it was understood at the time of its writing to show how far America has moved from what it originally meant.
In Charles' view, the well-regulated militia phrase of the Second Amendment has been deliberately overlooked by gun advocates because it undermines their main argument for looser gun control rules.
One of the key documents the Founders were inspired by when writing the Constitution was the 1689 Bill of Rights from England.
Article VII states: 'That the subjects which are protestants, may have arms for their defense suitable to their conditions, and as allowed by law'.
Charles argues that this meant Parliament could choose which persons could be armed - 'suitable to their condition' - and under what circumstances those arms could be borne - 'as allowed by the law'.
Gun ownership in England at the time was heavily controlled and depended on socioeconomic status, so Parliament was not sanctioning the widespread use of firearms.
As Charles sees it, Parliament had the authority to call forth the people as a militia - a group of civilians who could be called on to supplement the army in a crisis - to restore their own liberty and protect their government, nothing more.
This same principle was adopted by the Continental Congress in the US, Charles says. Another key principle, which Charles argues has been lost, is that this militia had to be 'well-regulated'.
In the book he says that 'every political and legal commentator from the Glorious Revolution through to the American Revolution agreed that the right to arms was useless, unless the militia was properly trained and disciplined'.
One unnamed mid 18th Century writer cited in the book summed up the dangers of a poorly trained militia.
He wrote: 'Should you take your Fire-Arms along with you, that John in the Rear will be firing his Piece into the Back-side of his Friend Tom in the Front or, which would still be worse, blow out the Brains of his noble Captain…
'...a Firelock, with Bayonet fixed on the End of it, is a very awkward Kind of Instrument, and that it requires more Dexterity than you may be aware of'.
According to Charles 'the belief in a well-regulated militia as the people's birthright and security permeated throughout the American revolution'.
He writes: 'Outlining the importance that the Founding Fathers placed on military discipline and training to effectuate a constitutional well-regulated militia is vital because there are many contemporary Americans who improperly equate a well-regulated militia as being one and the same with a mere armed citizenry.
'Nothing could be further from the truth. The Founding Fathers would have categorized such militias as ill-regulated, unregulated, or an armed mob'.
Charles says that the Constitution does not allow people to assemble as their own militias like the 'Oath Keepers' who have appeared at protests around the country in recent years to promote Second Amendment rights.
There were indeed some independent companies such as the Fairfax County Militia Association, but they were under the direction of colonial governments and later state and federal governments.
The Second Amendment was adopted in 1791 but the next year the Militia Acts were passed which made the states the organizers of militias.
It also effectively ended the idea of a national militia as the Founding Fathers envisaged it, due to squabbling between the federal and state governments.
During the 1840s compulsory militia service gave way to volunteer militia companies and gradually the idea of owning a gun became unlinked to military service.
By the time of the Civil War, the 'prevalence of the armed citizenry model over the civic republicanism model' had taken over.
The pro-gun lobby also began to form and the NRA was founded in 1871, named after an English rifle club of the same name.
Editorials began appearing in papers criticizing restrictions on armed carriage laws but in 1911 New York brought in the Sullivan Law, which required individuals to obtain a permit to purchase or carry handguns amid a moral panic about gang violence.
It sparked an intense backlash and led to a split between those who believed in the need for gun regulation to protect themselves and gun rights advocates who saw themselves as embodying 'true American ideals'.
During the 1930s the gun advocacy message began to pick up steam under the guidance of the NRA which created a 'cultural divide' to push their agenda, Charles charges.
Sportsmen, hunters and gun owners were cast as the patriotic defenders of the nation and were described as carrying on the arms-bearing tradition of the Founding Fathers.
For much of the 20th century the NRA was 'unwavering' in its belief that the Second Amendment guaranteed the right of an individual to own and use firearms for their own purposes.
But it was not until the 1970s that they had the legal arguments or academic theories to back them up, Charles argues.
The key texts which they have come to rely on, he writes, were known as the 'Standard Model Second Amendment', a series of originalist and individualistic interpretations of the Constitution, the most well known of which was by St Louis University Law Professor Don Kates.
An originalist approach involves reading the text as it was understood at the time, the technique Charles says he used on his book Armed in America.
Originalism's most prominent advocate on all clauses of the constitution was Justice Antonin Scalia, and Trump's Supreme Court pick Neil Gorsuch spoke in favor of such an approach at his confirmation hearing.
But Charles says that the key studies of the second amendment in the 1970s 'failed to adhere to even the most basic objectivity and methodology norms'.
He claims that they 'manufactured history as a means to advance Second Amendment rights' and that some of their claims were 'patently absurd'.
Charles admits that despite this, the Standard Model thinking became hugely influential and became received thinking among gun advocates.
When President George W Bush made longtime NRA member John Ashcroft his Attorney General, he changed the Department of Justice policy on firearms to be about the right of individuals to bear arms, not as part of a militia.
The influence was also felt through the courts and the NRA's biggest victory was the Supreme Court's 2008 decision in District of Columbia v Heller.
A majority of judges ruled for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individuals right to armed self defense in their home - a reading of the Constitution that was in line with Standard Model.
The Justices in the majority included Scalia. Charles writes that after the Heller ruling the 'political tone changed dramatically' in Washington.
Whilst Democrats continued to advocate for 'reasonable firearm controls' Republicans 'abandoned their support for gun control altogether'.
The reality is that appeasing the gun lobby is about 'appealing to a broader conservative political base that opposes liberal views, fears government overreach and views the Second Amendment as the last line of defense,' Charles says.
More recently there has been the development of what Charles calls an 'armed faith'. He describes this as the belief in 'unrestrained right to repel force with force and that any impediments to this right does society more harm than good'.
According to Charles this is a 'faith that [believes that] less restrictions on the access, ownership and use of firearms ensures democratic governance, protects all constitutional liberties, such as speech, religion and assembly, and as a matter of public policy is far better than any restrictive alternatives'.
It is also completely wrong, he argues. As Charles sees it, the US should heed the warnings of other countries that America's gun problem is out of control.
The US is first the world in arms ownership per capita and first among developed nations for firearm deaths and mass shootings.
Gun-related deaths happen so frequently that more people have died from them than all the major military conflicts in US history.
Despite this, the last time Congress passed a gun control bill was the assault weapons ban in 1994 - which expired in 2004.
In a searing opening chapter Charles seeks to debunk many NRA-promoted theories about why increased gun ownership is a good thing.
He criticizes the controversial 'Stand Your Ground' laws which were used by George Zimmerman in his defense for killing Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, in 2012.
In fact people living in the late 18th century were legally required to retreat before using deadly force, Charles writes.
Charles is tough on scholars who support the NRA's viewpoint and says they have been writing 'historical errors'.
He writes: 'The history of gun rights was not based on adhering to accepted historical principles such as historical objectivity, the search for the historical truth or a scholarly exchange of ideas.
'Rather, the history of gun rights was principled on legal advocacy, political activism and in the process expanding the meaning and scope of the Second Amendment as broadly as possible.'
Charles says the theory that 'more guns equals less crime' is 'specious'.
He says that out of 160 active shooter situations investigated by the FBI between 2000 and 2013 only 3.1 percent were ended by armed civilians.
More than four times that number, 13.1 percent, was ended by people without guns, according to his research.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Patrick Charles says the Second Amendment does not give us the right to own guns ….. Quick, git a rope!
Saturday, January 27, 2018
DOES HOUSTON NEED 1,000 MORE COPS?
The ability to respond to all calls in a timely manner should determine police manpower needs
By Howie Katz
Big Jolly Times
January 26, 2018
Scott Henson’s ‘Grits for Breakfast’ suggested it may be time to reduce the number of cos in light of falling crime rates. Here is his snippet from Thursday’s GFB:
Justifying more police in an era of declining crime
Recently, the Washington Post pointed out that, despite crime plummeting in the last three decades, the number of police has not declined, wondering aloud, as if for the first time, whether they should. So it's in that context that Grits reads the Houston Chronicle headline, "As crime drops, police chief says HPD needs thousands more on the force." This is preventive excuse making. If crime goes down, Chief Acevedo will surely take credit. But if it goes up, he will say it's because he didn't get his officers, even though the number of index-crimes-per-officer is near its 30-year nadir.
Let's get real. The police can do little about reducing crime other than catching crooks and making sure they are kept locked up. A criminal in jail is one less criminal on the streets.
By having a heavy patrol presence in high crime areas, the police may be able to reduce burglaries and gangbanger shootings somewhat. Most other crime, especially assaults and murders not related to gangs, cannot really be prevented by the police.
'Broken Windows' and stop-and-frisk operations by the police in New York did reduce crime, but because those operations impacted minority communities disproportionately, they are now verboten.
So the crime rate is going to go up and down regardless of a police presence.
And Scott is right about Arcevedo ..... If the crime rate goes down he'll brag about what a wonderful job HPD is doing and if it goes up he'll say it's because he doesn't have enough cops.
Having said that though, Arcevedo is right about needing more cops. With a growing population and countless requests for police services, HPD does not have enough cops to answer even some reported felonies. Asking for 1,000 more cops is not unreasonable for the city of Houston.
The bottom line is that crime rates should not determine the number of cops on the force! The ability to respond to all calls in a timely manner should determine Houston’s or any other city’s police manpower needs.
By Howie Katz
Big Jolly Times
January 26, 2018
Scott Henson’s ‘Grits for Breakfast’ suggested it may be time to reduce the number of cos in light of falling crime rates. Here is his snippet from Thursday’s GFB:
Justifying more police in an era of declining crime
Recently, the Washington Post pointed out that, despite crime plummeting in the last three decades, the number of police has not declined, wondering aloud, as if for the first time, whether they should. So it's in that context that Grits reads the Houston Chronicle headline, "As crime drops, police chief says HPD needs thousands more on the force." This is preventive excuse making. If crime goes down, Chief Acevedo will surely take credit. But if it goes up, he will say it's because he didn't get his officers, even though the number of index-crimes-per-officer is near its 30-year nadir.
Let's get real. The police can do little about reducing crime other than catching crooks and making sure they are kept locked up. A criminal in jail is one less criminal on the streets.
By having a heavy patrol presence in high crime areas, the police may be able to reduce burglaries and gangbanger shootings somewhat. Most other crime, especially assaults and murders not related to gangs, cannot really be prevented by the police.
'Broken Windows' and stop-and-frisk operations by the police in New York did reduce crime, but because those operations impacted minority communities disproportionately, they are now verboten.
So the crime rate is going to go up and down regardless of a police presence.
And Scott is right about Arcevedo ..... If the crime rate goes down he'll brag about what a wonderful job HPD is doing and if it goes up he'll say it's because he doesn't have enough cops.
Having said that though, Arcevedo is right about needing more cops. With a growing population and countless requests for police services, HPD does not have enough cops to answer even some reported felonies. Asking for 1,000 more cops is not unreasonable for the city of Houston.
The bottom line is that crime rates should not determine the number of cops on the force! The ability to respond to all calls in a timely manner should determine Houston’s or any other city’s police manpower needs.
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