I was hoping to say more about the latest in Syria, but Halloween weekend won that battle. I just finished this book as well, so no way to pull my thoughts together with two kids jacked up on candy and stuck in the house because of the rain. Hope to pull it off for a later one.
Here’s what’s been happening the last two weeks…
Bernie Sanders has come out with the strongest policy proposal for ending marijuana prohibition in the United States. He’s also more progressive on the death penalty.
A UN proposal suggesting that all countries decriminalize drug use and possession will not be considered. Details of the proposal were leaked by Richard Branson, who is devoting a lot of time and energy to ending mass incarceration.
Irin Carmon writes about the reductions in abortion access in red states. Becca Andrews writes about the additional repercussions of the extremist attacks on Planned Parenthood.
Danielle Allen writes about how the war on drugs leads to much of the violent crime that also fills our prisons.
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor writes about the death of Freddie Gray and the fight for black liberation.
Samuel Sinyangwe debunks the “Ferguson effect”.
Tim Lynch writes about a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee on sentencing reform. Mary Clane Jalonick has more. Daniel Denvir discusses the difficult parts of reducing mass incarceration. Nick Pinto explores why it’s so difficult to get there.
A group of high level law enforcers and prosecutors in the U.S. are calling for criminal justice reforms.
Chris McDaniel and Tasneem Nashrulla write about the mysterious business in India that’s selling death-penalty drugs to Nebraska. In Ohio, the Senate President suggested heroin as a potential alternative. States are hiring lawyers to try to explore what’s legal for them when it comes to obtaining these drugs.
Cyrus Farivar writes about the dismissal of an anti-surveillance lawsuit brought by Wikimedia against the NSA.
Jason Koebler writes about the troubling “cybersecurity” bill that passed in the Senate this week.
Muckrock has an extensive roundup of information on cell phone surveillance capabilities. Joseph Cox writes more about the latest capabilities with social media apps.
John Kiriakou explains what Hillary Clinton gets wrong about Edward Snowden. Amanda Winkler and Nick Gillespie talk to Snowden’s lawyer, Jesselyn Radack.
A Hawaiian police officer is being investigated for arresting two lesbians for kissing in public.
A petition has been started to demand a pardon for the victims of the Kettle Falls Five medical marijuana prosecution.
A U.S. District Court judge ruled that the recently passed Rohrabacher-Farr Amendement prevents prosecutions of medical marijuana providers. Christopher Ingraham has more.
A woman in California is suing a highway patrol officer after she claims that, during a DUI traffic stop, he opened her phone and forwarded private photos of the woman to himself.
A California police department is issuing nunchucks to officers.
Beryl Lipton writes about a private prison coming to California. Kelly Davis finds more horror stories coming out of California prisons.
Erica Hellerstein writes about the Oklahoma prosecutor who’s sent dozens of people to death row in his career.
A man in Louisiana was deported to Honduras despite a DHS lawyer determining that he was improperly detained. Tanvi Misra writes more about this and similar cases.
Radley Balko writes about a Missouri man who was falsely accused of sexual misconduct trying to clear his name.
A former St. Louis prosecutor plead guilty in a case where she covered up a police beating.
Also in St. Louis, a police officer attempting to shoot a dog shot a person instead.
The DEA raided hemp farms on Wisconsin tribal lands.
Spencer Ackerman uncovers more details on Homan Square, the secret detention facility used by Chicago police, with some additional data analysis here.
University of Illinois professor Steven Saliata, fired for his opinions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, would welcome the opportunity to go back to the university.
Prosecutors in Cleveland are finally presenting evidence to a grand jury in the videotaped murder of 12-year-old Tamir Rice by a Cleveland police officer. Jaeah Lee writes about why public anger is not likely to subside any time soon.
In Kentucky, a prosecutor stated in court that driving while hispanic is probable cause for pulling someone over.
An Alabama judge is accused of forcing people to give blood as a way to avoid jail.
An Alabama police officer who severely injured an Indian national visiting his relatives is being retried after the first trial ended in a jury deadlock.
Wesley Lowery writes about the killing of musician Corey Jones by a plainclothes cop in Florida after his car broke down on the freeway. The officer had been reported for multiple violations at a previous job. Jones’ lawyer alleges that the officer did not have his badge either.
An Orlando police officer was acquitted of using excessive force against a handcuffed suspect.
An Atlanta police officer is shown releasing a handcuffed suspect after noticing that he was being filmed.
A South Carolina school resource officer was caught on video violently abusing a teenage girl and later fired. Chris Hayes interviews a classmate.
Police officers in South Carolina are denying several specific allegations about a incident where they killed a teenager in a botched drug sting. Video of the incident has been released.
CJ Ciaramella writes about seven prisoners in South Carolina who got a combined 20 years in solitary confinement for making a rap video.
Sharon LaFraniere and Andrew Lehren write about the stark racial disparities in how police in Greensboro, NC treat its citizens.
Christopher Ingraham writes about the racial disparities in Virginia’s ramped up marijuana enforcement.
A video shows Maryland police officers improperly arresting someone for trying to assert their rights during a stop.
Theodore Hamm and Alex Vitale look at the racial disparities in marijuana enforcement across different neighborhoods in New York.
Corey Robin writes about police spying on Muslims at Brooklyn College.
Julie Netherland writes about the potential safe-injection facility for addicts in New York City, which would be the first in the United States.
Scott Shackford writes about NYPD secrecy over the use of X-Ray emitting equipment used to search cars and buildings.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo commuted two sentences for the first time in office.
German Lopez writes about the potential impact of Canada legalizing marijuana under its new Liberal government. Cory Doctorow writes about the concerns over internet freedom with the Liberals in power.
Police in Toronto harassed some men who were legally filming an arrest.
British resident Shaker Aamer was released from Guantanamo Bay.
In London, several protestors were arrested during the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Also in England, the BBC did nothing to prevent police from seizing the laptop of one of its reporters.
Germany is investigating another potential instance of UK-US spying involving a computer virus known to be used by NSA and GCHQ.
Megan Specia writes about the violent arrest and release of a Turkish journalist.
A drone strike in Syria killed an alleged al-Qaeda leader.
Amira Hass writes about how the despair of occupation leads to Palestinian violence. Julie Norman writes about the illegality and futility of the harsh Israeli crackdowns on Palestinian protests.
In Yemen, a hospital run by Doctors without Borders was bombed by Saudi forces. Lee Fang writes about how American defense contractors brush aside the humanitarian concerns over Saudi actions. Richard Norton-Taylor has more.
Raif Badawi, a Saudi blogger, continues to serve a 10 year jail sentence along with 1,000 lashes.
Michael Wahid Hanna argues for downgrading our relationship with the increasingly totalitarian nightmare of a government in Egypt.
Nick Turse writes about a secret U.S. drone base in Djibouti.
Police in Uganda are interfering with legitimate political activities.
Iran appears to be on track to execute 1,000 people this year.
Jason Cone calls for an investigation into the hospital bombing in Kunduz, Afghanistan by U.S. forces. This week, it was revealed that American forces were aware it was a hospital at the time it was attacked.
The Myanmar government is accused of committing genocide against Rohingya Muslims.
China is the worst in the world among developed countries when it comes to internet freedom.
Simon Denyer writes about the damage caused by China’s one-child policy over the years.
Helen Davidson writes about mass incarceration and racial disparities in the Northern Territory of Australia.
Court records show that police illegally searched the bank records of a New Zealand journalist.
“A Hawaiian police officer is being investigated for arresting two lesbians for kissing in public.”
He didn’t just arrest them; he also beat them up. http://handbill.us/?p=61642
Imagine living in a society where workers and consumers have no right to sue giant corporations that rip them off or cause them bodily harm. Well, that world isn’t just coming, it’s already here.
“By inserting individual-arbitration clauses into a soaring number of consumer and employment contracts, companies such as American Express devised a way to circumvent the courts and bar people from joining in class-action lawsuits, realistically the only tool citizens have to fight illegal or deceitful business practices.”
It’s no secret among lawyers that arbitrators favor the corporate defendants who pay their fees. (It’s tough to get work if you don’t.) In extreme cases, it’s even worse; for example, if you buy a new home in Texass that turns out to be a defect-riddled lemon, you can’t sue the builder, you have to go before an arbitration panel made up of builders.
http://www.seattletimes.com/na.....ht-to-sue/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Republicans have long pushed for what they mislabel as “tort reform,” which isn’t reform at all,
but simply taking away your right to sue. While they’ve been able to implement this at the state level in some red states, e.g. Texass, they’ve struggled to take it national (although they’re still trying).
What Republicans have been unable to accomplish noisily and publicly, corporations are getting away with quietly and sneakily, through the fine print of encyclopedia-length contracts written in opaque legalese set in 4-point type.
Where this is taking us, of course, is a society with a one-sided legal system which the powerful can use to destroy you if, for example, you speak out against a developer at a public meeting (SLAPP suits), but in which you have no redress if they decide to tear up contracts, sell you defective products, defraud you, or cause you bodily harm.
What they’re actually doing is shredding the social contract. It may be unwise, and the powerful may get more than they bargained for. The fundamental purpose of a legal system is to offer people a peaceful means of redress in exchange for giving up the practice of revenge. When a society stacks its legal system in favor of the powerful, or takes it away altogether (like Lucy snatching away the football), the powerless have nothing left but revenge. Can anyone doubt for a moment that some of them will resort to it?
Elsewhere on the civil liberties beat, a Texass judge is ordering people who committed pretty crimes to get married as a condition of being sentenced to probation instead of jail,
http://handbill.us/?p=61628
Republican presidential candidates are flocking to a conference put on by a rabid preacher who wants to exterminate gays,
http://handbill.us/?p=61666
some states and cities are trying to criminalize hunger,
http://handbill.us/?p=61651
and, of course, horror stories about rogue cops running amok continue unabated.
The mother of a child murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School by a crazed gunman wrote a book about her journey to healing. On Amazon.com, dozens of venom-filled reviews of her book have been posted by rightwing lunatics who believe the Sandy Hook massacre is a hoax perpetrated by our government as an excuse to confiscate their guns.
http://www.seattletimes.com/bu.....cies-rage/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: These sound like people who shouldn’t have guns, alright. Our government isn’t about to confiscate their guns, but it ought to.
@2,
I wonder if consumers couldn’t just scan and modify these agreements before signing? I doubt that commissioned sales drones working against a production quota would even care.
I just came across an interesting item in last week’s Sunday Times business section. It says it’s common practice for real estate agents to take money under the table to feed unsuspecting homebuyers to mortgage brokers and title insurance companies who rip them off, and the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is moving to crack down on this practice. CFPB, if you recall, was Elizabeth Warren’s brainchild, Republicans tried to block it and then tried to immobilize it by blocking the appointment of a director. Does anyone doubt that a Republican president and congress would demolish the CFPB if they got the chance? Don’t let your friends vote Republican!
http://www.seattletimes.com/bu.....ral-deals/