Replies to post #263674 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[F6]

No Joke, Trump’s New Slogan Is The Same One From ‘The Purge’

Keep America Great #DonaldTrump 2020 campaign slogan is plagiarized from #ThePurge
Par for course.
[

Keep America Great #DonaldTrump 2020 campaign slogan is plagiarized from #ThePurge

Par for course. pic.twitter.com/d5lOiIRUzg

— Red White & Shoe (@USAMINDJOB) January 18, 2017

(with comments)]

Yes, you have heard the phrase “Keep America Great” before.
01/18/2017 Updated January 18, 2017
[...]
Unfortunately, since Trump’s new tagline is technically already taken (by a movie that seemingly pokes fun at him), the president-elect may look elsewhere. For Mr. Trump’s reference, here are some other slogans that have been used before:



[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trumps-new-slogan-is-from-the-purge_us_587f928ee4b0cf0ae8810f52?cg8ls7zofuwii6yldi [with (separate) embedded video, and comments], http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXMp9fBomJw [embedded; with (over 10,000) comments]

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(linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=127993847 and preceding and following

[fuagf]

Trump picks conservative judge Gorsuch for U.S. Supreme Court

"Anne Gorsuch Burford—Head of the EPA. Crime: Cut the EPA staff by 22 percent and refused to turn over
documents relating to the Sewergate Scandal to Congress. Result: convicted of contempt but not imprisoned "

.. that's just trivia, of course, just the reason i linked it here ..

Wed Feb 1, 2017 | 12:08am EST

By Lawrence Hurley and Steve Holland | WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump on Tuesday nominated Neil Gorsuch for a lifetime job on the U.S. Supreme Court, picking the 49-year-old federal appeals court judge to restore the court's conservative majority and help shape rulings on divisive issues such as abortion, gun control, the death penalty and religious rights.

The Colorado native faces a potentially contentious confirmation battle in the U.S. Senate after Republicans last year refused to consider Democratic President Barack Obama's nominee to fill the vacancy caused by the February 2016 death of conservative justice Antonin Scalia.

The Senate's top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, indicated his party would mount a procedural hurdle requiring 60 votes in the 100-seat Senate rather than a simple majority to approve Gorsuch, and expressed "very serious doubts" about the nominee. Liberal groups called for an all-out fight to reject Gorsuch while conservative groups and Republican senators heaped praise on him like "outstanding," "impressive" and a "home run."

Gorsuch, the son of a former Reagan administration official, is the youngest nominee to the nation's highest court in more than a quarter century, and he could influence the direction of the court for decades. He is a judge on the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and was appointed to that post by Republican President George W. Bush in 2006.

Announcing the selection to a nighttime crowd in the White House East Room flanked by the judge and his wife, Trump said Gorsuch's resume is "as good as it gets." Trump, who took office on Jan. 20 and has sparked numerous controversies, said he hopes Republicans and Democrats can come together on this nomination for the good of the country.

"Judge Gorsuch has outstanding legal skills, a brilliant mind, tremendous disciple, and has earned bipartisan support," Trump told an audience that included Scalia's widow.

"Depending on their age, a justice can be active for 50 years. And his or her decisions can last a century or more, and can often be permanent," Trump added.

Gorsuch is considered a conservative intellectual, known for backing religious rights and writing against euthanasia and assisted suicide, and is seen as very much in the mold of Scalia, a leading conservative voice on the court for decades.

"I respect ... the fact that in our legal order it is for Congress and not the courts to write new laws," Gorsuch said, as Trump looked on. "It is the role of judges to apply, not alter, the work of the people's representatives. A judge who likes every outcome he reaches is very likely a bad judge, stretching for results he prefers rather than those the law demands."

A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the choice of Gorsuch was seen by the White House as a significant departure from Supreme Court nominations from the recent past, given that many justices have come from the eastern United States. Gorsuch lives in Boulder, Colorado, where he raises horses and is a life-long outdoorsman.

The official said a screening committee helped in the selection process that included Vice President Mike Pence, White House counsel Don McGahn, chief of staff Reince Priebus and top strategist Steve Bannon.

Gorsuch became the youngest U.S. Supreme Court nominee since Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1991 selected conservative Clarence Thomas, who was 43 at the time. Gorsuch was in the same 1991 graduating class from Harvard Law School as Obama.


U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with Neil Gorsuch (L) after nominating him to be an associate
justice of the U.S. Supreme Court at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 31, 2017.
REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

The selection of Gorsuch, who was on a list of about 20 judges suggested by conservative legal activists, unified Republicans in a way not seen since Trump's Nov. 8 election victory, with even critics within the party such as South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham singing the nominee's praises.

Trump made his choice between two U.S. appeals court judges, Gorsuch and Thomas Hardiman of the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, according to a source involved in the selection process.

The Senate confirmed Gorsuch for his current judgeship in 2006 by voice vote with no one voting against him.

Democrats signaled it may not be easy this time.

"Judge Gorsuch has repeatedly sided with corporations over working people, demonstrated a hostility toward women's rights, and most troubling, hewed to an ideological approach to jurisprudence that makes me skeptical that he can be a strong, independent justice on the court," Schumer said.

Trump got the opportunity to name Scalia's replacement only because the Republican-led Senate, in an action with little precedent in U.S. history, refused to consider Obama's nominee for the post, appeals court judge Merrick Garland. Obama nominated Garland on March 16 but Republican senators led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell denied Garland the customary confirmation hearings and vote.

"This is the first time in American history that one party has blockaded a nominee for almost a year in order to deliver a seat to a president of their own party. If this tactic is rewarded rather than resisted, it will set a dangerous new precedent in American governance," Oregon Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley said.

[i read an opinion that there was no good reason on principle to block Gorsuch's nomination,
and felt that was arguable. Merkeley pretty well echoed the thought there.]

McConnell said on Tuesday he hoped the Senate would show Gorsuch "fair consideration and respect the result of the recent election with an up-or-down vote on his nomination, just like the Senate treated the four first-term nominees of (Democratic) Presidents (Bill) Clinton and Obama."

A rally outside the Supreme Court building staged by liberal groups drew hundreds of demonstrators against Gorsuch.

Michael Keegan, president of the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way, described Gorsuch as an "ideological warrior who puts his own right-wing politics above the Constitution."

MOTHER SERVED IN REAGAN ADMINISTRATION

Gorsuch is the son of Anne Burford, the first woman to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She served in Republican President Ronald Reagan's administration but resigned in 1983 amid a fight with Congress over documents on the EPA's use of a fund created to clean up toxic waste dumps nationwide.

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Related Coverage

Back road drive, secret flight brought Trump's court pick to Washington
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-trump-secrecy-idUSKBN15G3AH?mod=related&channelName=politicsNews

Trump's Supreme Court nominee questions power of administrative agencies
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-gorsuch-deference-idUSKBN15G390?mod=related&channelName=politicsNews

FACT BOX Trump U.S. Supreme Court pick could affect pending cases
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-trump-cases-factbox-idUSKBN15F2N7?mod=related&channelName=politicsNews

FACT BOX Trump on Twitter (Jan 31) - Pelosi, Democrats, Gorsuch
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-tweet-factbox-idUSKBN15G3C8?mod=related&channelName=politicsNews
--

Trump's selection was one of the most consequential appointments of his young presidency as he moved to restore a conservative majority on the Supreme Court that had been in place for decades until Scalia died at age 79 on Feb. 13, 2016.

Trump's fellow Republicans hold a 52-48 Senate majority, meaning some Democratic votes would be needed to confirm his pick under current rules. Trump said last week he would favor Senate Republicans eliminating the procedural move that Democrats have promised, called a filibuster, for Supreme Court nominees if Democrats block his pick. Such a change has been dubbed the "nuclear option."

[ SCOTUS Fight Will Change Everything
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128282676 ]

Trump has said his promise to appoint a conservative justice was one of the reasons he won the Nov. 8 presidential election, with Christian conservatives and others emphasizing the importance of the pick during the campaign.

If confirmed, Gorsuch would expand the court's conservative wing, made up of John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy Samuel Alito and Thomas. Kennedy long has been considered the court's pivotal vote, sometimes siding with the liberals in key cases such as the June 2016 ruling striking down abortion restrictions in Texas.

[ also read if confirmed it would be the first time in history a judge of the
Supreme Court, Kennedy, had sat with his/her former clerk, Gorsuch, on this bench

The court's restored conservative majority likely would be supportive toward the death penalty and gun rights and hostile toward campaign finance limits. Scalia's replacement also could be pivotal in cases involving abortion, religious rights, presidential powers, transgender rights, voting rights, federal regulations others.

Gorsuch boasts Ivy League credentials: attending Columbia University and, like several of the other justices on the court, Harvard Law School. He also completed a doctorate in legal philosophy at Oxford University, spent several years in private practice and worked in George W. Bush's Justice Department.

Gorsuch joined an opinion in 2013 saying that owners of private companies could object on religious grounds to a provision of the Obamacare health insurance law requiring employers to provide coverage for birth control for women.

As long as Kennedy and four liberals remain on the bench, the court is not expected to pare back abortion rights as many U.S. conservatives fervently hope. The Supreme Court legalized abortion in the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling. In June, the justices ruled 5-3 to strike down a Texas law that restricted abortion access, with Kennedy and the liberals in the majority.

The current vacancy is the court's longest since a 391-day void from 1969 to 1970 during Republican Richard Nixon's presidency. After Abe Fortas resigned from the court in May 1969, the Senate voted down two nominees put forward by Nixon before confirming Harry Blackmun, who became a justice in June 1970. Aside from that one, no other Supreme Court vacancy since the U.S. Civil War years of the 1860s has been as long as the current one.

Trump may get to make additional appointments. Liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who Trump called upon to resign last July after she called him "a faker," is 83 while Kennedy is 80. Stephen Breyer, another liberal, is 78.

(Additional reporting by Ian Simpson, Eric Beech, Susan Cornwell, Andrew Chung, Richard Cowan, Susan
Heavey, Ayesha Rascoe and Doina Chiacu; Writing Will Dunham; Editing by Bill Trott and Peter Cooney)

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-trump-idUSKBN15F1OW

[fuagf]

Meanwhile - Innocence Is Irrelevant

"Comparing presidential administrations by arrests and convictions: A warning for Trump appointees"

This is the age of the plea bargain—and millions of Americans are suffering the consequences.

Emily Yoffe
September 2017 Issue


Shanta Sweatt (left) and her attorney, the public defender Ember Eyster, in Eyster's Nashville office
Nina Robinson

It had been a long night for Shanta Sweatt. After working a 16-hour shift cleaning the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, in Nashville, and then catching the 11:15 bus to her apartment, she just wanted to take a shower and go to sleep. Instead, she wound up having a fight with the man she refers to as her “so-called boyfriend.” He was a high-school classmate who had recently ended up on the street, so Sweatt had let him move in, under the proviso that he not do drugs in the apartment. Sweatt has a soft spot for people in trouble. Over the years, she had taken in many of her two sons’ friends, one of whom who had been living with them since his early teens.

[...]

This is the age of the plea bargain. Most people adjudicated in the criminal-justice system today waive the right to a trial and the host of protections that go along with one, including the right to appeal. Instead, they plead guilty. The vast majority of felony convictions are now the result of plea bargains—some 94 percent at the state level, and some 97 percent at the federal level. Estimates for misdemeanor convictions run even higher. These are astonishing statistics, and they reveal a stark new truth about the American criminal-justice system: Very few cases go to trial. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy acknowledged this reality in 2012, writing for the majority in Missouri v. Frye, a case that helped establish the right to competent counsel for defendants who are offered a plea bargain. Quoting a law-review article, Kennedy wrote, “?‘Horse trading [between prosecutor and defense counsel] determines who goes to jail and for how long. That is what plea bargaining is. It is not some adjunct to the criminal justice system; it is the criminal justice system.’”

[...]

Writing in 2016 in the William & Mary Law Review, Donald Dripps, a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, illustrated the capricious and coercive nature of plea bargains. Dripps cited the case of Terrance Graham, a black 16-year-old who, in 2003, attempted to rob a restaurant with some friends. The prosecutor charged Graham as an adult, and he faced a life sentence without the possibility of parole at trial. The prosecutor offered Graham a great deal in exchange for a guilty plea: one year in jail and two more years of probation. Graham took the deal. But he was later accused of participating in another robbery and violated his probation—at which point the judge imposed the life sentence.

What’s startling about this case, Dripps noted, is that Graham faced two radically different punishments for the same crime: either be put away for life or spend minimal time behind bars in exchange for a guilty plea. In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled, in Graham v. Florida, that the punishment Graham faced at trial was so cruel and unusual as to be unconstitutional. The Court found that a juvenile who did not commit homicide cannot face life without parole.

Thanks in part to plea bargains, millions of Americans have a criminal record; in 2011, the National Employment Law Project estimated that figure at 65 million....

[...]

Millions of people each year are now processed for misdemeanors. In a 2009 report titled “Minor Crimes, Massive Waste,” the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers described a system characterized by “the ardent enforcement of crimes that were once simply deemed undesirable behavior and punished by societal means or a civil infraction punishable by a fine.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/innocence-is-irrelevant/534171/

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Voting Rights for Ex-Offenders by State

(updated 6/10/19) In all but two states, voting-age citizens convicted of a felony are barred from voting for some period of time. Laws vary in each state .. http://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=286 . While many states restore voting rights to individuals automatically after they exit jail or prison, others continue the bar on voting even while on probation or parole. Some even permanently disenfranchise people with a past conviction or require they petition the government to have their right restored.

This is a short, up-to-date state guide to voting for people with past felonies. For more, visit the resources on the right.

Overview

Voting rights retained while in prison for a felony conviction in:

Maine and Vermont.

Voting rights restored automatically upon release from prison in:

Colorado, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire, New York, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Utah.

Voting rights restored automatically once released from prison and discharged from parole (probationers can vote) in:

California, Connecticut, and Oklahoma

Voting rights restored automatically upon completion of sentence, including prison, parole, and probation in:

Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. Virginia now does this by the policy of the current governor.

Voting rights restoration is dependent on the date or type of conviction or, in some cases, the outcome of an individual petition to the government in:

Alaska, Alabama, Delaware, Iowa, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Wyoming.

Voting rights can ONLY be restored through an individual petition or application to the government in:

Kentucky

State by State

With links for each state - https://www.nonprofitvote.org/voting-in-your-state/special-circumstances/voting-as-an-ex-offender/