Conspiracy theorist and Donald Trump enthusiast Alex Jones apologized for spreading the "Pizzagate" fake news story yesterday on the same day a 28-year-old man named Edgar Maddison Welch pleaded guilty to charges related to a December incident when he brought an AR-15 rifle and other weapons into Comet Ping Pong Pizza and fired shots inside. The apology seems to be a preemptive move to avoid a possible lawsuit. Despite his apology, it appears the monster Alex has created is now beyond his control.
Right-Wing Terrorist Influenced by Alex Jones, Stefan Molyneux, and Paul Ray Ramsey
Published on Mar 23, 2017 by Reich-Wing Watch
While digging into the background of Neo-Nazi terrorist James Harris Jackson, I discovered a a youtube channel under his name which had subscriptions to numerous white supremacist channels as well as Alex Jones and Stefan Molyneux. As usual, the media have focused all their attention on the recent attack in Britain, due to possibly Islamic fundamentalists ties.
The following documentary traces right-libertarianism back to it's roots, and discovers it's anything but a philosophy that promotes freedom and autonomy.
Featuring: Noam Chomsky, Ron Paul, Murray Rothbard, Ludwig Von Mises, Engelbert Dollfuss, H.L. Mencken, Ayn Rand, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Lew Rockwell, Donald Trump, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Alex Jones, Robert Welch, Austin Petersen.
Soundtrack: M83 - "Gone" Clubroot - "Low Pressure Zone" Telefon Tel Aviv - "Made A Tree On The Wold" Oneohtrix Point Never - "Remember" Boards of Canada - "Turquoise Hexagon Sun" The Auteurs - "Lenny Valentino 2"
Sunday, March 26th 2017: Back to Square One on Obamacare - Republican party efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare ultimately failed Friday, handing President Trump his first major legislative defeat. We'll break down what happens next with the Unaffordable Care Act, and look at how violence at pro-Trump rallies was blamed on Trump supporters. We'll also get the latest on the left's crazy Russia-Trump conspiracy theory.
Neil Gorsuch's confirmation hearing revealed his hidden similarity to Trump
The two appear to be a study in contrasts – but both display a remarkable lack of compassion. Their likeness could serve to justify Democrats’ opposition
‘The trouble with Neil Gorsuch, we learned this week, is not ideology but humanity.’ Photograph: Jim Bourg/Reuters
Lucia Graves in Washington @lucia_graves Saturday 25 March 2017 22.00 AEDT
[...]
One of the most revealing moments came on Tuesday as Gorsuch sought to explain his dissent in TransAm Trucking v Administrative Review Board. A focus of Democratic questioning much of the week, it has come to be known as the “frozen trucker” case. In it, Gorsuch sided with TransAm’s decision to fire its employee Alphonse Maddin for disobeying company orders after his truck broke down in subzero temperatures and he began to fear he would freeze to death. After notifying his employer and waiting hours, Maddin unhitched and temporarily abandoned his trailer to seek shelter. The dissenting opinion filed by Gorsuch in effect presented him with what sounds like an inhumane option: leave and be fired or stay and risk freezing.
Senator Al Franken asked Gorsuch what he would have done in those circumstances. “I don’t know what I would have done if I were in his shoes,” Gorsuch replied. “And I don’t blame him at all for a moment for doing what he did do. I empathize with him entirely.”
Empathy is often conflated with sympathy or compassion, but there’s a crucial difference. The latter connote feeling; the first does not. Having empathy, as Gorsuch said he had for Maddin, is morally neutral; it does not mean someone will necessarily help a person in need, only that they understand their situation.
By Maddin’s own account, three hours into waiting for help to arrive, his torso went numb. He couldn’t feel his feet and felt himself “fading”. Gorsuch understood that cognitively. Yet when presented with credible and abundant evidence of the grave risks faced by Maddin, Gorsuch deemed them irrelevant.
He may have empathized with Maddin but that did not lead him to change his legal opinion. What’s unusual here is not Gorsuch’s conservative philosophy or textualist tendencies. It’s not even that he sided with a company over the “little guy”, as Democrats repeatedly said.
It’s that the fact that Maddin might have died sitting there waiting for help at 14-below, if he’d been unwise enough to follow the only option made available by Gorsuch, did not appear to enter into his calculus. He did not seem to care.
“A good judge doesn’t give a whit about politics,” Gorsuch said at one point, a line whose variations would become a mantra of his throughout the week. But Gorsuch’s record and comments suggest he may also believe a good judge does not give a whit about people.
I wondered if the Democrats could hold up any judicial nomination for 4 years. Then saw the Republicans did exactly that when Bill Clinton nominated Judge Richard Paez to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1996.
Clinton appointments: 1993–2000 Main article: Bill Clinton judicial appointment controversies
In 1995, Democrats held the White House. The New York Times editorialized, "The U.S. Senate likes to call itself the world's greatest deliberative body. In the last session of Congress, the Republican minority invoked an endless string of filibusters to frustrate the will of the majority. This (is a) relentless abuse of a time-honored Senate tradition … Once a rarely used tactic reserved for issues on which Senators held passionate convictions, the filibuster has become the tool of the sore loser, dooming any measure that cannot command the 60 required votes." There was no attempt to rewrite Senate rules for cloture at that time.
In 1996, President Bill Clinton nominated Judge Richard Paez to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Republicans held up Paez's nomination for more than four years, culminating in a failed March 8, 2000 filibuster. Only 14 Republicans approved it. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) was among those who voted to filibuster Paez. Paez was ultimately confirmed with a simple majority.
In addition to filibustering nominations, the Republican-controlled Senate refused to hold hearings for some 60 Clinton appointees, effectively blocking their nomination from coming to a vote on the Senate floor.
Bush appointments: 2001–06 Main article: George W. Bush judicial appointment controversies
When George W. Bush took office in 2001 there remained dozens of federal court vacancies. Democratic Senators contended that these vacancies remained despite Clinton nominations to fill them because of obstruction by Republican Senators. Republicans held a majority in the Senate during the last six years of the Clinton administration and controlled who would be voted on. Democratic Senators asserted that, for the most part, Republicans did not raise objections to those judicial candidates, but simply refused to hold hearings on the nominations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_option#Clinton_appointments:_1993.E2.80.932000
So i have to agree with Ronald Klain in that
The Democrats Must Filibuster Neil Gorsuch
President Obama’s senior aide Ronald Klain tells Dahlia Lithwick why it’s time for the Dems to take a stand.
By Dahlia Lithwick and Camille Mott
Neil Gorsuch testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.
Ronald Klain, who served as senior White House aide to presidents Clinton and Obama and assisted in shepherding the last four Democratic-appointed justices through the Supreme Court confirmation process, believes that Senate Democrats are right to filibuster the Gorsuch nomination. On this week’s episode of Slate’s Supreme Court podcast Amicus .. http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/amicus.html , Klain told Dahlia Lithwick why it’s “time to draw the line in the sand.” (Klain’s answer has been condensed and edited.)
- My thinking on this has evolved over the past several weeks, but to me it comes down to this.
First of all, I think Justice Kennedy may well leave this summer, and I think that we’re talking about perhaps two nominees this year.
The idea that we would not filibuster Judge Gorsuch because Mitch McConnell is threatening to take our right to filibuster away, and save it for the next nominee, when Mitch McConnell will surely take our filibuster rights away—I just don’t see what we get out of abstaining in that circumstance. You know, this is a little bit like Charlie Brown and the football.
It’s time to take the strong stand, time to draw the line in the sand, and let the chips fall where they may. The only argument against filibustering Judge Gorsuch is, if you really believed that when Justice Kennedy retired and we wanted to filibuster that nominee that because we failed to filibuster Judge Gorsuch, Mitch McConnell would for some reason not go nuclear on the court-bending choice of Justice Kennedy’s replacement. And I don’t see any reason to believe that.
Given that I don’t think there could be a deal with McConnell or a deal that would be binding or any kind of long-term guarantee of the Democrats’ rights, I don’t really see why they shouldn’t use their full rights on this nomination, given both what happened to Judge Garland, and more importantly, Judge Gorsuch’s failure to answer questions in the confirmation process and failure to give Democrats any reassurance about his jurisprudence.
Rape charges to be dropped against immigrant teens in Md. case May 5, 2017 Maryland prosecutors said they will drop rape and sex offense charges against two immigrant teens accused of attacking a 14-year-old classmate in a high school bathroom stall in a case that shocked local parents, attracted international and White House attention and stoked the debate about illegal crossings into the U.S. After a court hearing Friday morning, prosecutors said they will drop the sex assault case against Henry Sanchez Milian, 18, and Jose Montano, 17, who was ordered released from custody. Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy said at a press conference that “the original charges cannot be sustained and prosecution is untenable” because of “substantial inconsistencies” from witnesses. McCarthy, who was joined by the county’s top leaders, said the decision to dismiss the charges followed an extensive investigation that included additional interviews and a review of medical records, school security videos, and phone and computer records. “As prosecutors we always go where the evidence takes us...regardless of public opinion or political pressures,” McCarthy said, without taking questions from reporters. [...] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/rape-charge-against-immigrant-teen-in-maryland-case-will-be-dropped-defense-lawyer-says/2017/05/05/a4806c02-312f-11e7-8674-437ddb6e813e_story.html [with embedded videos; comments closed]
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