Daily Links: 10/19/17 – Couple charged with causing trigger-happy cop’s panic attack

Deputy’s bodycam screencap

• Sevierville, TN deputy mistakes man’s cellphone for a gun, shoots at him and his girlfriend, then suffers a panic attack during which he’s forcibly disarmed by a paramedic. Naturally, the couple gets charged with causing the cop’s panic attack. ^{[bodycam screencap pictured]}
  (via @radleybalko)

• US government arrested a pregnant 17-year-old undocumented immigrant, denied her an abortion and forced her into Christian anti-abortion counseling, all the while trying to deport her. An ACLU-backed court order just shut them down.
  (via @radleybalko)

• University of Pennsylvania professor uses widely accepted teaching method to encourage participation in minority students. Racists and idiots raise a shitstorm. So the university punishes the professor.

• Oklahoma school district bans “gestures of protest”, forcing students to stand for the national anthem, revealing they don’t have a goddamn clue how the First Amendment works. The ACLU is already preparing to educate them.
  (via @GregortheMendel; RT: @Popehat)

• Meanwhile, the NFL is learning its lesson by allowing players to kneel during the anthem (for now).

• On the one hand, naming public buildings, particularly schools, after politicians is kinda iffy. On the other, renaming Mississippi’s (Jefferson) Davis IB Elementary School after Barack Obama is worth it just to watch racists’ heads explode.
  (via Dispatches From the Culture Wars)

• Finally, another ACLU victory: Trump administration drops its ridiculously overbroad demand for personal data on 6,000 anti-Trump Facebook users.

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