Daily Links: 12/22/17 – Important First Amendment victory for Trump protestors

• Important victory for free speech: All six defendants on trial for protesting during Trump’s inauguration ^[pictured], accused of “hiding behind the First Amendment” (WTF), are acquitted on all charges. Note how the prosecution had brazenly tried to get the jury to disregard the judge’s instructions on “reasonable doubt”.
  (via ACLU | Facebook)

• Beautiful: After Tennessee lawmakers ban cities from removing Confederate statues, Memphis exploits a workaround by selling the land its statues stand on to a nonprofit, which promptly takes the statues down overnight. Expect statue supporters to sue. State Republicans are already calling for an investigation.
  (via @radleybalko & @LilianaSegura)

• Meanwhile, watch and laugh as Fox News’s professional whiner Todd Starnes utterly melts down and demands the arrest of the Memphis mayor and city council for “wag[ing] jihad on American history” and “desecrat[ing] a gravesite”. But of course, his outrage is all about the “lawlessness” of the move (which was totally legal, just sly) and has nothing to do with the monuments themselves.

• Vox examines what the final Republican Tax Scam bill includes (allowing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) and doesn’t (killing student loan deductions, anti-abortion language, Johnson Amendment repeal, etc.). In short, it’s slightly less pungent shit.
  (via Dispatches From the Culture Wars)

• Finally, an ongoing Washington Post investigation reveals nearly a quarter of the 248 cops kicked off of the New Orleans police force for misconduct have been rehired elsewhere.
  (via @WesleyLowery; retweet by @KFILE)

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