This Week in Puppycide #34

Here’s a roundup of recent headlines of police shootings involving pets and other animals.

• Attempted | Hollywood, CA (03/24/18): LAPD officers investigating a crime nearby enter a family home and shoot their pit bull in front of their child, then prevent the family from seeing their bleeding dog. The dog lives and is now awaiting surgery. LAPD allegedly said the city would cover the $1,000+ vet bill, but that the family has to pay upfront.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

• Unjustified | Transylvania County, NC (03/26/18): Uninformative report copy-pasted from sheriff’s office statement claims a deputy responding to a “disturbance call” is allegedly attacked by a “pit bull”, which he first tries to shove aside and then guns down, shooting himself in the hand in the process. No witness reports, no indication of less-lethal weaponry used, etc.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

If you know of any similar stories I haven’t mentioned, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

Not sure what those colored labels mean? See my puppycide ruling explainer.

Taking a (sort of) brief writing break

I’ve been working on and (mostly) off on my novel project since I completed the first oh-so-primitive draft around 2011. For years I’ve tinkered with it, revising endlessly and gradually getting it closer to something presentable, but I’ve regularly run out of drive and the thing would then languish on my drive for the next several months before the urge to write found me again.

Well, we’ve come ’round again, and this time I’m fortunate that I’ve just scored some outside help – nothing like the promise of a second pair of critical eyes to give me the kick in the bum I need to get cracking. But I’ll have a hard time getting anything done if I spend hours a day trying keep up with all the news flying around and blogging it. So something’s gotta give.

As of now, I’m taking an indefinite semi-break. “Semi” in that I’ll still be around and I’ll still make the occasional post when a story just has to be opined on (not to mention the weekly puppycide posts will continue without interruption), and “indefinite” in the sense that I have no idea how long it’ll last – could be a few days, could be a few weeks. We’ll see.

In the meantime, I’ll be no less active on Twitter (which is my main hub anyway) and, to a lesser degree, on Facebook (which I mostly use to cross-post links from Twitter), so find me there at any time. You can also reach me by email.

Sporadic and infrequent blog posts, hanging out on Twitter and working on personal projects … wait, maybe this isn’t any different from business as usual after all.

Daily Links #119: SC cops shoot at man 57 times over $100 pot sale

Julian Betton

• South Carolina cops shot at a man ^[pictured] 57 times, hitting him nine times and paralyzing him, during a drug raid over a $100 pot sale. They claimed they’d announced themselves and that he fired at them first, and an “oversight” agency claimed the shooting was justified; his surveillance camera proved they lied about everything. The shooters and prosecutors have now given him a $2.75 million settlement.
  

• Slate exposes the junk science and blatant lies behind Trump’s trans military ban, including the fact that Defense Secretary Mattis was overruled by Mike Pence who, aided by fellow bigots like Tony Perkins, helped sway Trump to ignore the testimony from actual experts who say the ban accomplishes nothing good.
  (via @fark)

• Trump’s EPA continues to attack and lie about science at every turn.
  (via @BadAstronomer)

• You know someone has a bad case of Christian persecution complex when they complain that Sweet Jesus ice cream shop’s name is “offensive”.

• Finally, coal baron Bob Murray apparently thought it would be a good idea to send a complaint letter to the judge who dismissed his bogus defamation suit against John Oliver. The ACLU is amused. The judge is not.
  (via @adamsteinbaugh; retweet by @Popehat)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Louisiana AG: No charges for cops who killed Alton Sterling

Alton Sterling

The last couple years have seen an uptick in the number of cops charged (or even successfully prosecuted) for the wrongful shooting of Black people, but it’s important to remember that those cases are still a minority. Case in point: The Louisiana Attorney General has decided that family of Alton Sterling will see no such justice.

More than 20 months after the fatal police shooting of a black man outside a Baton Rouge mini-mart touched off protests nationwide over police treatment of African Americans, the Louisiana attorney general said Tuesday that he would not charge two white officers in the death.

The decision from Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry's office brought strong condemnation from Alton Sterling's family and civil rights activists, and closed the possibility of criminal charges in one of the most prominent police shootings in recent years.

Landry's announcement came close to 11 months after the U.S. Department of Justice similarly ruled out federal charges against the officers, Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake II.

Meanwhile, Sacramento police killed unarmed Black man Stephon Clark in his own backyard after mistaking his cellphone for a weapon, whilst a Houston deputy gunned down unarmed Black man Danny Ray Thomas in only 17 seconds. And those are just the reports I’ve heard of over the last week.

It doesn’t matter how many badge-wearing thugs get hauled into a courtroom; the number of Black lives needlessly lost will always far outpace the prosecutions of their killers.

(via @SinKirabo, retweeted by @pzmyers; Danny Ray Thomas link via @FairPunishment, retweeted by @radleybalko)

US drones keep striking, innocents and children keep dying

Amer Ali al-Saqra Huraidan, 13
[source]

I just can’t for the life of me understand why they hate the US so much that they’d wish harm upon it, as if out of vengeance for some perceived wrongdoing:

On March 5, 13-year-old Amer Ali al-Saqra Huraidan and his cousin were on their way home from visiting relatives in al-Hudhi, a small town in the eastern Yemeni province of Hadramout. As they drove along a desert highway around 4 p.m. local time, a U.S. drone circled overhead. Somewhere thousands of miles away, the drone operator launched a strike.

A short time later, Amer’s cousin Hasan awoke to fire and smoke rising from the mangled pickup truck and heard the buzz of the drone overhead. He had wounds on his right hand, leg, and head; chunks of shrapnel would later be removed from his body. But Amer was barely recognizable. The strike had charred his body and torn it to pieces, killing him instantly.

In a phone interview with The Intercept, Hasan, 19, said first responders were reluctant to come to the scene because they were concerned about a possible second strike by the drone that still hovered overhead. He and his family have been left wondering how the U.S. military mistook a fifth grader for a militant.

[…]

The strike that killed Amer was the first of three attacks near al-Hudhi in the span of a week. Seven other people were killed in strikes on March 7 and March 9, according to members of the al-Mahashima tribe to which all of the dead belonged. Independent sources on the ground in Yemen, as well as the international rights group Reprieve, confirmed the tribe members’ accounts. The victims, they noted, were poor people displaced from al-Jawf province, their lives upended by fighting that has raged on since 2014. None of them were affiliated with the Islamic State or Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, known as AQAP, the sources said.

Two days after Amer was killed, a man named Saleh al-Wuhair stood on top of a hill in al-Hudhi, looking for cell service to make a call. At around 5 p.m., a missile came flying down and killed him, according to a member of his family and independent observers in Yemen.

Because the area was targeted twice in two days, tribe members drove out to al-Hudhi to urge residents to relocate to a safer place. On March 9, a half-dozen members of the tribe — three of them the adult children of Abdullah al-Qibli al-Wuhair, a local tribal leader, and three of them his adult grandchildren — were driving back to Marib when a drone targeted an area called al-Abr at around 5 p.m. All six of them were killed.

Collateral damage, people. Just a couple oopsies. Nothing to see here.

US Army veteran with PTSD deported over drug conviction

Miguel Perez

A man immigrates to the US as a child, founds a family, and later enlists in the Army and serves two tours in Afghanistan. His experiences there land him with PTSD, which he copes with through alcohol and drugs. The latter nets him a criminal conviction, and now he’s been kicked out of the country.

The deportation follows an earlier decision by US authorities to deny Miguel Perez's citizenship application because of a felony drug conviction, despite his service and the PTSD he says it caused.

Perez, 39, was escorted across the US-Mexico border from Texas and handed over to Mexican authorities Friday, ICE said in a statement.

Perez, his family and supporters, who include Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, had argued that his wartime service to the country had earned him the right to stay in the US and to receive mental health treatment for the PTSD and substance abuse.

He chose to fight for a country he wasn’t even a citizen of and came out of it traumatized enough he turned to drugs to cope with it. What he needs and deserves is medical care. What he’s getting is thrown out the door, into a country he hasn’t visited since childhood and where his life may be in danger.

America sure loves supporting its troops – so long as that doesn’t require anything more than waving flags and having grade-schoolers send letters.

This Week in Puppycide #33

Here’s a roundup of recent headlines involving police shootings of pets and other animals.

• Unclear | Bolton, ON (03/17/18): Police raid pursuant to an armed robbery warrant results in a dog being shot and killed in a bedroom. No information is given about context to indicate whether the shooting was justified, though the police department naturally says it is.
  (via Dogs Shot by Canadian Police | Facebook)

• Chicago Sun-Times editorial | 700 dogs have been shot or shot at by police in Chicago in the past decade.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

If you know of any similar stories I haven’t mentioned, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

Not sure what those colored labels mean? See my puppycide ruling explainer.

The importance of protecting free speech: Spain and FOSTA

Back in January, Germany debuted a new hate speech law that began causing collateral damage less than a week after it came into effect, first by blocking a satirical magazine’s Twitter account and then by censoring the German justice minister who’d championed the law. This isn’t an isolated incident; any attempt at criminalizing “hate speech” (which, contrary to popular opinion, has no legal definition in the US) is guaranteed to have unintentional consequences, and nowhere is this illustrated more frequently than in Europe, whose countries have a host of anti-hate speech laws that are routinely used to silence human rights concerns and punish political dissidence – all without incurring any notable reduction in bigoted speech.

The latest example comes from Spain, which has a particularly spotty free speech record, and where laws meant to stop speech that promotes hate or “glorif[ies] terrorism” are wreaking such havoc that Amnesty International took a moment off focusing on barbaric dictatorships to speak out:

In a new report on the phenomenon, entitled “Tweet… If You Dare,” Amnesty International looks at the rise in prosecutions under Article 578 of the country’s criminal code, which prohibits “glorifying terrorism” and “humiliating the victims of terrorism.” The law has been around since 2000, but was amended in 2015 and since then prosecutions and convictions have risen sharply. […]

Among those who have been hit by the law are a musician who tweeted a joke about sending the king a cake-bomb for his birthday and was sentenced to a year in prison, and a rapper who was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in jail for writing songs that the government said glorified terrorism and insulted the crown. A filmmaker and a journalist have also been charged under the anti-terrorism law, and a student who tweeted jokes about the assassination of the Spanish prime minister in 1973 was also sentenced to a year in prison, although her sentence was suspended after a public outcry.

This is a striking example, but Spain is hardly the only place, particularly in Europe, where a government empowered to curb “bad speech” is using that power to stamp out any kinds of speech it doesn’t like. After all, that’s what people told it to do – they just likely didn’t imagine those censorial powers would be used against them. (Shades of the “leopards eating people’s faces” joke.)

The whole point of having free speech protections – the reason the First Amendment exists – is to protect people’s right to express any ideas they want without fear of government interference. The moment you give the government power to selectively silence certain forms of speech, you’ve irretrievably started down a path that will lead to that power being used against you, your ideas, your speech. It’s only a matter of time. That’s why freedom of speech must be protected against any attempt to curtail it, even if that means putting up with terrible people saying terrible things.

---

But laws that try to ban mean thoughts aren’t the only threat to free speech. In the US, Congress recently passed FOSTA, an anti-sex-trafficking bill that would do nothing to actually fight sex trafficking. Along with its sibling SESTA (which so far hasn’t passed), FOSTA would basically hold websites and service providers civilly and criminally liable for anything posted by users on their platforms. (In fact, it would make it harder to help sex trafficking victims, since closing down public forums where some traffickers may hang out will force them to move to darker corners that are less easily monitored, ensuring fewer victims will be found.)

FOSTA essentially neutralizes the all-important Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (commonly known as CDA 230), which makes it so that social media platforms, website owners and so on can’t be held responsible for whatever their users say or do. CDA 230 is possibly the biggest factor that’s allowed the free and open Web to exist; without it, website operators would be forced to moderate their comment sections and other public platforms for any speech that may get them sued, regardless of the fact that they’re not the ones posting it. It would be the greatest chilling effect the Web’s ever seen as sites and services buckle down to cover their asses.

That’s not hyperbole. And in the hours since FOSTA’s passage, it’s no longer a hypothetical, either. Websites are already reacting, and several forums where people have spent years conversing, sharing and connecting without breaking any laws are suddenly going dark. The most prominent is Craigslist, which just killed off its Personals section:

US Congress just passed HR 1865, "FOSTA", seeking to subject websites to criminal and civil liability when third parties (users) misuse online personals unlawfully.

Any tool or service can be misused. We can't take such risk without jeopardizing all our other services, so we are regretfully taking craigslist personals offline. Hopefully we can bring them back some day.

Craigslist is not alone. Reddit is joining in with a new content policy, updated just as FOSTA arrived on the scene, that’s resulted in several long-running adult sections getting banned:

So far, four subreddits related to sex have banned: Escorts, Male Escorts, Hookers, and SugarDaddy. None were what could accurately be described as advertising forums, though (to varying degrees) they may have helped connect some people who wound up in "mutually beneficial relationships." The escort forums were largely used by sex workers to communicate with one another, according to Partridge.

It’s not explicitly stated that the subreddits were taken down due to FOSTA’s passage, but the timing all but eliminates the possibility of it being a coincidence. Other adult websites are also feeling the chill.

Regardless of anyone’s personal views concerning the content of these websites and the attitudes of the people there, the fact remains that these were totally legal spaces that have been closed in an effort to shield their owners from being held liable for speech that has no business being outlawed in the first place. That should concern everyone. And if Trump signs FOSTA into law – and frankly, does anyone doubt that President Fuck-Up will do so? – it’s a matter of time before every social media website, discussion forum, personal ads site, instant messaging platform and any other Internet-connected utility that allows people to communicate and upload material starts putting some serious clamps on what’s allowed. Whatever websites won’t police users much more harshly may just shut down altogether.

Anyone who hasn’t yet heard of FOSTA or SESTA or of the importance of Section 230 of the CDA is about to. Remember how websites panicked at the near-passage of SOPA in 2012? We’re in for some déjà vu.

(via Techdirt: 1, 2)

Trump admin. enacts new trans military ban

The Pentagon had until tonight to institute Trump’s policy to ban trans servicemembers, and characteristically, Trump signed the order at the last minute. Months of legal challenges later, the trans military ban is now in place:

Following a Pentagon policy review after a tweet by President Donald Trump last year, the White House said the policy will say "transgender persons with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria -- individuals who the policies state may require substantial medical treatment, including medications and surgery -- are disqualified from military service except under certain limited circumstances."

[…]

According to a Pentagon memo about the policy, exceptions to the ban include people who have been "stable for 36 consecutive months in their biological sex prior to accession," servicemembers who "do not require a change of gender" and troops who started serving under the Obama administration's policy prior to the new memo.

It doesn’t matter what excuse or rationale they bring up to bolster this move; it won’t hide the fact that this is no more than a gift to Trump’s regressive base, the same that has a conniption at the thought of trans people using the right bathrooms. The facts were already clear when Trump first tweeted the policy change last August and they’ve only been hammered home since: Thousands of trans troops are already in the US armed forces, they serve every bit as competently and professionally as their cisgender comrades, and throwing them out would only weaken the military, not strengthen it. (It’s never been made clear just how throwing out thousands of dedicated soldiers, trans or otherwise, is supposed to strengthen the military’s combat readiness.) This is discrimination in its plainest form.

The lawsuits are guaranteed to keep coming, so it’s anyone’s guess how it’ll turn out. But I’m not holding onto hope; in the end, the executive branch has the power to implement whatever conditions for enlistment it wants, barring anything blatantly unconstitutional. Trans people were already banned up to 2016; there’s little reason things couldn’t go back to that.

Ohio Republican bill would put abortion doctors on death row

In which “pro-lifers” yet again illustrate the irony in their chosen label by trying put people they don’t like to death, this time on Ohio:

A bill from two Republican lawmakers, introduced Monday, would ban all abortions in Ohio. Doctors could be charged with murder or sued for the wrongful deaths of aborted fetuses, according to the proposal. […]

Opponents of the bill fear it could charge doctors with murder, punishable by life in prison or the death penalty.

There’s basically zero chance this bill will become law – even the majority of the state House GOP caucus haven’t signed on, likely because they know it would be challenged and struck down quasi-instantly, and even the famously anti-abortion Gov. John Kasich (R) previously vetoed a “heartbeat bill” that was similarly doomed. But there’s also basically zero chance these zealots will give up their attempts to curtail women’s bodily autonomy, at least not until they finally get their long-awaited Supreme Court challenge. And Roe v. Wade is quite likely one single justice death or retirement away from being overturned.

(via Friendly Atheist)

Headline of the day: Another GOP alternative to gun control?

We’ve finally found an idea even dumber than giving teachers guns:

Source: WNEP.com

(via @KrangTNelson)

Daily Links #118: US bishops praise LGBTQ discrimination bill

• US Conference of Catholic Bishops praises a Senate bill that would legalize anti-LGBTQ discrimination nationwide, because of course they do.
  (via Joe.My.God.)

• A Buffalo, NY bishop names 42 priests accused of child sexual abuse, many of whom were previously unidentified, because … wait, that’s actually surprising.
  (via Joe.My.God.)

• Meanwhile, Michigan police raided the Saginaw Catholic Diocese and a bishop’s home, citing their lack of cooperation in a sexual abuse investigation.
  (via Joe.My.God.)

• ICE contractor says it doesn’t use solitary confinement, and also, please ignore the testimony and photos of its isolation cells that prove they use solitary confinement.

• The sun continues to set on the northern white rhinoceros as Sudan, the species’ last living male, dies. Two females survive, which conservationists hope to impregnate using IVF.

• Security theater: The Parkland, Florida high school where the February shooting occurred now requires that students wear clear backpacks, which I’m sure will make it impossible to bring guns into schools and would totally have prevented those shootings carried out with rifles that don’t fit in backpacks anyway.
  (via @adamconover)

• Finally, Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature passes a bill, sure to be signed by Gov. Bill Haslam (R), requiring public schools to display “In God We Trust” in a “prominent location”, which is guaranteed to fix every problem forever.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Daily Links #117: Unarmed Black man shot by Sacramento cop

Stephon Clark

• Sacramento, CA: Unarmed black man ^[pictured] shot to death in own backyard after police mistake cell phone for weapon.
  (via The Watch | The Washington Post)

• Meanwhile, the Minneapolis, MN officer who shot Justine Damond turns himself in on murder charges.
  (via The Watch | The Washington Post)

• Having finally lost their cause to keep their old gerrymandered district map, Pennsylvania Republican officials are now moving to impeach the Democratic justices of the state supreme court who ruled against them.
  (via @BadAstronomer)

• New Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner promised big criminal justice reforms. And he’s delivering.

• The 400 residents of Dewey, Delaware must be nothing but hardcore gangbangers, because the town’s 11-officer police force requested, and obtained, 31 military vehicles and other gear through the Pentagon’s 1033 program.

• Finally, just a reminder that nine years later, Sean Hannity still still hasn’t been waterboarded as he promised he would be “for the troops”.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Heartwarming headline of the day

The steam coming out of Pence’s ears must be as white as his hair right about now.

Source: Vanity Fair

Call me a petty bastard, but this makes me smile.

(via Joe.My.God.)

Daily Links #116: Officials misbehavin’ edition

• It may interest you to know that the NYPD lies in court so often they have a name for it – “testilying”.
  (via @Snowden)

• Seattle, WA district attorney’s office ratchets up their prostitution-related caseload to meet quotas set by a privately run anti-sex-worker organization that pays them yearly grants. This is amazingly messed up. (Of the over 100 clients arrested last September, roughly half had their charges dismissed because police had illegally wiretapped them.)
  (via @davidminpdx; retweet by @radleybalko)

• Alabama sheriff legally rerouted $750K meant to feed inmates to pay for his beach house. Reporter breaks the story. Days later, the source who blew the whistle is arrested on drug charges and held in one of the sheriff’s prisons.
  (via @G_Padraic; retweet by @radleybalko)

• Wisconsin school district limits discussions of racism after an MLK Day exercise on social privilege made the majoritarily White community uncomfortable.
  (via @jeffelrod; retweet by @Popehat)

• In several death-penalty cases in the 1970s, prosecutors in Muscogee County, Georgia systematically excluded Black jurors in handwritten notes where they marked their names with ‘N’ (White jurors were marked with ‘W’). Of 44 potential Black jurors, two were allowed to serve.
  (via @davidminpdx; retweet by @Popehat)

• Finally: Look, I understand that guns in schools is a sensitive topic. But can we still agree that “hand gestures” by a six-year-old cannot possibly warrant a police investigation for “terroristic threats”?
  (via @TimCushing; retweet by @radleybalko)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Supreme Court rejects last-ditch Pennsylvania GOP attempt to block new district map

In which we finally reach the close of the Great Pennsylvania Gerrymandering Affair:

The Supreme Court has denied a request from Pennsylvania Republicans to block new congressional maps that could tilt several key races in Democrats' favor from being used in the midterm elections.

The court issued one sentence to reject the request. There were no noted dissents.

GOP leaders of the state House and Senate asked the court for an emergency stay blocking the implementation of the maps, which were unveiled last month by the state Supreme Court after it ruled that the previous maps had been gerrymandered in violation of Pennsylvania's Constitution.

Lawyers for House Speaker Mike Turzai and Senate President Pro Tempore Joseph Scarnati argued that the state's high court overstepped its authority in setting a deadline for lawmakers to draw new maps -- and then, when the GOP-led Legislature missed that deadline, producing new maps drawn by an expert selected by the court.

Of course, the state Supreme Court wouldn’t have needed to impose a deadline or bring in an independent expert to draw the new map if state Republicans could be trusted to do an honest job of it. And the new map wouldn’t have been necessary in the first place had those same Republicans not gerrymandered the original so badly that the court ruled it “plainly and palpably violate[d]” the state constitution.

The new map is here to stay. Whilst it won’t make for a Democratic turnover – the state’s electorate is still solidly red – it does virtually guarantee some Republicans who only hold their seats due to the old map’s tricks will lose them come the next elections.

John Oliver examines (and expertly trolls) Mike Pence

If you aren’t watching Last Week Tonight with John Oliver every Sunday night, you should be – or at least catch the full segments his team puts on YouTube shortly after the show airs. Last night’s episode centered around Mike Pence, that creepy religious-regressive former governor of Indiana who’s now the one official in the White House Trump cannot fire. Oliver covers Pence’s views on everything from his contempt for women in the military to his support of “conversion therapy” (a fancier way of saying “pray the gay away”), along with his affiliation with the Christian-patriarchal group Focus on the Family.

Pence is the reason efforts to get rid of Trump before the next election are shortsighted – Trump is terrible in large part because he’s clueless and incompetent at everything, but that’s also been a saving grace as he keeps sabotaging his own worse moves. Mike Pence, on the other hand, is smart and politically experienced. Impeaching or otherwise removing Trump would mean replacing him with his next-in-command, and if Trump is the frying pan of stupid, Pence is the fire of pure religious zealotry.

The best thing voters can do is castrate them both in the November midterms, and then toss them out for good in 2020.

*

Apropos of nothing, I got this in the mail earlier:

T’was a nice little bit of reading.

What happens to CIA officials who expose torture vs. those who enable it

John Kiriakou

John Kiriakou is a former CIA official who blew the whistle on the agency’s torture program in 2007. For this, he was investigated multiple times by the FBI and was ultimately convicted under the Obama Justice Department and sent to prison for two years.

Gina Haspel is a CIA official who oversaw torture at the “black site” she ran in Thailand and who later destroyed recordings of these sessions to prevent them being seen by Congress. For this, she suffered no penalties whatsoever and was instead regularly promoted, and she’s now poised to become CIA Director.

Kiriakou has an op-ed in The Washington Post where he lays out some truth. You should read it. Here’s the rundown:

[W]hile I went to prison for disclosing the torture program, Haspel is about to get a promotion despite her connection to it. Trump’s move hurts morale among CIA officers who recognize that torture is wrong. It comforts people at the agency who still believe “enhanced interrogation” is somehow acceptable. I spoke with a senior officer this past week who said, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” There’s an attitude of defeatism among opponents of torture.

And the message it sends to our friends and allies (and the countries we criticize in the State Department’s annual human rights reports) is this: We say we’re a shining city on a hill, a beacon of respect for human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and the rule of law. But actually, that’s nonsense. We say those things when it’s expedient. We say them to make ourselves feel good. But when push comes to shove, we do what we want, international law be damned.

The meaning of Haspel’s nomination won’t be lost on our enemies, either. The torture program and similar abuses at military-run prisons in Iraq were among the greatest recruitment tools that al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and other bad actors ever had, according to legal experts, U.S. lawmakers and even the militants themselves.

US officials and lawmakers and media talking heads like may like to pat themselves on the back for being a “nation of laws” that has “moral authority” on the world stage, but it’s impossible for anyone outside their borders to hear this and not laugh or groan.

(via Dispatches From the Culture Wars)

Study: Abortions are safe (when not undermined by anti-choicers)

One argument used by anti-choicers is that abortion is medically dangerous and fraught with risks and side-effects. This has always been nonsense, as with everything else they say, and now a landmark new study lays out the obvious: abortion, when performed by qualified professionals in a timely manner, is perfectly safe for women.

The report, called "The Safety and Quality of Abortion Care in the United States," examined the four major methods used for abortions — medication, aspiration, dilation and evacuation, and induction — and examined women's care from before they had the procedure through their follow-up care.

"I would say the main takeaway is that abortions that are provided in the United States are safe and effective," says Ned Calonge, the co-chair of the committee that wrote the study. He is an associate professor of family medicine and epidemiology at the University of Colorado and CEO of The Colorado Trust.

Calonge says the researchers found that about 90 percent of all abortions happen in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. And complications for all abortions are "rare," the report says.

Of course, complications can arise, but doctors do everything they can to minimize the risk. One thing that increases the risk? Stupid laws that force doctors to lie to their patients, perform unnecessary medical procedures on them and make them wait for no reason, all to try to dissuade women from getting the medical help they need.

But the report did find that state laws and regulations can interfere with safe abortions.

"Abortion-specific regulations in many states create barriers to safe and effective care," the report says.

Calonge says those rules often have no basis in medical research.

[…]

The National Academies report says waiting periods and requirements for unnecessary tests can result in long delays because women may have to travel to get care and have trouble getting appointments.

"Delays put the patient at greater risk of an adverse event," the report says.

And the more adverse events occur, the more anti-abortionists point to them as proof that abortion is dangerous, and the more they push lawmakers to impose further obstacles. It’s a cycle of mendacity and ignorance.

Let’s not think for a moment that this study, or even a hundred like it, could ever sway abortion opponents. Their crusade is ideological, not fact-based. That they can force women to endure unwanted pregnancies, with all the personal and medical ramifications that may follow, and then pat themselves on the back for doing God’s work is evidence enough.

(via Friendly Atheist)

This Week in Puppycide #32

Here’s a roundup of recent headlines involving police shootings of pets and other animals.

• Averted | Pueblo, CO (undated): Animal control officer finds Koda the pit bull being attacked by two loose dogs in her own yard, pushes the aggressive dogs away with her baton and drags Koda to safety. Koda suffers “massive injuries” but survives; the other dogs are captured by animal law enforcement. Funny how this female AC officer was able to handle two vicious dogs without resorting to lethal force when so many male colleagues cannot.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

• Unjustified | Indian River County, FL (02/23/18): Officer responds to a call about a dog at large that had supposedly bitten a child (this is later revealed to be false), shoots a loose pit bull it approaches a woman who had just shooed it away. The dog is later euthanized. The owner, who had been searching for the dog after it escaped its yard, says it wasn’t aggressive; dashcam footage shows the dog trotting away and then towards the woman, tail wagging.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

• Unjustified | Springfield, IL (03/04/18): Officer responding to a vicious dog call immediately shoots and kills the dog when it allegedly charges at him. The police chief considers the shooting justified, but the owner questions why the cop didn’t try his taser or billy club instead of killing the animal.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

• Unclear | Hampton, VA (03/10/18): Officer responding to a dogs-at-large call is allegedly charged by two pit bulls, who leave when he retreats to his car. He then finds them attacking a dog in its backyard; they allegedly charge him again, whereupon he shoots and kills both. The injured dog’s owner says the shooting appeared justified, but another witness claims the two dogs were playful and nonaggressive. Animal Control was called but said they don’t respond on weekends; the killing might have been avoided otherwise.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

• Unjustified | Indianapolis, IN (03/12/18): Police chaplain shoots and mortally wounds his neighbor’s pit bull after it jumps his fence and allegedly runs at him threateningly several times in his driveway. The dog was later put down. The chaplain claims the dog had been aggressive in the past, yet he didn’t think to prepare any nonlethal weaponry.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

If you know of any similar stories I haven’t mentioned, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

Not sure what those colored labels mean? See my puppycide ruling explainer.

Fox News’s double-standard on US presidents meeting North Korean dictators

Criticizing Fox News for being hypocrites isn’t so much swinging at low-hanging fruit as it is buzzing a chainsaw through them. Still, there’s a supercut making the rounds that throws their total lack of scruples into sharp relief, comparing their scorn and derision over Obama’s willingness to meet with North Korea’s leadership with their gleeful approval over Trump announcing the same plan:

Everything wrong with Fox News in one video pic.twitter.com/MhnApiQ3pG

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) March 16, 2018

Part of me still refuses to believe Fox’s viewership are so gullible and clueless that they can’t recognize the wool being pulled over their eyes. The con is hardly subtle.

(via retweet by @pzmyers)

El Salvador woman released after 15 years in prison for abortion

This terrible report is a good reminder of why it’s so important to fight for abortion rights. For anti-choice zealots, “abortion is murder” isn’t just rhetoric, it’s an actual belief, one that leads to situations such as what’s happening in El Salvador, where abortion is illegal in all cases and where women are convicted of murder for terminating their pregnancy – or even if they miscarry or their infant is stillborn.

Maira Veronica Figueroa was a teenager when she lost her baby and was put behind bars under El Salvador's strict anti-abortion laws.

Now, 15 years later, the 34-year-old woman left prison Tuesday after the court commuted her 30-year sentence for aggravated homicide.

[…]

But there are at least 24 other women in similar circumstances still languishing in jail, Boukher said, including Evelyn Beatriz Hernandez Cruz, who was jailed after she gave birth to a stillborn conceived during an alleged gang-rape.

[…]

In 2016, the country's ruling party introduced a bill to allow abortion in cases of rape or a risky pregnancy, but no date has been set for a vote, and it will likely face tough opposition from the Catholic Church and evangelical groups.

If you want more proof that reproductive rights are human rights, look at what happens when countries don’t consider them as such. Punishing women for having an abortion isn’t just wrong, it’s inhumane, and I’d go so far as to call it a crime against humanity.

Also, fuck the Catholic Church. That doesn’t get said often enough.

Daily Links #115: Homeland Security separates refugee families

Whoops – I’m so out of it today I almost forgot to give y’all your links.

• Last year, Homeland Security threatened to punish families that cross the border illegally by separating them. They’re now doing just that to refugees fleeing violence – only now they deny it’s meant as punishment. Because there must be a perfectly reasonable basis for wrenching a crying child out of their parents’ arms and detaining them in different states.
  (via @hiattf; retweet by @radleybalko)

• Baton Rouge, Louisiana officer goes 94 MPH on a 50 MPH road and plows into a woman’s car, killing her 1-year-old infant. So naturally, police arrest the mother and charge her with “negligent homicide”.

• Death meets Stephen Hawking at the edge of the Dark Desert over half a century later than expected.

• My guess is Trump heard about the sci-fi trope of space marines and decided, “I want that.” Includes a name only Trump (or a child) could come up with.
  (via Joe.My.God.)

• Finally: Jesus jailed for saying he’d bomb the gays. (I’m so sorry.)
  (via Joe.My.God.)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Fox hosts think CIA black site torture criminal is “hero”

Greg Gutfeld

The reactions are coming in to Trump’s nomination of Gina Haspel, a career CIA official who ran a “black site” in Thailand and oversaw the torture of prisoners there, to run the agency. Much of them are rightly condemnatory, but there are those who’ll stop at nothing to defend Trump’s every decision and praise anyone he picks, and you already know I’m talking about Fox News, don’t you. Here’s a representative take:

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): I think she should be proud of what she did. […] She has to make decisions that a lot of her critics don't have to make. She answered the call, and that call forces you to make decisions that could put you in jail. So, the thing is, if you are faced with a potential terror attack that could kill thousands, and they say "But if you do this, you go to jail," -- if you follow that order, you are wrong. If you follow the order that puts you in jail, that makes you a hero.

DANA PERINO (CO-HOST): And they save lives.

GUTFELD: And they save lives, so I think she is a hero. And if she was a TV character, she would be a hero, a woman running a black site, that's -- that's -- that's a great character.

You know, I fully expected Fox News talking heads to defend Haspel in spite of her involvement in torture. I didn’t expect them to praise her because of it. But that’s what blind partisanship does – you don’t just excuse the inexcusable, you claim them as your own and try to spin their monstrosity as a gain, even if that makes you as ghoulish as they are.

Funny of Gutfeld to say that Haspel’s actions could have landed her in prison, though. We all know that government officials don’t get punished by their own when they commit crimes; they’re defended and even promoted. Accountability isn’t a word that exists in the US government’s lexicon.

Surveillance perjurer gets off, CIA torture criminal gets promoted [updated]

Update: Some of the claims in this post concerning CIA Director-designate Gina Haspel are hereby retracted. More below.

James Clapper

Almost five years ago, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress that the NSA didn’t spy on Americans. This lie was so baldfaced it prompted Edward Snowden to blow the whistle in the first place. Lying to Congress is illegal, yet Clapper still hasn’t been punished for his perjury, or even charged.

And now, with the expiration of the five-year statutes of limitations this past Monday, it seems he never will be. And that isn’t remotely surprising.

Former intelligence chief James Clapper is poised to avoid charges for allegedly lying to Congress after five years of apparent inaction by the Justice Department.

Clapper, director of national intelligence from 2010 to 2017, admitted giving “clearly erroneous” testimony about mass surveillance in March 2013, and offered differing explanations for why.

Two criminal statutes that cover lying to Congress have five-year statutes of limitations, establishing a Monday deadline to charge Clapper […]

Clapper’s problematic testimony occurred a few minutes before noon on March 12, 2013, when he told Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., “No, sir,” and, “Not wittingly,” in response to a question about whether the NSA was collecting “any type of data at all” on millions of Americans.

Most criminals try to evade punishment by dodging the cops or using masks and online proxies to hide their identity. What they should do instead is work for the government and climb their way to a position of power, at which point they can do all the wrongdoing they want and lie about it under oath, and the corrupt officials and craven politicos around them will make sure they never pay a price.

Gina Haspel

And if their crimes are inhumane enough, they may even get promoted.

When President Donald Trump nominated Gina Haspel on Tuesday to be the next CIA director, he selected a seasoned intelligence officer with decades of experience, but also a key figure in the agency's troubled legacy of using torture as an interrogation tactic.

[…]

From 2003 to 2005, Haspel oversaw the top-secret CIA program where dozens of suspected terrorists were deprived of sleep, stuffed into coffins and had water forced down their throats, according to The New Yorker.

While overseas, she also ran a CIA "black site" — or secret prison — in Thailand where suspected terrorists Ab Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri were waterboarded in 2002, NBC News confirmed.

[…]

She also assisted with an order to destroy CIA waterboarding videos.

ProPublica has more on Haspel’s torture record, including a telling bit about how she mocked Zubaydah and accused him of faking his psychological breakdown. Whether this was before or after he was waterboarded 83 times in one month is unclear.

The UN Convention Against Torture, which the US is ostensibly bound by, unambiguously demands that any and all torturers be prosecuted. Yet not a single war criminal involved in the Bush administration’s “enhanced interrogation” regime has ever been charged. And now, someone who personally oversaw – and according to the above-linked report, participated in – the torture of detainees at the secret military base she ran is being rewarded with a prestigious job and even more power and influence.

The idea of accountability in the higher echelons of government is so ridiculous, it wouldn’t even pass for a joke.

(via @Snowden; @csmcdaniel, retweet by @KFILE)

---

UPDATE (03/15/18 @ 8:50 PM ET) —

ProPublica has just posted a major update/retraction: Whilst Gina Haspel did run a “black site” in Thailand and oversaw torture of at least one detainee there, she was not involved in the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah and she didn’t mock him. She only arrived at the Thailand base and took command there after Zubaydah’s torture had ended. She was, however, involved in the waterboarding of al-Nashiri, and she helped destroy recordings of his and other detainees’ torture sessions on her boss’s orders. Zubaydah was tortured as described, but it was overseen by a different base commander. The original post above is left unchanged.

This correction notwithstanding, Gina Haspel remains a war criminal under the UN Convention Against Torture and the only occupation she’s fit for is that of prison inmate, as with anyone else involved in the Bush-era torture regime.

Trump proposes the death penalty for drug dealers

Donald Trump

Trump’s admiration for authoritarians has always been evident, and he’s now flirting with yet another idea from their despotic playbook:

Trump said that allowing prosecutors to seek the death penalty for drug dealers — an idea he said he got from Chinese President Xi Jinping — is “a discussion we have to start thinking about. I don’t know if this country’s ready for it.”

“Do you think the drug dealers who kill thousands of people during their lifetime, do you think they care who’s on a blue-ribbon committee?” Trump asked. “The only way to solve the drug problem is through toughness. When you catch a drug dealer, you’ve got to put him away for a long time.”

It was not the first time Trump had suggested executing drug dealers. Earlier this month, he described it as a way to fight the opioid epidemic. And on Friday, The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration was considering policy changes to allow prosecutors to seek the death penalty.

Modern US presidents don’t have a particularly strong record of upholding democratic values once they become inconvenient to their goals, but Trump is the first to throw away any pretense at giving any damn at all. Though, to be perfectly fair, that’s probably in part because he doesn’t know or understand the first thing about due process, or Constitutional safeguards – not surprising from a man who (reportedly) rolled his eyes four Amendments into the actual text of his country’s founding document.

(It should go without saying, but in addition to violating the core principles of a democratic justice system, imposing the death penalty on drug dealers would do absolutely nothing to curb the dealing of drugs. “Toughness” on crime does not work, largely because would-be criminals simply don’t consider the legal penalties at play, if they’re even aware of them, when engaging in criminal acts. The idea that harsher sentences lowers crime is a myth that’s now only promoted by dinosaurs like Trump and his Attorney General.)

The man is like a broken, neverending carnival ride – you just never know where he’s going next and how much whiplash everyone else will suffer from it. It’s highly unlikely he’ll make a serious push for this, just as it’s unlikely he’ll push for almost any policy he proposes. The man has absolutely no sincere ideological or political beliefs; he just repeats whatever he last picked up from someone else. And with someone who spends so much time fraternizing with strongmen and autocrats, that’s something to be concerned about.

(via @radleybalko)

This Week in Puppycide #31

Here’s a roundup of recent headlines involving police shootings of pets and other animals.

• Unjustified | Durham County, NC (02/26/18): Cops responding to a domestic call demand residents restrain their two large “aggressive” dogs; a pit-hound mix escapes its room and “lunge[s] at the deputy’s face”, at which point an officer shoots it dead, feet away from a resident’s head as he tried to grab the dog. Owner says the dog was likely going for the deputy’s gun, thinking it was a toy, and questions why the officer didn’t taze, spray or kick the animal instead. An investigation is ongoing.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

• Attempted | La Mesa, CA (03/05/18): Two officers responding to a domestic argument call get allegedly “charged” at by a large dog. One cop fires twice but misses; their partner corners the animal and gets it into their patrol car safely.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

• Averted | Tolono, IL (03/05/18): Police chief responds to a call about a German shepherd under attack by neighborhood dogs in its own backyard, uses his Taser to stop them. All dogs involved survive. Bonus: Includes politicians babbling about the need for “tougher laws” to try and prevent dogs from behaving like dogs.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

• Unclear | Escambia County, FL (03/06/18): Officers respond to call about a family dog that’s bitten its teenaged owner, find the family struggling to restrain the animal. Animal control is called but say a tranquilizer is over an hour away, so a deputy executes the dog with a headshot. It’s unclear whether the family consented to this and what their reaction was afterwards. Also unexplained is why the deputy didn’t use a muzzle, rope or other means to restrain the dog rather than kill it.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

• Attempted | Linden, NJ (03/07/18): Officer conducting a welfare check on a homeless man is allegedly attacked by the man’s dogs and fires twice, wounding one dog. No explanation is given for why the officer approached without any preparation for the dogs, such as calling animal control, or why he didn’t use a taser or mace.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

• Attempted | Chillicothe, OH (03/07/18): Police statement claims officers returning to a residence for a check-up are “charged” by a “large pit bull” that gets out when a child opens the door; one officer fires at the dog, giving it “minor injuries”. An internal investigation is underway. No alternate viewpoint from residents or witnesses is presented.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

• Unjustified | Jasper, IN (03/08/18): According to a police report, cops respond to a call about an “aggressive” “pit bull-type” dog at large and track it to its home; the owner allegedly sics the dog on them, whereupon they shoot the dog dead. No further information (including possible use of nonlethal weapons) is known.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

• Attempted, Possibly Justified | Charlotte County, FL (03/08/18): Deputy responds to a call about a man trapped by three aggressive pit bulls, opens fire when they allegedly attack him, injuring two and causing all three to run away. Animal control later captures the dogs for treatment.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

• Possibly Justified | Erie, PA (03/08/18): Police respond to call about a dog attacking a woman, find the “pit bull” biting her head and neck, immediately shoot and kill it. Owner is in the hospital with serious injuries.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

If you know of any similar stories I haven’t mentioned, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

Not sure what those colored labels mean? See my puppycide ruling explainer.