Really good piece, please read the whole thing.

"As it is, Chauvin’s attorneys have taken to citing the 1989 Supreme Court case Graham v. Connor—and doing it so frequently that you’d think a man named Graham V. Connor told Chauvin he could get away with murder. In a way, that’s exactly what the case did. Graham v. Connor changed the use-of-force guidelines for police all across the country, allowing them to be more violent and homicidal.

To understand how one case has authorized brutality, you have to appreciate that our only real constitutional protection from police violence is the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on “unreasonable search and seizure.” “Unreasonable” was, naturally, poorly defined by the collection of white men who wrote and ratified the Constitution and determined that things such as slavery and genocide were totally “reasonable” uses of state power. Still, for most of American history, the Fourth Amendment followed a “reasonable [white] man” standard: The actions of the government, or its agents, were judged through the lens of what an average person would find reasonable.

In practice, this allowed for plenty of abuse. Victims of police brutality had to show that officers acted “unreasonably” and with malicious intent. As one can imagine, it was always hard for victims (or their surviving family members) to prove that a violently homicidal police officer intended to kill them. Before camera phones, it was nearly impossible to get white people to believe the cops acted like Black people have always said they do.

Graham v. Connor took this loophole and made it so big that whole police forces could simply saunter right through it. Instead of limiting police use of force to what a reasonable person might expect, the Supreme Court said that force could only be judged against what a reasonable “officer on the scene” would do. In the actual Graham v. Connor case, that meant the court found that a “reasonable officer” could slam Dethorne Graham’s head into his car and break his foot, because Graham was resisting arrest, never mind that he was a diabetic going into shock who was being detained on the suspicion that he stole some orange juice—which he did not."
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/chauvin-supreme-court/

Is anyone more toxic and evil than this guy?

Video at the link
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/tucker-carlson-gives-passionate-defense-white-replacement-theory

TUCKER CARLSON: I'm laughing because this is one of about 10 stories that I know you have covered where the government shows preference to people who have shown absolute contempt for our customs, our laws, our system itself and they are being treated better than American citizens. Now, I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term "replacement," if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World. But they become hysterical because that's what's happening actually. Let's just say it: That's true.

...

If you change the population, you dilute the political power of the people who live there. So every time they import a new voter, I become disenfranchised as a current voter. So I don't understand what we don't understand cause, I mean, everyone wants to make a racial issue out of it. Oh, you know, the white replacement theory? No, no, no. This is a voting right question. I have less political power because they are importing a brand new electorate. Why should I sit back and take that? The power that I have as an American guaranteed at birth is one man, one vote, and they are diluting it. No, they are not allowed to do it. Why are we putting up with this?

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1379521435350228999?s=20

https://www.thebiglead.com/posts/donald-trump-baseball-boycott-mlb-channels-yankees-01f2m9yr36j0

"You want to find a game. It's on every channel, and yet you can't find anything. It's the weirdest thing"

He's seriously senile.

I saw this one posted on FB but I have some issues with it. It also doesn't seem very comprehensive. I'm interested in pluses and minuses that could be used to sell it versus criticize it.

The only thing I found useful here was that it explained that The John Lewis Voting Rights Act is a different bill-- HR4, when I thought HR1 was The John Lewis Voting Rights Act.

https://elections-daily.com/2021/03/25/h-r-1-the-good-the-bad-and-the-wtf/

https://twitter.com/leahstokes/status/1377308365710262279?s=20

It's about time. Hallelujah!

If a simple change in terminology changes our gun politics, great. I'm skeptical but it can't hurt.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/27/opinion/sunday/gun-control-safety.html

Why would any black voter ever vote Republican? Why would any decent person vote Republican?

Also, so much of this bill seems unconstitutional. It is just insane how bad it is.

Yesterday I stopped at a gas station mini-mart. The place was fairly crowded, a nice day, lots of people were out. I was with a 10 year kid I was taking care of for the afternoon-- taking him to get him a snack.

As we were walking into the store, I saw a woman also walking in, who was very ...attractive. I'm not sure the most politically correct way to put it but she attracted attention and as soon as started walking in-- some guy started catcalling her as she was going in. It wasn't how she was dressed either. Anyway, she came in after us and went to the cashier to pay for some gas.

Immediately like 3 guys moved around her, fairly big dudes, and just started saying the most lewd things imaginable. The most disturbing thing is one guy kept slapping her on the butt-- like many times very loudly. She seemed to be taking it very calmly. Maybe she was used to that sort of attention. But it was making me upset seeing her be abused like that.

We weren't that close to this incident as we were looking at snacks in the other part of the store, but we could hear them.

I kept thinking that maybe I should say something but a couple of the guys were really big and seriously I felt like they could have killed me if they were angry enough and who knows if they had a weapon.

I decided to just leave the place without buying anything because it was not an appropriate scene for the kid I was with. Thankfully after we left, I saw the woman walking out to her car by herself, and pumping gas.

My wife says I did the right thing to leave, particularly since I was with a kid, and if I was really worried, I could have called the cops.

But I keep feeling like I should have said something. I was a very disturbing thing to see. Just terrible to see men act like that.

P.S. of course all these people weren't wearing masks, which also made me want to stay away from them.

I really can't understand how tightly Repubs are sticking by the former president as he runs into a tsunami of legal trouble.

It doesn't take a genius to see how tainted he will be in a year by lawsuits and serious criminal trouble.

Are they seriously incapable of looking ahead and thinking maybe they should distance themselves a bit? It's just nuts.

“Black officers fought a different battle” on Jan. 6, said Harry Dunn, a Capitol Police officer. Here is what he saw and heard when rioters, including white supremacists, stormed the Capitol.


"“It took a horrific toll on us,” Officer Harry Dunn of the Capitol Police said of the attack on Jan. 6. “Mental health has always been a stigma. Nobody wants to talk about it.”

"WASHINGTON — The racist slurs hurled at Harry Dunn, a Capitol Police officer, during the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol were cited as evidence this month in the Senate’s impeachment trial of former President Donald J. Trump. Until this week, Officer Dunn had remained anonymous.

Now, Officer Dunn, 37, who is Black and is a 13-year veteran of the force, and who grew up in nearby Prince George’s County, Md., is ready to speak publicly about the violence and racism he experienced at the hands of a pro-Trump mob during that dark day in American history.

Standing 6-foot-7 with a muscular frame, Officer Dunn is an imposing figure, but he says the bigotry and trauma he experienced that day were enough to intimidate anyone. Now that he’s talking about his experience, he says other Black officers have told him that they, too, experienced racist slurs from the mob."

NYTimes
https://t.co/djBJzyCxNR?amp=1