While the House managers make the case for removing Donald trump from the office of the presidency, more incriminating evidence keeps dripping out. This morning it was a tape of a conversation during dinner at Trump’s Washington DC hotel about then US to the Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch between Trump, and his personal lawyer Rudy …
Tag: abuse of power
Aug 17 2018
The Russian Connection: Trump Admits To Obstruction
For a man who claims that there is no obstruction or “collusion” and that he has done nothing wrong, Donald Trump sounds and acts guiltier by the day. On Wednesday he revoked the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan outside of the normal clearance review and adjudication process. In a 255 word statement …
Jan 05 2013
Blowing the whistle on Obama’s America
On the campaign trail four years ago, US presidential candidate Barack Obama shared his views on whistleblowers. He said: “Often the best source of information about waste, fraud and abuse in government is a government employee committed to public integrity, willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism … should be encouraged rather than stifled.”
As president, the reality has been very different. During his first term in office, six whistleblowers have been charged under the Espionage Act for allegedly mishandling classified information. That is twice as many as all previous presidents combined.
The fact that Barrack Obama was once a Constitutional Law professor at the university of Chicago seems in complete contradiction to what he has done to protect the the abuses of government.
The Pentagon Papers, Watergate, Iran-Contra and wiretapping without warrants by the Bush administration are known to the wider public because someone had the courage to blow the whistle.
Sep 22 2009
Cops taser legless man
I am not making this up.
A pair of cops tasered a legless black man.
They tried to pull his two-year-old daughter out of his lap, he resisted (who WOULDN’T??) and they got nasty on him and fucking tasered him, leaving lying on his side, NAKED FROM THE WAIST DOWN, outside of his apartment for all to see.
I wish I was making this up. Because it’s just godawful.
http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/…
The incident began when police responded to a call claiming an argument had broken out at Williams’ home. One of the officers involved, John Pinnegar, claims Williams’ wife said Williams had hit her, a charge Williams denies. Police say when they tried to take his two-year-old daughter from his lap to hand her over to Child Protective Services, Williams resisted. That’s when the violence allegedly began.In an emotional video interview, Williams said: “I’m not a violent person, I do not have a criminal background.”
Added Williams: “How much resisting am I going to do with no legs, no feet? How much resisting am I going to do?”
“Williams said Pinnegar unholstered his Taser, jammed it into his rib cage and shocked him twice. Williams said he fell from his chair onto his stomach on the ground outside his doorway,” the Sun-Star reports.
Williams also says an officer put his knee on Williams’ neck after he was already on the ground, even though “I can’t get up now — I don’t have any feet to get up with,” Williams said.
He added: “And they tell me that I’m doing stupid stuff in front of my kids? These are cops and they come in my house — what if they had accidentally tased my kid because of their [stupidity]?”
The Sun-Star reports that a “hostile” crowd gathered around the apartment building during the incident. The “apartment complex came to a roar because they were tasing a guy in a wheelchair and it was for no reason,” said one witness interviewed on video.
Williams was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence and resisting arrest. He spent six days in lock-up before he was released, and the county prosecutor has laid no charges.
A legless black guy, tasered, humiliated by police, locked in jail for six days.
No charges filed.
Cops are just way out of control with these tasers. Tasers can kill you. That kind of electric shock is downright dangerous, anyone who has to do any kind of professional safety training regarding electricity KNOWS that. They can kill you. But cops are tasering people just for the sheer rollicking hell of it, constantly, tasering old women, legless men, pretty much everybody who is already helpless against them.
This is disgusting.
I’m way too tired to really develop this any more, just wanted everyone to know about it. Pass it along. I won’t post it anywhere else.
Apr 02 2009
Prosecuting Those Responsible.
(After quantifying US casualties on September 11, 2001.)These measurements obviously did not capture the full meaning of September 11. A familiar terrorist threat announced itself that day with frightening new proximity and ambition. But decision made in the White House, in response, had incomparably greater impact on American interests as a society.
Barton Gellman in Angler – The Cheney Vice Presidency, page 132.
It is entirely by design that bringing abusers of power to justice will be riddled with setbacks. The Bush 43 leaders and high level advisors used deliberate sleight of hand to insure their prosecution was improbable. They are counting on the fact that the decision to prosecute them is entirely political, and that willingness to to spend political capital for crimes gone by will be small. But they’ve also fortified their steps with subtleties that make it harder to figure what went wrong.
It will take a lot more than just energizing the left wing behind the cause and supporting Senator Leahy to bring lawbreakers to justice. We have to convince the American mainstream if we are going to make prosecution happen. A mainstream that has demonstrated time and again that they are certain to miss the subtlety.