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The NRA’s Dana Loesch and Marco Rubio: Genuine ‘Insane Monsters’

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By Mark Sumner / Daily Kos

On Wednesday night CNN had a Townhall-style debate in which NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch appeared to scowl at grieving parents and prove once and for all that the organization she represented was exactly as awful as it seems. No matter what approach was made, no matter how much either logic or grief was brought to bear, Loesch refused to consider anything that would put any limits on the sale of any weapons system whatsoever.

Loesch’s guns-at-any-cost whoppers hit a nadir when she responded to a comment that the Second Amendment was written at a time when firearms consisted of muskets by claiming that the Revolutionary War period was far more advanced than people believe:

“At the time there were fully-automatic firearms that were available, the Belton gun and the Puckle gun.”

  [Read more…]

How Republicans Stole the Second Amendment

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By Rebecca Pilar Buckwalter Poza  / Daily Kos

Republicans stole the Second Amendment. Over the course of 30 years, the right waged a war on political, legal, and academic fronts to redefine that amendment, contrary to history, text, and precedent, as creating an individual right to bear arms. Of course, none of those efforts, nor their aggregate effect, would have been enough to accomplish the right’s aims without a far-right ideologue on the Supreme Court, the late Justice Antonin Scalia, to codify them.

The right’s misappropriation of the Second Amendment ranks among the most stunning legal feats in U.S. history.   [Read more…]

Next Tuesday We Will Have an ‘Active Shooter’ / Intruder Drill …

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By Phillip Timothy / Facebook

Next Tuesday we will have an “active shooter” / intruder drill at our school, and I will hunker down behind flimsy wooden cabinet doors with my students.

You see, we open the cabinets and hide behind the doors so that anyone peering into the classrooms will not see us, and maybe think it is an empty room. Maybe we will be unnoticed, which just means maybe he will go to another classroom.

In preparation, I will remind my students tomorrow that our hallway doors should always be locked, so if an intruder shows up we can just pull the doors closed without fiddling with keys. I have assigned students whose job it is to check those doors every period to make sure we don’t forget.

I will try to keep the children quiet during our drill on Tuesday. It’s hard. They’re packed in tight behind those cabinet doors, and they talk and giggle. Because they’re children. They look like young adults, but they’re children.   [Read more…]

‘A Big Scare Tactic’: ExxonMobil Files ‘Conspiracy’ Counter Suits Against Climate Defenders

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ExxonMobil has named the supposed “coordinated” campaign against them “The La Jolla playbook”

By Jessica Corbett / Common Dreams

In response to a series of lawsuits aimed at holding the oil giant to account for its climate crimes, ExxonMobil is taking “a bare-knuckle approach rarely seen in legal disputes” by threatening and filing countersuits against those who have sued them.

ExxonMobil “has targeted at least 30 people and organizations, including the attorneys general of New York and Massachusetts, hitting them with suits, threats of suits, or demands for sworn depositions,” based upon claims that “the lawyers, public officials, and environmental activists are ‘conspiring’ against it in a coordinated legal and public relations campaign,” Bloomberg reports.   [Read more…]

Statement on Kelly Davis Case: Society of Professional Journalists, San Diego Chapter

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By The Society of Professional Journalists, San Diego chapter

The San Diego chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists is deeply concerned about San Diego County government’s inappropriate treatment of journalist Kelly Davis after she exposed the deaths of dozens of people in its jails. Its action represents a failure of transparency and a misguided attack on a journalist instead of an attack on the very real and important problems she uncovered.   [Read more…]

Trump Prepares to Release the Memo—and Bring the Constitutional Crisis to a Boil

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By Mark Sumner / Daily Kos

On Wednesday, the FBI took the extraordinary step of creating an unsigned document—a document in the name of the whole agency, rather than any individual—opposing the release of the Trump–Nunes memo. This followed a visit to the White House from both FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to personally oppose the release. And overnight, Democratic Representative Adam Schiff discovered that the memo Devin Nunes gave to Trump, was not the same as the one that was voted on in the House.   [Read more…]

To Protest Racist Comments and Policies, Walkout Planned for Trump’s Davos Speech

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By Julia Conley / Common Dreams

Several attendees of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland are planning to walk out of President Donald Trump’s speech at the summit on Friday afternoon, in protest of his recent reported remarks about countries whose citizens he deems undesirable immigrants.

In an open letter, Business Leadership South Africa CEO Bonang Mohale denounced Trump’s alleged statement, confirmed by Republican and Democratic lawmakers, that more immigrants from “countries like Norway” should come to the U.S. instead of people from “shithole countries” such as Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations.

  [Read more…]

45 Years After Roe v. Wade, How Far Have We Come When It Comes To Abortion And The Right To Privacy?

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By Kelly Macias / Daily Kos

January 22 marked the 45th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision which, through a Supreme Court ruling, legalized abortion in all 50 states. It has been an uphill battle to maintain that right ever since then. Though conservatives have tried and failed at numerous attempts to repeal the law nationally, they have been very successful at passing restrictive local laws that limit a woman’s access to contraception and abortion.As Mary Ziegler in the New York Times reminds us, though Roe is often solely associated with abortion, the law actually is about something larger.   [Read more…]

‘Billionaire Boom’: World’s Richest 1% Took 82% of All New Wealth in 2017, Bottom Half Got Zero, Zilch, Nada

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By Jon Queally / Common Dreams

Call it the ‘Year of the Billionaire.’

In 2017, a new billionaire was created every two days and while 82 percent of all wealth created went to the top 1 percent of the world’s richest while zero percent—absolutely nothing—went to the poorest half of the global population.

That troubling information is included in Oxfam’s latest report on global inequality—titled Reward Work, Not Wealth (pdf)—released Monday. In addition to the above, the report details how skyrocketing wealth growth among the already rich coupled with stagnant wages and persistent poverty among the lowest economic rungs of society means that just 42 individuals now hold as much wealth as the 3.7 billion poorest people on the planet.   [Read more…]

A Powerful Economic Justice Movement Is Brewing, Even in This Dark Time

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An American Democracy Movement is fighting brutal capitalism and the culture of blame.

By Frances Moore Lappé and Adam Eichen / AlterNet

In this tumultuous world, one thing seems certain: today’s dire threats to our democracy did not arise out of nowhere. Every culture thrives, or not, on whether its core narrative—the causation story we tell ourselves—enhances mutual gain or spurs division. And, the narrative driving today’s unfolding catastrophe feeds the latter.

It begins with a deep distrust of human nature.

Way back in 1651, philosopher Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan summed up our nature with the Latin proverb Homohominilupus, “Man is a wolf to his fellow man.” From this thought tradition, now reinforced through much of media and advertising, we absorb the notion that humans are essentially selfish, competitive, and materialistic. Yet, with this dim view of our nature, how can we possibly make society work? The dominant narrative has the answer: Just put self-interest to work.   [Read more…]

Public Schools Best Fulfill Dr. King’s “Purpose of Education”

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By Steven Singer / Common Dreams

What is the purpose of education?

Is it to train the next generation of workers?

Or is it to empower the next generation of citizens?

Is it to give children the skills necessary to meet the needs of business and industry?

Or is it to provide them the tools to self-actualize and become the best people they can be?
  [Read more…]

UCSD Student and DACA Recipient in ICE Custody After Taking a Wrong Turn at the Border

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By Gabe Ortiz / Daily Kos

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients don’t have until March 2018 for Congress to act on the DREAM Act. As it is, many don’t even have until tomorrow:

UCSD student and DACA recipient Orr Yakobi was detained Sunday by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) after making a wrong turn near the U.S. Mexico Border coming back from San Ysidro.

First reported by 10News, Yakobi and his friend Ryan Hakim were visiting the Las Americas outlet mall in San Ysidro on Sunday near the border. On the way back, they accidentally took the 805 South freeway instead of the 805 North, which forced them into Mexico. When they turned around, Border Patrol officers flagged their car and detained Yakobi.   [Read more…]

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