San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

You are here: Home / Archives for Politics / Courts, Justice

Now is the Time to Investigate Climate Change Deniers Under RICO

by

By Doug Porter

A letter signed by twenty leading scientists sent to the Justice Department and White House asking for a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) investigation of corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change is getting renewed attention in light of last week’s disclosures about a decades-long effort to suppress important research.

Pulitzer Prize winning Inside Climate News published results of an investigation based on emails obtained by the Union of Concerned Scientists recently showing that Exxon’s own scientists warned company executives in 1977 about global warming caused by fossil fuels.     [Read more…]

The Pope Isn’t Coming to San Diego – Don’t Let That Be Your Excuse for Doing Nothing

by

By Doug Porter

Pope Francis is coming to the United States next week, and will bump the Trump off the top off the news pile. His message will be somewhat different than what Americans are used to hearing from the Catholic Church. Already Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) has written a letter saying he’ll be boycotting the Pope’s address to Congress because of “socialist talking points…presented to guilt people into leftist policies.”

While I’ve got plenty of issues with Catholic Church* doctrine and policies, this is one of those times when perfection can be the enemy of progress. Let’s seize the moment and use the occasion to take action towards making the world a better place…

Or you can sit and stew. Your choice.   [Read more…]

San Diego’s Police Citizen Review Board Falls Short on Transparency, Accountability

by

Opportunity to provide citizen input at September 23 meeting

By Jeeni Criscenzo

Four years ago today (September 17, 2011) the Occupy movement began in New York City’s Zuccotti Park in Wall Street. Like wildfire the movement that defined Us (the 99%) vs Them (the 1%) spread from city to city.

Three weeks later a large and exuberant crowd gathered in San Diego’s Children’s Park before marching defiantly to Civic Center Plaza, and Occupy San Diego was born.

And from that emerged a group of mostly “mature” women (of which I was one) who used our experience and energy to advance the movement long after the camps in cities throughout the nation had been aggressively dismantled by an organized police campaign. It was in that “dismantling” that many of the original members of Women Occupy San Diego (WOSD) came face to face with the ugly underbelly of SDPD.   [Read more…]

‘News’ Story Pleads Developers Cause on Civic San Diego Oversight Law

by

By Doug Porter

This is why we can’t have nice things in San Diego. By this I mean the greed of the local billionaire class and the willingness of the Union-Tribune to publish lies on their behalf.

UT reporter Roger Showley was apparently called upon to create some propaganda following the legislature’s approval of Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez’s AB 504, a bill designed to strengthen oversight of organizations like Civic San Diego making land use decisions for cities.

It’s my guess this UT article represents a last ditch attempt to appeal to Gov. Jerry Brown in the hope he won’t sign the bill. (You never know with the Gov…)

Gonzalez and other civic activists saw the necessity for such a measure because San Diego is the only city in California that outsources permitting and planning functions to a nonprofit with minimal oversight. Attempts at oversight and citizen input have been continually stymied.   [Read more…]

GOP Candidate Proposes Abolishing the National Labor Relations Board

by

By Doug Porter

Republican Scott Walker’s idea for turning around his diminishing poll numbers is to go big with his anti-union cred.

At a speech in Los Vegas, the Wisconsin Governor proposed scrapping the National Labor Relations Board, making right-to-work the default national standard for workplaces, eliminating public employee unions, restricting automatic withdrawal of dues, and forbidding union organizers to access employees personal information.  

In other words, he’s declared war. In the perfect world of Scott Walker, the US economy as far as employees are concerned would completely revert to the 1880’s. Yes, indeedy, get your beggars cups ready to catch whatever crumbs fall off the corporate tables.   [Read more…]

The ACLU Beat: Do You Know the Way to Escondido?

by

By David Loy

I became legal director for the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties in April 2006. In August, Escondido became one of the first cities to propose a ban on renting homes to unauthorized immigrants. So much for a quiet start to the new job.

That autumn, I wore grooves into the freeway as I worked with Escondido community groups, met with residents, spoke at events, and testified against the ban. After the City Council adopted the ban, I led the team that went to court and won an injunction against it.

Since then, I’ve never had to worry about forgetting the way to Escondido. Besides the ACLU’s advocacy for immigrants’ rights and civic participation, I’ve held the city accountable for First Amendment violations such as stifling the right to videotape checkpoints, terminating a social service agency’s contract in retaliation for its speech, and enforcing a restrictive ordinance that stifled rallies and demonstrations.   [Read more…]

Sharing Solidarity on Labor’s Day in San Diego

by

By Doug Porter

It was Labor Day on Monday. That’s the holiday where people are supposed to celebrate the many little victories adding up to what is generally referred to as middle-class life. These days it’s about those fortunate souls who’ve managed not to be pushed downward by the market-based economy.

Many of them are union families. In America’s Finest City they’re likely the most diverse grouping of people you’ll see anywhere. Black, Brown, old, young, gay and straight–the one thing binding them together is the power that collective bargaining gives them.

In the news business if it doesn’t bleed, it doesn’t lead. There were no bombs thrown and no heads busted at the hundreds of labor day picnics, rallies and parades around the country. So it was in San Diego, where just a couple of TV crews braved the blazing sun to report on the rally held by the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council at Tailgate park.   [Read more…]

Happy Labor Day? The Jury is Out

by

By Jim Miller

Toward the end of June, as many liberals were cheering the Supreme Court’s unexpectedly nonpartisan legalization of same-sex marriage and its equally surprising upholding of the Affordable Care Act, they missed the signal of some potentially very bad news to come this fall.

Indeed, while it was fun to see the Republicans being frustrated by a high court of their own making, that very same court reserved the right to bring some serious pain to progressives for the long term by agreeing to hear Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association in its next session.   [Read more…]

Police Deaths Matter. Now, Can We Talk About Injustice?

by

By Doug Porter

The gang at Fox News is doing their damnest to make a connection between #BlackLivesMatter and police officers killed in the line of duty.  Yesterday, Megyn Kelly and Katie Pavlich characterized Black Lives Matter as violent, with Pavlich calling it “a movement that promotes the execution of police officers.”

Elsewhere in the media the implied story is that cops are getting mowed down at a dramatically increasing rate.  The Los Angeles Times ran with a story saying “the recent bloodshed feels different.” 

CNN does it by slight of hand in its coverage of Illinois police officer Charles Joseph Gliniewicz and Texas Sheriff’s Deputy Darren Goforth, telling us that the number of deaths in the line of duty this year has increased from 73 to 85.   [Read more…]

Lawsuits Point to Misconduct in San Diego City and County Police Agencies

by

By Doug Porter

We’re supposed to have been reassured that San Diego was on its way to solving the problems with police officers who break bad.  Yet there is mounting evidence that it’s business as usual behind the ‘blue curtain’ in local law enforcement.

Mayor Kevin Faulconer appointed a new chief of police before he was even sworn in and a voluntary audit by way of the Justice Department’s office of Community Oriented Policing made recommendations for reform. Chief Zimmerman assured the City Council not long ago that new training procedures were addressing the concerns raised by the audit.

When the Union-Tribune editorial board is taking the department to task and lawsuits begin to pile up, you might have a problem if you are the San Diego Police Department. This problem isn’t constrained by the city limits, as legal actions and court settlements point to the County Sheriff’s Department having it’s own issues with use of force.   [Read more…]

Group Behind Planned Parenthood Attacks has Close Ties to Extremists

by

Senior Policy Advisor convicted of conspiring to bomb a San Diego abortion clinic in 1988

By Joan McCarter / Daily Kos

The group behind the falsified videos attacking Planned Parenthood calls itself a “group of citizen journalists,” but is of course not actually journalists. What the so-called Center for Medical Progress really is is a group of committed anti-abortion activists with close ties to “some of the country’s hardest-line anti-abortion extremists,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The group’s leader and one of the actors in the videos is David Daleiden, “who was previously the director of research for Live Action News.” Live Action also produced falsified Planned Parenthood videos, in a failed effort to bring the organization down. But it’s the board members of CMP that have the strongest ties to extremist groups.   [Read more…]

My Day in Court, Short and Bittersweet

by

By Bob Dorn

I had the distinction of being the first person thrown off a jury peremptorily in a courtroom this week. Before any evidence was introduced in this criminal misdemeanor case (a DUI), and before prosecution and defense had opened their arguments, the judge was forced to dismiss me from service.

It was the Deputy DA who had me thrown out. I’m not sure I understand why he did it. In legal terms, it was a peremptory challenge, and it means the attorney who exercised this right, the Deputy DA, could object to my presence on the jury without offering any cause or reason.

Was it my blue eyes? Do I look like a drunk? My curriculum vitae? Was it something I said?   [Read more…]

©2010-2017 SanDiegoFreePress.org

Code is Poetry