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Democratic Senators Throw a Wrench in Kavanaugh’s Sure Thing Nomination Process

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The junior United States Senator from California–Kamala Harris–is a boss. Her unrelenting questioning during the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brent Kavanaugh was extraordinary. And things have gone uphill from there.

Now, the nomination that was supposed by a slam dunk, doesn’t look so easy anymore. Other United States Senators of the Democratic persuasion are no longer playing “the get along to go along” game.

I don’t care at this point who is or isn’t running to be the Democratic nominee for President. I care that elected officials are growing a spine. It’s about time. The GOP started out with enough votes to confirm Kavanaugh, who is clearly being positioned to obstruct proceedings against the President in addition to serving as the deciding vote on making this country re-live the not-so-good old days again.   [Read more…]

The Deafening Drumbeat of the Unfree

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Above the din of disturbing news – that discordant banging you’re hearing, steadily getting louder and louder, that you can no longer ignore – that’s the drumbeat of the unfree.

Dehumanized by the labels “prisoner,” “inmate,” and “convict,” even reduced to serial numbers like Victor Hugo’s Jean Valjean in “Les Misérables,” these men and women are, just like you and me, or any mortal – irrespective of flaws, frailties, even felonious acts and misdemeanors – endowed with the right to be treated with dignity, decency, and respect.

Advancing 10 specific demands as a rallying cry in prisons nationwide, these brave incarcerated souls are striking by: not eating, refusing to do prison work, engaging in sit-ins, and taking part in myriad other acts of nonviolent resistance that could, nonetheless – given the carceral, contentious environment they’re taking place in – quickly trigger violence (even reprisals, including the nefarious, all-too-frequent imposition of solitary confinement).

So what can you do? At a minimum, read the list of demands; they’re not long and considerable thought and effort went into crafting them. Since the very act of striking places the safety of the strikers in greater jeopardy, it’s the least you, as a civic-minded, compassionate citizen, can do. The complete list is inside:   [Read more…]

Deep Dark Secrets – Opening Statement by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) on the Kavanaugh Hearings | Video Worth Watching

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Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s opening remarks at the Senate hearings on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh include an observation that the selection process and support for Kavanaugh has been a deep dark secret. He notes that the White House “in-sourced” the selection process to the Federalist Society. That process was opaque to any public observation. His nomination is being promoted, to the tune of millions of dollars, by organizations such as the Judicial Crisis Network, whose funding is also a deep dark secret. And a significant portion of his record is being hidden by claims of Executive Privilege. Is this any way to select a lifetime appointment to the highest court of the land?

The full transcript of Sen. Whitehouse’s remarks from his website are included below the video. To listen to the entire remarks, after the excerpt finishes, click on the replay icon in the lower-left corner of the video.   [Read more…]

Update on Prison Strike Demanding End of “Slave Labor”: After 10 Days, Protests Spread to 11 States | Video Worth Watching

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From the Democracy Now! YouTube channel, an update on the nationwide prison strike: Prisoners across the country join work stoppages, hunger strikes and commissary boycotts in at least 11 states to protest prison conditions and demand the end of what they call “prison slavery.” Organizers report prisoners in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Indiana are […]

Campus Rapists and Sexual Harassers Set to Get a Big Gift from the Trump Administration

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By Laura Clawson / Daily Kos

In the age of #MeToo, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is poised to set a policy that lets colleges off the hook for taking sexual harassment seriously and makes life much easier for accused rapists and harassers. DeVos previously rescinded Obama-era guidelines on campus sexual assault because they were supposedly unfair to rapists, and now she’s ready to take the next step with regulations of her own.

The DeVos rules would allow perpetrators to cross-examine their victims during mediation and would “also allow the complainant and the accused to have access to any evidence obtained during the investigation, even if there are no plans to use it to prove the conduct occurred.” Because it’s not already hard enough for assault survivors to come forward—now their assailants will have free rein to dig through their lives and intimidate them in person.   [Read more…]

Prisoners Risk Their Lives Fighting California Wildfires for $2 a Day

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Wildfires continue to ravage California. Instead of hiring firefighters to put out the fires, the government is turning to incarcerated people for labor. More than 3,400 prisoners risk their lives every day to tackle the wildfires. While the average California firefighter earns $74,000 plus benefits annually, imprisoned people are paid as little as $2 a day. By relying on prison labor, California avoids spending $80 to $100 million a year.

I first learned about the exploitation of imprisoned laborers during the snowpocalypse that hit Boston in 2015. Imprisoned workers were paid 20 cents an hour for shoveling the city in the freezing cold that no one else wanted to venture out and brave. It dawned on me then that prison wasn’t just about gruesome punishment: it’s about profit. And prison labor is responsible for more of this country’s everyday products and services than is let on.

Today, the United States holds 5 percent of the world’s population and incarcerates 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. More than 2 million people are separated from their families, deprived of basic human rights, abused, and left to suffer in cages. Incarceration has increased by 500 percent in the last 40 years, even though crime rates have decreased. More than one-half of all federal prisoners are incarcerated for a nonviolent drug offense.   [Read more…]

Judgment at Nuremberg – Judge Dan Haywood (Spencer Tracy) Delivers the Verdict | Video Worth Watching

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Although the cruelties and injustices of this administration haven’t risen to the level of those of the Third Reich, the same principles of justice and moral responsibility apply. While some who support actions such as separating children from their parents might claim it necessary for the protection of our borders, as Spencer Tracy notes in his reading of the verdict:

There are those in our own country too who today speak of the “protection of country” — of “survival.” A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient — to look the other way.

Well, the answer to that is “survival as what?” A country isn’t a rock. It’s not an extension of one’s self. It’s what it stands for. It’s what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult!

Before the people of the world, let it now be noted that here, in our decision, this is what we stand for: justice, truth, and the value of a single human being.

  [Read more…]

Protesters in Downtown San Diego and All Fifty States Object to Trump’s Supreme Court Choice

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One hundred ninely+ locations in all fifty states hosted events protesting the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court on Sunday.

Led by Move On, NARAL, and the People’s Defense Coalition, more than 70 activist organizations endorsed the rallies and marches.

The event in San Diego was held at Waterfront Park on the west side of the County Administration Building. Roughly 300 people attended, cheering on speakers and marching thru downtown afterward.
  [Read more…]

Unite for Justice Rally & March to Protest Trump’s Supreme Court Nomination

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On Sunday, August 26th, local activists, leaders, and champions for women’s reproductive freedom will gather for a Unite for Justice Rally and March at Waterfront Park in San Diego, beginning at 10am.

Donald Trump has long promised to only nominate a justice who will end Roe v. Wade and criminalize abortion. Trump has found his man in Brett Kavanaugh.

We can’t and won’t go back to the days when abortion was illegal in this country. We know what’s at stake in this fight: our most precious and fundamental rights. Brett Kavanaugh will not only work to end Roe and criminalize abortion, he will rule to gut health care, voting rights, LGBTQ rights, environmental protections, workers’ rights, and immigrant rights. And his record of arguing for extreme executive privilege, such as suggesting that the Supreme Court was wrong to compel the Watergate tapes from President Richard Nixon, creates the real threat that confirming Kavanaugh will help Trump put himself above the law.   [Read more…]

Will the GOP Send ‘Poor’ ‘Dead’ Duncan Hunter Back to DC to Represent East San Diego County?

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Now that Congressman Duncan Hunter and wife Margaret have been indicted, Republicans are working hard on formulating a strategy to keep his District 50 seat red.

While the Representative from Alpine has been full of bluster, anybody who’s actually read the 60 counts against him knows he’s a dead man walking. All that’s left for him to do is work out a plea deal that is consummated after November 6. Oh, and hope his wife doesn’t escalate expression of her rage beyond the stony silence on display at their arraignment.

There were about a hundred or so people on hand to witness Hunter walk into the San Diego Federal Courthouse. His dash from the curb to the door was more like a circus parade than a perp walk, as demonstrators from various Indivisible chapters waved signs, wore bunny ears (in honor of the plane tickets purchased for the family’s pet rabbit), and chanted “lock him up.”   [Read more…]

U.S. Prisoners: Why They Strike and Why It Matters

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By John M. Webb / Daily Kos

Amid all of the news about Cohen and Manafort this week, an important story is going under-reported. While it may be tempting to escape into some schadenfreude about our president’s little circle of criminal cronies, prison is no laughing matter. It is a dangerous place where we are literally throwing away our fellow human being beings. Tuesday was the beginning of a massive prisoners strike to protest the conditions in which they live and work.

Men and women incarcerated in prisons across the nation declare a nationwide strike in response to the riot in Lee Correctional  Institution,  a maximum security prison in South  Carolina.  Seven comrades lost their lives during a senseless uprising that could have been avoided had the prison not been so overcrowded from the greed wrought by mass incarceration, and a lack of respect for human life that is embedded in our nation’s penal ideology. These men and women are demanding humane living conditions,  access to rehabilitation, sentencing reform and the end of modern day slavery.   [Read more…]

A Nationwide Prison Strike Began This Past Tuesday, August 21st | Video Worth Watching

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From the DemocracyNow! YouTube website:

Prisoners in at least 17 states are expected to strike [Tuesday, August 21,] in a mass mobilization demanding improved living conditions, sentencing reform, the right to vote and the end of “prison slave labor.” The weeks-long strike begins on the 47th anniversary of the killing of Black Panther George Jackson, who was shot and killed by guards during an escape attempt from San Quentin prison. It will end on September 9, the 47th anniversary of the deadly Attica prison uprising. For more, we speak with Heather Ann Thompson, American historian, author and activist. She is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy.” She is a professor of history at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. We also speak with prison strike organizers Amani Sawari and Cole Dorsey.

  [Read more…]

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