Month: April 2015

Another cop killing, another coverup

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

This is really difficult to watch. What makes it worse is knowing if a bystander hadn’t taken this video, the cop’s version would have been the last word. Very sickening:

WASHINGTON — A white police officer in North Charleston, S.C., was charged with murder on Tuesday after a video surfaced showing him shooting and killing an apparently unarmed black man in the back while he ran away.

The officer, Michael T. Slager, 33, had said he feared for his life because the man took his stun gun in a scuffle after a traffic stop on Saturday. A video, however, shows the officer firing eight times as the man — Walter L. Scott, 50 — fled.

The North Charleston mayor announced the state charges at a news conference Tuesday evening.

The shooting comes on the heels of high-profile incidents of police officers using lethal force in New York, Cleveland, Ferguson, Mo., and elsewhere around the country. The deaths have sparked a national debate over whether the police are too quick to use force, particularly in cases involving black men.

Also: Here’s how this story would have been written without the video.

Encouraging

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

supremecourt

Let’s hope it stays this way:

The U.S. Supreme Court turned away an appeal by North Carolina, declining for now to approve Republican-backed voting restrictions that may shape the 2016 election.

North Carolina asked the nation’s highest court to uphold provisions that eliminate same-day voter registration and out-of-precinct voting. The Supreme Court previously let those provisions take effect for the 2014 balloting, and the state was seeking a ruling that would have a broader effect.

The high court will almost certainly have another chance to consider the restrictions before the 2016 election. A trial in the North Carolina case is set for July in a federal district court in Winston-Salem.

A federal appeals court ruled in October that the disputed changes disproportionately affected black voters and probably violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

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The senator from AIPAC

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

2015 03 29_5826_Chuck Schumer

Oh Chuck, you never fail to prove who really owns you:

Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, one of Capitol Hill’s most influential voices in the Iran nuclear debate, is strongly endorsing passage of a law opposed by President Barack Obama that would give Congress an avenue to reject the White House-brokered framework unveiled last week.
The comments Monday by the Democratic leader-in-waiting illustrate the enormity of the task ahead for President Barack Obama and his team: While there’s no guarantee that Congress would ultimately reject an agreement with Iran, there’s an increasingly bipartisan consensus that Congress should at least have the ability to do so.
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“This is a very serious issue that deserves careful consideration, and I expect to have a classified briefing in the near future. I strongly believe Congress should have the right to disapprove any agreement and I support the Corker bill which would allow that to occur,” Schumer said in an emailed statement to POLITICO.
Schumer had quietly signed on to a bill allowing congressional review of the Iran deal two weeks ago, but made little fanfare of his co-sponsorship. In a brief statement on Friday, he said only that he’d review the agreement. Now that the outlines of an agreement are known, Schumer’s emphatic statement that Congress has an important role becomes more significant, signaling to fellow Democrats that it’s safe to jump on board the review bill.

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