pnwmom
pnwmom's JournalRon Sims, WA State's most powerful black politico, has been stopped 8 times.
And at 68, he's still being stopped.
Ron Sims is the former Executive of King County, the most populous county in the State.
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/driving-while-black-even-seattles-ron-sims-counts-8-cop-stops/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=article_left_1.1
“I know not to argue with the police, so I didn’t,” Sims said. “But I’m thinking to myself, ‘You stopped me to ask where I’m going? What possible business is that of yours?’?”
Sims told me this in April and since then, I think of it often. He’s an ordained Baptist minister, was the longest-serving King County executive ever (1996-2009) and is now a Washington State University regent. He’s arguably the most successful black politician in Seattle history, as well as a pillar volunteer in the community.
Yet he’s been pulled over eight times.
I have never been pulled over in the city. I drove around for years in a 30-year-old Volvo with a muffler tied on with a coat hanger and red tape for a taillight. Never pulled over once.
How do police organizations feel about gun control?
Are they allies of progressives who want stricter regulations or are they on the side of the NRA?
Nat'l Intel report: the whole system of classification is a big subjective mess.
This is why the Department of Intelligence can disagree with the Department of State. They have separate classification guides and each department has its own rules.
The head of Intelligence called on the FBI to investigate Hillary -- but the State Department had its own rules and procedures and wasn't subject to the rules of the Department of Intelligence. The heads of both agencies reported directly to President Obama -- not to each other.
A 2008 article by Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists discussed an Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) review of US classification policy that was intended to try and develop a government wide system. Aftergood concluded that “There appears to be no common understanding of classification levels among the classification guides reviewed by the (ODNI) team, nor any consistent guidance as to what constitutes ‘damage,’ ‘serious damage,’ or ‘exceptionally grave damage’ to national security... There is wide variance in application of classification levels.”
What this means in practice is there can be confusion on the part of those working on national security issues as to what should be classified in an email and what should not. This is not an excuse to abuse the classification system, but it is an explanation of how some in government may have a legitimate interpretation of what is classified, differing from others handling the same information, particularly if that information is unmarked with a classification level.
While there are two general conclusions that frame the result of the investigation, there are two issues that the investigation raises that must be dealt with to improve security and lessen confusion. The first is to update and make more efficient the government-wide classification system, working with experts like the ODNI and others to ensure that the system will be secure, clear and uniformly implemented. This will help prevent confusion in the future over such issues as to what can be shared on an unclassified system and what must be protected.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-danvers/the-email-investigation-a_b_10904786.html
Armed open-carry protestor was a suspect in the Dallas shootings.
And he was lucky he was only a suspect. In the dark, in the midst of the shootings, he was lucky that he didn't get gunned down by a police officer who mistook him for an active shooter..
What is the purpose of open-carry? It's so you can defend yourself in situations like this, right? Whip out your gun and defend yourself and others from people with guns. And yet what if he had drawn his weapon? He might have just aimed it at ANOTHER open-carry activist. In any case, the police could have been justified in shooting him.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/07/09/open-carry-activist-labeled-suspect-in-dallas-shooting-says-police-defamed-him.html
As soon as the shooting started, "I told him, `Give your gun to this cop because we don't want an accident. We don't want them to come around the corner and see you with a gun and start shooting at you,"' Cory Hughes told CBS 11.
The Hughes brothers claim Mark Hughes was held for 30 minutes before he was released.
Hughes said police questioned him about why he wanted to shoot officers, adding that they told him witnesses saw him firing the rifle. That "is a lie," Hughes said.
Hughes told CBS 11 that he was "defamed" by police. His identification as a person of interest has resulted in "thousands" of death threats on Facebook, he added.
Black cop union -- separate from white cops -- slams St. Louis police department.
Did other people here know that in many police departments across the country, black officers had separate unions from white officers?
One more thing I didn't know . . .
Black police union in St. Louis releases scathing evaluation of their own department, call for the resignation of Police Chief Sam Dotson
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/king-black-union-st-louis-slams-department-article-1.2702852
Few people know that all over this country, many police departments have two separate police unions — one for white officers and one for black officers. St. Louis is one of those cities with segregated police unions where African-American officers felt like they had to form their own separate organization in order for their concerns and needs to be addressed. It's despicable that this is still the case in 2016, but it is very real.
Even the name of the African-American police union in St. Louis, The Ethical Society of Police, clues us in to the fact that they felt like their white counterparts in law enforcement often lacked the basic integrity required of the job.
On Thursday, in a Daily News exclusive, The Ethical Society of Police has released a scathing, comprehensive 112 page evaluation of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. At a scheduled forum Thursday evening, black police officers from the Ethical Society of Police told The News that they plan to publicly call for the immediate resignation of Police Chief Sam Dotson based on the damning findings of their report, which is embedded below.
It goes to into painstaking and meticulous lengths to detail 360 degrees of racism, discrimination, cronyism and even crime within the department. The union had previously given Dotson a vote of "no-confidence," but this is the first time they have called outright for his termination.
SNIP
In Dallas, what is the official reason they didn't just wait the shooter out?
Who was at risk? Why did they feel justified in just killing him with the robot? Could they have remained at a distance till he fell asleep or something?
Back in the pre-drone days, what would they have done?
I'm not necessarily condemning the action -- I'm just wondering how and why the decision was made.
ON EDIT:
I just found this "conversation" with a UW law professor discussing why, in his view, the use of the robot bomber was justified in these particular circumstances -- because the lives of human beings were at risk and lethal force was justified.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/8/12132120/dallas-shooting-police-bomb-robot-ethics-ryan-calo-interview
So those are sort of the three major debates going on globally. What I’m trying to say is that this particular incident does not implicate any of those. I mean, here the officers were justified in using lethal force. So, any court that looked at this, barring something bizarre, would probably be pretty agnostic as to the means by which they delivered violence.
MSNBC: The Republicans goofed. The hearing helped Hillary.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/gop-accidentally-does-clinton-favor-james-comey-hearing?cid=sm_fb_maddowBefore the hearing Republicans had a series of fairly specific talking points: Clinton lied to the FBI; she created a national security threat; she plays by a different set of rules than everyone else. But instead of simply repeating those talking points, GOP lawmakers invited the FBI director – a lifelong Republican, whom GOP officials have repeatedly praised for his honesty – to testify about how wrong the party’s arguments are.
“We have no basis to believe she lied to the FBI,” Comey said. Asked about Clinton benefiting from a different set of rules, he responded, “It’s not true.” Asked about classified emails, Comey said there were only three messages – each of which were not properly marked classified when she received them.
In other words, congressional Republicans had the bright idea of holding a hearing with a credible witness who was perfectly happy to explain to them how wrong they are.
Making matters worse, GOP lawmakers forgot who the villains and heroes were supposed to be in their story. Republicans were supposed to make Clinton the scoundrel of this narrative, but today, they decided instead to go after the director of the FBI – because he had the audacity to say a Democrat didn’t commit a crime.
Watch this black female officer's righteous rant.
http://pix11.com/2016/07/07/how-dare-you-police-officer-shares-powerful-response-to-fatal-shooting-of-alton-sterling/Michael Eric Dyson, NYT: What White America Fails to See
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/opinion/sunday/what-white-america-fails-to-see.htmlIT is clear that you, white America, will never understand us. We are a nation of nearly 40 million black souls inside a nation of more than 320 million people. We don’t all think the same, feel the same, love, learn, live or even die the same.
But there’s one thing most of us agree on: We don’t want the cops to kill us without fear that they will ever face a jury, much less go to jail, even as the world watches our death on a homemade video recording.
You will never understand the helplessness we feel in watching these events unfold, violently, time and again, as shaky images tell a story more sobering than your eyes are willing to believe: that black life can mean so little. That Alton B. Sterling and Philando Castile, black men whose deaths were captured on film this past week, could be gone as we watch, as a police officer fires a gun. That the police are part of an undeclared war against blackness.
You can never admit that this is true. In fact, you deem the idea so preposterous and insulting that you call the black people who believe it racists themselves. In that case the best-armed man will always win.
SNIP
Remember when some were confidently proclaiming that the FBI
was also investigating the Clinton Foundation? Based on wishful thinking instead of evidence.
Charity Watch gives it an A rating and lists it as one of the top two charities focused on "Peace and International Relations."
https://www.charitywatch.org/ratings-and-metrics/bill-hillary-chelsea-clinton-foundation/478
https://www.charitywatch.org/top-rated-charities
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