April 11, 2017

The Man Who Wants to Tax Porn Thinks His Past Assault Case Is 'Fake News'

Chris Sevier, who wants to put a porn filter on every internet-connected device, jokingly calls himself ‘the mentally ill stalker who wants to marry his computer’—and has a warrant out for his arrest.

BEN COLLINS

BRANDY ZADROZNY

04.11.17 1:15 AM ET

Conservative lawmakers in over a dozen states are pushing a bill that would force consumers to pay a ransom to access pornography. The Human Trafficking Prevention Act, if passed, would apply a pornography filter to any device, from laptops to cellphones to routers, that connects to the internet—and would levy a $20 tax to remove it from each one. The bill mandates all manufacturers of internet-connected devices maintain separate, 24-7 call centers to make sure obscene material is appropriately labeled.

The American Civil Liberties Union is calling the legislation a violation of the First Amendment, while critics at the Electronic Frontier Foundation argue that the bill would help “kill innovation” and present potentially insurmountable barriers to entry for both consumers and small businesses that use the internet. And the only thing more bizarre than the Human Trafficking Prevention Act itself might be the man behind it.

Chris Sevier, 40, who sometimes goes by Mark Sevier in court and Chris Severe in communications with state legislators, has a contentious and often intentionally provocative relationship with the American court system that is news to at least some of the bill’s co-sponsors. He once famously tried to legally marry his computer to protest same-sex marriage, and was charged with stalking and harassing both country star John Rich and a 17-year-old girl.

Sevier has helped push and draft the bill in 13 states and says he’s trying to introduce it at the federal level during meetings in Washington, D.C., next week. In an interview with The Daily Beast, he readily acknowledged each case in his personal history, and sometimes jokingly referred to himself as “the mentally ill stalker who wants to marry his computer,” in reference to the national news coverage his exploits often invite.

The Daily Beast has also learned that Sevier has a warrant out for his arrest in Tennessee for failure to appear at criminal contempt proceedings. Sevier had failed to pay child support and violated a restraining order by communicating with his former wife. The restraining order stems from Sevier’s 2011 arrest and conviction for assaulting his father-in-law during a fight over a visitation rights of his then-7-month-old son, whom Sevier tried to take during a supervised visit. Sevier’s baby was also injured in the altercation and taken to the ER.

more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/11/anti-porn-warrior-behind-the-porn-filter-bill-has-a-tangled-legal-history.html

April 11, 2017

Putin says expects 'fake' gas attacks to discredit Syria's Assad

Source: Reuters



Tue Apr 11, 2017 | 9:09am EDT

President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Russia had information that the United States was planning to launch new missile strikes on Syria, and that there were plans to fake chemicals weapons attacks there.

Putin, standing alongside Italian President Sergio Mattarella who was in Moscow for talks, said Russia would tolerate Western criticism of its role in Syria but hoped that attitudes would eventually soften. When asked whether he expected more U.S. missile strikes on Syria, he said:

"We have information that a similar provocation is being prepared ... in other parts of Syria including in the southern Damascus suburbs where they are planning to again plant some substance and accuse the Syrian authorities of using (chemical weapons)."

He did not offer any proof for that assertion.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-usa-putin-idUSKBN17D1K9?il=0

April 11, 2017

'We Will Solve (North Korea) Without Them!' Trump Warns China in New Tweets

Source: Mediaite


by Ken Meyer | 8:45 am, April 11th, 2017

Surprise! President Trump is making news on Twitter. On Tuesday he doubled down on previous remarks about taking action against North Korea, with or without cooperation from China.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/851766546825347076
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/851767718248361986

Trump hosted the Chinese president at Mar-a-Lago last week, where they discussed international economics and China’s relationship with the rogue nation. Previously, Trump gave an interview where threatened to take unilateral action against North Korea even if he couldn’t convince China to work with America.

In recent days, the U.S.S. Carl Vinson drew significant media intrigue when the aircraft carrier led a strike group towards the Korean Peninsula. This development came shortly after Trump ordered an airstrike into Syria as a punishment for Bashar al-Assad‘s use of chemical weapons.

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Read more: http://www.mediaite.com/online/we-will-solve-north-korea-without-them-trump-warns-china-in-new-tweets/

April 11, 2017

United Airlines Stock is in Free Fall, Down More Than 3.5 Percent in Early Trading

Source: Mediaite




by Joe DePaolo | 9:46 am, April 11th, 2017



One day after a man was violently dragged off of a United Airlines flight after it was overbooked, the airline’s stock is in free fall.

After closing Monday at 71.52, United was listed at 69.19 as of 9:40 am ET Tuesday — a drop of more than three percent. The stock began to tumble late in the day on Monday. It dropped nearly a half point in the final hour yesterday, going from 71.96 to its closing price of 71.52.

On Tuesday, the stock opened at 70.12. It rose briefly after the opening bell, crawling up to 70.30, before plummeting to an early-morning low of 68.95. The United story gained traction through the morning on Monday, but the stock was actually up in early trading. At 12:27 pm ET, United posted a statement to its Twitter account from CEO Oscar Munoz — in which he said “I apologize for having to re-accommodate these customers.”

As that statement began to circulate on social media and was widely mocked, United stock began to plummet in the late-afternoon. In after-hours trading, it fell below 70, down nearly 2.5 percent.

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Read more: http://www.mediaite.com/online/united-stock-is-in-free-fall-down-more-than-3-5-percent-in-early-trading/

April 11, 2017

Poll: Sanders Is Most Popular Senator Among Constituents; McConnell Is Least

Source: Talking Points Memo




By MATT SHUHAM Published APRIL 11, 2017, 9:35 AM EDT

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is the most popular senator among his constituents in the country, according to a poll released Tuesday. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is the least popular.

Seventy-five percent of Sanders’ constituents approved of his performance in office, compared to 21 percent who disapproved, according to the latest installment of Morning Consult’s senators poll.

Forty-four percent of Kentuckians approve of McConnell’s performance, compared to 47 who disapprove. McConnell is the only senator to receive a net disapproval from his constituents, Morning Consult found.

Sanders and McConnell retained their titles as most- and least-liked since the last time Morning Consult released poll results on senators’ approval ratings among constituents, in September 2016.

Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/morning-consult-senator-approval-sanders-mcconnell

April 11, 2017

A Special Election In Kansas Could Signal 'Big League' Problems For GOP, Trump

April 11, 2017 8:13 AM ET

DOMENICO MONTANARO

A special election in Kansas Tuesday has Republicans sounding worried about an enthusiasm gap in the Trump era. Trump himself was apparently worried enough that he cut a robo call for Republican state party Treasurer Ron Estes.

"On Tuesday, Republican Ron Estes needs your vote — and needs it badly," the president says in the recorded call intended to boost Estes in the race to replace Mike Pompeo, who is serving as Trump's CIA director. "Ron is a conservative leader who's going to work with me to make American great again. We're going to do things really great for our country. Our country needs help; Ron is going to be helping us — big league. But I need Republicans like Ron Estes to help me get the job done. This is an important election. There's really few very much more important. And I need your vote for Ron Estes on Tuesday."

This is a heavily Republican district that includes Wichita. It's one that Trump won by 27 points in 2016. But in a low turnout election, almost anything can happen.

"Our enemy right now is complacency," said Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who was campaigning in the fourth congressional district with Estes Monday, in an 11th hour attempt to boost the Republican over Democrat James Thompson, a civil-rights attorney. This district has voted Democratic before. Pompeo was swept in with the Republican wave of 2010. Democratic enthusiasm, Republicans' lack of it and independents' dissatisfaction with incumbent GOP Gov. Sam Brownback are all making for what could be a closer-than-expected result.

more
http://www.npr.org/2017/04/11/523380705/a-kansas-special-election-could-signal-big-league-problems-for-gop-trump

April 11, 2017

Children of undocumented immigrants to protest at White House

Source: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE



11 APR 2017 AT 09:29 ET

Dozens of child and teen protesters — mostly youths whose parents are in the United States illegally — departed Florida for Washington Monday to urge President Donald Trump to end his policy of ramped-up deportations.

“We are going to Washington on a bus. This caravan is about how us, youth, are going to stand up to President Trump’s bullying,” said Jasmine, a 10-year old, said at a news conference.

She did not want to give her last name so as to protect her parents.

“I’m going to Washington DC for my mom and dad. I’m going to stand up to defend my family,” Jasmine said. She was part of a group of about 40 minors, accompanied by relatives and adult activists, who boarded a bus in Florida bound for the US capital, wearing T-shirts and carrying signs reading “We Belong Together.”

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/2017/04/children-of-undocumented-immigrants-to-protest-at-white-house/

April 11, 2017

UN: Trump must become 'better informed' on Paris deal

Source: Newsweek




11 APR 2017 AT 08:07 ET

The deputy secretary-general of the United Nations says the Trump administration must be “brought back to the table” on climate change, despite repeatedly pledging to pull out of an agreement aiming to reduce carbon emissions.

Amina J. Mohammed says the international community has a responsibility to convince President Donald Trump of the benefits of fighting global warming after he repeatedly pledged to pull out of an agreement aiming to reduce carbon emissions.

“I think that where people are not well-informed, we have to go back and do that. It seems as though we are taking 10 steps forward and five back, but it’s an imperative. We don’t have an option,” Mohammed tells Newsweek in an exclusive interview. “The U.S. is an important leader in this and we believe that they will do the right thing once they are better informed about it.”

Mohammed says it will be “very difficult” for Trump to completely pull out of the Paris climate deal brokered by President Barack Obama and world leaders in 2016, which seeks to limit global temperature rise to under 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The United States has already ratified the deal and the White House would have to wait three years to announce a withdrawal. Officially exiting the compact would take another year after the formal request.

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/2017/04/un-trump-must-become-better-informed-on-paris-deal/

April 11, 2017

The struggle to give a soul to a soulless presidency - By Michael Gerson

Michael Gerson is a nationally syndicated columnist who appears twice weekly in The Post.

In a conversation with an ambassador from Asia a few years ago, I asked why her country was still more favorably disposed to the United States than to a rising China. “Because we know what you believe in,” she responded. Since World War II, the United States has operated in the Pacific with a certain set of interests and values. Both, she said, are “less clear” with respect to China.

It is predictability that builds and maintains alliances. It is constancy that enforces red lines, allowing others to accurately calculate the limits of American patience. It is vagueness and impulsiveness that invite testing and the possibility of deadly miscalculation.

President Trump has now placed his own line in the Syrian sand: At the very least, the Assad regime must not use chemical weapons against civilians in its showdown assault on the Idlib province. But is this commitment the expression of a set of values with broader implications? Does it reflect an expansive interpretation of America’s global role, including the responsibility to protect civilians when feasible? Or is it the enforcement of a narrow norm against the use of weapons of mass destruction?

We have no idea which interpretation is correct, because Trump himself is unlikely to know. Like on health care, he seems to be encountering these issues for the very first time. It is unlikely that he played through the scenarios of humanitarian intervention and regime change during campaign policy briefings with national security experts. Trump’s Stephen Bannon-ridden inaugural address claimed that the world’s troubles are not the United States’ problem. But then there are the “babies” killed by an apparent nerve agent.

On Syria, Trump’s message has gone from mixed to pureed. Apparently, engagement in Syria is both a stupid move and a moral necessity. On foreign policy, Trump is ideologically rootless. He seems to have no considered views about the world, just confidence about his own abilities as a leader. And this places an unsettling randomness at the heart of America’s global role.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-struggle-to-give-a-soul-to-a-soulless-presidency/2017/04/10/a3fc4b66-1e15-11e7-a0a7-8b2a45e3dc84_story.html?utm_term=.e5e83a82d5c6&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1

April 11, 2017

No one should feel good about Trump's attack on Syria - By Eugene Robinson

The United States has become a combatant in Syria’s horrific civil war. The Trump administration, which intervened with deadly military force, gives no sign of knowing what it’s doing or why.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has absurdly tried to suggest that nothing has changed. He is wrong. Fifty-nine cruise missiles constitute a policy shift. So what is the administration’s strategic vision? What is its desired outcome? How does it get there? And what happens next?

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley said Sunday that the administration cannot envision “a peaceful Syria” with dictator Bashar al-Assad still in power. Tillerson went on a different Sunday show to say that Assad’s fate is up to “the Syrian people.” Neither statement had much grounding in the reality of a heartbreakingly brutal war that has killed about 400,000 people and displaced half of Syria’s population.

Who’s going to make Assad leave? “The Syrian people” have been trying to get rid of him for about six years, yet he remains. The Obama administration believed it had at least negotiated the surrender of Assad’s capacity to use chemical weapons, but last week’s sarin attack demonstrates otherwise. There is no political process through which Syrians can express their will. There is only a grinding, multi-sided conflict that has allowed the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, to seize huge swaths of territory.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/no-one-should-feel-good-about-trumps-attack-on-syria/2017/04/10/e610ef3e-1e15-11e7-a0a7-8b2a45e3dc84_story.html?utm_term=.9a6d3856fbfa&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1