More prosecutorial misconduct in Chicago (same US attorney as last time, happens to be the one investigating the E Jean Carroll stuff)
Shenanigans in one North Carolina county:
Over in the ICE thread, I posted this:
The Guardian added a few more details on that conviction that qualify as a milestone.
tl;dr: Be careful publishing material that goes “too far” in discussing how to resist the regime.
And as a reminder, I do think criminal convictions and jail sentences were warranted given the acts described in the earlier article. The sentences, however, were excessive…and it’s difficult to see claims that publication of anti-establishment literature may be part of what’s being penalized when you consider some of the events that led up to the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago.
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The mean sentence for murder in the US is 40 years, the median is 20 (the mean is skewed by people sentenced to over 100 years in prison). Median time served is much lower, but there is no federal parole so these people won’t be eligible for it. I didn’t see data on attempted murder, but have seen people say that the sentences tend to be about half that length. So per the judges, what these people did is on par with an extreme murder.
If we have enough of these examples, would you consider a 1.776B taxpayer funded compensation appropriate for those over-sentencings?
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In terms of sentencing for a federal crime that doesn’t have parole . . . the next President can just pardon/commute that sentence.
Lots of (RECENT!) precedence for that now.
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November’s mid-term elections are a critical point.
When I wrote a book called The Age of the Strongman a few years ago, I had to wrestle with the question of whether it is fair to lump together leaders such as Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin — who operate in genuinely authoritarian systems — with those like Trump or Orbán who were legitimately elected. My conclusion was that strongman leaders — whatever the system they operate in — frequently share instincts and methods. They encourage a cult of personality, they centralise power around themselves and they fight against independent institutions they cannot control — whether that is the courts, the media or an electoral commission. Strongmen also often abolish constitutional term limits so as to extend their stay in power. Xi, Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have all done this — while Trump’s superfans keep speculation alive about an unconstitutional third term for him. Strongmen are also almost invariably male, nationalist and populist. Their personalised leadership encourages cronyism and the corruption that flows from it. All this, as they say in car showrooms, “comes as standard”.
The difference lies not in the instincts of the strongmen but in the robustness of the systems they operate in. If a strongman ruler is already governing in a largely authoritarian system — like Xi or Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman — they are almost impossible to get rid of. It might take a coup or an unusually effective ruling-class conspiracy to make a change at the top. But if the strongman has come to power in a system that still has free elections — as well as courts that retain some independence and a military that will not follow unconstitutional orders — then it is still possible to evict them from office.
You can expect a strongman leader to try a familiar array of tricks to tilt a democratic system in their favour. Rich cronies can buy up the media. Judges and generals who show too much independence can be replaced. Electoral boundaries can be redrawn. The constitution can be rewritten or ignored. The end result is often an election that is free but not fair, because the odds are stacked against the opposition. Even so, if a strongman is sufficiently unpopular he can still lose the vote. That is what happened to Hungary’s Orbán. Despite massively slanted television coverage that ignored his opponent, Péter Magyar, he went down to a crushing defeat in April’s elections.
https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/379207dc-8051-4453-81fc-51d781fe195c
…but partially offsetting that…
The sentence in the first Guardian article you posted seems a little slanted, don’t you think?
Prosecutors also highlighted other evidence they claimed proved that the protesters planned violence, including their decision to communicate and auto-delete messages on Signal, an encrypted messaging platform widely used among activists, journalists and other citizens wary of government surveillance.
Isn’t Signal what Hegseth used to notify others about a military strike? So seeming to indicate it might only be used by those “wary of government surveillance” seems be slanted.
And it is one of the top messaging apps used by those in the military for communication. I have first hand knowledge of that.
Terrible.
And, yes, go after the CC company who gave away their location. And for what, and I’m asking about bribes or threats.
And all for what? Petty bullshit that this a-hole (ICE head, not the citizen) thought was ok to do.
I’m glad that ALL of the illegals have been rounded up, so ICE has time to go after actual US citizens exercising their illegal (“made their noss mad”) right to free speech. /s
Cuz, everyone, that’s who’s next.
And, I’ll blame the individual ICE officers who thought this was their job, and “followed orders” as the Nazis did.
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Flock and other LPR might be getting upgrades to track your electronics including RFID things including pet chips.
Sounds like the kind of bad thing the stasi in East Germany did and was why communism was bad/evil.
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Mainland China seems to be doing OK
The distance between how mainland China behaves and how the US behaves seems to be getting narrower and narrower.
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I would get a polarised license plate cover if I lived in the US.
Nullifies the camera tracking nonsense.
It is illegal to have such a cover in most states. If that was not the case there would probably be a federal ban.
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I wonder when cars will come equipped with Faraday cages? Though still with all the electronics already built into the car itself, I don’t know?