Category: department

Was The McKinney ‘Barrel Roll’ Necessary?

CASEBOLT

Some articles are out that discuss the importance (or silliness?) of the McKinney cop’s “barrel roll” and how it was necessary.

The point being made is that this kind of behavior was the latest example of “overbearing police tactics meted out in an unwarranted setting,” according to attn.com.

“But the barrel roll provided a glimpse into a particular mindset of policing using unnecessary tactics, and informed with an action-movie zeal,” writes attn.com.

Be sure to check out hilarious memes at hashtag #barrelroll on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/hashtag/barrelroll

(Updated article)

More:

http://www.attn.com/stories/1956/barrel-roll-policing-mckinney?utm_source=huffpostpolitics&utm_medium=onsitepost&utm_campaign=syndication

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/12/heres-why-the-mckinney-co_n_7569882.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592

Senator Ted Cruz Threatens To Subpoena Treasury Officials To Testify About Obamacare

Roll Call states that Senator Ted Cruz is warning he might seek to compel testimony from the Treasury Department about the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).

The Texas Republican senator – who is also a presidential candidate – is in control of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts.

He said his staff had been informed by the Obama administration that witnesses would not be available to testify about the rule-making process for providing subsidies under Obamacare because of ongoing litigation.

“For two main reasons, this excuse is entirely invalid,” Cruz wrote in a new letter to Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew.

“First, Congress retains its right to conduct oversight of the executive branch at all times, regardless of any perceptions of poor timing by, or inconvenience to, the executive branch. The Senate Judiciary Committee has obligations to ensure the proper functioning of the federal government at all times, and not just during windows of convenience for political officials. Second, your Department’s pending litigation justification is without basis, particularly given how you have provided at least one Department witness for the exact same topic during the pendency of other litigation over the last few years.”

http://blogs.rollcall.com/wgdb/cruz-threatens-to-subpoena-treasury-officials-to-testify-about-obamacare-rules/

Hillary Clinton E-Mails To Be De-Classified By State Department

The State Department will announce a timetable Tuesday for the release of more of the 55,000 pages of emails sent and received by Hillary Clinton on her private server, writes NBC News.

The State Department is under court order to make the scheduled releases public. A federal judge has ordered that the documents be released on a “rolling basis” every 60 days.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/state-department-outline-timetable-clinton-email-release-n364606

Court Won’t Lift Ban On Obama Immigration Action

On Tuesday, a federal appeals court refused to lift a temporary hold on President Barack Obama’s executive action that would prevent as many as 5 million immigrants illegally living in the U.S. from being deported, according to the AP. The hold allows the deportations to continue.

The U.S. Justice Department had asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a Texas judge who agreed to temporarily block the president’s plan in February, after 26 states filed a lawsuit alleging Obama’s action was unconstitutional. However, on a two-one vote, a panel of the court denied it, writes the AP.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans made the decision that the executive action must be delayed until the lawsuit is resolved.

It wasn’t clear if the government would appeal, either to the full appeals court in New Orleans or to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The states suing to block the plan argue that Obama acted outside his authority and that the changes would force them to invest more in law enforcement, health care and education.

The White House has said the president acted within his powers to fix a “broken immigration system.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/27/us/fifth-circuit-court-of-appeals-rules-on-obama-immigration-plan.html?_r=0

The Newest Hot Hillary Clinton Scandal? NYT Claims Questionable Donations Between Russian Uranium Group And Clinton Foundation

Leaks are now coming out from the book “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich,” by Peter Schweizer, which is supposed to hit the shelves May 5th.   The book is supposed to cover controversial donations made to the Clinton Foundation.

The book “tries to draw connections between Clinton Foundation donations and speaking fees and Hillary Clinton’s actions as Secretary of State,” writes Politico.

Recently, the New York Times wrote about an instance from that book regarding the uranium industry.

In January, 2013, an article in the Russian newspaper Pravda described how the Russian atomic energy agency Rosatom had taken over a Canadian company with uranium-mining rights stretching from Central Asia to the American West. The deal made Rosatom one of the world’s largest uranium producers.  It also brought Russian President Putin closer to his goal of controlling much of the global uranium supply chain.

But there is an untold story behind that story that involves not just the Russian president, but also The Clinton Foundation.

Several people, leaders of the Canadian mining industry, have been major donors to the charity run by former President Bill Clinton and his family.

Members of that group built, financed, and eventually sold off to the Russians a company that would become known as Uranium One.

The sale gave the Russians control of very lucrative mines in Kazakhstan as well as one-fifth of all uranium production capacity in the United States.  Uranium One has mining operations in Australia as well.

Since uranium is considered a strategic asset with implications for national security, the deal had to be approved by a committee composed of representatives from a number of United States government agencies – including the State Department.

The State Department was at that time headed by Hillary Clinton.

As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show that a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. According to the New York Times, those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors.

Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.

shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.

At the time, both Rosatom and the United States government made promises intended to ease concerns about ceding control of the company’s assets to the Russians. Those promises have been repeatedly broken, records show.

The New York Times claims its examination of the Uranium One deal is based on dozens of interviews, as well as a review of public records and securities filings in Canada, Russia, and the United States. Some of the connections between Uranium One and the Clinton Foundation were unearthed by Peter Schweizer, a former fellow at the right-leaning Hoover Institution and author of book previously mentioned.   He is currently the president of the Government Accountability Institute, a conservative research group.  Schweizer provided a preview of material in the book to The New York Times.

Whether the donations played any role in the approval of the uranium deal is unknown. However, the episode underscores the special ethical challenges presented by the Clinton Foundation, headed by a former president who relied heavily on foreign cash to accumulate $250 million in assets even as his wife helped steer American foreign policy as secretary of state.

In their defense, Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign, said no one “has ever produced a shred of evidence supporting the theory that Hillary Clinton ever took action as secretary of state to support the interests of donors to the Clinton Foundation.”

Fallon emphasized that multiple United States agencies, as well as the Canadian government, had signed off on the deal and that, in general, such matters were handled at a level below the secretary.

More:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html

(Updated article)

Racist Police Texts


TYT Network

Three cops in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida have been fired and a fourth, Alex Alvarez, has been suspended in an investigation of that police department for racism.

They may have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for five-month-long internal affairs investigations and a bad breakup between an officer and his fiance.

The investigation found prolonged misconduct in the department and it is possible there could be even more terminations as more racism becomes apparent.

“But they might never have been detected, nor run off, if not for a bad breakup that led to one officer’s former fiance coming forward with damning information,” according to Florida’s Sun-Sentinel newspaper.

Albuquerque Community Tribunal Puts APD On Trial: DailyLobo.com

On the one-year anniversary of homeless camper James Boyd’s death at the hands of the Albuquerque Police Department, activists and community members gathered in a dusty downtown warehouse in search of a little street justice, states DailyLobo.com.

Activist group “ABQJustice,” with help from other community groups, held the Albuquerque People’s Tribunal on Police Brutality on Saturday.

The event, which was open to the public, featured the results of a six-month-long, street-level investigation of “prejudice and racial bias” in the APD.

American Studies professor and ABQJustice member David Correia helped do the investigation and present the group’s findings at the tribunal.

“I thought it was good,” Correia said. “There’s really two pieces: there’s this report, which we’ve spent six months doing, with dozens and dozens of interviews with people on the street; then, this tribunal is an opportunity to make a preliminary presentation of our findings, trying to ask these panelists to help us figure out what we really need to do to resolve these problems that we’ve identified.”

The group said that the DOJ’s investigation only looked at a two-year period of police violence, and did not address racial biases and other systemic prejudice in the police force.

More here

(Updated post)

NYPD caught editing Wikipedia pages on alleged police brutality

Several incidents of alleged police brutality have made headlines in recent months, it seems police in New York have come up with a new way to bolster their public image.

By editing Wikipedia pages on alleged police brutality incidents, they have made them look more favorable to the officers involved.

CapitalNewYork has checked recent edits to the Wikipedia pages for Eric Garner, Sean Bell and Amadou Diallo — all of whom died at the hands of NYPD officers under controversial circumstances.

They found discrepancies and tracked them to computers at the NYPD’s headquarters at 1 Police Plaza.

The edits were made to make the circumstances surrounding the shootings more favorable to the police officers.

In the case of Eric Garner, who died last year after an officer placed him in a chokehold that was prohibited by NYPD’s own rules, CaptialNewYork found that the following changes were made:

  • “Garner raised both his arms in the air” was changed to “Garner flailed his arms about as he spoke.”

  •  “[P]ush Garner’s face into the sidewalk” was changed to “push Garner’s head down into the sidewalk.”

  •  “Use of the chokehold has been prohibited” was changed to “Use of the chokehold is legal, but has been prohibited.”

  •  The sentence, “Garner, who was considerably larger than any of the officers, continued to struggle with them,” was added to the description of the incident.

  • Instances of the word “chokehold” were replaced twice, once to “chokehold or headlock,” and once to “respiratory distress.

Are Democrats Finally Showing Some Spine With Funding Homeland Security?


Majority Report

Republicans caved in on funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

Sam Seder and Cliff Schecter of Majority Report discuss whether Democrats are now “showing spine.”

The New York Times:

“The fight over funding the Department of Homeland Security that began with Republicans thundering about a lawless president abusing power to change immigration policy ended with a quiet capitulation Tuesday when the House voted to fund the agency and avert a partial shutdown.”