All-purpose news and politics thread: Two Steps Beyond!(Part II)

[Matt]

Reminder #2 is as many days:

This thread is here to talk about politics.
Do NOT make comments personal.
Argue the topic, not the person.

Anyone further breaches of this fairly simple guideline may very well result in people have a holiday from the forums for a while.

[numberthirty]

Kamala Harris: ‘I Take Full Responsibility’ For Decisions I Made As A Prosecutor
The new presidential candidate has faced criticism from some on the left over her record as a district attorney and California’s attorney general.

So that the opinion piece that said article mentions doesn't get lost in the shuffle...


https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/o...l-justice.html

Kamala Harris Was Not a ‘Progressive Prosecutor’

With the growing recognition that prosecutors hold the keys to a fairer criminal justice system, the term “progressive prosecutor” has almost become trendy. This is how Senator Kamala Harris of California, a likely presidential candidate and a former prosecutor, describes herself.

But she’s not.

Time after time, when progressives urged her to embrace criminal justice reforms as a district attorney and then the state’s attorney general, Ms. Harris opposed them or stayed silent. Most troubling, Ms. Harris fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions that had been secured through official misconduct that included evidence tampering, false testimony and the suppression of crucial information by prosecutors.

Consider her record as San Francisco’s district attorney from 2004 to 2011. Ms. Harris was criticized in 2010 for withholding information about a police laboratory technician who had been accused of “intentionally sabotaging” her work and stealing drugs from the lab. After a memo surfaced showing that Ms. Harris’s deputies knew about the technician’s wrongdoing and recent conviction, but failed to alert defense lawyers, a judge condemned Ms. Harris’s indifference to the systemic violation of the defendants’ constitutional rights.

Ms. Harris contested the ruling by arguing that the judge, whose husband was a defense attorney and had spoken publicly about the importance of disclosing evidence, had a conflict of interest. Ms. Harris lost. More than 600 cases handled by the corrupt technician were dismissed.

[numberthirty]

Also from that opinion piece...

Worst of all, though, is Ms. Harris’s record in wrongful conviction cases.

...

She also defended Johnny Baca’s conviction for murder even though judges found a prosecutor presented false testimony at the trial. She relented only after a video of the oral argument received national attention and embarrassed her office.

And then there’s Kevin Cooper, the death row inmate whose trial was infected by racism and corruption. He sought advanced DNA testing to prove his innocence, but Ms. Harris opposed it. (After The New York Times’s exposé of the case went viral, she reversed her position.)

To his credit, Jerry Brown has ordered new tests in the latter instance...

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/...224-story.html

Gov. Jerry Brown orders new tests in quadruple-murder case of death row inmate Kevin Cooper

In the interest of not cherry picking, this is the end of the piece...

Of course, the full picture is more complicated. During her tenure as district attorney, Ms. Harris refused to seek the death penalty in a case involving the murder of a police officer. And she started a successful program that offered first-time nonviolent offenders a chance to have their charges dismissed if they completed a rigorous vocational training. As attorney general, she mandated implicit bias training and was awarded for her work in correcting a backlog in the testing of rape kits.

But if Kamala Harris wants people who care about dismantling mass incarceration and correcting miscarriages of justice to vote for her, she needs to radically break with her past.

A good first step would be to apologize to the wrongfully convicted people she has fought to keep in prison and to do what she can to make sure they get justice. She should start with George Gage.

[Kevinroc]

https://thinkprogress.org/california...-5c768fd447a4/

From 2014.

California Attorney General Kamala Harris told ThinkProgress Wednesday she is concerned her department created a perception that the state’s prisons have a goal of “indentured servitude.” Harris was responding to revelations that lawyers in her office argued in court without her knowledge that a program to parole more prisoners would drain the state’s source of cheap labor.

“The way that argument played out in court does not reflect my priorities,” she said, adding that she fears state lawyers taking that position will create more distrust in the criminal justice system. Harris worried that heavily policed communities may suspect the state has an “ulterior motive,” especially when it seems “the penalty may not be proportionate to the crime.”

“The idea that we incarcerate people to have indentured servitude is one of the worst possible perceptions,” said Harris. “I feel very strongly about that. It evokes images of chain gangs. I take it very seriously and I’m looking into exactly what needs to be done to correct it.”

In a new chapter in California’s years-long battle over how and when to reduce the population of its unconstitutionally crowded prisons, lawyers in Harris’ division pushed back against a federal order to expand an early parole program, arguing that it would deplete their stock of prison labor, especially inmates who fight wildfires.

Harris told Buzzfeed she was “shocked” and “very troubled” to discover this, and told ThinkProgress on Wednesday that the argument was counterproductive. “It’s important for us to be constantly vigilant in developing and nurturing relationships of trust with communities that are policed and impacted by criminal justice policy,” she said.

“The war on drugs was a failure,” she said at a policy conference hosted by the Center for American Progress. “These so-called ‘tough on crime’ approaches have resulted in a nearly 800 percent rise in incarceration nationally. It’s just not smart to have those approaches. Instead of keeping them because of a blind adherence to tradition, we should ask, ‘What is the return on investment?’”

Harris also said she hopes to prevent people from entering the prison system in the first place. “There’s no question there’s a school to prison pipeline,” she said. “We should have the goal of ending the pipeline, shutting it down. Let’s break it down to its discrete parts, and let’s take it on with gusto and make some progress. I’ve chosen to focus on elementary school truancy.

Harris also praised California voters for passing a ballot initiative to reclassify several non-violent offenses from felonies to misdemeanors, which is already allowing thousands of prisoners to reduce their sentences and, in some cases, be released early. Harris said the measure will save the state $150 to 200 million dollars a year, and promises the savings will go “directly to mental health, truancy, services for victims of crime.”

But the state’s massive prison system remains unconstitutionally overcrowded, and the current administration has blown off many deadlines set by courts to remedy the situation. Protests also continue over the state’s use of long term solitary confinement, the pepper spraying of inmates with mental illnesses, and unsanitary conditions that have led to the death of some prisoners.

[Kevinroc]

Harris in 2006.

https://twitter.com/Politidope/statu...50482710990848

[numberthirty]

Harris in 2006.

https://twitter.com/Politidope/statu...50482710990848

Here's the issue with that...

If that is what you say in 2006 but this...

Ms. Harris was criticized in 2010 for withholding information about a police laboratory technician who had been accused of “intentionally sabotaging” her work and stealing drugs from the lab. After a memo surfaced showing that Ms. Harris’s deputies knew about the technician’s wrongdoing and recent conviction, but failed to alert defense lawyers, a judge condemned Ms. Harris’s indifference to the systemic violation of the defendants’ constitutional rights.

Ms. Harris contested the ruling by arguing that the judge, whose husband was a defense attorney and had spoken publicly about the importance of disclosing evidence, had a conflict of interest. Ms. Harris lost. More than 600 cases handled by the corrupt technician were dismissed.

is what you were actually doing, there is an issue. The "Accountability..." that she mentioned.

Here is the piece about it...

https://archives.sfweekly.com/thesni...me-lab-scandal

Judge Blames D.A. Kamala Harris for Crime-Lab Scandal

The section that addresses the "Accountability..." Harris mentioned...

In a 26-page ruling, Judge Anne-Christine Massullo wrote that Harris "failed ... in two respects" to deal adequately with revelations that crime-lab technician Deborah Madden was suspected of stealing portions of cocaine samples and had a criminal history: by not disclosing information the office possessed about Madden, and by not having a general policy in place to inform defense attorneys of past wrongdoing by prosecution witnesses. (Under the U.S. Supreme Court decision Brady v. Maryland, such information must be shared, in the event defendants want to challenge witnesses' credibility.)

[Mister Mets]

Gail Simone shared this post on her Facebook page. The post by Jeff Neal breaks down the 4 hour video of the MAGA kids incident.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?sto...7&id=817262976

It’s pretty interesting

It's fairer than some of the arguments, and the guy did his research, although I think he still has his finger on the scale.

The Phase 1 description leaves out some of the nastier stuff said by the Hebrew Israelites (IE- the claim about incest babies.) The first amendment praise is a whole 'nother can of worms, since there are legitimate arguments against heckling.

On Phase 2, he has a good point that Phillips read the situation differently (he thought a large group of teens picked on four older black men) and came into it without knowing what had been going on before.

On Phase 3, he correctly notes that the "build that wall" chant hasn't come out in any video. The question on mockery requires knowing what kids were thinking during a strange encounter with someone who thought they were.picking a fight against members of a protected class they outnumbered. A lot of this is about what people did and intended with missing context.

The Phase 4 description might get to the controversy, since facial expressions are imbued with so much meaning (a haunting scowl, an expression similar to a side-character in Karate Kid.) When there's a lot of nonverbal communication, things can be misread.

Ultimately the blame lies with the adults who had the bright idea to bus these kids to a protest, about an issue that they have little understanding of and in no way affects them, and then stood aside and didn't try to calm things down when the confrontation started. Look, all teenage boys have these kinds of shitheaded tendencies and I'm sure all of us have done things that we're not proud of, but it's the responsibility of adults to try to control this behavior, or at the very least channel it in a harmless direction, not to encourage it in a public setting and then try to justify and defend it when the inevitable backlash comes. I mean, what kind of lesson do you think these boys will learn from the incident, will it teach them to be accountable for their actions or to try and be better people in the future?

Under what circumstances is it okay for adults to take teens to a protest? Would you be similarly opposed to protests to bringing high school juniors to protests about the travel ban, or the wall?

The point is that you failed to see the forest because you were looking at the trees. The individual students are the Trees, the school as whole is the Forest.

That seems like a dangerous attitude. The school is dismissed based on limited evidence, and then the students are blamed because they're members of the school. It's guilt by association, which is especially problematic as kids don't get to pick where they go to school.

Also from that opinion piece...



To his credit, Jerry Brown has ordered new tests in the latter instance...

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/...224-story.html



In the interest of not cherry picking, this is the end of the piece...

It's worth noting Cooper is still on death row, as the DNA test did not exonerate him.

[Mister Mets]

The twitter account that spread the video of the Native American elder and Kentucky Catholic School teens has been banned for misleading account information.

Twitter suspended an account on Monday afternoon that helped spread a controversial encounter between a Native American elder and a group of high school students wearing Make America Great Again hats.

The account claimed to belong to a California schoolteacher. Its profile photo was not of a schoolteacher, but of a blogger based in Brazil, CNN Business found. Twitter suspended the account soon after CNN Business asked about it.

The account, with the username @2020fight, was set up in December 2016 and appeared to be the tweets of a woman named Talia living in California. "Teacher & Advocate. Fighting for 2020," its Twitter bio read. Since the beginning of this year, the account

had tweeted on average 130 times a day and had more than 40,000 followers.

Late on Friday, the account posted a minute-long video showing the now-iconic confrontation between a Native American elder and the high school students, with the caption, "This MAGA loser gleefully bothering a Native American protester at the Indigenous Peoples March."

Rob McDonagh, an assistant editor at Storyful, a service that vets content online, was monitoring Twitter activity on Saturday morning and said the @2020fight video was the main version of the incident being shared on social media.

In one indicator of the @2020fight's video's virality, multiple newsrooms, including some national American outlets, reached out to the user asking them directly about the video.

McDonagh said he found the account suspicious due to its "high follower count, highly polarized and yet inconsistent political messaging, the unusually high rate of tweets, and the use of someone else's image in the profile photo."

Molly McKew, an information warfare researcher who saw the tweet and shared it herself on Saturday, said she later realized that a network of anonymous accounts were working to amplify the video.

The video shared by @2020fight did not show what preceded the confrontation between the Native American elder and the high school students.

Speaking about the nature of fake accounts on social media, McKew told CNN Business, "This is the new landscape: where bad actors monitor us and appropriate content that fits their needs. They know how to get it where they need to go so it amplifies naturally. And at this point, we are all conditioned to react and engage or deny in specific ways. And we all did."

Twitter's rules forbid users from creating "fake and misleading accounts," and shortly after CNN Business asked Twitter about the account, it was suspended.

A spokesperson for Twitter told CNN Business, "Deliberate attempts to manipulate the public conversation on Twitter by using misleading account information is a violation of the Twitter Rules."

CNN Business was unable to reach the person, or people, behind the account, to ask if they were indeed a California schoolteacher that chose to use someone else's picture. Soon after we pointed out on Twitter that the account was using a different woman's profile picture, the account blocked this reporter.

[numberthirty]

It's worth noting Cooper is still on death row, as the DNA test did not exonerate him.

The piece is from Christmas Eve, last year.

If testing has been done, I have not come across anything about it having happened. Meanwhile, this piece from mid-January seems to point to that testing has not happened yet.

https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/20...1/18820288.php

To paint a clearer picture of exactly how it might come into play, this is from the earlier article...

In 2002, the attorney general’s office green-lighted additional DNA testing in the case. The results showed that Cooper’s DNA was on a bloody T-shirt found outside a bar near the Ryens’ home, on two cigarette butts inside the family’s stolen station wagon and in the blood droplet inside the home.

But the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals intervened eight hours before Cooper’s execution in 2004 to order more tests on the T-shirt.

Tests later revealed that Cooper’s blood stains on the T-shirt had a high concentration of the chemical EDTA, which is used to preserve blood samples in police labs. Cooper’s attorney argued that the blood was planted.

[Kevinroc]

Here's the issue with that...

If that is what you say in 2006 but this...



is what you were actually doing, there is an issue. The "Accountability..." that she mentioned.

Here is the piece about it...

https://archives.sfweekly.com/thesni...me-lab-scandal



The section that addresses the "Accountability..." Harris mentioned...

Wow, you must think Harris has a real shot at being the nominee if you're attacking her like this. Is this the best you got?

(Edit: I'm not saying this is the best look, or that Harris is perfect. But I don't see how this is actually disqualifying if she is the nominee. If she is the nominee, I will have absolutely zero problems voting for her. I've seen what the alternative is for the last two years.)

[numberthirty]

A little bit of credit where it is due...

https://www.wmur.com/article/jon-bon...tdown/25980920

Jon Bon Jovi offering free meals to federal workers during government shutdown

[Tendrin]

Wow, you must think Harris has a real shot at being the nominee if you're attacking her like this. Is this the best you got?

(Edit: I'm not saying this is the best look, or that Harris is perfect. But I don't see how this is actually disqualifying if she is the nominee. If she is the nominee, I will have absolutely zero problems voting for her. I've seen what the alternative is for the last two years.)

I mean, I don't begrudge sex workers and trans activists their militarism on issues relating to trans rights for prisoners and sex work. Those are areas that Harris is vulnerable on, but unlikely to be terribly effective lines of attack against her in a primary. I want her to account for that, and I want SETSA/FOSTA done away with due to the jeapordy it places on sex workers.


As for the whole 'Kamala Harris is a cop' thing, I'm willing to bet whooooole lot of the people behind those attacks are white men. Not all, of course, but a majority.

[Tendrin]

A good twitter thread on the emerging spin that's trying to provide 'nuance' for what we all saw with the Cov-Cath boys who, by the way, have a professional PR team now.

https://twitter.com/emrazz/status/1087512650794315776

[numberthirty]

I mean, I don't begrudge sex workers and trans activists their militarism on issues relating to trans rights for prisoners and sex work. Those are areas that Harris is vulnerable on, but unlikely to be terribly effective lines of attack against her in a primary. I want her to account for that, and I want SETSA/FOSTA done away with due to the jeapordy it places on sex workers.


As for the whole 'Kamala Harris is a cop' thing, I'm willing to bet whooooole lot of the people behind those attacks are white men. Not all, of course, but a majority.

Someone being a part of that part of the bigger picture? No big whoop.

Someone being a part of that part of the bigger picture while repeatedly getting caught messing with folks' right to be able to mount a defense? That is something that said "Someone" should absolutely have to account for.

Sex workers? Man, that's a whole separate issue that Harris really needs to seriously address.

[Kevinroc]

I mean, I don't begrudge sex workers and trans activists their militarism on issues relating to trans rights for prisoners and sex work. Those are areas that Harris is vulnerable on, but unlikely to be terribly effective lines of attack against her in a primary. I want her to account for that, and I want SETSA/FOSTA done away with due to the jeapordy it places on sex workers.


As for the whole 'Kamala Harris is a cop' thing, I'm willing to bet whooooole lot of the people behind those attacks are white men. Not all, of course, but a majority.

This idea that she's against Trans rights feels like a mischaracterization.

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/01/2...der-president/

Others have highlighted Harris’ work in favour of trans and LGBT+ rights in general, pointing to how she has signed friend-of-the-court briefs arguing that trans people should be allowed to use their bathroom of choice.

When she was California’s Attorney General, she filed briefs which voiced support for the Obama administration’s guidance supporting trans students’ rights and argued against North Carolina’s anti-trans House Bill 2.

As a senator, Harris signed a brief which called on the Supreme Court to rule in favour of trans student Gavin Grimm, who argued that a Virginia high school had violated his constitutional rights by blocking him from using the bathroom corresponding to his gender identity.

Harris co-sponsored The Census Equality Act in 2018, which, if passed, would add questions related to sexual orientation and gender identity to the decennial census and American Community Survey.

Harris also introduced legislation last year to ban the use of the gay and trans panic defence across the US.