All-purpose news and politics thread: Two Steps Beyond!

[Darkspellmaster]

screw her and anyone who took a paycheck to work with her, double bird to ABC for shelving an episode of Blackish that wanted to address the anthem protests.

f**k John Goodman, Sarah Gilbert, and the lot of them

Oh boy, there's a lot more behind this then just saying F**CK to them and their working with her. You kind of have to understand a few things about the whole of the situation. Gilbert and the other younger actors at the time grew up with Barr and Goodman. That was their family, just as much as their real life family was. Hell Sarah's on screen boyfriend was the person she first came out to and he helped her out a lot during that time. Goodman for his part has always been a person that has been a class act and is willing to be professional regarding his co-stars. Barr, previously, was vastly different than she is now. She was far more left in the 80s and 90s then she is now, and I think it's because as she got older her career changed drastically. During the time that Rosanne first aired, there really wasn't a show like it on the air at the time. Female mothers previously were either divorced women trying to come to grips with their new free life (One day at a time), shows like Different Strokes where the mother role went to a nanny figure, or you had Family ties where they weren't working class but upper middle class, and you also had shows like Murphy Brown and Facts of Life. You really did not have the working class mother figure and Barr honed in on that with her stand up at the time. Her movies also were very much the idea of the less then perfect woman who got ditched by the hot husband, only to get revenge on him (See She Devil).

So you had this group who, for better or worse, fit well at the time to cover issues that a lot of people in the 80s and 90s were dealing with. Gilbert, who I think had the idea for the revival, probably was hoping that by bringing together the people that helped make Barr a more progressive person, they could change her view point on things and maybe move her into a better place. The issue is that she's so drastically and radically changed from the person that they knew all those years ago that whatever plan of either intervention, or rehabilitation, they were hoping to use via the show to help her recoop and become a better person backfired. Remember they grew up with this woman, they knew her in a way that we, the public, didn't. And it's easy for us to tell them that they were wrong to do this, but they probably were coming from a place of love and compassion for someone that they cared about and wanted to help. In their mind, or at least probably Gilbert's, Barr is a sick person who needs help and friends to help her. And Barr, I think, was once friendly with Skykes and Gilbert knows Wanda. It's normal in the comic family to want to help other comedians because they are honestly, in a lot of cases, the most broken people in the entertainment area. A number of them have dealt with a long list of family issues, personal demons, etc.

Attacking the cast is the wrong idea. They can't control her, the same way that Ivanka can't control her dad. Or better it's like trying to control a student in class from behaving badly. You can do detentions, you can warn them, you can do a lot of things. Ultimately though it's up to the person to change and clearly Barr is in no mind of changing. So I disagree on attacking Gilbert and the others over this. They don't live with Barr, they are not married to her, and they can't magically change her view point over night. She f**cked up herself, and the only one to blame for that was Barr.

As for ABC and taking the show on in the first place. Given that 1. the show was known for being a solid hit back in the day. 2. All the other cast members are well known and well liked, 3. a strong writer room promoted the pitch that was given, and 4. more than likely they saw it as an easy tent pole to prop up new shows that were far riskier. This is the same way that movies are done. Strong shows tend to lead into newer shows, or sure fire new shows lead off riskier new shows.

The cast has been mad at her long before this.

Yeah this is true. I can't remember exactly what happened. I know that Goodman had left for a personal reason, but I don't remember the details.

13 year-old reporter on assignment for Time for Kids:
“At my school, we recently had a lockdown drill. One thing that affects my and other students’ mental health is the worry about the fact that we or our friends could get shot at school. Specifically, can you tell me what the administration has done and will do to prevent these senseless tragedies?”

Sanders:
"We're having a meeting."

This hurts....The fact that they have no answer hurts. I keep wondering in the back of my mind if a musical or a play about a school shooting, or a movie would wake up people to the actual issues at hand.

Also it keeps making me think of the Poem Trigger Warning, basically four girls from Chicago did a amazing poem about the issue of shootings and should be shown in every school PTA meeting in the future.

Trump is apparently considering pardoning or commuting Rod Blagojevich and Martha Stewart. Of note, Blago was prosecuted by James Comey and Stewart was prosecuted by Comey's current lawyer. It's all personal with Benedict...

The thing that's interesting about Blago from the point of someone from Chicago, is that his sentence is actually far worse then what the crime was. I think the idea was that they were hoping to get others to not be so corrupt in the govs office. But that just lead us to getting a$$ Rauner.

My uninformed guess is that Time Warner (owner of TBS) ordered Bee to apologize, maybe out of fear of Trump turning his bully pulpit on them like he had the NFL and how he made the league cower like whipped dogs.

I am not surprised given that his barking dog at the FCC probably would try to pull the cord on TBS if they didn't get her to say she was sorry.

I would agree, except Trump, Sessions and Stephen Miller are still in their positions along with everyone associated with them.

What worries me about Miller is that I was hearing today on the radio about Marget Mitchell, who was trying to get info out on Nixion and was thrown around and frankly beaten and sedated by Miller (allegedly), it makes me wonder, given that he was around during the time that Meliana has been out of the scene, could there have been some underhandedness done to keep her from talking? People are starting to worry because her latest tweet didn't sound like her, and she hasn't been seen by anyone since the surgery. There are some rumors going around....

[kidfresh512]

I really need some help with how trump supporters could even remotely be ok with us starting a trade war with our closest allies. And he wants to help ZTE, and has to be forced to do anything to Russia who actually attacked us.
It is just mind boggling. What is the good here? Our own allies saying they can't trust us and we are abandoning years of leadership and trust with them.

After trump era is over they will still be reluctant and hesitant because a segment of the population voted for that idiot and still would in 2020. Even after seeing what he does and how he treats longtime allies.

[Michael Watkins]

Trump is trying to remind his buddies that are under investigation that they don't have to turn State's Evidence to avoid the slammer...they can do the time for contempt or whatever and he'll pardon them too, down the line.

or he's guilty of similar crimes and this is a message to a future president; from whom he would need a pardon.

[Carabas]

I really need some help with how trump supporters could even remotely be ok with us starting a trade war with our closest allies. And he wants to help ZTE, and has to be forced to do anything to Russia who actually attacked us.
It is just mind boggling. What is the good here? Our own allies saying they can't trust us and we are abandoning years of leadership and trust with them.

After trump era is over they will still be reluctant and hesitant because a segment of the population voted for that idiot and still would in 2020. Even after seeing what he does and how he treats longtime allies.

In Trumpvision america is big enough to not need allies, so why have any? They only cost you money. Besides, allies are just enemies who haven't attacked you yet.

And all the bad stuff Trump does is either wonderful stuff that they genuinely love, or made up propaganda from the left.

[kidfresh512]

In Trumpvision america is big enough to not need allies, so why have any? They only cost you money. Besides, allies are just enemies who haven't attacked you yet.

And all the bad stuff Trump does is either wonderful stuff that they genuinely love, or made up propaganda from the left.

How do they think trade wars with them are awesome for us? I mean im not listening to their conspiracy theory podcasts and Hannity etc. Whats the upside in their mind?

[Carabas]

How do they think trade wars with them are awesome for us?

They don't really understand what a trade war is, but Trump and Fox News told them it is the bestest thing ever. And they're America, so how could they possibly lose ?

[BeastieRunner]

America has only won trade wars when we've been in hot wars at the same time. And that was because we were the last one standing. Making everyone go against us is not going to work.

[Mister Mets]

Secret Service has confirmed Melania has moved back to NYC

When was this confirmed?

Don't think we're letting Obama's role in all of this go unnoticed. We're not. He built the infrastructure that is now being used to such monstrous effect.

But the prison bus (and the story accompanying it).. c'mon, dude. We're not so naïve and gullible.

With the "naive and gullible" comment, what exactly are you talking about? Is Slate wrong about the field trips thing?

The Weekly Standard has a conservative position, so I doubt you guys will take their explanation without further evidence, but they summarize the misunderstanding well.

https://www.weeklystandard.com/holme...ust-for-babies

The image in question comes from a 2016 report by the GEO Group, a contractor with ICE, covering two new buses specifically made to take children detained at the Karnes County Residential Center on field trips “to a variety of places, such as the San Antonio Zoo, seeing a movie at the local theater, going to the park, etc.”

“Each seat has a convertible child safety seat and is equipped with a DVD system,” according to the report, “with four drop down screens to provide entertainment to the children with onboard movies during transport missions.” The two buses mentioned in the article are not equipped with bars/screens on the window or with steel cages, but are issued with camera systems.

While some fact-checkers disagree, TWS Fact Check maintains that calling these vehicles “prison buses for babies” is inaccurate because they are designed for field trips for kids ages 4 to 17. (Or at least, is similar to suggesting that any form of daycare is tantamount to prison.) Stating that these buses are a part of “Trump’s America” also misleads readers, as the buses came into use during Obama’s tenure.

Some tweets incorrectly suggested that children in the buses would not be accompanied by adults when in fact “each trip requires a minimum of one nurse, two teachers and one case manager” who are “evenly dispersed throughout the cabin” according to the GEO Group.

Snopes notes the photo came from a PR release which included the explanation that the bus was mainly used for things to help children. The press release also came before Trump was elected President.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pr...us-for-babies/

The photograph displayed above was featured in a 29 April 2016 Geo Group press release describing the purchase of two “New Specialized Transport Buses” outfitted with convertible child safety seats, intended to be used to carry children ranging from ages 4 to 17 for medical treatment, to court appointments, and on monthly offsite field trips:

The San-Antonio Express News reports the same material.

https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/lo...s-12952495.php

According to the GEO Group's press release, the buses are used to transport children to the San Antonio Zoo, theaters, the park and similar places.

"To date, the field trips have been a huge success and the frequency and numbers of school aged children being transported offsite for these sanctioned activities is expected to increase in the future," the release reads.

Perhaps, press releases from a private contractor with ties to ICE written during the Obama administration present a false view of immigration policies, but there is no credible alternate explanation.

[Mister Mets]

Amanda Taub wrote about this panic in the New York Times.

The fact that so many Americans readily believed this myth offers a lesson in how partisan polarization colors people’s views on a gut emotional level without many even realizing it.

As other articles have explained, the missing children and the Trump administration’s separation of families who are apprehended at the border are two different matters.

The Trump administration does in fact have a new policy of separating undocumented parents and children. But the 1,475 children whom the Department of Health and Human Services recently reported it cannot locate are not among those taken from their parents. These “missing” children had actually come to the United States without their parents, been picked up by the Border Patrol and then released to the custody of a parent or guardian.

Many probably are not really missing. The figure represents the number of children whose households didn’t answer the phone when the Department of Health and Human Services called to check on them. The unanswered phone calls may warrant further welfare checks, but are not themselves a sign that something nefarious has happened.

She blames rising partisanship for a change in attitude in how this issue is seen at this moment.

Immigrants’ rights activists have brought a series of lawsuits that challenged and ultimately overturned many detention efforts. But those efforts did not reach the level of national scandal that the Trump administration’s policies have now.

So what has changed? Rising partisan polarization.

Long-running social science surveys have found that since the 1980s, Republicans’ opinions of Democrats and Democrats’ opinions of Republicans have been increasingly negative. At the same time, as Lilliana Mason, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, writes in a new book, partisan identity has become an umbrella for other important identities, including those involving race, religion, geography and even educational background. It has become a tribal identity itself, not merely a matter of policy preferences.

So it’s not that liberals didn’t care about immigrant children until Mr. Trump became president, or that they’re only pretending to care now so as to score political points. Rather, with the Trump administration’s making opposition to immigrants a signature issue, the topic has become salient to partisan conflict in a way it wasn’t before.

Let's take a look at every post in this thread on this topic. These don't seem to capture the nuances mentioned in Slate or the New York Times.

Kevinroc cited a tweet by a Congressman that conflated the two issues, without making it clear that these are different controversies.

https://twitter.com/tedlieu/status/1000523296599719936



These monsters that make up the federal government released children to human traffickers.

$#$# ICE.

https://www.geogroup.com/News-Detail/NewsID/428

Paul Bullion incorrectly referred to the photo as a transfer from the Mexican border That's not its purpose.

This photo of a prepared bus transfer from the Mexican border from the story Tendrin linked to is heartbreaking.

This led to comments about the need to abolish ICE.

It's vile. It's sick. 'Abolish Ice' needs to be a mainstream Democratic position. Investigating and prosecuting ICE for misconduct must be next.

The two of you are talking about how Manchin is a compromise that needs to be made right before talking about that ICE needs to be dealt with should be a mainstream Democratic position.

If you can't even deal with that you have to accept that compromise, you sure ain't ready to tackle dealing with ICE being a mainstream party position.

This led to comments about the missing children.

Have we heard from Roseanne "Trump is secretly saving all the children" Barr on the missing kids yet? Will she do an episode of her show about that?

1500 children are still missing

I gather some of them are in the hands of human traffickers, which take a very bleak view of a common situation (children having guardians who are difficult to get a hold of.)

I hope the people who put that orange shitgibbon in office understand the pain of those children is on their heads

But they felt really good standing up for their impossibly high standards in the voting booth.

or the ones who wanted to "own the libs"

Sacrifices must be made for progress. I mean, it's not their kids at risk. Why should they care? They aren't white. They should have stayed in their Third World sweatshops, picking coffee beans for their lattes.

Maybe they'll even be in favor of it! Knowing that children will be kidnapped and sold to human traffickers is a sure fire deterrent to people that might illegally cross the border. We could even put up a statue. "Bring us your tired, your poor, your innocent children yearning to be raped and murdered and buried in the desert."

[Mister Mets]

There had also been an earlier discussion chain on the rumor that started out with a bit more nuance (the view that ICE had been trouble for a while and shouldn't be trusted to separate families) to 1500 kids were lost to trafficking because they were separated from their families, and this is why it's outrageous to focus on 2016, when A) most of the kids were not lost to trafficking, B) the missing kids weren't separated by the government from their families, and C) this isn't a problem unique to the Trump administration.

Montini: The feds lost – yes, lost – 1,475 migrant children

Yup, nearly 1.5k children lost but we should trust them to separate families. I've been against this sort of **** for years. But this administration doesn't care from the top down.

Don't worry. As ICE destroys the records of these crimes, I'm sure someone will come rushing into the thread to tell us that everything is okay and it's no big deal that ICE is arresting 'criminal immigrants' for their 'traffic tickets'.

They shouldn't separate immigrant families. They should let families reunite with the deportees back in their countries.

If they want to immigrate, they should immigrate legally like legal immigrants who had to wait in line to get their visas.

Yes, I know most of them are as poor as dirt, but I hardly have any sympathy for illegal immigrants who would rather cram and squeeze together like sardines fully crowded in small trucks to cross the border than wait a long time to get a visa. Streets aren't paved with gold bricks in America.

People can't afford to wait, often times, because they're fleeing dangerous situations or levels of economic hardship I can scarcely imagine. Our immigration system is ill-suited to grapple with modern reality, especially with its multi-year wait times. Asking people to wait in line is often tantamount to asking them to starve or die in gangland violence. We can do better by them.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics...s-like/540408/

Our streets may not be paved with gold but 'get in line' is hardly a realistic option for the folks who are fleeing.

Agreed. In most instances, those people are LITERALLY fleeing for their lives, and being sent back to their home countries is practically a death sentence. To simply turn such people away makes us no better than the totalitarian regimes and dictatorships we are told to despise.

ICE makes me sick, what they are doing to children and families makes me sick.

At this point ICE simply needs to be disbanded. They're too racist to fix.

Even worse is how ICE is systematically targeting immigrants of Latin (brown skin) descent. It's rare to read stories of those bastards going after European immigrants with the same sort of relentlessness, if they go after them at all. Bottom line: If you have white skin, you're safe from ICE.



Good luck with that pipe dream. Trump loves ICE since it's his personal Gestapo, and Republicans won't so much as utter jack **** in complaint against ICE, never mind curb the organization for fear of pissing off Sunkist Satan.

That's why they shouldn't be disbanded. They just need their wings clipped a bit.

If they are disbanded they'll just disperse into other branches or into state or local law enforcement.

Born life is really not their bailiwick.

next step is some Eric Prince-led organization taking over border patrol.

so ICE lost about 1,500 kids

Im going to guess to trafficking

because predators will always find a way

many experts predicted this when it was announced ICE would be separating kids and parents

Is that how they're going to pay for the Wall? Selling children?
I hate the whole world some days.

Here's a hint: If you're spending more time bitching about Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton online than almost 1500 children the government tore from their families and then lost track of, your priorities are horrible.

severely horrrible

1500 kids GONE

and you lot still going on about 2016

FOCUS ON RIGHT NOW

Here is an uncomfortable bit of reality(we won't even get into the way that people are framing legitimate criticism of that pair of politicians)...

Being critical of the weaknesses of those two(and really, all) politicians?

That is the the most direct path to preventing what happened to those kids.

Trying to address that people are being asked to back a lot of wishy washy garbage is focusing on right now.

look, based on your previous opinions I know you dont consider immigrants humans, so whatever happens to them doesn't matter

so pardon me if I dont really care what you have to say on this matter

No one is claiming that the US is selling children.

Losing track of children who come to the country illegally has been a problem for some time.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics...rant-children/

This is a weird game of telephone where it's gone from a bad thing (ICE has lost track of about 1,500 kids) to an extreme conclusion (all of those children are in the hands of traffickers) to an even more extreme conclusion (this is how someone in the US government in profiting)

I'm guessing those protesting Trump will vote. The people who need to be swayed are those who aren't that passionate about politics.




Trump is building on a pattern of executive order use established by Obama.

This team politic thing is why the country is so fucked up in the first place. When you play team sports you get a party that puts aside all principle to get Trump. And someday the Democrats will elect an absolute piece of **** because "this is not the time and place to fight for a Democratic party with 100% candidates that pass your own personal purity tests". If you don't have principles you have nothing.

You get Republicans who rip children away from their families and then lose track of them because Hillary Clinton didn't want to bake cookies.

Well one that's disingenuous. You had Hillary Clinton who in addition to not wanting to bake cookies was associated with some of the worst policy decisions and was on the wrong side of history on significant generation defining issues multiple times.

But that's not the point. The point is the Republican party played team politics and compromised on their principles. Eventually they got the Tea Party and then they got Trump. That's what it leads to. I have no problem with someone thinking Hillary was better, or thinking that she was actually a good candidate. Hell I voted for her, so I don't think her negatives were that bad in comparison to the policies I thought she would bring to the country in a larger sense. That said, I'm not going to begrudge someone who said based off their values it didn't align with them supporting her. And people need to get over that some people took that stance. Because if people stop, someday the Democrats will get a **** candidate whose absolutely dreadful and they'll all say "you can't let the Republicans win" and you'll get your own Trump

See, this post screams "both sides."

It's not a good look in the era of Trump.

[Kevinroc]

Harvard study estimates thousands died in Puerto Rico because of Hurricane Maria

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...=.084fd8862903

A new Harvard study published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine estimates that at least 4,645 deaths can be linked to the hurricane and its immediate aftermath, making the storm far deadlier than previously thought. Official estimates have placed the number of dead at 64, a count that has drawn sharp criticism from experts and local residents and spurred the government to order an independent review that has yet to be completed.

The Harvard findings indicate that health-care disruption for the elderly and the loss of basic utility services for the chronically ill had significant impacts, and the study criticized Puerto Rico’s methods for counting the dead — and its lack of transparency in sharing information — as detrimental to planning for future natural disasters. The authors called for patients, communities and doctors to develop contingency plans for such disasters.

Researchers in the mainland United States and Puerto Rico, led by scientists at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, calculated the number of deaths by surveying almost 3,300 randomly chosen households across the island and comparing the estimated post-hurricane death rate to the mortality rate for the year before. Their surveys indicated that the mortality rate was 14.3 deaths per 1,000 residents from Sept. 20 through Dec. 31, 2017, a 62 percent increase in the mortality rate compared with 2016, or 4,645 “excess deaths.”

[numberthirty]

https://twitter.com/owillis/status/1002254973705621504

Basics 101...

If Ted Nugent said it, that is all you should need to realize that there is no scenario where you saying it is anything except unacceptable.

[Kevinroc]

There had also been an earlier discussion chain on the rumor that started out with a bit more nuance (the view that ICE had been trouble for a while and shouldn't be trusted to separate families) to 1500 kids were lost to trafficking because they were separated from their families, and this is why it's outrageous to focus on 2016, when A) most of the kids were not lost to trafficking, B) the missing kids weren't separated by the government from their families, and C) this isn't a problem unique to the Trump administration.

How the Trump Administration Got Comfortable Separating Immigrant Kids from Their Parents

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-...-their-parents

Two months into Donald Trump’s Presidency, John Kelly, then the Secretary of Homeland Security, publicly confirmed that his department was considering separating immigrant parents from their children at the border, as a way of discouraging families from crossing illegally. It was a radical idea, one that past Administrations had considered and then dismissed as too extreme and too complicated. After coming under intense criticism from the press, human-rights advocates, and members of Congress, Kelly backed off from it. But the idea persisted. A few months later, in August, 2017, a group of officials at the Department of Homeland Security gathered to brainstorm new ways to toughen immigration enforcement. Among those leading the discussion was an official named Gene Hamilton, a former aide to Jeff Sessions, the Attorney General, and a close ally of Stephen Miller, the President’s chief immigration adviser. “Hamilton told us that over the next few days we’d need to generate paperwork laying out everything we could do to deter immigrants from coming to the U.S. illegally,” a person who attended the meeting told me. Memos were drafted outlining a range of possible policies; one of them was separating parents from their kids at the border. “All the memos sucked,” the person said. “The outcome was predetermined. We didn’t have time to work out any of the policy differences. Some of the ideas didn’t make sense. Some were illegal, and some, like separating kids, were just immoral.” Many of the proposals, including the one involving family separation, “got bogged down in the clearance process, because of how difficult and controversial it was,” the person said. And yet every few months the idea would resurface in discussions. “It would rear its head again.”

Last summer, public defenders and immigration judges along the border began noticing an alarming pattern. Parents who had crossed into the U.S. with their children were arriving to detention facilities without them. The reason had to do with the Department of Justice, which was pushing U.S. Attorneys across the country to prosecute more border crossers for entering the U.S. illegally. In the past, many of these people, especially those with children, had been released pending the outcome of their civil immigration cases; now they were being arrested and held for extended periods by the D.H.S. The government was treating their children as though they’d come to the U.S. alone, as unaccompanied minors, and turning them over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a branch of the Department of Health and Human Services. There appeared to be no coördination between the different government agencies involved, so parents were losing contact with their own children. “They have no idea where their child is,” one assistant public defender, in Arizona, told the Houston Chronicle last fall. In one judicial order, a federal magistrate judge, in El Paso, Texas, asked the government, “What are the arresting agency’s procedures for providing information (e.g. location and well-being) regarding the unaccompanied minor children of undocumented alien defendants charged with a petty misdemeanor such as illegal entry . . . ?” Government lawyers didn’t seem to have an answer.

At first, the Trump Administration denied there was a formal family-separation policy in place. Then, as the evidence mounted, it claimed that it was only trying to protect immigrant kids from smugglers and imposters posing as their guardians. In February, the A.C.L.U. sued the government for separating a Congolese mother from her seven-year-old daughter, for more than three months, after they had arrived in San Diego seeking asylum. The mother was held in California, while her daughter was sent to Chicago. The D.H.S. claimed that it had doubts about whether the woman was truly the child’s mother, yet it waited four months to administer a DNA test. In April, the Times reported that more than seven hundred families had been separated since October, including more than a hundred children under the age of four. A government spokesperson responded, “D.H.S. must protect the best interests of minor children crossing our borders, and occasionally this results in separating children from an adult they are traveling with.”

Last month, the pretense fell away completely. On April 6th, Jeff Sessions and Kirstjen Nielsen, the head of Homeland Security, announced a zero-tolerance policy for immigrants at the border. Anyone who didn’t cross the U.S. border at an official port of entry would be criminally prosecuted, even if they were seeking asylum, and those travelling with their children would be separated from them. The policy was now official, and the Administration acknowledged its rationale: it was separating families to discourage others from travelling to the United States illegally. (A recent analysis, by Dara Lind at Vox, shows how the D.H.S.’s own data undermines the argument that this policy will act as a deterrent.) According to the D.H.S., six hundred and fifty-eight children were separated from their parents between May 6th and May 18th. Reports have surfaced of children, some as young as toddlers, being wrested from family members, and of parents being deported before they could locate their children, who remain stranded in the U.S. “Little kids are begging and screaming not to be taken from parents, and they’re being hauled off,” Lee Gelernt, a veteran attorney for the A.C.L.U., told the Washington Post. “It’s as bad as anything I’ve seen in twenty-five-plus years of doing this work.” Research has shown that removing a young child from her primary caregivers for even a short period can cause long-term psychological harm.

[numberthirty]

she's pathetic for apologizing. she should have followed the lead of our scumbag in chief. his daughter is feckless. good on Samantha for not playing nice.

Negative.

You don't fix idiocy by being an idiot.

Edit: Let alone that the apology says one of two things clearly...

- One: "I Don't Really Believe In What I Say Enough To Draw Clear Lines As To What Is Morally Acceptable."
- Two: "I Am Only Apologizing To Save My Own Skin. This Leaves You To Decide What I Actually Believe About What Is Right And Wrong."

[BeastieRunner]

I''m wearing this to family functions!