Stephan: Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas under the best of circumstances is a small nasty little man, lacking in morals, ethics, and compassion. But what particularly stands out for me is that the people of Texas elected such a person to be their governor. And if you look across the country you see the same thing playing out over and over. It seems to be a plus for a Republican candidate to be abusive to women, criminal, and incompetent. Republican voters seem to like White supremacist, male dominance, candidates who are bullies, as you can see in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana, as a partial list. That, I think, is the real takeaway.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks at a press conference in Austin on May 18, 2020. Credit: Lynda M. Gonzalez / Getty
Days after rights advocates warned that the U.S. Supreme Court’s expected overruling of Roe v. Wade portends rollbacks of numerous rights for people in the U.S., Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said he wants to challenge a 40-year-old ruling that affirmed states must offer free public education to all children.
“I can’t believe this has to be said, but ALL children deserve access to a quality public education.”
In a radio interview with right-wing host Joe Pagliarulo late Wednesday, Abbott discussed border security and agreed with the host’s claim that the children of undocumented immigrants place a “real burden on communities” when they attend public schools, as the Plyler v. Doe ruling required states to allow in 1982.
“The challenges put on our public systems [are] extraordinary,” Abbott said. “Texas already long ago sued the federal government about having to incur the costs of the education program… And the Supreme Court ruled against us on the issue about denying, or let’s say Texas having to […]
Stephan: For the entirety of my life and yours, the Supreme Court has stood apart from the rest of the federal government. It was an institution of Law, not a political operation. However, thanks to the christofascist Federalist Society, Donald Trump, and Mitch McConnell, that sacred status has been destroyed and the reality that the court is, and always has been, a political entity has become clear. The Republican Party and those that support it are dismantling the American republic, one agency, one entity at a time. And if the Republicans become the majority in the House and Senate after the November election, you can kiss American democracy goodbye.
Dred Scott, whom the Supreme Court of the United States described as a being “of an inferior order.” Credit: Getty
Two events occurred Monday night — one historic, the other rather insignificant — which placed an unflattering spotlight on the Supreme Court of the United States.
The historic event was that Politico published an unprecedented leak of a draft majority opinion, by Justice Samuel Alito, which would overrule Roe v. Wade and permit state lawmakers to ban abortion in its entirety in the US. Alito’s draft opinion is not the Court’s final word on this case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, but the leaked opinion is the latest in a longlist of signs that Roe may be in its final days.
The other event that also occurred last night is that I sent two tweets. One praised whoever leaked Alito’s opinion for disrupting an institution that, as I have written about many times in many forums, including my first book, has historically been a malign force within the United States. And a second celebrated the leak for the distrust it […]
Michael German, Fellow of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty & National Security Program - Brennan Center for Justice
Stephan: Today I listened to politicians talk about more money for police as if that were the issue. The shallowness of thinking amongst American politicians is a national shame. On the basis of facts, not partisan politics, it should be clear to anyone with the ability to think rationally that there is something deeply wrong in American law enforcement, and it is not a lack of money. It isn't just that American police and sheriffs are the poorest trained amongst the developed democracies of the world, or that American police kill more people in a single year than the rest of those democracies combined kill in a decade. There is also the blatant racism, rightwing politics, and the grotesque inequality of enforcement. This excellent fact-based, fully documented, report lays out some of the major issues.
Introduction
Racial disparities have long pervaded every step of the criminal justice process, from police stops, searches, arrests, shootings and other uses of force to charging decisions, wrongful convictions, and sentences. footnote1_t3c8c9h1 As a result, many have concluded that a structural or institutional bias against people of color, shaped by long-standing racial, economic, and social inequities, infects the criminal justice system. footnote2_f8ppena2 These systemic inequities can also instill implicit biases — unconscious prejudices that favor in-groups and stigmatize out-groups — among individual law enforcement officials, influencing their day-to-day actions while interacting with the public.
Police reforms, often imposed after incidents of racist misconduct or brutality, have focused on addressing these unconscious manifestations of bias. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), for example, has required implicit bias training as part of consent decrees it imposes to root out discriminatory practices in law enforcement agencies. Such training measures are designed […]
JULIA HARTE and ALEXANDRA ULMER, - Reuters Special Report
Stephan: Part of the problem with American law enforcement is that not only are American police and sheriffs by far the worst and shortest in terms of time trained law enforcement amongst the developed democracies of the world, the people who train them tend to be christofascist thugs. Reuters has done a special report on this, and here it is.
Law enforcement trainer Richard Whitehead has publicly espoused far-right extremist views and, in the classroom, has drawn complaints of using offensive language and content targeting women, Muslims and transgender people. Credit: Jim Urquhart / Reuters
On social media, Richard Whitehead is a warrior for the American right. He has praised extremist groups. He has called for public executions of government officials he sees as disloyal to former President Donald Trump. In a post in 2020, he urged law enforcement officers to disobey COVID-19 public-health orders from “tyrannical governors,” adding: “We are on the brink of civil war.”
Whitehead also has a day job. He trains police officers around the United States.
The Idaho-based law enforcement consultant has taught at least 560 police officers and other public safety workers in 85 sessions in 12 states over the past four years, according to a Reuters analysis of public records from the departments that hired him. A Washington state training commission in 2015 temporarily banned Whitehead from advertising courses on its website because of instructional materials that referred […]
Stephan: Here is the data on police killings from just one state, Michigan. In most countries in Europe, Scandinavia, and Japan, Michigan's annual police murder rate would cover not a year but a decade, maybe two.
Michigan leaders in recent years have proposed police reform with the hope of reducing police killings, but it doesn’t seem to working.
At the current rate, Michigan will record 30 police killings of citizens this year.
That’s the most since at least 2013 when comprehensive recordkeeping began, and 50% more than the previous high of 24 last year. No Michigan police have been killed this year.
Three officers nationally have been fatally shot by suspects, two while responding to the same domestic violence call in New York and another during a traffic stop in Texas. An equal number of law enforcement personnel were accidentally killed by other police, two because of crashes involving officers responding to the same scene and a third by friendly fire.
The Michigan surge in police killings comes amid national scrutiny sparked by the death of 26-year-old Patrick Lyoya, who was shot in the back of the head by Grand Rapids Police Officer Christopher Schurr during a struggle following a traffic stop on April 4, and nearly two years […]
