“Committee Chairman Representative Bennie Thompson, D-Mississippi, expects the panel to make criminal referrals to the Department of Justice, he told reporters Tuesday.”
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NRA suffers massive defeat as federal judge dismisses its bankruptcy case
“The Court finds, based on the totality of the circumstances, that the NRA’s bankruptcy petition was not filed in good faith but instead was filed as an effort to gain an unfair litigation advantage in the New York Attorney General Enforcement Action and as an effort to avoid a regulatory scheme,” Judge Harlin Hale ruled.
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Vancouver is the anti-Asian hate crime capital of North America
“A surge of attacks in one of Canada’s most multicultural cities during the pandemic is surfacing long-simmering racial tensions,” reports Bloomberg’s Natalie Obiko Pearson.
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Oregon Republican Mike Nearman charged with letting rioters breach state Capitol
The lawmaker has been charged with misdemeanor counts of first-degree official misconduct and second-degree criminal trespass, according to court documents.
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Olympia police arrest Trump backer who fired gun during Saturday protest
“The twenty-seven-year-old man who was arrested was part of a pro-Trump rally Saturday afternoon on the Capitol Campus. They eventually clashed with black-clad counter-protesters at Capitol Way South and 11th Avenue Southeast,” The Olympian reports. Allegedly, the man fired his gun at people protesting the Trump regime.
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Right wing terrorists who plotted to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer arrested, FBI announces
A group of militant right wing extremists who were plotting to harm Governor Gretchen Whitmer have been arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the federal government announced today.
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Watch Pramila Jayapal take Trump’s AG Bill Barr apart on Capitol Hill
When it was her turn to spar with Trump’s enforcer, Pramila Jayapal made the most of it. Watch her take Bill Barr apart in this three minute video.
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Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has signed into law a police accountability bill that prohibits neck restraints
“The bill, passed by the Legislature earlier this week, also bans chokeholds and fear-based or ‘warrior-style’ training, which critics say promotes excessive force,” The Associated Press reports. “It imposes a duty to intercede on officers who see a colleague using excessive force and changes rules on the use of force to stress the sanctity of life.”
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FBI arrests gang of right wing neo-Nazis after they threatened activists and KING5’s Chris Ingalls
Defendants are charged with conspiring to mail threatening communications and stalking.
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Abolition of death penalty in Washington draws attention from national, world media
A roundup of national and world media coverage of the Washington State Supreme Court’s decision in State v. Gregory.
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Harvey Weinstein and Steve Bannon: The troubled business relationship revealed
“In the week since bombshell allegations against film mogul Harvey Weinstein became public, the Breitbart website has been all over the scandal as an opportunity to showcase liberal hypocrisy in Hollywood. One thing missing from its coverage, though, is the role that its executive chairman Steve Bannon once played for Weinstein,” writes Eriq Gardner.
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Trump lit the torches of white supremacy in Charlottesville. We must extinguish them.
When the mob of white men marched in Charlottesville carrying flaming torches Friday night shouting “Heil Trump” as the curtain-raiser for a day of violent
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The best way to fight neo-Nazis is to… laugh?
The Seattle Times’ Danny Westneat writes: “Hate is marching in the streets. Some of the same groups that marched in Charlottesville are growing in the Northwest. A local author has argued the best thing to do to confront it all is to … show up and mock them.” The local author Westneat talked to is none other than David Neiwert, the respected creator of Orcinus and an expert on right wing extremism and eliminationists.
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Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio found guilty of criminal contempt of court
Because the Court finds that Defendant willfully violated an order of the court, it finds Defendant guilty of criminal contempt. — Ex-Maricopa County Sheriff Joe
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Reports of bias incidents in Oregon and southwest Washington since Donald Trump’s election | OregonLive.com
The Oregonian has published an accounting of all of the reports of hate crimes and bias incidents reported in Oregon and southwest Washington since Trump’s victory in 2016. The newspaper is partnering with ProPublica on the project.
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President Trump is considering pardoning himself. I asked 15 experts if that’s legal.
All the experts agreed about one other fact: Even if Trump does pardon himself, that would not shield him from impeachment hearings. And most believe
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Reader responds to revival of hunger strike at Tacoma’s infamous private prison
To The Editor: More than four hundred people have joined the hunger strike in the NWDC in Tacoma that started Monday. What are they demanding?
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Chelsea Manning is going free: President Obama commutes thirty-five year prison sentence
Chelsea Manning, the transgender soldier sentenced to thirty-five years in prison for leaking documents to WikiLeaks will be released this coming May after President Obama granted a commutation.
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U.S. Supreme Court rules Florida’s system for sentencing people to death unconstitutional
In a nearly unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that a Florida law that has given judges the final say over who is put to death is unconstitutional. Juries must decide whether a person is sentenced to death, the Court said, with only Justice Samuel Alito dissenting. Lyle Denniston of SCOTUSBlog has more on the ruling.
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Justices question Florida’s death penalty system
There is no other state that permits anyone to be sentenced to death other than by a unanimous determination by the jury… And the State
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Watch Pope Francis’ historic address to a joint session of Congress
This morning, Pope Francis became the first leader of the Roman Catholic Church to address a joint session of the United States Congress. In his beautifully framed speech, firmly rooted in humanity’s universal progressive values, he urged Congress to act to address income inequality, the climate crisis, and immigration. He also called for the abolition of the death penalty.
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