Month: November 2015

QOTD

by digby

Dr Ben, of course:

I’m not giving any information about who the person was that I tried to knife.

But then there’s Trump:

You know, when you say hitting your mother over the head with a hammer, when you talk about hitting a friend in the face with a lock, a padlock. And you talk about stabbing someone and it got stopped by a belt buckle.Belt buckles don’t really stop stabbings. They turn and twist and things slide off them. It’s pretty lucky if that happened.

That’s your Republican presidential frontrunner, ladies and gentlemen…

Amato says, where is Richard Pryor when you need him? Sadly no longer with us. But we still have Chris Rock — anyone heard from him on this weird stuff?

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We’re not going to hell in a handbasket?

by digby

Kevin Drum says people really aren’t engulfed in existential despair after all:

I hate to throw a wet blanket on this pity party, but perhaps we should take a look at a few other data points before we decide that America is on the brink of a mass Jim Jones extinction event. For starters, here’s a map from the 2015 World Happiness Report. Basically, it shows that most rich countries are pretty happy, including the United States:

For the record, we came in 15th. That’s toward the low end of rich countries, but still pretty happy. Next up is a long-running Gallup poll about personal satisfaction:

There are surely pockets of despair. We’ve been hearing a lot about how white middle aged people are killing themselves or living with addiction and illness in much greater numbers than before. So I don’t mean to make light of those things. But generally speaking the country has not changed substantially. We aren’t the happiest nation on earth (that would be Disneyland) but most Americans don’t feel they’re living in a dystopian hellscape. Just yet anyway.

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“That leftist rag … Politico”

by digby

Roy Edroso has the definitive round up of right wing defenses of Ben Carson’s loooney tunes week:

At The Federalist Mollie Hemingway interpreted Politico’s editorial note (which begins “Editor’s note: POLITICO stands by its reporting on this story, which has been updated to reflect Ben Carson’s on the record response…”) thus: “Politico Admits Fabricating A Hit Piece On Ben Carson.” Matthew K. Bure of Politistick denounced “leftist rag Politico” for “one of the worse smears in the history of politics… It’s pretty clear that Politico is getting their marching orders from Hillary Clinton and the Democrat Party, acting in a role very similar to that of Pravda in the old USSR.” (This is a good point at which to mention Politico’s actual pedigree.) 

“Politico would never editorialize about any Democrat who issued such a response to a factual inquiry in this manner,” said Ben Shapiro at the Daily Wire. “Frankly, this might be the best thing that could have happened to Dr. Carson,” said Emily Zanotti of The American Spectator. “After a week of weird sound bites, the story surrounding him is an attack by the media, something conservative candidates should be able to capitalize on and thrive from.”
On Friday, in what the New York Times described as “combative” press conference (though he didn’t try to stab anyone), Carson himself tiraded against — you guessed it! — Liberal Media and the “witch hunt” against him. “My job is to call you out when you’re unfair,” he said at one point in a telling reversal of the traditional press-and-politician relationship. 

Just about that time, another noted Liberal Media outlet, The Wall Street Journal,questioned other Carson stories, including an elaborate tale involving a Yale class called Perceptions 301; a teacher who announced to the class that their test had been burned and would have to be retaken; a walkout by all the students except Carson; the teacher’s announcement that this had been the real test; and Carson’s rewards including coverage by the Yale Daily News and a $10 bill. The Journal was able to confirm only the existence of Yale University. (Later Carson claimed to have proof of his story’s veracity: a press clipping about a parody issue in which a similar story appeared. “It wasn’t a scam, it was a parody,” Carson triumphantly told George Stephanopoulos on This Week.) 

As this stuff kept coming out, rightbloggers looked at the number and peculiarity of the stories and had to admit what was now undeniable: Liberal Media has it in for Ben Carson, and this was good news for Ben Carson. 

“No one in their right mind would pay for CNN’s brain-dead nonsense about Ben Carson except for CNN,” said Roger Simon of PJ Media. “…It’s so sleazy, in fact, that it is certain to rebound against network and in favor of Carson.”
“What are we dealing with here? It’s not like he doesn’t remember what happened the night of Benghazi,” said Rush Limbaugh. 

“Unfortunately for the left, the double-barreled attacks seemed to leave Carson in a stronger position than he had been in before, as they essentially verified what he has been saying all along,” said the Conservative Tribune — “that the liberal mainstream media will do or say anything to keep a black conservative out of the White House.” (That’s why we haven’t had one yet, besides Barack Obama.) 

Meanwhile Donald Trump, fresh from a highly-rated Saturday Night Live appearance, returned to TV Sunday morning to imply that Carson is nuts. Don’t feel bad for Carson, though: He announced that, thanks to the “biased media,” his campaign took in $3.5 million last week.

Be sure to click over to read the rest. There’s more. About the pyramids. And the alleged stabbing. And more.

Sometimes you have to clear out the old to make room for the new

by Gaius Publius

Short and simple — this is about Exxon, climate change, fraud, and investor value. As you may know, there have been multiple calls for RICO investigations and/or lawsuit filings against Exxon and the rest of the fossil fuel industry thanks to the investigative work by Inside Climate News and separately, the LA Times.

There have also been calls for the SEC to investigate Exxon, using, I think, Sarbanes-Oxley, which provides for criminal penalties and jail time for corporate executives who sign off on knowingly false annual and quarterly statements.

That’s two methods of approach, RICO and Sarbanes-Oxley. A third approach is the little-known Martin Act, a New York state statute that gives prosecutors very broad powers of subpoena and discovery.

What’s the news? New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is using the Martin Act (at least) to subpoena documents from Exxon, looking for evidence of investor fraud (at least). This comes from two sources. Let’s start with the New York Times (my emphasis everywhere):

Exxon Mobil Investigated for Possible Climate Change Lies by New York Attorney General

The New York attorney general has begun a sweeping investigation of Exxon Mobil to determine whether the company lied to the public about the risks of climate change or to investors about how those risks might hurt the oil business.

According to people with knowledge of the investigation, Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman issued a subpoena Wednesday evening to Exxon Mobil, demanding extensive financial records, emails and other documents.

The investigation focuses on whether statements the company made to investors about climate risks as recently as this year were consistent with the company’s own long-running scientific research.

The sources said the scrutiny would include a period of at least a decade when Exxon Mobil funded outside groups that sought to undermine climate science, even as its in-house scientists were outlining the potential consequences — and uncertainties — to company executives.

Kenneth P. Cohen, vice president for public affairs at Exxon Mobil, said on Thursday that the company had received the subpoena and was still deciding how to respond. […]

Now from Inside Climate News:

New York Attorney General Subpoenas Exxon on Climate Research

New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office demanded that ExxonMobil Corporation give investigators documents spanning four decades of research findings and communications about climate change, according to a person familiar with the year-long probe.

An 18-page subpoena issued to the oil giant late Wednesday seeks documents from Exxon (NYSE:XOM) related to its research into the causes and effects of climate change, to the integration of climate change findings into business decisions, to communications with the board of directors and to marketing and advertising materials on climate change, the person said.

Investigators have been looking closely into the company’s disclosures to shareholders and the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the subpoena also sought documents related to those communications. The probe is based on New York’s powerful shareholder-protection statute, the Martin Act, as well as the state’s consumer protection and general business laws. […]

This is already broader than many people realize. Looks like Exxon’s not alone (via the Times article):

The people with knowledge of the New York case also said on Thursday that, in a separate inquiry, Peabody Energy, the nation’s largest coal producer, had been under investigation by the attorney general for two years over whether it properly disclosed financial risks related to climate change. That investigation has not been previously reported, and has not resulted in any charges or other legal action against Peabody.

Peabody deserves whatever it gets. This could get big quickly:

Mr. Schneiderman’s decision to scrutinize the fossil fuel companies may well open a new legal front in the battle over climate change. To date, lawsuits trying to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for the damage they are causing to the climate have been failing in the courts, but most of those have been pursued by private plaintiffs.

Attorneys general for other states could join in Mr. Schneiderman’s efforts, bringing far greater investigative and legal resources to bear on the issue. Some experts see the potential for a legal assault on fossil fuel companies similar to the lawsuits against the tobacco companies in recent decades, which cost them tens of billions of dollars in penalties.

“This could open up years of litigation and settlements in the same way that tobacco litigation did, also spearheaded by attorneys general,” said Brandon L. Garrett, a professor at the University of Virginia law school. “In some ways, the theory is similar — that the public was misled about something dangerous to health. Whether the same smoking guns will emerge, we don’t know yet.”

This should strike a huge blow to the whole industry, but especially to Exxon. And not soon enough, considering the cliff we may be about to go over — as a species. Watch that stock price (NYSE:XOM). Would you buy Exxon stock tomorrow morning? If you owned it, would you sell it? Collapses often happen quickly.

And finally, which would you rather see go over the edge into the canyon, Exxon’s corporate valuation or your grandchildren’s odds of living in something like civilization? Don’t weep for Exxon. Sometimes you have to clear out the old to make room for the new.

Think of it as emptying the closet so you can buy new clothes.

(A version of this piece appeared at Down With Tyranny. GP article archive here.)

GP

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We’re not doomed?
by Tom Sullivan

A couple of links I came across over the weekend gave me just a moment’s pause to think that maybe, just maybe, we are not doomed. Nancy LeTourneau at Political Animal points to a conversation Robert Reich had with a Republican former member of Congress:

Me: “So what do really you think of these candidates?”
Him: “You want my unvarnished opinion?’
Me: “Please. That’s why I called.”
Him: “They’re all nuts.”
Me: “Seriously. What do you really think of them?”
Him: “I just told you. They’re bonkers. Bizarre. They’re like a Star Wars bar room.”
Me: “How did it happen? How did your party manage to come up with this collection?”
Him: “We didn’t. They came up with themselves. There’s no party any more. It’s chaos. Anybody can just decide they want to be the Republican nominee, and make a run for it. Carson? Trump? They’re in the lead, and they’re both out of their f*cking minds.”
Me: “That’s not reassuring.”
Him: “It’s a disaster. I’m telling you, if either of them is elected, this country is going to hell. The rest of them aren’t much better. I mean, Carly Fiorina? Really? Rubio? Please. Ted Cruz? Oh my god. And the people we thought had it sewn up, who are halfway sane — Bush and Christie — they’re sounding almost as batty as the rest.”
Me: “Who’s to blame for this mess?”
Him: “Roger Ailes, David and Charles Koch, Rupert Murdoch, Rush Limbaugh. I could go on. They’ve poisoned the American mind and destroyed the Republican Party.

So maybe there is some common ground out there.

Another link that came over the transom is from Bill Maher’s show. Alexandra Pelosi interviewed New Jersey Republicans on what they want to see Big Gummint cut: pretty much nothing. Medicare? Nope. Social Security? Nope. Veterans’ benefits, education, military, unemployment benefits? Nope, nope, nope, and nope. But the waste, of course.

LeTourneau cites “movement conservative refugee” Michael Lind’s Politico piece on the decrepit conservatism the GOP clings to like Bill Buckley standing athwart history yelling Stop. The result, LeTourneau writes, is the “policy vacuum that has been filled by the likes of candidates like Trump and Carson.”

See, liberals and conservatives can agree on something. LeTourneau points to a clip I’ve seen before from filmmakers Annabel Park and Eric Byler. Watch it for the last few minutes and see someone’s eyes opened. Maybe it will make Monday a little more bearable for you.

No honor or decency

by digby

Fiorina:

While Fiorina was campaigning in New Hampshire on Friday, a man referred to Obama as a “black Muslim” and said “he doesn’t want this country to get ahead.”

Fiorina responded that “it’s time to do something different in many ways” as she walked away.

That’s awful. And it gets worse:

Fiorina said it wasn’t her job to defend the president, noting that he “isn’t on the ballot.”

“I’ve said on many occasions: President Obama tells me he’s a Christian; I take him at his word,” she said on Fox News on Friday. “But the truth is, President Obama isn’t on the ballot.”

There are many ways she could have handled that. She could have said that there’s nothing wrong with being black or Muslim. She could have said the President is a Christian. She could have said that she disagrees with his policies but doesn’t think he “doesn’t want the country to get ahead.”

But no. She fed right into that bigoted nonsense and let it stand and then defended her actions by saying Obama isn’t on the ballot as if that means anything. I guess she’s all in. The fever swamp beckons.

“I think women are not presidents”


by digby

I know this is all in good fun but it depresses me anyway:

Women can’t be president because “they’re too girly” and will make “girl rules,” according to some youngsters appearing in a segment on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” that featured Hillary Clinton.

ABC’s late-night host gathered a pair of girls and boys for an experiment-of-sorts on gender equality on his Thursday show.

After Kimmel asks the kids to name some women who have been commander in chief, one replies, “I think women are not presidents.” 

“They’re too girly,” responds little Jayden. “They’ll make, like, girl rules.”

One example of a “girl rule”?

“Free makeup in the world,” according to Jayden.

Another of the school-age kids, Andrew, predicts a woman president would give the White House a feminine makeover.

“They’ll decorate and make it all girly,” he says. “They might even paint it pink.”

“I agree with him,” one of the girls in the seemingly unscripted sketch, Belle, chimes in.

The young girls do support a woman in the Oval Office, with Belle saying the country should elect a female because “there hasn’t been a girl president.”

“I think if there was a war she would probably make it stop so people could be more healthy and they won’t die,” says Sydney.

But Jayden isn’t convinced.

“Girls are actually too girly for boys and boys are too buff to have girl stuff,” the smiling boy says.

“I’d like you guys to meet somebody,” Kimmel tells the children, as Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner, walks into the room and pulls up a chair alongside the outspoken group.

“Wait, are you president?” Jayden asks Clinton.

“I’m running to be the president,” Clinton responds.

The former secretary of State later makes her pitch to the kids.

“You know we haven’t had a woman to be president yet, so we need to have a woman to be president, and then you’d have more evidence to base your decision on,” Clinton says.

I have often heard a story of the little African American kid visiting the White House with his parents in the early months of the Obama administration running up to one of the guards, also African American, excitedly asking  “are you the president?” Everyone was embarrassed, but the guard told the parents to relax saying with a smile, “that’s the first time anyone’s asked me that.” (Or something like that…)

Anyway, the point is that until Barack Obama became president no young African American kid would ever have thought any African American man was president. Similarly, no young girl will assume that some random woman in the White House is president until there is actually a woman president. I’d like to see that.

In fact, I still can’t believe we haven’t seen it already. It’s 2015 and we have had 43 white male presidents and one African American male president. As a woman that just seems … weird.  We’re 50% of all humankind.

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Sunday Funnies

by digby

Tom Tomorrow via The Nation:

McFadden New York Times

A debate preview by Gary jacobs, LA Times:

The candidates have joined forces to craft a new debate format, one that will better and more fairly allow them to expound their views to the American people. Here’s an advance look at the result:

HANNITY: Hi, I’m Sean Hannity and these are my fellow moderators, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. Let’s get right to it. This first question calls for a show of hands. If you think America is the greatest country in the entire universe, raise your hand. [All hands go up except for Dr. Ben Carson’s]

HANNITY: You disagree, Dr. Carson?

CARSON: [Inaudible]

HANNITY: I’m sorry, Doctor. Could you please speak up?

Hi, I’m Sean Hannity and these are my fellow moderators, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.
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CARSON: I said there’s a problem with the question. I would say America is the greatest country in the entire universe and any parallel universes. [All hands go up. Applause.]

COULTER: Mr. Trump, you have said you will build a wall to keep Mexican illegals out of the country and that you will make the Mexican government pay for it. The obvious question is: How high do you think that wall should be?

TRUMP: Good question, Ann. Here’s the good news. Mexicans are not very tall. That’s why you don’t see any in the NBA. That means a six, seven foot wall should do the job.

HUCKABEE: If I can follow up.

COULTER: I’m sorry, Governor, we need to move on. [Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, walks hurriedly on stage and whispers in Coulter’s ear.] My deepest apologies, Governor, I didn’t mean to interrupt.

HUCKABEE: I was just going to add that this is yet another example of how God has blessed this country. Just think if we shared a border with Africa. Then we’d need a much taller wall and the costs would soar. [Applause]

LIMBAUGH: This question is for Senator Cruz. What’s your favorite color?

CRUZ: It’s not one color, Rush. It’s three. Red, white and blue. [Thunderous applause]

LIMBAUGH: What about you, Governor Bush?

BUSH: Gosh, brown maybe.

COULTER: Senator Rubio, you’ve been described as young, handsome, virile, a powerful and attractive politician with great appeal to women voters.

RUBIO: What’s the question?

COULTER: No question.

HANNITY: Senator Paul, I’d like to try a word association exercise with you.

PAUL: First I want to address something very important that was discussed earlier. Cyan.

HANNITY: Pardon?

PAUL: That’s my favorite color.

HANNITY: Let me try this with you, Mrs. Fiorina. When I say “Obamacare,” what’s the first word that comes to mind?

FIORINA: A failed socialist experiment that was forced down the throats of the American people, which has resulted in thousands of lost jobs, skyrocketing insurance premiums, extreme tornadic activity in the Southwest and a tenfold rise in skin eruptions. [Applause]

COULTER: Governor Kasich, when Hillary Clinton goes to prison for her Benghazi crimes, you just know there’s going to be a hue and cry from the liberal media to pardon her. Will you?

KASICH: In Ohio, we’ve lowered—

Get your free weekly take on the most pertinent, discussed topics of the day >>
Get your free weekly take on the most pertinent, discussed topics of the day >>
COULTER: What about you, Governor Christie?

CHRISTIE: Hell no, I wouldn’t pardon her. I’d make sure she served every day of her sentence.

CRUZ: If I could jump in here. I agree with the governor, but I would go further. I would use all the powers of the presidency to make certain she served her entire sentence in solitary confinement.

CHRISTIE: I thought that was a given.

FIORINA: I’d also deny her visitors and reduce her food intake to water and dog kibble every other day.

HANNITY: That’s all the time we have. I want to thank all the candidates for participating in tonight’s debate.

BUSH: You know what? I think I may prefer beige.

The evolution of a Deep State president

by digby

If you read nothing else today, read this interview by Elias Isquith at Salon with the NY Times’ Charlie Savage about his new book. It’s about Obama’s evolution from when he ran for president and seemed to be skeptical of the national security state to his later embrace of it. An excerpt:

All right. So then Christmas Day, 2009, happens; the so-called underwear bomber. You argue that this was a big, big deal within the White House — bigger than many outsiders appreciate. Why was this failed attack so important?

That was a turning point for Obama. He’d already had some compromises and encountered things that were sort of harder in the real world than they seemed on the campaign trail, but he was basically on track to be doing what he wanted to do — or what he thought he wanted to be doing — coming out of that first year.

And then, on Christmas, 2009, an al Qaeda terrorist operative from Yemen — well, east of Nigeria, but fed by IEC, the mini-affiliate of al Qaeda — nearly brings down a jetliner above Detroit. It would have killed almost 300 people on American soil, on [Obama’s] watch. And so, number one, that’s a gut-wrenching moment; it was only sheer luck that the bomb didn’t go off. It was not that the system they put in place worked.

And then, the fallout from that was also tremendously important. Republican critiques that he was dismantling some of the things that Bush had put into place suddenly got a lot sharper; and the sense was, if there was another attack, and if it succeeded, the blood would be on his hands. And then underscoring all that is that Scott Brown, a Republican, wins Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat in deep-blue Massachusetts.

Right. That usually doesn’t get mentioned in this story. It’s usually seen as a major development in the story of the Affordable Care Act; not counter-terrorism policy. Why did it matter in that latter context, though?

The media at that time was portraying [Brown’s victory] as a reaction to Obamacare, but inside the Scott Brown campaign, the polls showed that it was really the terrorism issue that he got the most traction on. He was pounding on Obama and on his Democratic opponent for treating terrorists as criminals, for the fact that the underwear bomber had been read his Miranda warning and was being interrogated by the FBI and charged [in civil court] because Obama and Eric Holder wanted to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 suspects from Guantanamo to New York and give them a civilian trial.

Brown kept pounding on the idea that these are terrorists and we shouldn’t give them these rights; and even in Massachusetts, at that moment, there was a certain wave of fear from the underwear bomber rolling across the country. It really resonated — and, suddenly, a Republican had won a Senate seat in Massachusetts. So inside the Obama administration, [it came to be believed that if] there is another attack, and it actually succeeds, Obama will be a failed, one-term president. He’ll lose, just like Jimmy Carter; and everything he came in there to do, including things that have nothing to do with national security, would fail.

The way events — the near-miss human disaster on Christmas Day, the political disaster of Scott Brown’s victory — dictated Obama’s actions, it raises one of the central questions of his presidency, which you talk about in the book. Namely, did he normalize the post-9/11 national security state? Or was he swept along with it?

It can’t be reduced to a single bumper sticker [answer]; and there were things that he did before the underwear attack that did have the effect of entrenching aspects of [the Bush response to 9/11]. But there was a kind of an ambivalence, or an imbalance, [in the White House] between the reformers and those who more or less represented the security state interests. And after the Christmas attack, the balance between those voices shifted dramatically, and the administration starts taking a much harder line as these debates continue to play out in the months and years to come.

The voices that are saying, “We need this surveillance tool” or “We’d better not let this person out of Guantanamo” — they have much more sway in the internal meetings. And the people who are saying, “We can dismantle this; we can be less secretive; we can do this; we can do that” in a reform perspective, they have less sway. Because the political context has changed dramatically.

So then Obama ends up locked into the dynamic we’ve seen for much of the rest of his presidency; civil liberties groups are mad at him from one end of the spectrum, while the neoconservative, unreconstructed Cheneyites rail against him from the other. I think most people at this point are familiar with the civil liberties folks’ criticism, as well as that of the Cheneyites. And they know Obama’s usual responses to the neoconservatives; but what was his pushback to civil liberties groups usually like?

I think that to an extent [he felt that] some of his critics on the left were in the business of criticizing whatever the government is doing from an individual rights perspective; so even when things got adjusted [to their liking] they just sort of moved the goal post. I know that a lot of officials in his government feel that way.

But also I think he generally had this lawyerly mindset that held that the main problem with Bush was that Bush put policies in place unilaterally. He said that, as Commander-in-Chief, he could violate statutes; and that’s what Obama thought was especially overreaching and out of hand. He felt that when you have a president who is not doing that, but is acting pursuant to Congressional authority, he shouldn’t be considered Bush-like. And that actually raises a broader theme of the book, which is that the Bush and Obama presidencies were very different in a lot of ways, despite these policy continuities between them, and one of their greatest differences concerned the metric of lawyerism.

One of the most interesting insights Savage elucidates is this idea that there were always two different arguments against the Bush national security atrocities. One was that they were wrong, period. The other was that they were wrong because they were executive power grabs and should have gone through congress. Even the iraq war had this split with some opponents saying it was daft on the merits and others objecting because Bush failed to get UN approval.

I have always called this “the process dodge” which allows people to seem opposed to something without actually taking a stand. A lot of politicians do this — it’s the easy way out. It’s not that it’s right for presidents to commit the nation to war without congressional approval,or to circumvent the law to do i but the truth is that its’s extremely rare for congress not to approve a war and a president can almost always gin up enough fear and anger to get them to legalize whatever they did after the fact. Relying on that argument means you never have to make the case against the war itself.

You can see where this leads. You may recall that even when Obama was running he voted to legalize the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping.

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Comey’s “common sense”

by digby

This is interesting:

Four cops from four different departments lied about shootings they were responsible for, and their lies were used by media outlets and pro-police groups to implicate Black Lives Matter protesters each time. It turns out that in all four cases, the officers involved either shot themselves, shot their own car, or were shot by a fellow officer.

The link goes into the four cases.

I don’t want to make too much of this. There are a lot of cops in this country, most of whom are professionals. But it does point up the fact that the alleged “politicizing” of this issue is not a one way street.

An I think that James Comey should STFU. This is just irresponsible nonsense:

FBI director James Comey conceded on Monday that he had little evidence to support his theory that a recent increase in crime was caused by heightened scrutiny of the police, as the White House appeared to distance itself from his remarks.

Addressing police chiefs at a conference in Chicago, Comey said he could not be certain that the so-called “Ferguson effect”, following unrest in the Missouri city after the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black 18-year-old last year, had led to a retreat by officers, but said this was “common sense”.

“The question is, are these kinds of things changing police behavior around the country?” said Comey. “The honest answer is I don’t know for sure whether that’s the case … but I do have a strong sense.”

Basically he’s saying that police are refusing to do their duties if they are subject to scrutiny. If they have to follow the law they just can’t do their jobs. They’re out there doing their duty and the head of the FBI is saying they are slacking because they’re scared of being caught on tape. I think most decent cops would be offended by that.

By the way:

The Sentencing Project, a criminal justice nonprofit, has published research indicating that a rise in homicides in the St Louis area predated the death in Ferguson of Michael Brown and the ensuing protests. Bruce Frederick, a senior researcher at the Vera Institute of Justice, wrote last month at The Marshall Project that there was also no “compelling evidence that there has been a pervasive increase in homicides that is substantively meaningful”.

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