Demagogue Joe Arpaio Announces Senate Run in Arizona

01/10/2018

The Confirmation Files current events, Law, Politics , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Can we please banish really old, racist men from running for office?

Libergirl

Image: Doug Mills/The New York Times

Joe Arpaio, the polarizing 85-year-old immigration hard-liner pardoned by President Trump after a conviction for criminal contempt, announced on Tuesday that he is running in Arizona for the United States Senate.

The move by Mr. Arpaio, who just six months ago faced a jail sentence before he was pardoned, upended the race to replace Senator Jeff Flake, a Republican who abandoned his 2018 re-election campaign after coming under criticism from Mr. Trump.

The contenders for the seat include Representative Kyrsten Sinema, a centrist Democrat, and Kelli Ward, a conservative Republican and former state senator who aligns herself with Mr. Trump. Mr. Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, lost his own re-election bid for that post in 2016 to Paul Penzone, a Democrat and Phoenix police officer.

“I got a little disturbed about how some people in the Senate were treating the president,” Mr. Arpaio said in a telephone interview, explaining the motivations for his decision. “I think I can bring some new blood to Washington.”

More from The New York Times

Posted by Libergirl

 

Advertisements

Russia’s Favored Outlet Is an Online News Giant. YouTube Helped.

10/24/2017

The Confirmation Files current events, Politics, World , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

When the state-backed Russian news channel RT became the first news organization to surpass one billion views on YouTube in 2013, it marked the achievement with a retrospective of its most popular videos and a special guest — one of the Google-owned site’s senior executives.

Robert Kyncl, a YouTube vice president who has since become its chief business officer, joined an RT anchor in a studio, where he praised RT for bonding with viewers by providing “authentic” content instead of “agendas or propaganda.”

But now, as investigators in Washington examine the scope and reach of Russian interference in United States politics, the once-cozy relationship between RT and YouTube is drawing closer scrutiny.

YouTube — the world’s most-visited video site, owned by one of the most powerful and influential corporations in America — played a crucial role in helping build and expand RT, an organization that the American intelligence community has described as the Kremlin’s “principal international propaganda outlet” and a key player in Russia’s information warfare operations around the world.

More from The New York Times

Posted by the NON-Conformist

Pennsylvania Voter ID Law Struck Down

01/17/2014

The Confirmation Files Politics , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

A state judge on Friday struck down a nearly two-year-old requirement that almost all of Pennsylvania’s 8.2 million voters show photo identification before voting, setting the stage for a showdown before the state’s highest court.

Judge Bernard L. McGinley of Commonwealth Court, a Democrat, said that the law would unreasonably burden people trying to exercise their fundamental right to vote, and that the state had been unable to convincingly explain why it was necessary.

“Voting laws are designed to assure a free and fair election; the Voter ID Law does not further this goal,” Judge McGinley wrote in his 103-page ruling.

The law, one of the strictest in the nation, was signed by Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican, in March 2012 over the protests of Democratic lawmakers in state Republican-controlled Legislature.

Enforcement of the law has been blocked by court order pending resolution of the legal challenge. Both sides had vowed to appeal any decision against them to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

A spokesman for Mr. Corbett did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Witold J. Walczak, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which helped lead the legal challenge, said “the act was plainly revealed to be nothing more than a voter suppression tool.”

More from the Associate Press via New York Times

Posted by Libergirl

Glenn Greenwald: The New York Times ‘helped to kill journalism as a potent force for checking power

10/29/2013

The Confirmation Files Politics , , , , , , Leave a comment

Glenn Greenwald: The New York Times ‘helped to kill journalism as a potent force for checking power’ (via Raw Story )

Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald appeared Monday on Democracy Now to discuss his latest project, a new media startup funded by billionaire philanthropist Pierre Omidyar. Greenwald said the new media outfit would practice “adversarial journalism”…

Posted by The NON-Conformist

A Federal Budget Crisis Months in the Planning

10/09/2013

The Confirmation Files Health, Politics , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Shortly after President Obama started his second term, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III gathered in the capital to plot strategy. Their push to repeal Mr. Obama’s health care law was going nowhere, and they desperately needed a new plan.

Defund Obamacare MiniBanner

Image: teaparty patriots.com

Out of that session, held one morning in a location the members insist on keeping secret, came a little-noticed “blueprint to defunding Obamacare,” signed by Mr. Meese and leaders of more than three dozen conservative groups.

It articulated a take-no-prisoners legislative strategy that had long percolated in conservative circles: that Republicans could derail the health care overhaul if conservative lawmakers were willing to push fellow Republicans — including their cautious leaders — into cutting off financing for the entire federal government.

“We felt very strongly at the start of this year that the House needed to use the power of the purse,” said one coalition member, Michael A. Needham, who runs Heritage Action for America, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation. “At least at Heritage Action, we felt very strongly from the start that this was a fight that we were going to pick.”

More from the NYT Times

Posted by the NON-Conformist

John(get off my lawn)McCain says Putin ’destroying’ Russia’s reputation in biting retort

09/19/2013

The Confirmation Files Politics, World , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Image: Mandel Ngan / AFP – Getty Images

Sen. John McCain said Russian President Vladimir Putin is “destroying” his country’s reputation in a blistering op-ed article for one of the country’s leading news websites early Thursday.

The Arizona Republican accused Putin of allying himself with tyrants and ruling through violence and repression, a scathing retort to a New York Times editorial by Putin last week.

“He is not enhancing Russia’s global reputation,” McCain said in the piece published on Pravda.ru. “He is destroying it,” adding that by befriending tyrants and making enemies of the oppressed, Putin was losing the trust of nations seeking to “build a safer, more peaceful and prosperous world.”

“President Putin doesn’t believe in these values because he doesn’t believe in you [the Russian people],” he wrote.

“He doesn’t believe that human nature at liberty can rise above its weaknesses and build just, peaceful, prosperous societies. Or, at least, he doesn’t believe Russians can. So he rules by using those weaknesses, by corruption, repression and violence. He rules for himself, not you,” he added.

Questioning Putin’s alliance with Syrian President Bashar Assad, which he called one of “the world’s most offensive and threatening tyrannies,” McCain asked: “How has he strengthened Russia’s international stature?”

More from NBC News

Posted by Libergirl

Judge Rejects New York’s Stop-and-Frisk Policy

08/13/2013

The Confirmation Files Blacks, Crime, Politics , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Image: NY Times

A federal judge ruled on Monday that the stop-and-frisk tactics of the New York Police Department violated the constitutional rights of minorities in the city, repudiating a major element in the Bloomberg administration’s crime-fighting legacy.

The use of police stops has been widely cited by city officials as a linchpin of New York’s success story in seeing murders and major crimes fall to historic lows. The police say the practice has saved the lives of thousands of young black and Hispanic men by removing thousands of guns from the streets.

But the judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, found that the Police Department resorted to a “policy of indirect racial profiling” as it increased the number of stops in minority communities. That has led to officers’ routinely stopping “blacks and Hispanics who would not have been stopped if they were white.”

The judge called for a federal monitor to oversee broad reforms, including the use of body-worn cameras for some patrol officers, though she was “not ordering an end to the practice of stop-and-frisk.”

More from the New York Times

See also: Eugene Robinson: Stop and Frisk Might Work Better on Wall Street

Posted by Libergirl

Older Entries

%d bloggers like this: