Last Call For The Full Ginsburg

The NY Times is quite upset that Justice Ruth Bader Ginburg would voice an opinion about Donald Trump being less than optimal for America if he were elected president.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg needs to drop the political punditry and the name-calling.

Three times in the past week, Justice Ginsburg has publicly discussed her view of the presidential race, in the sharpest terms. In an interview with The Times published Sunday, Justice Ginsburg said, “I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president,” joking that if her husband were alive, he might have said, “It’s time for us to move to New Zealand.”

Earlier, in an interview with The Associated Press that appeared on Friday, when asked to consider a Trump victory, Justice Ginsburg replied, “I don’t want to think about that possibility, but if it should be, then everything is up for grabs.”

On Monday Justice Ginsburg doubled down, calling Mr. Trump “a faker,” who “has no consistency about him.” In that interview, with CNN, she added: “He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego.”

The basic argument is that stooping to the level of the late Justice Antonin Scalia and uttering political proclamations about the executive branch is beneath Notorious RBG, particularly when they involve an upcoming election.  I can see that point of view, but then Donald Trump exploded on Twitter today and basically proved Justice Ginsburg was correct.

Trump on Tuesday fired back.

“I think it’s a disgrace to the court, and I think she should apologize to the court,” he told the newspaper. “And I would hope that she would get off the court as soon as possible.”

He added, “I think it’s highly inappropriate that a United States Supreme Court judge gets involved in a political campaign, frankly.”

Now, can you imagine what thin-skinned Trump would dare to do if the Supreme Court ever ruled against his administration?

Pretty sure Justice Ginsburg made us all consider that this week.

A Whiter Shade Of Beyond The Pale

The narrative that Democrats have abandoned "working-class Midwest whites" who are now rallying around Trump because of "class issues" is the chosen narrative of the Village to explain away all of Trump's unfortunate support from the white supremacist movement in the US, but Nick Confessore over at the NY Times is at least acknowledging that this handwaving is, you know, a real problem for America right now.

Outside a former aircraft factory in Bethpage, N.Y., not far from a strip of halal butchers and Indian restaurants now known as Little India, a Long Island housewife who gave her name as Kathy Reb finished a cigarette on a spring evening. Nervously, she explained how she had watched the complexion of her suburb outside New York City change. “Everyone’s sticking together in their groups,” she said, “so white people have to, too.” 

The resentment among whites feels both old and distinctly of this moment. It is shaped by the reality of demographic change, by a decade and a half of war in the Middle East, and by unease with the newly confident and confrontational activism of young blacks furious over police violence. It is mingled with patriotism, pride, fear and a sense that an America without them at its center is not really America anymore. 

In the months since Mr. Trump began his campaign, the percentage of Americans who say race relations are worsening has increased, reaching nearly half in an April poll by CBS News. The sharpest rise was among Republicans: Sixty percent said race relations were getting worse. 

And Mr. Trump’s rise is shifting the country’s racial discourse just as the millennial generation comes fully of age, more and more distant from the horrors of the Holocaust, or the government-sanctioned racism of Jim Crow. 

Some are elated by the turn. In making the explicit assertion of white identity and grievance more widespread, Mr. Trump has galvanized the otherwise marginal world of avowed white nationalists and self-described “race realists.” They hail him as a fellow traveler who has driven millions of white Americans toward an intuitive embrace of their ideals: that race should matter as much to white people as it does to everyone else. He has freed Americans, those activists say, to say what they really believe. 

“The discussion that white Americans never want to have is this question of identity — who are we?” said Richard Spencer, 38, a writer and activist whose Montana-based nonprofit is dedicated to “the heritage, identity and future of people of European descent” in the United States. “He is bringing identity politics for white people into the public sphere in a way no one has.”

White folks as a whole are definitely not ready for an America where white people are no longer the cultural, social, historical, and legal default, so the goal is to square the circle and get them back on top again.  Here's the rub though, they always have been on top and still are in many way, just not as in many way as they were in say, 1956, 1976 or even 1996.

The country is still adjusting, and will be for some time.  But let's be real here, Donald Trump is empowering the forces that want to take us back to to 1956 in one fell swoop, and that can't be allowed to happen, and there are plenty of folks on the left who will be willing to help Trump do just that come November.

We'll see what comes from it.

Our Poll Arised Nation, Con't

Two polls out today showing the race for the White House going off in completely different directions.  First, Reuters is out with a new national poll showing Hillary Clinton with a major lead:

Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton extended her lead over Republican rival Donald Trump to 13 percentage points in a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Tuesday, up from 10 points at the end of last week. 

The July 8-12 poll showed 46 percent of likely voters supported Clinton, the former secretary of state, while 33 percent supported Trump, a celebrity real estate developer. Another 21 percent did not support either candidate. 

That compared with 45 percent who supported Clinton and 35 percent who supported Trump in the five days to July 8. 

Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has mostly led in the national online poll this year. The last time Trump came close to Clinton's popularity was in early May, when his last two rivals for the Republican nomination dropped out of the race and party leaders started to line up behind his campaign.

Trump, who is expected to become the official Republican nominee at the party's convention next week, has since lost ground in the poll as he struggled to refocus his campaign from the Republican nominating contests to the Nov. 8 general election.

The poll also shows Clinton breaking even on popularity, where Trump is mired in the upper 30's. That however is a far cry from the latest Quinnipiac swing state poll of Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, showing Trump leading or tied with Clinton and Trump winning all three states when third party candidates Jill Stein and Gary Johnson are factored in.

With a drop in grades on honesty and moral standards, Democrat Hillary Clinton loses an 8-point lead over Republican Donald Trump in Florida, and finds herself in too-close-to-call races in the three critical swing states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to a Quinnipiac University Swing State Poll released today.

Clinton loses ground on almost every measure from a June 21 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University. The Swing State Poll focuses on Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania because since 1960 no candidate has won the presidential race without taking at least two of these three states.

The presidential matchups show: 

• Florida - Trump at 42 percent to Clinton's 39, compared to a 47 - 39 percent Clinton lead June 21;
• Ohio - Clinton and Trump tied 41 - 41 percent, compared to a 40 - 40 percent tie June 21;
• Pennsylvania - Trump at 43 percent to Clinton's 41 percent, compared to June 21, when Clinton had 42 percent to Trump's 41 percent. With third party candidates in the race, results are:
• Florida - Trump leads Clinton 41 - 36 percent, with 7 percent for Libertarian Gary Johnson and 4 percent for Green Party candidate Jill Stein;
• Ohio - Trump at 37 percent to Clinton's 36 percent, with Johnson at 7 percent and Stein at 6 percent;
• Pennsylvania - Trump over Clinton 40 - 34 percent with 9 percent for Johnson and 3 percent for Stein.

"Donald Trump enters the Republican Convention on a small roll in the three most important swing states in the country. He has wiped out Hillary Clinton's lead in Florida; is on the upside of too-close to call races in Florida and Pennsylvania and is locked in a dead heat in Ohio," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

Needless to say, at least one of these polls is badly, badly wrong.  If Reuters is correct, Hillary Clinton is on her way to an historic landslide victory, where a 13 point lead would end up giving her possible wins in previously safe, deep red states like Texas, Tennessee, Alaska, and even Kentucky, setting up a complete Republican wipeout in November that would totally reverse the last six years of GOP gains in Congress.

But if Quinnipiac is right, it's entirely possible that both national third party candidates may end up in double digits and give Trump the wins across the Rust Belt that he has to have in order to win in November and possibly putting other Rust Belt blue states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa and even Illinois and Minnesota into serious contention for Trump and the GOP.  That in turn could relegate the Democrats to a regional coastal minority for the next decade.

The truth, dear reader, is somewhere in between, I suspect.  There's no way I believe that Clinton is ahead by 13 nationally, but there's no way I believe that Trump is ahead in Florida by five and PA by six points right now, either.  The Reuters poll is probably closer to the truth, but it's not nor will it ever be a double digit lead unless Trump completely crashes.

On the gripping hand, the new McClatchy poll showing Clinton ahead 42-39 while only getting 81% of the black vote, only 57% of Sanders supporters, and only 52% of the Latino vote is complete nonsense.

I suspect we'll have a clearer picture come August once the conventions are over.

StupidiNews!

• China now says it will strongly consider establishing a military air defense zone over the South China Sea in reaction to losing an international territorial ruling to a court in the Hague.
• A new study finds black drivers living in predominately African-American zip codes pay on average 70% more in auto insurance costs nationwide.
• The solar-powered Solar Impulse 2 plane has landed safely in Cairo, Egypt as it continues to circle the globe and will tackle the trip's final leg to Abu Dhabi later this month.
• Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg faces sharp criticism from conservatives after she voiced her opinion this week calling Trump a "faker" unfit for the presidency.
• Criticism over where it's appropriate to play Pokemon Go is igniting a national debate over the digital rights of public and private places in America.

Last Call For The Speech In Dallas

President Obama must hate giving these speeches in the wake of mass shooting tragedies, yet he keeps on going even as he is visibly aware that his time in the White House is running out.  His speech today in Dallas was both no exception, and exceptional. The Dallas Morning News editorial board covered it:

Dallas' response in the days since five of our police officers were murdered demonstrates that our city can help show America how to heal its divisions over race and ease tensions over police violence.

That was the message President Barack Obama delivered Tuesday, and we couldn't agree more.

The shooter, Obama noted, was motivated by racial hatred, but the white officers he killed had been motivated by love and service. Dallas has responded with more love and unity in the days since.

That's a recipe for hope, the president said.

"We are not as divided as we seem," he said. "And I know that because I know America. I know how far we've come against impossible odds. ... And I know it because of what we've seen here in Dallas."

We weren't waiting for the President to tell us we've done what is right. We feel it in our bones, and see it in our neighbors' faces. But the words are welcome anyway.

The truth is, even before any of Tuesday's speeches, the service at the Meyerson Symphony Hall was poignant and pitch-perfect. It was an appropriate capstone for five painful days that, despite our tears, have showed Dallas at its best.

Barack Obama truly believes America is better than the deaths of black people, the deaths of police protecting a protest of police,  the blazing hatred that has shown its ugly head nearly every day of this man's presidency.  He believes we are better.

Even when we do not.

"I've seen how inadequate words can be in bringing about lasting change. I've seen how inadequate my own words have been," he said.

He went beyond words, however, when he urged us to confront the racism we too often ignore. It is real, and the protesters like the ones in our streets last Thursday speak from places of pain and desperation. We must hear them even as we honor our police.

That's what Dallas can do, and the good news is we've already begun.

As Obama said: "Weeping may endure for a night but I'm convinced joy comes in the morning."

I'm weary of waiting for that joy.  I'm tired of shouting into the night and expecting the sun to come up.  I'm tired of an entire political party dedicated to making everyone but themselves miserable. I'm tired of being considered a dangerous, mindless brute and hearing from people I trust and even love that my experiences aren't happening, can't be happening in this America in 2016.  I'm tired of the psychic damage delivered offhand by someone who never has truly wanted for anything.

Barack Obama has been through that times a million.  And yet he keeps going.

That does give me hope.

Where Bernie Went Wrong

Fusion author Terrell Starr gives us a very good postmortem for the Sanders campaign on why they lost to Hillary Clinton, and it's because while both campaigns absolutely took black voters like myself for granted, Clinton at least made an effort to listen to that criticism and tried to correct it, while Sanders continued to assume that black voters would magically just go to him over his message.

It didn’t have to be that way. But his campaign never explained how black people fit into his vision of a radically changed America. And, according to a series of Fusion interviews with former staff members, campaign leadership didn’t really see the point in trying.

Those former staffers described a campaign that failed to give its black outreach teams the resources they needed, that never figured out how to connect to black audiences, and that marginalized black media.

In the process, the campaign missed a chance to capitalize on a revolutionary message that otherwise might have appealed to black voters frustrated with the current political order.

Instead, Sanders was clobbered by Hillary Clinton among black voters in state after state after state, including some where Sanders either won white voters or lost them narrowly. The gap made it all but impossible for him to win the nomination.

Sanders himself was “sincere to the core,” said Roy Tatem, the campaign’s former deputy director for African-American outreach. But he said he felt that neither campaign manager Jeff Weaver nor other high-ranking figures thought Sanders could overcome Hillary Clinton’s appeal to black voters.
“I think they felt that the relationship with Hillary was so strong that they didn’t have confidence in doing much of anything to change it,” Tatem said. “Some people felt he had a better chance at winning the Latino vote and the millennial vote than the black vote.”

In other words, as Elon James White has been saying for the last 12 months, "Earn this damn vote or lose."  Bernie made no effort to do so, none at all.  Hillary has made some effort to do that at least, but still has some ways to go.  The difference?  She realized that no Democrat can win nationally without the black vote.  Bernie did not. He blew chance after chance to do so.

As such, Bernie lost.  There is a lesson here for those who wish to learn it.

The NeverEnding Boring

Understand that as long as Republicans remain in charge of the House of Representatives, that they will never, never, never stop going after Hillary Clinton.

Two House Committees on Monday asked the Justice Department to investigate whether Hillary Clinton perjured herself on the email controversy while testifying before Benghazi Committee investigators in October.

Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) sent the referral to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, asking him to probe claims Clinton made during the hearing last fall that have proved false.

Clinton testified, for example, that she neither sent nor received emails marked classified, and that she turned over all her work-related emails to the State Department. FBI Director James Comey said those statements were wrong during a hearing last week. She did receive some emails with classified markings, he said; his agents found them during their investigation. And they also discovered thousands of work-related messages her lawyers failed to turn over, he said.

“The evidence collected by the FBI during its investigation of Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal email system appears to directly contradict several aspects of her sworn testimony,” the committee chairmen wrote. “In light of those contradictions, the Department should investigate and determine whether to prosecute Secretary Clinton for violating statutes that prohibit perjury and false statements to Congress, or any other relevant statutes.”

The Justice Department, run by the Obama administration, is unlikely to act on the referral. But the missive suggests Republicans have no intention of dialing back their protest of the FBI's refusal to prosecute Clinton, or their criticism of the presumed Democratic nominee for her email set-up.

And when the Justice Department tells these little gremlins to go to hell, they will demand a special prosecutor. When that doesn't happen, they will threaten to impeach.  When that doesn't happen, well, who knows?  They'll go after Clinton's aides, convince Senate Republicans to block any and all cabinet appointments, filibuster everything, it won't end.

It won't end until the voters choose to throw them out of the House.

StupidiNews!

• An international tribunal in The Hague has ruled in favor of Philippines versus China over territorial claims in South China Sea, a ruling Beijing already says it will ignore completely.
• A gunman opened fire on a peaceful vigil in Baltimore for a 24-year-old shot and killed Sunday, five people were injured, no arrests have been made.
• Tory lawmaker Theresa May will become Britain's next Prime Minister, replacing David Cameron, who will step down Wednesday in the wake of the UK's Brexit vote.
• President Obama will be joined by Vice President Biden and former President George W. Bush in Dallas today as they attend the memorial for five slain police officers killed last weekend.
• Security experts are cautioning Pokemon Go players on iOS that signing into the game gives it access to a person's entire Google account, documents, information and more.

Last Call For The Big Bern Out

With the scrapping over the DNC platform ahead of the convention all but over, and Bernie Sanders gaining a number of language concessions in the party planks, it's looking more and more like the senator from Vermont is going to endorse Hillary Clinton and move on.

Bernie Sanders will join Hillary Clinton on Tuesday for a rally in New Hampshire, Clinton's campaign announced Monday. 

Sanders will campaign with Clinton at a high school in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, at 11 a.m. Tuesday, less than two weeks before the party's convention begins in Philadelphia.

The Vermont senator's campaign announced his participation minutes after the Clinton team's email hit inboxes, with both announcements sharing the same language that the two former primary rivals will "discuss their commitment to building an America that is stronger together and an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top." 

The joint appearance comes after the Vermont senator scored several victories on the Democratic platform over the weekend in Orlando, Florida, including on climate change, health care and a minimum wage increase to $15. Sanders and his allies, however, lost out on language related to the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Don't get much more unity than a joint campaign appearance in New Hampshire, folks.  It's long past time for Sanders to throw in the towel and back Hillary, and it looks like he's been given a final chance to do just that.

On to Philly.

Trump's Pence-sive Decision

Several news outlets are reporting that Donald Trump has decided on Indiana GOP Governor Mike Pence as his running mate.

A Donald Trump campaign stop in Indiana scheduled for Tuesday is raising speculation that the presumptive Republican nominee will announce Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate.

The Washington Times reported Sunday evening that Pence has a “95 percent probability” of being Trump's choice, according to sources close to the campaign and to the governor. The first-term Indiana governor’s name has surfaced in recent weeks as a contender for the position. Pence tepidly endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas before the state's May primary, but later backed Trump, praising the chance to "take a new direction" in Washington.

"The kind of leadership that I truly do believe, to borrow a phrase, will make America great again," Pence said during a Thursday campaign stop, according to The Associated Press.

Others said to be under consideration for vice president are former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama.

Considering the convention is coming up next week for the Republicans, Trump certainly doesn't have a lot of time to make a decision.  But Mike Pence wouldn't have a whole lot of time to decide to accept, either.

The coming days could see a major shake-up in Indiana politics as Donald Trump considers Indiana Gov. Mike Pence among others as his Republican vice presidential choice.

Pence is set to attend a campaign fundraising event with the New York billionaire in Indianapolis on Tuesday - just six days before the Republican national convention in Cleveland. The Trump campaign also has scheduled a rally for Tuesday evening in suburban Indianapolis.

If Trump picks Pence as his running mate, it would scramble the Indiana governor's race as Pence could not run for both offices under state law and would have to drop his re-election campaign by noon Friday.

A number of other Republicans are already expressing interest, including House Speaker Brian Bosma and U.S. Rep. Todd Rokita. Lt. Gov. Eric Holcomb, Pence's current running mate, and U.S. Rep. Susan Brooks also are viewed as potential replacements.

It would also definitively link Trump to Indiana, and I'm not sure how that will be received by Republicans in the state.  It's certainly not going to help Trump in November.  The question is will Pence gamble his political career on arguably the worst job in the GOP right now?

We'll see, possibly as soon as tomorrow.

[UPDATE]: Now we're hearing that Indiana has gone completely insane and that former Dem Sen. Evan Bayh could be getting into the state's Senate race to reclaim his old seat.

Evan Bayh is mounting a return bid to the U.S. Senate, giving national Democrats a boost as they aim to retake the chamber in November. 

An announcement about Bayh's candidacy for the Indiana Senate seat is expected later Monday morning, said a source familiar with the plans. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because they will not be released publicly until later Monday. 

National Democratic leaders have encouraged Bayh to run for more than a year, ever since incumbent GOP Sen. Dan Coats announced he would not run again. Bayh was dismissive at first, insistent he was done with public life, but Monday's announcement will mark a significant victory for Senate Democratic recruiters. 

Rep. Todd Young won the hotly contested Indiana Republican primary, beating out Rep. Marlin Stutzman for the nomination. Young has been heavily favored to beat Hill in November, but Bayh's entry into the race easily changes that dynamic. 

Bayh stunned Democrats in 2010 when he left the Indiana Senate race after being named the nominee. Indiana Democrats picked then-U.S. Rep. Brad Ellsworth to fill the Senate slot on the ballot, but he lost to Coats in the 2010 tea party wave. 

In an interesting reversal, Indiana Democrats will now have to formally place Bayh's name on the ballot after nominee Baron Hill announces he is stepping out of the race. That announcement is expected at the same time as Bayh's, according to the source.

Holy crap.  I get to break out my favorite retired StupidiTag!

Black Lives Still Matter In Cincy

While there were hundreds of arrests across the country over the weekend as police broke up Black Lives Matter protests in dozens of cities, thousands marched peacefully in Cincinnati's demonstrations which went on without incident.

Black Lives Matter protesters and a diverse group of supporters took to the streets for two hours, memorializing black men killed by law-enforcement and calling for just punishment of the police officers responsible for their deaths.

The “Enough is Enough” rally remembered black men who died in the past week at the hands of police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and suburban St. Paul, Minnesota. Several signs bore the names of the two victims, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, respectively.

The mother of Samuel DuBose, the unarmed black driver shot and killed a year ago by a University of Cincinnati police officer, spoke to the large crowd in front of Cincinnati police headquarters about the loss she suffered. The officer, Ray Tensing, faces a murder trial in the fall.

“When it happens to you, you got a job to do. You are called out," Audrey DuBose said. "Let’s keep fighting. Don’t wait until it happens to your son.”

Local organizers were undeterred by the sniper ambush that killed five police officers and wounded seven more Thursday night during a Black Lives Matter march in Dallas. They took exception to any suggestion the attack was linked with the Black Lives Matter movement.

"They are sniffing for a connection," Brian Taylor, one of three Black Lives Matter Cincinnati steering committee co-chairs, told the large crowd that assembled in front of District 1 police headquarters in the West End. "We are fed up with police brutality. We are fed up with police not being found guilty."

Organizers took several precautions, primarily against what they perceived as potential police harassment. They formed a legal observation team, designated marshals to guide marchers, gave out two phone numbers for on-call lawyers before marching and collected $3,800 on YouCaring.com for bail money.

Some of the speakers said the deaths of Dallas police officers were “sad and unfair to their families” but also noted such sympathy is not always shown to the families to African-Americans who died in encounters with police.

“Never let it minimize the scope of your own suffering. We are being hunted," Taylor said. "Oppressed people have the greatest capacity for empathy in history."

Cincinnati is often held up as a model of community policing nationally,  but the fact remains that Sam DuBose was still murdered last summer by a UC campus cop, and that Cincinnati and America have a long, long way to go.

Meanwhile, cops are thinking using bomb disposal drones to deliver a breaching charge to deliberately kill suspects is a good idea, so if you thought police reform was going to happen nationally, you're kidding yourself.  San Bernardino, Orlando, and now Dallas have put that idea to rest as police now want more, not less military equipment despite President Obama scaling that back last year.

And this is gear that will be used against people of color, most likely black and Latino people first. I guarantee it.

StupidiNews!

• Hundreds of Black Lives Matter protesters were arrested in Baton Rouge and cities across the country as weekend demonstrations for police reform continued after a tumultuous week.
• Pentagon officials have released a Guantanamo Bay inmate to Italy, six years after his transfer was approved, reducing the total number of inmates in the facility to 78.
• US police departments are changing tactics in the wake of demonstrations and mass shootings, focusing on the use of more military-style equipment and robotic drones.
• The surprising popularity of the Pokemon Go mobile app has pushed stocks of Japanese game maker Nintendo up 25% as the company focuses on more mobile games. 
• China says construction of the world's largest radio telescope is finished and that the FAST array will be online in September.

Last Call For Bad Math

You can always count on the Assrocket to compare apples to Easter Island head statues.

What was the racial breakdown of those who were shot by police in 2015? The largest number, 494, almost exactly half, were white. 258 were black, 172 were Hispanic, and the remaining 66 were either “other” or unknown. (Interestingly, Asians are rarely shot by police officers.)

The 258 blacks represent 26% of the total. That is about double the percentage of blacks in the American population. Is that prima facie evidence of racism on the part of law enforcement? Of course not. It is common knowledge that blacks have an unusually high rate of contact with the police, both as victims and as perpetrators. In 2012-2013, the Department of Justice found that blacks were the perpetrators of 24% of all violent crimes where the race of the perpetrator was known (in 7.8% of violent crimes, it was unknown).

So the percentage of blacks fatally shot by police officers (26%) is almost exactly equal to the percentage of blacks committing violent crimes (24%). Indeed, given that the black homicide rate is around eight times the white rate, it is surprising that the portion of blacks fatally shot by policemen is not higher.

I'm trying to think about this from a number of angles, and all I can come up with is "committing a violent crime" is equal to "being shot and killed by police".  I mean, that's exactly the two statistics he's comparing here, so he must be implying that if you commit a violent crime, you should be killed by a cop.

I mean, not sent to jail, or captured alive, or evaluated for possible mental health issues, or treated as a human being, it's just "police should be executing black people and actually I don't know why that rate isn't higher." Note the default here.

Hindraker has thrown out some doozies over the years, but this may actually be the worst, most callow, heartless, staggeringly false argument for the justification of police violence against black America that I have ever seen.

Why aren't more of us being killed by cops?  He seriously wants to know this.

It's astonishing.

It's A Mean Girls World

NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd loathes Hillary Clinton to the point of near-psychotic obsession with her, and now that President Obama has endorsed and appeared with Clinton at campaign events, Dowd is apparently going to be spending the rest of the campaign coming for him as well.

In a mere 11 days, arrogant, selfish actions by the Clintons contaminated three of the purest brands in Washington — Barack Obama, James Comey and Loretta Lynch — and jeopardized the futures of Hillary’s most loyal aides.

It’s quaint, looking back at her appointment as secretary of state, how Obama tried to get Hillary without the shadiness. (Which is what we all want, of course.)

The president and his aides attempted to keep a rein on Clinton’s State Department — refusing to let her bring in her hit man, Sidney Blumenthal.

But in the end, Hillary’s goo got on Obama anyhow. On Tuesday, after Comey managed to make both Democrats and Republicans angry by indicting Clinton politically but not legally, Barry and Hillary flew to Charlotte, N.C., for their first joint campaign appearance.

Obama was left in the awkward position of vouching for Hillary’s “steady judgment” to run an angry, violent, jittery nation on the very day that his F.B.I. director lambasted her errant judgment on circumventing the State Department email system, making it clear that she had been lying to the American public for the last 16 months.

Comey, who was then yanked up to Capitol Hill for a hearing on Thursday, revealed that instead of no emails with classified information, as Hillary had insisted, there were 110, of those turned over to the State Department. Instead of Clinton’s assurances that the server in the basement in Chappaqua had never been breached, Comey said it was possible that hostile actors had hacked Clinton’s email account. Among the emails not given to State, he said at least three contained classified information.

Hillary had already compromised the president, who feels he needs her to cement his legacy. Obama angered F.B.I. agents when he wasinterviewed on CBS’s “60 Minutes” last fall and undermined the bureau’s investigation by exonerating Hillary before the F.B.I. was done with its work, saying pre-emptively, “This is not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered.”

Hillary willfully put herself above the rules — again — and a president, campaign and party are all left twisting themselves into pretzels defending her.

Obama aimed to have no shadows, but the Clintons operate in shadows.

This is a woman who hates Hillary Clinton with a passion bordering on obsession, to the point where I expect a boiled pet rabbit to show up in Hillary's kitchen.  Not only is Dowd reduced to repeating debunked Fox News talking points, but she doesn't even bother to hide her contempt for both Clinton and Obama at this point.

It's not a good look for her.

Sunday Long Read: Junk Science

The War on Drugs is designed to send as many people to prison as long as possible in order to enrich the pockets of the prison industry and its investors.  No wonder then that a $2 drug test with serious false positive flaws sends thousands of people to prison every month in America.

AMY ALBRITTON can’t remember if her boyfriend signaled when he changed lanes late that August afternoon in 2010. But suddenly the lights on the Houston Police patrol car were flashing behind them, and Anthony Wilson was navigating Albritton’s white Chrysler Concorde to a stop in a strip-mall parking lot. It was an especially unwelcome hassle. Wilson was in Houston to see about an oil-rig job; Albritton, volunteering her car, had come along for what she imagined would be a vacation of sorts. She managed an apartment complex back in Monroe, La., and the younger of her two sons — Landon, 16, who had been disabled from birth by cerebral palsy — was with his father for the week. After five hours of driving through the monotony of flat woodland, the couple had checked into a motel, carted their luggage to the room and returned to the car, too hungry to rest but too drained to seek out anything more than fast food. Now two officers stepped out of their patrol car and approached.

Albritton, 43, had dressed up for the trip — black blouse, turquoise necklace, small silver hoop earrings glinting through her shoulder-length blond hair. Wilson, 28, was more casually dressed, in a white T-shirt and jeans, and wore a strained expression that worried Albritton. One officer asked him for his license and registration. Wilson said he didn’t have a license. The car’s registration showed that it belonged to Albritton.

The officer asked Wilson to step out of the car. Wilson complied. The officer leaned in over the driver’s seat, looked around, then called to his partner; in the report Officer Duc Nguyen later filed, he wrote that he saw a needle in the car’s ceiling lining. Albritton didn’t know what he was talking about. Before she could protest, Officer David Helms had come around to her window and was asking for consent to search the car. If Albritton refused, Helms said, he would call for a drug-sniffing dog. Albritton agreed to the full search and waited nervously outside the car.

Helms spotted a white crumb on the floor. In the report, Nguyen wrote that the officers believed the crumb was crack cocaine. They handcuffed Wilson and Albritton and stood them in front of the patrol car, its lights still flashing. They were on display for rush-hour traffic, criminal suspects sweating through their clothes in the 93-degree heat.

As Nguyen and Helms continued the search, tensions grew. Albritton, shouting over the sound of traffic, tried to explain that they had the wrong idea — at least about her. She had been dating Wilson for only a month; she implored him to admit that if there were drugs, they were his alone. Wilson just shook his head, Albritton now recalls. Fear surging, she shouted that there weren’t any drugs in her car even as she insisted that she didn’t know that Wilson had brought drugs. The search turned up only one other item of interest — a box of BC Powder, an over-the-counter pain reliever. Albritton never saw the needle. The crumb from the floor was all that mattered now.

At the police academy four years earlier, Helms was taught that to make a drug arrest on the street, an officer needed to conduct an elementary chemical test, right then and there. It’s what cops routinely do across the country every day while making thousands upon thousands of drug arrests. Helms popped the trunk of his patrol car, pulled out a small plastic pouch that contained a vial of pink liquid and returned to Albritton. He opened the lid on the vial and dropped a tiny piece of the crumb into the liquid. If the liquid remained pink, that would rule out the presence of cocaine. If it turned blue, then Albritton, as the owner of the car, could become a felony defendant.

Helms waved the vial in front of her face and said, “You’re busted.”

The test was wrong, of course.  But Albritton was railroaded within days into pleading guilty and serving a 45-day sentence in a Texas county jail on felony posession of crack cocaine.  She lost her job, her apartment, and her livelihood.  Nobody back home knew she was in jail.

The field tests seem simple, but a lot can go wrong. Some tests, including the one the Houston police officers used to analyze the crumb on the floor of Albritton’s car, use a single tube of a chemical called cobalt thiocyanate, which turns blue when it is exposed to cocaine. But cobalt thiocyanate also turns blue when it is exposed to more than 80 other compounds, including methadone, certain acne medications and several common household cleaners. Other tests use three tubes, which the officer can break in a specific order to rule out everything but the drug in question — but if the officer breaks the tubes in the wrong order, that, too, can invalidate the results. The environment can also present problems. Cold weather slows the color development; heat speeds it up, or sometimes prevents a color reaction from taking place at all. Poor lighting on the street — flashing police lights, sun glare, street lamps — often prevents officers from making the fine distinctions that could make the difference between an arrest and a release.

There are no established error rates for the field tests, in part because their accuracy varies so widely depending on who is using them and how. In Las Vegas, authorities re-examined a sampling of cocaine field tests conducted between 2010 and 2013 and found that 33 percent of them were false positives. Data from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement lab system show that 21 percent of evidence that the police listed as methamphetamine after identifying it was not methamphetamine, and half of those false positives were not any kind of illegal drug at all. In one notable Florida episode, Hillsborough County sheriff’s deputies produced 15 false positives for methamphetamine in the first seven months of 2014. When we examined the department’s records, they showed that officers, faced with somewhat ambiguous directions on the pouches, had simply misunderstood which colors indicated a positive result.

ProPublica found hundreds of wrongful convictions and plea deals just in Harris County Texas and Houston alone.  Across the country, the number is easily in the tens of thousands, and yet these folks have to live their lives as convicted felons for years and sometimes decades.

Amy Albritton's conviction was overturned.  Many, many more will never be that lucky.