Couple of big stories developing this weekend:
Cleveland police officer Michael Brelo was acquitted of charges by a judge in the involuntary manslaughter charges against a black couple when officers fired 138 bullets into the car that killed Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams.
A white Cleveland police officer who stood on a car and shot the vehicle's two unarmed black occupants after colleagues already riddled the car with bullets in 2012 was found not guilty Saturday in their deaths -- with a judge ruling his actions were constitutionally justified.
Cuyahoga County Judge John P. O'Donnell, who reached the verdicts after a several-week trial, declared Officer Michael Brelo not guilty of voluntary manslaughter and felonious assault in the deaths of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams following a 20-minute car chase.
Brelo's actions -- jumping onto the stopped car and firing 15 shots into the vehicle after he and his colleagues fired more than 100 times -- were constitutionally justifiable because it wasn't yet clear that any perceived threat to the officers was over, O'Donnell ruled.
It looks like same-sex marriage will win and win big in Ireland as exit polls for Friday's referendum indicate the Yes vote leading.
Early results suggest the Republic of Ireland has voted to legalise same-sex marriage in a historic referendum.
More than 3.2m people were asked whether they wanted to amend the country's constitution to allow gay and lesbian couples to marry.
Government ministers have said they believe it will pass, while prominent "no" campaigners have conceded defeat.
Counting started at 09:00 BST on Saturday morning. An "unusually high" turnout has been reported.
A final result is expected late afternoon on Saturday.
The Senate has blocked reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act, and rejected a bill that would continue the bulk collection of metadata on US citizens.
Unable to end a struggle over how to deal with government surveillance programs, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell scheduled a last-minute session to consider retaining the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of domestic phone records.
McConnell, R-Ky., warned against allowing the controversial NSA program and other key surveillance activities under the USA Patriot Act to expire at midnight May 31. He said he would call the Senate into session that day, a Sunday, and seek action before the deadline.
Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky’s other senator and a Republican presidential candidate, called the Senate’s failure to allow an extension of the surveillance programs during a late-night session Friday into Saturday a victory for privacy rights.
“We should never give up our rights for a false sense of security,” Paul said in a statement. “This is only the beginning — the first step of many. I will continue to do all I can until this illegal government spying program is put to an end, once and for all.”
By the time senators broke for the holiday, they had blocked a House-passed bill and several short-term extensions of the key provisions in the Patriot Act.
More on this as it develops.
As wonderful as our social liberal victories might be, when are we going to get serious about the economic liberal side of things? I would like to believe that we can walk AND chew gum at the same time. As it stands, the triumph of the "social liberal, economic conservative" quadrant has been a factor in wages remaining stagnant since 1973 and is a major prop to the 0.1% percent we all despise. As one snapshot of how awful things are in this regard, a leftie rag today published an article on the need for radicals like Bernie Sanders to run as Democrats and take control of the party from within.
ReplyDeleteWait, what?
Bernie fucking Sanders a radical? The man is a perfectly orthodox Social Democrat, just like I am. We are the anti-radicals, the deliberately non-revolutionary Bourgeois Reformist Left, and if the trots and anarchists think they can simply waltz in and take over the Party without anyone noticing then they are setting themselves for the World's Biggest Butthurt. Ever.
So maybe it's good that the gibbering idiot left has noticed that third party vanity candidates are a pointless waste of time, where they are not outright destructive to the cause, but they still have to learn that victory comes from the ground up and not from the top down. When they figure that out they will be welcome to the fight, until then we have to keep an eye open against the old shiv in the kidney.