Last Call For Dispatches From Bevinstan

And just because Gov. Matt Bevin hasn't wasted enough taxpayer money on fighting the Obama administration, he's joining the Texas suit over where kids pee.

WKYT has learned Kentucky is joining the list of states suing the Obama administration over a federal directive concerning transgender students in public schools. 

Governor Matt Bevin's office made the announcement on Friday. 

Earlier this month, President Obama issued a directive telling schools that they must allow students to use bathrooms and locker rooms based on their gender identity instead of the sex on their birth certificate. 

In a statement, Governor Bevin says that since Attorney General Andy Beshear did not act, his administration is joining in on the lawsuit. 

“The federal government has no authority to dictate local school districts' bathroom and locker room policies,” said Gov. Bevin. “The Obama Administration’s transgender policy ‘guidelines’ are an absurd federal overreach into a local issue.” 

“Unfortunately, Attorney General Andy Beshear is unwilling to protect Kentucky’s control over local issues. Therefore, my administration will do so by joining this lawsuit. We are committed to protecting the Tenth Amendment and fighting federal overreach into state and local issues.”

Yep, gotta protect the state's right to discriminate and treat people like sub-human garbage.  So when the courts tell Bevin "Why yes, if you take federal money for schools, local and state government buildings, and  public facilities, you can't actually use them to discriminate" then I'll have a good laugh, but I really, really hope that at some point we get rid of the hatred this man proposes.

He's been in office six months and he already is tiresome.

Oh well.  I voted for Conway.

Berned Out, Con't

It's kind of hard to talk about "party unity" when Sanders supporters are openly hoping for an FBI indictment for Hillary Clinton.

Senator Bernie Sanders may be trailing Hillary Clinton by hundreds of delegates, and Mrs. Clinton may be treating the Democratic nomination as hers, but Julie Crowell, a stay-at-home mother and a die-hard Sanders supporter, is holding out for an 11th-hour miracle: divine deliverance at the hands of the F.B.I. 

Like many of Mr. Sanders’s supporters, Ms. Crowell, 37, said she hoped that Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state would eventually yield an indictment, and she described it as the kind of transgression that would disqualify another politician seeking high office. 

“She should be removed,” said Ms. Crowell, of Tustin, Calif., who attended a Sanders rally here on Tuesday and said she planned to vote for a third-party candidate if Mr. Sanders failed to overtake Mrs. Clinton and capture the Democratic nomination. “I don’t know why she’s not already being told, ‘You can’t run because you’re being investigated.’ I don’t know how that’s not a thing.” 

Campaigning in California, where polls show a tightening primary race, Mr. Sanders continued to hit Mrs. Clinton over her positions on Wall Street, trade deals, the minimum wage, hydrofracking and “super PACs” — seemingly everything except her emails, which he famously took off the table as an issue during an early Democratic debate. But Mrs. Clinton faces renewed criticism after an inspector general’s report faulted her for violating the State Department’s records-retention policy. And as the F.B.I. continues its investigation into the handling of classified information, attendees at Sanders rallies have repeatedly expressed hope that the scandal would result in criminal charges against Mrs. Clinton. 

“If there’s any chance of her getting indicted, they shouldn’t even consider her for the nomination,” said Zachary O’Neill, 21, of Escondido. “We can’t have a criminal in the White House.” 

And what would be a more colossal comeuppance to the Democratic establishment? 

“We can’t go back and undo giving her the Democratic nomination,” said Jennifer Peters, 28, of Costa Mesa. 

I know, 2008 was far worse.  I was there. It's why I started the blog nearly 8 years ago. But it's going to be months more of idiocy like this, and every bit of it will only help Trump.

Sanders is the one who will have to bury the hatchet.  I still have reservations believing he will, because assholes like this exist:

Victor Vizcarra, 48, of Los Angeles, said he would much prefer Mr. Trump to Mrs. Clinton. Though he said he disagreed with some of Mr. Trump’s policies, Mr. Vizcarra said he had watched “The Apprentice” and expected that a Trump presidency would be more exciting than a “boring” Clinton administration. 

“A dark side of me wants to see what happens if Trump is in,” said Mr. Vizcarra, who works in information technology. “There is going to be some kind of change, and even if it’s like a Nazi-type change. People are so drama-filled. They want to see stuff like that happen. It’s like reality TV. You don’t want to just see everybody be happy with each other. You want to see someone fighting somebody.”

Trump'll make the trains Bern on time!

Seriously, folks, there's a subset of Bernie voters who were never, ever going to vote for Clinton in the first place, and they're having their day in the hot take sun.

They were never Dems to begin with, just embarrassed Republicans, most of them. Treat them as such.

The Sound Of The Police

With two of the six officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore getting off with no convictions so far, two more of the officers are now suing Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby for defamation of character ahead of their respective trials, essentially saying they were scapegoated.

Sgt. Alicia White and Officer William Porter, who are facing charges of involuntary manslaughter in the 25-year-old's death last April, filed the lawsuit against Mosby, Baltimore sheriff's office Maj. Sam Cogen and the state of Maryland on May 2, according to Baltimore Circuit Court records made public Wednesday. 

The officers claim that Mosby and Cogen knew the statement of charges filed against the officers and other statements made by Mosby at a May 1, 2015, news conference announcing the charges "were false." 

"These among other statements were made not for the purpose of prosecuting crimes that had allegedly been committed by White and Porter, but rather for purposes of quelling the riots in Baltimore," the suit alleges. 

The officers had asked that the lawsuit be sealed to "avoid any suggestion" that they were "not complying with the spirit of" a gag order issued in their criminal cases by Circuit Judge Barry G. Williams, and to "avoid any additional pretrial publicity in connection with their upcoming criminal trials." They said they had to file the lawsuit at this time because of statute of limitations concerns. 

Judge Althea Handy on Wednesday denied the motion to seal the case, saying the officers had "failed to provide a special and compelling reason to preclude or limit inspection of the case record sufficient to overcome the presumption of openness" under Maryland law.

Basically, White and Porter are saying the charges are trumped-up just to stop rioting last year.  It's a stupid shot in the dark, but considering Mosby is zero for two so far, and given the minuscule percentage of cops ever convicted for murder, it's probably worth the hassle.

Not that I expect a single charge to stick to any of these scumballs.

StupidiNews!

• President Obama became the first sitting US president to visit the Hiroshima Memorial in Japan today, speaking at length on a need for a world without nuclear weapons.
• After 25 rounds of battling it out, America once again has two US Scripps National Spelling Bee co-champions in Nihar Janga and Jairam Hathwar.
• The first case of colistin-resistant bacteria in the US has been confirmed in Pennsylvania, health officials warn that more such infections are inevitable.
• In his first campaign rally since gaining enough delegates to win the GOP nomination, Donald Trump in North Dakota vowed to dismantle the Obama administration's climate policy.
• Cyber-security procedures at a dozen more international banks are now under investigation in relation to an attempted billion-dollar heist at Bangladesh's central bank in March.