Progressive One

**Almost That Time**

A new move by President Trump would remove white nationalists and other hate groups from extremist databases — "absolutely a signal of favor to us," neo-Nazis rejoiced.

Neo-Nazis: 'Donald Trump is setting us free'
President Donald Trump / REUTERS

By Kaitlyn D'Onofrio / February 6, 2017

A new move by President Donald Trump’s administration would remove white nationalists and other hate groups from extremism databases, an act being praised by groups of neo-Nazis.

According to a Reuters report published last week, “The Trump administration wants to revamp and rename a U.S. government program designed to counter all violent ideologies so that it focuses solely on Islamist extremism.” Currently the program is called “Countering Violent Extremism,” or CVE, and focuses on all forms of extremism. But under new proposed rules, “[it] would no longer target groups such as white supremacists,” Reuters stated, and would be called “Countering Islamic Extremism” or “Countering Radical Islamic Extremism.”

Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer, rejoiced in a blog post on Thursday that “it just couldn’t ever get any better than this.”

“Yes, this is real life. Our memes are real life,” Anglin wrote. “Donald Trump is setting us free.”

The Daily Stormer is named after the notorious Nazi publication “Der Stürmer” and billed as “America’s #1 Most-Trusted Republican News Source.”

“We helped get Trump get elected, and the fact of the matter is, without Alt-Right meme magick, it simply wouldn’t have happened,” Anglin continued. “We were there every step of the way, keeping the energy HIGH all through these tubes. The people paying attention know how much good we did, and they know how much good we can do in the future, making sure young people get on board with Trumpism.”

The CVE name change may be more symbolic than anything else, a former official with the program told CNN, and the move would simply “be ‘more intellectually honest’” about the program’s primary focus.

“The former official said as of now the only thing that would change ‘in practice’ would be the actual name of the program,” CNN reported.

Whether symbolic or actionable, however, the move signals to white nationalists and other similar hate groups that they will not be under federal scrutiny. The move also comes despite reports that suggest non-Islamic threats should in fact remain a focus for national safety.

A 2015 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) states that “since the 9/11 mass murder, more people have been killed in America by non-Islamic domestic terrorists than jihadists.”

In “Age of the Wolf: A Study of the Rise of the Lone Wolf and Leaderless Resistance Terrorism,” the SPLC analyzed domestic terrorism and radical violence data in the United States from April 1, 2009, to Feb. 1, 2015, and found that many attacks are carried out primarily by one or two “lone wolves”:

“[The data] also shows that fully 74% of the more than 60 incidents examined were carried out, or planned, by a lone wolf, a single person operating entirely alone. A total of 90% of the incidents were the work of just one or two persons, the study found.”

Also taking the focus away from homegrown extremist groups, Trump has insisted that his Muslim travel ban is a necessity to ensure national security. However, according to a continuously updated report from New America, this is not in fact an effective solution, given the data on previous terrorism incidents.

“None of the deadly attackers since 9/11 emigrated or came from a family that emigrated from one of these countries nor were any of the 9/11 attackers from the listed countries,” the report states. “Seven of the lethal attackers were born American citizens.”

Civil rights groups have spoken out against the proposal.

“At a time when right-wing extremists are on the rise, the government should keep its eye on the ball and focus on all types of extremism whether from terrorists motivated by extreme interpretations of Islam or white supremacists,” said Jonathan A. Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). “We urge President Trump to reconsider the idea of limiting CVE programs just to Islamic extremists.”

The SPLC called the idea “dangerous and unacceptable.”

“In recent years, we’ve seen a series of deadly terrorist attacks from homegrown extremists inspired by white supremacist or antigovernment ideologies, such as the massacre at the Charleston church in 2015,” said Heidi Beirich, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project. “But now it appears that President Trump wants the government to stop its efforts to prevent terrorism by far-right extremists.”

Life After Hate, a group of former members of the violent far-right, has received grants from CVE. Co-founder Christian Picciolini reported to ThinkProgress that the president’s plan is “extremely troubling.”

“It sends a message that white extremism does not exist, or is not a priority in our country, when in fact it is a statistically larger and more present terror threat than any by foreign or other domestic actors,” Picciolini said. “We have hundreds of thousands of homegrown sovereign citizens and militia members with ties to white nationalism training in paramilitary camps across the U.S. and standing armed in front of mosques to intimidate marginalized Americans.”

Trump Disavows White Supremacists (But They Know What He Means)

Trump has previously “disavowed” white supremacist groups, but this did not stop them from feeling energized by the president’s rhetoric and ideologies.

“I obviously would have preferred he not condemn, but I’m not going to read too much into that. It is what it is — just words,” Daily Stormer’s Anglin said in November. “As long as he does what he says he’s going to do, he can condemn whatever he wants and I’ll still support him 100%.”

plainlogic

More fake news, more progressive make believe.

Progressive One

nope diversityinc.com....real news so your lazy ass dismissal does not work trump..............go see all the other sources also............

Weewillynobeerspilly Loc: North central Texas

I wish the hell someone would set me free. ....the tax man is making me his bitch once a year!

plainlogic

The sources I see is where the progressives turn lose the illegal aliens to murder/kill American citizens just to be let loose again, to start all over again. That IS YOUR party, pretty proud of that aren't you. Just hope the people the illegals murder is not a friend or family member, but then again, would you really care? I doubt it, progressives are that way...

Take another hit of acid the liberals give you to be on these sites spewing the diatribe you do....

plainlogic

Yeah, it's bend over time again, the tax man says he's just a proctologist checking things.

Progressive One

cut that delusional paranoid shit out...........

plainlogic

You must be talking to yourself in the mirror while using female nair to shave with. What a DOOFUS!

Progressive One

believe what you like

Progressive One

I told you people long ago this would happen....

Supreme Court reopens Texas death penalty case
Justices rule that racial bias played a role in jury’s sentencing of Houston killer.
DUANE BUCK was convicted of shooting and killing his former girlfriend and her new boyfriend in 1995. The court called his defense attorney “incompetent.” (AFP/Getty Images)
By David G. Savage
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday firmly rejected the use of racial stereotypes when deciding the proper sentence for a convicted criminal, reopening the case of a black man who was condemned to death after his Texas jury was told African Americans were statistically more likely than whites to commit violent crimes.
“Our laws punish people for what they do, not for who they are,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said in the courtroom.
Providing the jury with such crime statistics appealed “to a particularly noxious strain of racial prejudice,” he wrote in the decision.
“Some toxins can be deadly in small doses.”
The 6-2 decision faulted Texas authorities and judges for refusing to give a new sentencing hearing to Duane Buck, a Houston man convicted of shooting and killing his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend in 1995.
As jurors were hearing testimony during the punishment phase, a court-appointed defense attorney called an expert witness to testify that Buck’s violent outburst was a psychological reaction to his breakup. But the expert also ended up citing controversial statistics suggesting that blacks are more likely than whites to commit more crimes.
The jury decided Buck posed a “future danger” and sentenced him to death rather than life in prison.
Years later, Texas state attorneys reopened the cases of five other black defendants who were sentenced to death based partly on that same testimony on statistics.
However, they refused to reopen Buck’s case because it was his own court-appointed lawyer, not the prosecutor, who had called the expert to the witness stand.
Civil rights advocates hailed Wednesday’s ruling.
“Today’s decision sends a powerful message that no court can turn a blind eye to racial bias in the administration of criminal justice,” said Christina Swarns, an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund who represented Buck. “Given the persistence of racialized fears, stereotypes and discrimination, this decision is as important to the country as it is to Duane Buck.”
It also reflects the chief justice’s steady view that race should play no role in government decisions, whether it is in schools, colleges or courtrooms. At times, this aligns him with the court’s conservatives and other times with its liberals.
Last year, Roberts spoke for the court in giving a new trial to a black man on death row in Georgia after new evidence revealed white prosecutors had conspired to keep black people off the jury. Roberts called the prosecutor’s shifting explanations “nonsense.”
Dismissing just two potential black jurors because of their race is “two more than the Constitution allows,” he said.
Only Justice Clarence Thomas dissented.
At the same time, Roberts has rejected the use of race in deciding college admissions, school assignment plans and the drawing of electoral districts. Last year, for example, he dissented when the court, in a 5-3 decision, upheld an affirmative action policy at the University of Texas.
“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” he wrote in 2007 in rejecting a race-based plan for integrating schools in Seattle.
In Wednesday’s decision, Roberts said it was clear that race played a role in Buck’s sentencing. “Discrimination on the basis of race, odious in all aspects, is especially pernicious in the administration of justice,” he wrote, quoting a court decision from 1979.
Roberts described the performance of Buck’s defense attorney as “incompetent,” and sent the case back to the courts in Texas to reconsider the death sentence.
Thomas dissented and was joined by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.
Thomas described the killings as “premeditated and cruel,” and said Buck had shown no remorse. He said Buck’s behavior, not the racial crime data, probably persuaded jurors to impose a death sentence.
He also faulted Roberts and the majority for reopening the case. “Having settled on a desired outcome, the court bulldozes procedural obstacles and misapplies settled law to justify it,” he wrote.
david.savage@latimes.com

Progressive One

Don’t blame reform for crime
T he overwhelming grief felt by Whittier Police Chief Jeff Piper following the brutal killing Monday of Officer Keith Boyer is understandable. But public officials need to be held accountable for false or misleading statements that are calculated to sway opinion on important policy matters, even if those comments come during times of great duress. And unfortunately, Piper misused the occasion of Boyer’s traumatic death to lash out at recent criminal justice reforms.
“We need to wake up,” he said. “Enough is enough. You’re passing these propositions, you’re creating these laws.... It’s not good for our community [and] it’s not good for our officers.”
The outburst against laws adopted by the Legislature and the voters might have been forgivable had alleged killer Michael C. Mejia been paroled under last November’s Proposition 57, or released earlier than planned because his felony was changed to a misdemeanor under 2014’s Proposition 47, or otherwise at large because of some supposed defect in AB 109, the 2011 ”realignment” law that assigned more criminal justice responsibilities to counties.
But none of those things were true, nor was Mejia the beneficiary of “early release.” The parole process restored by Proposition 57 hasn’t even kicked in yet, and Mejia had served his full time in prison for car theft, a crime unaffected by Proposition 47. AB 109 — despite the assertions of law enforcement leaders, elected officials and far too many news outlets that ought to know better — neither mandates nor permits “early release” from prison or jail.
Californians have been hearing complaints about criminal justice reform for years from officials who are uncomfortable with changing their practices or taking on new responsibilities for dealing with dangerous offenders. Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell complained about reform measures in October, following the slaying of Sgt. Steve Owen in Lancaster — and again on Monday after Boyer’s death. Earlier on, the once-viable Republican Abel Maldonado centered his abortive election challenge to Gov. Jerry Brown on the provably false assertion that a host of killers had been allowed to commit their crimes because of AB 109. More generally, police have offered the specious assertion that a shift in public opinion away from tough-on-crime measures and toward more thoughtful outcome-oriented public safety policies have contributed to attacks on police officers.
Like Maldonado’s ill-chosen examples, Mejia had been not been released from prison any earlier than he would have been before any of the allegedly dangerous reforms. Under AB 109 he was supervised after prison not by state parole officers but by Los Angeles County probation officers. And when Mejia violated the terms of his probation — repeatedly — the county officers had several options for dealing with his violations, including sending him to jail for 10 days and seeking to revoke his supervised release.
Certainly something went wrong. After repeated punishment he was still free to allegedly commit at least one murder. So — were there shortcomings in his county supervision, as there so often are with state parole supervision? If so, that’s what should be targeted, criticized and fixed, not the underlying reform that empowers counties to better manage their criminal populations.
Although it wasn’t the case with Mejia, AB 109 does mandate that some criminals convicted of less-serious crimes do their time in county jail instead of state prison — and some county jails are at capacity, which requires sheriffs to make decisions about whom to release before their terms expire. So it is certainly possible that a sheriff could choose to release an AB 109 felon before his or her full term expires.
Yet few counties do release felons from jail early, preferring instead to release misdemeanor inmates before their full six-month terms in order to provide enough space for felons. Most California sheriffs, including McDonnell, keep AB 109 inmates for their full felony terms.
Criminal justice reform puts those sheriffs, along with chief probation officers, boards of supervisors and other county officials, in the driver’s seat. They now have the ability to manage jail populations by assessing and comparing the risk of accused and convicted offenders to flee or commit new crimes. They have a range of options for overseeing them on parole-like community supervision. They can measure the impact of rehabilitation programs and respond accordingly.
Results in some parts of California — San Diego, for example, where crime is at the lowest rate in years and continues to drop — are good. In Los Angeles County and its constituent cities, officials seem overwhelmed by the size of their caseload and the scope of their challenge. Their frustration is understandable. But that does not alter their duty to accurately and dispassionately lay out the facts.

Weewillynobeerspilly Loc: North central Texas

Some books can be judged by their covers.....Cali was stupid for cutting this guy loose, he proved it too.

Progressive One

Judging books by covers is the basis for stereotyping....which makes others pay for the transgressions that was not theirs.......

Weewillynobeerspilly Loc: North central Texas

Really? I don't have to get fanged to know the rattlesnake is gonna bite......i know you've seen this fella, is he the usual product of LA? Quite a quality citizen your state produced.....then ignorantly cut loose......gotta love his record, no reason to doubt his good intentions....


.Suspect in California police officer shooting death arrested 5 times in last 7 months
By STEPHANIE K. BAER, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA NEWS GROUP |
PUBLISHED: February 22, 2017 at 11:53 am | UPDATED: February 22, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Michael Christopher Mejia, 26, of Los Angeles, was identified Tuesday by authorities as the suspect in the fatal shootings of Whittier police Officer Keith Boyer and 46-year-old Roy Torres, the suspect's cousin. Mejia was released from prison under a controversial program that many law enforcement agencies blame for an uptick in crime, authorities said.(COURTESY OF THE LOS ANGELES SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT)
Michael Christopher Mejia, 26, of Los Angeles, was identified Tuesday by authorities as the suspect in the fatal shootings of Whittier police Officer Keith Boyer and 46-year-old Roy Torres, the suspect’s cousin. Mejia was released from prison under a controversial program that many law enforcement agencies blame for an uptick in crime, authorities said.<br />(COURTESY OF THE LOS ANGELES SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT)
A man suspected of killing a Whittier police officer in a shootout Monday, hours after allegedly slaying his cousin, was arrested five times in the past seven months while under supervision of county authorities as part of a controversial program many law enforcement agencies blame for an uptick in crime, according to records and authorities.

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Michael Christopher Mejia, 26, of Los Angeles, was identified Tuesday as the suspect in the fatal shootings of Whittier police Officer Keith Boyer and 46-year-old Roy Torres, the suspect’s cousin.
Lt. John Corina of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Homicide Bureau said Mejia was released from state prison in April 2016 following a grand theft auto conviction in 2014. He was on county probation under Assembly Bill 109 when he allegedly shot and killed Boyer and Torres and also had been arrested multiple times in recent months for violating his probation, Corina said.

Signed into law in 2011, AB 109 mandated “realignment,” which shifted nonviolent offenders from state prisons to county jails, or placed them on probation under county supervision rather than parole under state supervision. It was a response to a U.S. Supreme Court order declaring the condition of California’s overcrowded prisons as violating the constitutional rights of inmates.

This undated photo provided by the Whittier Police Department shows Whittier police officer Keith Boyer. On Monday, Feb. 20, 2017, Boyer was answering a report of a traffic accident when he was shot and killed, authorities said. (Whittier Police Department via AP)
This undated photo provided by the Whittier Police Department shows Whittier police officer Keith Boyer. On Monday, Feb. 20, 2017, Boyer was answering a report of a traffic accident when he was shot and killed, authorities said. (Whittier Police Department via AP)
Citing concerns raised about AB 109 and other criminal justice reforms aimed at alleviating prison and jail crowding, Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors called for an investigation into the criminal and probation background of Mejia on the county and state levels.

“There are a lot of questions. I think we need to find out the facts and look at if there was a failure of protocol in the result of the tragic death of Keith Boyer,” said Supervisor Janice Hahn, during the board’s Tuesday meeting.

The county probation chief, in coordination with other agencies, has 30 days to report to the board with a comprehensive history of the suspect.

“I don’t want to have to do another adjournment for another fallen police officer,” Barger said. “I think we have to take a comprehensive look not only with state partners but county partners to see what’s going on.”

Mejia is suspected of fatally shooting Boyer, 53, and wounding his partner Officer Patrick Hazell in a shootout that began around 8:30 a.m. when the two officers responded to a traffic collision at Mar Vista Street and Colima Road.


Authorities said the suspect rear-ended two vehicles stopped at the intersection while he was driving the car he stole from Torres hours earlier.

When officers arrived and contacted the suspect, Corina said Mejia pulled out a handgun from his waistband after exiting the car and shot at both Boyer and Hazell, striking both of them. Mejia was also struck during the brief gun battle.

Mejia is suspected of also fatally shooting Torres a few hours earlier in the 1400 block of Volney Drive before stealing his car.

In 2010, Mejia was convicted of robbery and sentenced to four years in prison, according to court records. His 2014 conviction came with a two-year prison sentence.

Since being released last year, Mejia has been arrested five times for probation violations, Los Angeles County booking records show. His most recent arrest was on Feb. 2.

In each case, no charges were filed and Mejia was held for a period of up to nine or 10 days before being released.

Corina said he was not sure what the probation violations were, referring to the temporary holds as “flash incarcerations.”

Flash incarcerations are used as punishment for violations of probation, ranging from minor offenses to more serious crimes, said Kerry Webb, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County Probation Department. Webb could not speak specifically to Mejia’s case because of confidentiality laws.

“It’s temporary for the most part, to basically get them off the street,” she said.

A flash incarceration might imprison a low-level drug offender for up to 10 days, for example, and then release the individual into drug rehabilitation. But it could also be used on someone with a more serious violation ahead of a judge’s ruling on his or her probation status, Webb said.

“At some point, the court will get involved and take a look at what is going on here and see the pattern,” she said. “The judge will have to make a final decision.”

Someone with repeat violations is more likely to get elevated to those harsher consequences, she said.

A probationer under AB 109 is sent to the county’s supervision for nonviolent, non-serious and non-sexual offenses. Webb said AB 109 eligibility is based on the offense the person is in jail for, not their prior record, but ultimately, a judge determines whether each person qualifies.

Mejia, who was still being treated at a local hospital Tuesday, has not been charged in either of the Monday killings. Corina said investigators have not yet interviewed the suspect, adding that they would likely submit the case to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office next week.

Progressive One

McVeigh wasn't from California....no one judged that book by its cover...did you?