Ex-officer pleads guilty in South Carolina shooting
Michael Slager admits to violating rights of black man he killed.
JUDY SCOTT discusses the guilty plea in the police shooting of her son, Walter Scott, two years ago. He was unarmed and running away when he was killed. (Jeffrey Collins Associated Press)
By Jaweed Kaleem
In a dramatic turn of events, a former South Carolina police officer who spent two years fighting charges in a high-profile shooting of an unarmed black man pleaded guilty Tuesday in his federal case.
Michael T. Slager entered his plea in federal court in Charleston, S.C., more than two years after he fatally shot Walter Scott five times as Scott was running away after being pulled over for a broken car brake light.
Slager pleaded guilty to one federal charge of violating Scott’s civil rights. In exchange, two other federal charges against him will be dropped, as will a state murder charge, according to his plea agreement.
The move allows Slager, an officer in North Charleston at the time of the shooting, to avoid a jury trial.
U.S. District Judge David Norton of the South Carolina District will decide Slager’s sentence, which could be life in prison. With a guilty plea, Slager has a better chance at a lesser sentence. Under the plea agreement, the federal government will advocate for Slager’s crime to be treated as a lower-level offense.
“The Department of Justice will hold accountable any law enforcement officer who violates the civil rights of our citizens by using excessive force,” Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions said in a statement. “Such failures of duty not only harm the individual victims of these crimes; they harm our country, by eroding trust in law enforcement and undermining the good work of the vast majority of honorable and honest police officers.”
Slager entered his plea during a pretrial hearing Tuesday in Charleston before being handcuffed and led out of the court by U.S. marshals. The trial was scheduled for May 15.
“We hope that Michael’s acceptance of responsibility will help the Scott family as they continue to grieve their loss,” Slager’s lawyer, Andrew J. Savage III, said.
After the hearing, Scott’s oldest brother, Anthony Scott, said that “the healing begins today” for the family.
“I knew from Day One there was something wrong with the picture,” he said. “My brother was violated. He was gunned down running away, and this gentleman continued to stick to that story, but today he told the truth. He said he did it. That’s our victory.”
The April 2015 shooting of Scott, 50, was recorded on cellphone video by a bystander. The video became a rallying point of protests nationwide against high-profile deaths of black men at the hands of police.
But Slager’s case stood out for a rarity in police shootings: Last May, a grand jury indicted him on federal charges.
The indictment said that Slager used excessive force in violation of Scott’s civil rights when he shot Scott and that he falsely told state investigators under oath that he fired as Scott moved toward him with a Taser. Slager also was charged with use of a weapon during a civil rights offense. The indictment said the shooting was “without legal justification.”
At the arraignment, Slager pleaded not guilty.
In a statement, South Carolina Solicitor Scarlett Wilson, who led the state’s case against Slager, praised the developments Tuesday.
“We found justice in a resolution that vindicates the State’s interests by holding former police officer Michael Slager accountable for shooting Mr. Scott (in the back) when Slager knew it was wrong and illegal; as well as justice in a resolution that recognizes the egregious violation of Mr. Scott’s civil rights,” she said.
jaweed.kaleem @latimes.com

Trump suggests shutdown in fall
The president rejects talk of bipartisanship after Democrats hail their victories in the budget showdown.
“OUR COUNTRY needs a good ‘shutdown’ in September to fix mess!” President Trump tweeted before pointing out GOP gains during an appearance Tuesday. (Jim Lo Scalzo European Pressphoto Agency)
By Michael A. Memoli
WASHINGTON — President Trump, smarting at the notion that he was outmaneuvered by Democrats in their first real legislative showdown, is musing openly about seeking to scrap one of the last remaining checks the minority party has, even suggesting he might welcome a government shutdown this fall to further that end.
From the Rose Garden and his Twitter account Tuesday, Trump expressed frustration with hardening conventional wisdom that the $1-trillion spending plan Congress expects to vote on this week represents a setback for his agenda, despite his party having the strongest grip on power in Washington in more than a decade, controlling the House, Senate and White House.
Members of both parties were at a loss to explain how what had appeared Monday to be a rare bipartisan achievement had evolved 24 hours later into the source of recriminations.
As has often been the case with Trump, this episode began with a morning series of postings on social media, in which he seemed to concede that the funding package he signed off on over the weekend — one that largely preserves money for items he promised to slash, but does not advance his promised border wall — was full of concessions to Democrats.
He then laid out options that could free him of the need for such compromise: for voters to swell GOP ranks in the Senate to surpass the 60-vote threshold to overcome filibusters, or for Senate Republicans to eliminate the ability of any senator to demand a three-fifths majority to advance major legislation.
He capped that with a remark that seemed to embrace a fiscal crisis to push his agenda. “Our country needs a good ‘shutdown’ in September to fix mess!” the president tweeted.
Aides later said Trump bristled at comments from Democrats claiming victory in the spending fight, as became clear when he appeared in the Rose Garden hours later. Flanked by members of the Air Force Academy football team, Trump boasted of the deal’s higher spending levels on defense, “historic investments in border security,” and funding for charter schools. Put together, he said at the event awarding the team the annual Commander-in-Chief Trophy, “our Republican team had its own victory under the radar.”
“And we didn’t do any touting like the Democrats did,” he added, before praising new military spending that he said fulfilled a core campaign promise.
Democrats had been quick Monday to hail provisions of the spending bill that protected their priorities while averting what they called “poison pill” amendments like one to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood. But legislative leaders from both parties were also eager to sell the package as an example of compromise that is possible if all sides act in good faith.
“This deal is exactly how Washington should work when it is bipartisan: Both parties negotiated and came to an agreement on a piece of legislation that we can each support. It is truly ashame that the president is degrading it because he didn’t get 100% of what he wanted,” Democratic leader Charles E. Schumer of New York said on the Senate floor.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) groused at having to respond to another presidential Twitter flurry as he faced reporters shortly after the tweets were posted.
“When you look at the bill, there’s a lot of good conservative wins here,” he said.
On Monday morning, Trump had indicated he was satisfied with the agreement and noted that both sides could claim victory. But by late Monday, his budget chief, Mick Mulvaney, was sent to the White House briefing room to proclaim victories for the administration.
“I’d be hard-pressed to figure how we could fund more of the priorities,” he said then.
By the time the budget chief spoke to reporters again Tuesday afternoon, he said Democrats had tainted future negotiations.
“The president is frustrated with the fact that he negotiated in good faith with the Democrats and they went out to try and spike the football and make him look bad,” Mulvaney said. If Democrats don’t change that posture, he added, a shutdown “may be inevitable.”
It wasn’t clear why the president believed a government shutdown — a costly, inconvenient and embarrassing affair — would be beneficial at a time when Republicans control the White House and Congress. The White House also could not clarify whether Trump was calling for an actual government shutdown; his tweet put the term in quotation marks, which he sometimes cites later as a sign he was not speaking literally.
The last federal shutdown occurred during a standoff between President Obama and Republicans in 2013 over healthcare, lasting 16 days. In Congress, neither side of the aisle wanted a repeat of that.
“That the president would say, in effect, what this country needs is a good shutdown just speaks in volumes as to his insensitivity to what a shutdown means, or his lack of knowledge … of what a shutdown means,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said in an interview.
“What’s he complaining about? That left to their own devices, the Congress came to agreement?” she asked.
If the House and Senate pass the spending bill this week as expected, it will fund government operations through the close of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. White House officials say Trump will be in even a stronger negotiating position by then.
“We’re hopeful that we can see as we go through the 2018 process … more of a Republican-driven process, especially in the House, which would be a little bit more typical,” Mulvaney said Monday.
But on the legislative front, it’s unclear what else Republicans will be able to pass , given their internal divisions and an emboldened Democratic minority.
Trump has been increasingly focused on the filibuster hurdle in the Senate; he called the chamber’s rules “archaic” in an interview on Fox News last week.
But while Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was willing to deploy the “nuclear option” to change the Senate rules and let Trump’s Supreme Court nominee advance with a simple majority vote, he and other Republicans have indicated they are not inclined to lower the threshold to overcome a filibuster for legislation.
“There is an overwhelming majority on a bipartisan basis not interested in changing the way the Senate operates,” McConnell told reporters Tuesday. “That will not happen.”
The Trump administration is set to release a more detailed budget blueprint for 2018 later this month, part of a process that Republicans hope will be a vehicle to enact a far-reaching tax plan. First, they still hope to restart an effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.
It is possible for Republicans to secure both without Democratic votes, McConnell said. “On everything else, the Senate has been known for its bipartisanship, and you’re seeing a perfect example of it on the spending bill that will be on the floor this week,” he said.
michael.memoli@latimes.com

I'm just posting articles....no stance on the issues...saves debate and name-calling.........

Wow...so it is all about what YOU want....how do you feel if the majority of Americans disagree with YOU? Are you afraid that your tax dollars will help people you do not like?

Nope...I understand that I am from a different area of endeavor and until you people can dialogue without insult which is not allowed in intellectual/academic environments, I realize you all are just compensating. It is like when I summarized my microprocessor interface design and assembler programming which could be considered the BIOS for the system, if any of you could have replied in a relevant, on-topic, non-insulting manner, you would have at lease demonstrated a degree of academic prowess. I was going to continue from there are describe my experience within the servomechanism and control systems realm. I was going to educate you all on Phase Locked Loops(PLL) and show you all how a integrating circuit along the lines of dv/dt can be designed using basic principles of Calculus. I have many things I can discuss with a greater degree of complexity and my Phased Array radar background afforded me the opportunity to learn things very few know. So with a EE background, being a Professor and an Advisory Consultant and showing how the curriculum from a MBA in Technology Management serves to link the technical and strategic business arenas....I don't even have to worry about peer scrutiny outside of formal evaluations. I don't have to insult and name-call to post items of substance....at all.......you can call names because that requires no skill at all but let me see you address any of the issues just mentioned in this post.

BACK STORY
What’s the House GOP plan for sick Americans?
How Republicans’ latest bill may erode Obamacare’s protections for people with preexisting conditions
UNDER the current GOP replacement for Obamacare, a patient with diabetes, for example, might be guaranteed coverage but have to pay five to 10 times more. (John Locher Associated Press)
By Noam N. Levey
As they scramble to get votes to advance legislation to roll back the Affordable Care Act, President Trump and House Republican leaders say their bill would protect Americans who have preexisting medical conditions.
But most healthcare experts and patient advocates dispute this, noting that the House GOP plan would allow states to scrap many protections put in place by Obamacare, as the law is often called.
This week, even late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel jumped into the debate , telling his viewers Monday that his new son was born with a congenital heart condition that would have once made him uninsurable.
If you’re trying to make sense of the competing arguments, here’s a look at Obamacare’s protections for sick patients and how those safeguards could change under the Republican alternative.
How did Obamacare change how preexisting conditions are handled?
One of the healthcare law’s most significant changes was prohibiting health insurers from denying coverage to people with preexisting medical conditions, a protection called guaranteed issue.
The practice of denying coverage was once widespread in the insurance industry.
In order to get healthcare coverage (if they did not get it through work), consumers had to fill out detailed medical histories.
And insurance companies routinely turned down people who’d had major illnesses, such as cancer, or even less serious ailments such as arthritis.
Alternatively, insurers would charge people with preexisting medical conditions more for their health plans.
This also was barred by Obamacare, a protection that is known as community rating.
How many people did these new protections affect?
It is difficult to know how many sick Americans who were denied coverage before Obamacare now have health plans.
But federal census data and other surveys show that more than 20 million previously uninsured people have gained coverage since the law began guaranteeing coverage in 2014.
At the same time, other research suggests that as many as 1 in 4 Americans have some kind of preexisting medical condition , which could have made them uninsurable before 2014.
What would the House Republican plan do?
The American Health Care Act, as the House Republican healthcare bill is called, does not eliminate the guaranteed issue provision of Obamacare.
But a proposed amendment to the bill by Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-N.J.) would make some significant changes to the insurance protections enacted in Obamacare.
The amendment would allow states to obtain a waiver from the federal government to eliminate the community rating requirement in the current law. That would allow insurance companies to once again charge consumers with preexisting medical conditions more for coverage.
In other words, a patient with diabetes, heart disease or cancer might still be guaranteed coverage, but only if he or she agreed to pay five or 10 times as much for a health plan.
But didn’t Trump and other Republicans say the bill would enhance protections for patients with preexisting conditions?
Yes. Supporters of the amendment say that sick Americans would still be protected in these states because the amendment, among other things, requires states to enact other protections, such as offering a special insurance plan for sick customers, known as a high-risk pool.
The House bill offers states billions of dollars to operate these high-risk pools.
“The AHCA provides significant resources at the federal and state level for risk-sharing programs that lower premiums for all people,” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) says on his website.
So would sick consumers be protected?
Not necessarily.
Nothing in the amendment requires states to certify that health plans available through the high-risk pools would be affordable.
That means that many sick consumers might not be able to buy such plans, leaving them unable to get coverage, as many were before Obamacare.
In fact, many states operated high-risk pools before the current law was enacted . Most were underfunded, forcing states to either charge unaffordable rates for coverage or cap how many people could sign up for a plan.
Do advocates for the sick think the legislation will protect patients?
In a word, no.
Not a single major group representing physicians or patients supports the House bill.
In a letter to lawmakers last month, the American Cancer Society’s advocacy arm warned that the proposal could “have the effect of returning the nation to a patchwork system of health coverage in which patients with preexisting conditions in some states would no longer be protected.”
And this week, a coalition of 10 leading patient advocacy groups , including the American Diabetes Assn., the American Heart Assn., the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and the March of Dimes, called on Congress to scrap the approach.
“We challenge lawmakers to remember their commitment to their constituents and the American people to protect lifesaving healthcare for millions of Americans, including those who struggle every day with chronic and other major health conditions,” the groups warned.
noam.levey@latimes.com
Twitter: @noamlevey

3rd GOP health measure falling short
Leaders are at a loss as more Republicans reject the Obamacare repeal effort over constituent concerns.
By Lisa Mascaro, Noam N. Levey and Sarah D. Wire
WASHINGTON — The latest version of the Republican effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act teetered on the verge of failure Tuesday as the conversation among Republicans on Capitol Hill shifted to soul-searching and recriminations over what went wrong in their long campaign to end Obamacare.
Though House leaders say they have not given up on the effort, no vote is planned and some senior GOP lawmakers signaled their dissent.
A failure to vote before the House goes on recess at the end of the week would mark the third time that Republicans tried to muster support from their ranks to advance the healthcare overhaul, only to have to make an embarrassing retreat at the last minute.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and other leaders, including Vice President Mike Pence, engaged in a flurry of closed-door meetings at the Capitol. Some estimates put the vote count within single digits of the 216 needed for passage, but others numbered Republican defections at more than 30, well over the 22 the party can afford to lose.
Rank-and-file lawmakers say they are being bombarded by calls to their offices and protests at home. Of particular concern is that this latest version of the bill contains a provision, added to attract votes from conservatives, that would essentially end Obamacare’s guarantee of insurance coverage for those with preexisting conditions.
States could allow insurers to charge sick people more and offer them coverage through so-called high-risk pools, which many states operated before Obamacare. But experts and consumer advocates panned this arrangement as unaffordable.
“They’re scared,” said Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.), whose district voted for President Trump. “[They] feel like they’re about to lose it and they’re going to die. And if we cannot explain to people that is not going to happen, then it’s going to be very difficult to ever bring a bill to the floor.”
Many lawmakers expressed frustration at having to figure out on their own how the recent changes to the bill would affect consumers. They complain that Trump should be playing a bigger role, explaining the legislation to wary voters, while others bemoan that Congress never dug into the thorny policy details to devise a workable healthcare alternative.
Among the notable recent defections was Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), former chairman of a key committee that approved the bill earlier this year. He told the Michigan radio station WHTC-AM on Tuesday that he was now opposed, uncomfortable with latest revisions, according to the Detroit News.
Leaders have indicated that they will no longer be making adjustments to the bill, the American Health Care Act, because tweaks made to win support from the conservative House Freedom Caucus have only served to chase away centrist Republicans.
GOP Reps. Ken Calvert of Corona and Dana Rohrabacher of Costa Mesa are among those who supported the original version of the bill but have backed away from the amended version. Another, Rep. Doug LaMalfa of Richvale, remained undecided.
“That’s part of my own internal struggle — if we do something and it’s still harmful to a lot of folks,” LaMalfa said.
The growing prospect that Trump and Ryan won’t get the votes to advance the healthcare bill doesn’t necessarily kill the long Obamacare repeal effort. But G. William Hoagland, a former Senate Republican budget official who is now senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said failing to get a vote by Friday would make it very difficult for House Republicans to carry on their repeal campaign much longer.
“At a certain point, the politics become hard to sustain and it comes time to call it like it is and move on,” he said.
There has been very little enthusiasm among Senate Republicans for the House bill. That means less incentive for House Republicans to risk political backlash for a bill that faces such an uncertain future in the Senate.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky did little to calm those fears Tuesday when he suggested that passage in the Senate would be a “real big challenge.”
The longer the hunt for votes drags on, the more it exposes lawmakers to the risks of doing nothing or approving a bill that, so far, polls show has little public support.
“They’ve got a trifecta going,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) during an interview Tuesday with The Times.
“They lose if they bring it up and it passes the House and the Senate and then the public sees what that is — that’s a loser. They lose if they bring it up in the House and they can’t pass it in the Senate, because they’ve now walked the plank for nothing. And then they’re now in another losing situation because it doesn’t appear that they’re going to have the votes.
“It is doggie doo on their shoe,” Pelosi said. “They cannot get away from it.”
Trump and House Republican leaders labored in recent days to push the bill forward, making the case that it would not threaten critical health protections in the Affordable Care Act.
Over the weekend, Trump and other administration officials tried to argue that Americans with preexisting medical conditions would still be protected.
“Health care plan is on its way,” Trump wrote in one tweet. “Will have much lower premiums & deductibles while at the same time taking care of pre-existing conditions!”
But the legislation’s sweeping cuts to healthcare assistance for millions of low- and moderate-income Americans — some 24 million more people would probably be without insurance — energized a nationwide resistance movement against it.
At the same time, not a single major group representing doctors, hospitals and patients supported the House bill.
Ryan echoed Trump’s promise, insisting that proposed changes to the legislation by Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-N.J.) would force states that scrap Obamacare protections to offer other options, such as special high-risk health plans for patients with preexisting conditions.
But the MacArthur amendment was greeted with derision by leading physician and patient groups — including the American Diabetes Assn., the March of Dimes and the advocacy arm of the American Cancer Society — which warned in increasingly stark language that it would be disastrous for sick Americans.
Still, MacArthur was among those who warned that the window for action was closing.
“It’s this week or it’s very difficult,” said the former insurance executive. “How many times are we going to go through this?”
lisa.mascaro@latimes.com
noam.levey@latimes.com
sarah.wire@latimes.com

This (OPP) is your "safe space" where there is no TRUE accountability required....

yeah....self-declared chat room victories....too bad you all don't have the ability to lift your intellect up a notch and try your hand at some intellectual and academic issues....OPP is all you have....I'll stick to higher education....as a student or professor....and I'll never have to worry about seeing you lower-tier racists there.......you have your self-declared victories in here....I'll let others declare mine out in the real world and reward me accordingly....I've proven my worth hundreds of times and have the commensurating paper trail to go with it....so I'm kool.........you all stick with OPP and I'll stick to academia where there is accountability...........I'll post a little from time to time just to watch your type, divert, deflect and call names to stay off-topic and compensate for your cerebral shortcomings and inabilities..........see? that wasn't vulgar and I didn't even return YOUR name-calling....haha!

fk em...let em go hungry...the little ungrateful fks are too stupid to a)understand nutrition and b) know that there are starving kids all over the world that would be happy for ANYTHING to eat because they have ignorant ass parents who let their kids dictate to them what they will and won't do..........and trust me....a hungry motherfker will eat the food....but let them be some ungrateful fks....those kind always struggle in life when they cannot get what they want because their stupid ass parents accommodated their stupid ass dumbshit....fk em........and when their obese asses get illnesses. hopefully trump will have killed their ObamaCare...I hate ungrateful or selfish ass people......I don't even use the word hate but this could be one of those times.......

that's still too much time....try to reduce it to 0 minutes.....

go ahead and roll with the janitor thing....I'll wait for someone knowledgeable to come along and we can talk because they'll a)understand what I am talking about and b) know what it takes to procure that level of knowledge........I'm kool because it is difficult to lie in that much detail....even ao with his Ferraris, net jet and banging on my door with my license cannot lie that much in a coherent manner.....haha....but I understand because when you all go there with the ghetto GED thing, if you had to embrace what I said at face value....it would make most of you come to the realization that you're hardly in a position to criticize-upbringing, education, professional success and otherwise........it would destroy the racist psyche that really wants to believe they are superior.......behavioral science is a wonderful thing........

First of all, you dishonest POS's know that this all started as a response to the racist ass GED, welfare, food stamp characterizations people started with when they read a article that did NOT espouse their truth....so since they wanted to go there with the nastiness, I wanted them to see they got their black people mixed up with that cracka ass bullshit. So yes, educated middle, upper middle and upper class black folks do exist. So if you motherfkers really think I can create a middle class upbringing with the specifics, educational chronology from 1-12 with parental learning methods, academically successful siblings, my college scholarship, graduate and post graduate school, professional and academic careers with engineering design methodology descriptions, specifics of higher academic research, dissertation publishing, professorships at 3 different colleges and covering the curriculum specifics while working an additional, post-engineering new career simultaneously? Man if I could lie like that I would have never had to work. But I know you people know better.....it is too humbling and against your cracka ass code of ethics to ever give credit for all that BS...plus on one of your created threads in my honor before...one of your colleagues had a brain fart and disclosed the plan was to never give that nigger credit for shit.....but it's kool....it is all on paper and I get compensated accordingly.....I never needed to feel like I had to wear a fking pedigree image....as long as i am highly highly highly highly competent....the rest don't matter........so i'm kool....you people enjoy your ao janitor stories..i'm not trying to prove shit....just wanted to show you how you got your black people mixed up talking to me like I had a fking dixieland upbringing.......wrong motherfker

Answer a question: what would I have to gain telling lies to people not even at the top of the educational or professional ladder who could even advance me in that regard? Do you people really view yourselves as someone that another person would try to impress? If so, why you all? What is there to gain because I don't see anything.

trans·ves·tite

/transˈvesˌtīt,tranzˈvesˌtīt/

noun

plural noun: transvestites

a person, typically a man, who derives pleasure from dressing in clothes primarily associated with the opposite sex.



*A certain guy in here in OPP would post pictures in this regard until made to feel shame.*