Tuesday, May 9, 2023

Tuesday, May 9, 2023

And another day of verdicts, charges, declining giving a list of gifts, SCOTUS possibly legalizing assault weapons in all 50 states, a record pace for mass killings, conservatives transforming school districts, and mammograms comes to a close:


“We now have a proven sexual assaulter, insurrectionist, twice impeached ex POTUS running for POTUS again. How is this ok?” — bridget123goooo


Jury finds Trump liable for sexual abuse, awards accuser $5M. The verdict was split: Jurors rejected Carroll’s claim that she was raped, finding Trump responsible for a lesser degree of sexual abuse. The judgment adds to Trump’s legal woes and offers vindication to Carroll, whose allegations had been mocked and dismissed by Trump for years.


Rep. George Santos charged by federal prosecutors in New York. The charges are under seal so the nature of the allegations is currently unclear.


Harlan Crow declines to provide Senate Finance Committee with list of gifts he has given to Justice Clarence Thomas. "We have serious concerns about the scope of and authority for this inquiry. As you are aware, the Committee’s powers to investigate are not unlimited," the letter from Crow's lawyer, Michael D. Bopp, said.


A new Supreme Court case seeks to legalize assault weapons in all 50 states. The plaintiffs, which include a gun shop owner and a gun rights group, claim the two statutes violate the Second Amendment. Should the Supreme Court accept that argument and overturn these laws, it would have sweeping implications for the entire country. That decision would need to be followed throughout the entire nation — which would most likely mean that neither any state nor the US Congress could ban assault rifles or high-capacity magazines. And there is good reason to fear that this Court could, at the very least, decide to make semiautomatic assault rifles legal throughout the United States. In 2011, a federal appeals court upheld the District of Columbia’s ban on assault weapons — over the dissent of an up-and-coming right-wing judge named Brett Kavanaugh. Although the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) permitted lawmakers to ban “dangerous and unusual weapons,” Kavanaugh read that decision narrowly in his 2011 opinion. He reasoned that semiautomatic rifles are neither more dangerous than lawful weapons such as handguns, nor are they especially unusual — among other things, he argued that at the time of his opinion, “about two million semi-automatic AR-15 rifles have been manufactured.” Flash forward a dozen years, and Kavanaugh is now the median justice on a Supreme Court dominated by Republican appointees. So if he still believes semiautomatic rifles aren’t particularly “dangerous and unusual,” he is well-positioned to turn the opinion he wrote in 2011 into law...But even if the Court does decide to push off the Naperville case until another day, when that day comes there will likely be five votes on this Supreme Court to legalize assault weapons throughout the country.


U.S. on record pace for mass killings. This year has seen more mass killings to date than any other year since 2006. The killings in 2023 have been driven "exclusively by gun violence," as all 22 incidents of mass murder this year have involved guns. — It’s what makes America “exceptional.”


Louisiana man is accused of shooting a girl playing hide and seek on his property. A Louisiana man faces aggravated assault and battery charges after firing a gun at children who were playing hide and seek outside his home, wounding a 14-year-old girl, according to the local sheriff’s office. The girl suffered a gunshot wound to the back of the head early Sunday, and was taken to a hospital with injuries that were not considered life-threatening. — The default for these people is grab the gun and shoot. WTF? 


1 maternal or newborn death happens every 7 seconds, WHO report finds. Global progress in reducing deaths during pregnancy has flatlined since 2015, according to a new report from the World Health Organization. The report shows that over 4.5 million women and babies die every year during pregnancy, childbirth or the first weeks after birth, which is equivalent to one death every seven seconds. These deaths are mostly from "preventable or treatable causes if proper care was available.”


Florida Rejects Dozens of Social Studies Textbooks, and Forces Changes in Others. Florida has rejected dozens of social studies textbooks, the latest effort under Gov. Ron DeSantis to scrub textbooks of topics like the Black Lives Matter movement, socialism and why some citizens “take a knee” during the national anthem.


Gov. Ron DeSantis Restricts Chinese Citizens From Buying Land in Florida. He hopes the bill will go toward “counteracting” the “malign influence of the Chinese Communist Party in Florida,” according to a recent press release. “Today, it’s clear that we don’t want CCP in the Sunshine State,” said DeSantis at a press conference on Monday. “We want to maintain this as a free state of Florida.” — DeFascist has made Florida a “not-free” state. You’re only free in Florida if DeFascist allows you to be


A former NFL player persuaded politicians that his child ID kits help find missing kids. There’s no evidence they do. The fingerprinting kits were produced by the National Child Identification Program, a Waco-based company that has persuaded lawmakers and attorneys general in at least 11 states to provide the kits, at times spending millions of dollars purchasing them. In Texas alone, lawmakers allocated about $5.7 million on kits for all students in kindergarten through eighth grade. They are currently considering funding additional kits for the next two years. But similar kits are available for free from nonprofit and governmental entities, and claims made by the company about the number of missing children and the effectiveness of such kits are exaggerated, according to missing child and law enforcement experts. “The organizations promoting the kits are preying on people’s fears,” said Stacey Pearson, a child safety consultant who oversaw the Louisiana Clearinghouse for Missing and Exploited Children during a 20-year stint with the Louisiana State Police. Pearson called the kits “crime control theater,” a term used to describe criminal justice laws and policies that make people feel as though they are being proactive but in reality accomplish little. “They’re promoted as preventative measures, but they’re not preventative at all,” she said…Out of the 11 [of 15] law enforcement agencies that responded, none could recall using a kit to help find a runaway or kidnapped child. The executive director of the Sheriffs’ Association of Texas also said he could not think of a case in which the kits helped. ProPublica and the Tribune also found that the startling figure Hansmire and his company have repeatedly cited to promote his product is inflated. Eight hundred thousand children do not go missing every year.


Amended bill would keep tenure at Texas public universities. Instead of prohibiting tenure for all new faculty hires, an amended version of Senate Bill 18 that was obtained by The Texas Tribune codifies tenure in state law and requires university governing boards to ensure they have clear guidelines to grant tenure and conduct regular performance reviews for those who earn it, something that Texas university systems already have in place. It also instructs university regents – who are appointed by the governor – to ensure their policy includes specific instances in which universities can dismiss a tenured professor, such as professional incompetence, failing to perform their duties as a professor, violating university policies or engaging in unprofessional conduct. — Hmmm. “Unprofessional conduct” is pretty subjective. I’m sure that would never be abused to oust faculty.


‘Trump was great at this’: How conservatives transformed a Colorado school district. When a conservative slate of candidates won control of the school board here 18 months ago, they began making big changes to reshape the district…These rapid and sweeping shifts weren’t coincidental — instead it was a plan ripped from the MAGA playbook designed to catch opponents off guard, according to a board member’s email released through an open records request. “This is the flood the zone tactic, and the idea is if you advance on many fronts at the same time, then the enemy cannot fortify, defend, effectively counter-attack at any one front,” David Illingworth, one of the new conservative school board members, wrote to another on Dec. 9, 2021, weeks after they were elected. “Divide, scatter, conquer. Trump was great at this in his first 100 days.” — To MAGAs, all other Americans are “the enemy.”


Spain records hottest and driest April on record. The State Meteorological Agency, known by the Spanish acronym AEMET, said Monday the average daily temperature in April was 14.9 degrees Celsius (58.8 Fahrenheit), that is 3 degrees Celsius above the average. AEMET said average maximum temperatures during the month were up by 4.7 Celsius. Rainfall was a fifth of what would normally be expected in the month, making it the driest April on record in Spain.


Seattle Public Library announces plan for young adults nationwide to access banned books. Seattle Public Library has announced a plan for teens and young adults across the United States to access books and audiobooks, including books that may have been banned in their local community. The program is called Books Unbanned and it invites teens and young adults, aged 13 to 26, to access the library’s entire collection of thousands of e-books and audiobooks…The library said that no one will be told about what books are checked out. — Way to go Seattle Public Library


Start mammograms at 40, not 50, a US health panel recommends. Women should start getting every-other-year mammograms at age 40 instead of waiting until 50, according to a draft recommendation from a federal task force.


Workers Say It’s Harder to Get Things Done Now. Here’s Why. If you ever wonder why it can feel there’s no time to accomplish anything at work, consider this: Many of us spend the equivalent of two workdays a week in meetings and on email.


Wendy’s, Google Train Next-Generation Order Taker: an AI Chatbot. Wendy’s is automating its drive-through service using an artificial-intelligence chatbot powered by natural-language software developed by Google and trained to understand the myriad ways customers order off the menu.


Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.


Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.


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