Our Supreme Court unanimously rules that states and localities must adhere to our Constitution before they can indulge in asset forfeiture shenanigans. To be sure, their ruling won't end asset forfeiture, but it will give defendants a way to argue that seizing their property without being able to convincingly tie them to an actual drug funding network violates our 8th Amendment protections against excessive fines. Maybe one day we'll be able to get our Supreme Court to recognize that seizing property without convicting someone of a crime is itself an excessive fine, but the arc of history surely bends toward justice even when it looks less like an arc and more like a plank.
I'm not sure saying that our "liberal" media have been busy lately "erasing" the positive effects of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela gives us the whole picture, because it sure seems to me that our "liberal" media have never acknowledged these gains! The Chavismos have definitely reduced poverty, illiteracy, malnutrition, and even racism; does that make it OK for the late Mr. Chavez to have demanded (and received) "rule-by-decree" power in 2000 and 2007, for example? No, of course not. But painting the works of the Bolivarian revolution the way our "liberal" media do sure doesn't tell us the whole story, and not least because they all forget to mention U.S. sanctions on Venezuela as the main contributor to Venezuela's economic woes.
Another day, another report showing big corporations getting hundreds of millions of dollars in tax rebates despite making hundreds of millions (or billions) in profits. And another day, another "expert" asserting that corporations should never pay more taxes than they owe because they're supposed to please their shareholders, when the issue is actually that we don't make them owe enough in the first place! Seriously, that statement has almost everything I hate about right-wing argument in it -- the gaslighting, the changing of the goalposts, the tacit admission that they can't win on the merits.
Surprise, surprise, our President talks tough about stopping migrant smugglers while undermining actual efforts to do that. Typical. To be sure, this state of affairs results (at least in this Administration) from overzealousness in one area (deportation) resulting in neglecting another (attacking smuggling rings), but when a man spends so much time talking about how super-awesome he is, you do tend to be less forgiving of his faults, and who could blame you? Besides a ragehead, that is.
When you encounter a poll indicating that Sen. Mitch McConnell's poll numbers are seriously underwater just 20 months before he goes before the voters again, you may remember we were at this point in 2013, also, and he went on to paste his opponent -- you remember his opponent, Alison Lundergran Grimes, the one who refused to say whether she voted for Barack Obama for President? Lesson: if Democrats won't put up someone people will want to vote for, then Mob Boss Mitch will cruise to another term, no matter how little Kentuckians seem to like him.
Finally, with his Administration's own climate change assessment and intelligence community having the temerity to tell him things he doesn't want to hear, our President is putting together another climate change panel, to be headed up by an unregenerate climate change denier who has said -- sit down for this one! -- that the "demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler." Just like! Remember how we kicked carbon dioxide out of our schools, segregated it into its own ghettoes, boycotted and vandalized its shops, made it wear yellow Stars of David, and then froze its property and assets when it tried to leave for other lands? When they say a little learning makes a man dangerous, this must be what they mean.
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