Imagine losing your job because you forgot to take your TDS pill and had an episode at work

She lucky Eric decided not to press charges on her, he too nice.




A waitress at the upscale Aviary cocktail bar in ChicagoÂ’s West Loop was taken into Secret Service custody Tuesday night for allegedly spitting on Eric Trump.

She was immediately handcuffed and detained by the Secret Service and the Chicago police, , according to the New York Times. She was released after about two hours when Trump, son of President Donald Trump, decided not to press charges.

The Secret Service has declined to comment on the incident.

However, Eric Trump told the conservative website Breitbart that “it was purely a disgusting act by somebody who clearly has emotional problems."

Anthony Guglielmi, a Chicago Police Department spokesman, confirmed on Twitter that local officers assisted the Secret Service at the bar but declined to discuss what happened.

“Any and all inquiries regarding a federal protectee must be directed to the Secret Service,” he said.


 https://www.masslive.com/ .. ric-trump.html

The latest report from journalist Murray Waas in the New York Review of Books offers damning new details about a letter that President Donald Trump drafted that explicitly linked the firing of former FBI Director James Comey to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Waas, who claims that he has personally examined the draft, reports that the original draft of TrumpÂ’s letter justifying ComeyÂ’s dismissal made it plain that he was displeased with the FBI for investigating whether the Trump campaign helped Russia interfere in the election.


Specifically, Trump made reference to “the fabricated and politically-motivated allegations of a Trump-Russia relationship with respect to the 2016 Presidential Election” in his letter — although this line was later deleted at the urging of officials at the Department of Justice, including former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

In fact, Waas writes that Rosenstein agreed to write a cover story for the president that cited ComeyÂ’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe as a justification for his termination.




“At the time he did so, Rosenstein fully understood that the president’s primary reason for firing Comey was related to the Russia investigation,” Waas writes. “He also knew from the draft that the president wanted McCabe removed as well.”

Read the full report here.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet with U.S. President Donald Trump on the sidelines of an international summit in Japan, the Kremlin said Wednesday, in talks that come amid bitter differences between Moscow and Washington.

Trump has said he plans to meet with Putin during the Group of 20 summit in Osaka, and Putin has said he welcomes dialogue and is ready to sit down for talks. Wednesday's statement by Putin's foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, marked the official Kremlin confirmation of the two presidents' meeting on Friday.


Ushakov said the meeting is set to last about an hour, though it will be up to the presidents to decide. He added that the talks are expected to touch on arms control issues and international crises, including the Iranian nuclear deal, Syria, North Korea and Ukraine.




"Russia and the United States can work together efficiently on the basis of equality and mutual respect," Ushakov said, adding that the Kremlin "stands for developing Russian-U.S. relations in a constructive and businesslike way."

Russia-U.S. ties have sunk to their lowest level since the Cold War over the crisis in Ukraine, the war in Syria and Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Putin has denied that Russia has meddled in the vote to help Trump win, even though U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller has uncovered extensive evidence to the contrary.

Putin and Trump have met on the sidelines of several international meetings, most recently at the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires last fall. They also had a full-fledged summit in Helsinki, Finland last July, after which Trump had faced fierce criticism at home for accepting Putin's denial of meddling in the U.S. vote.


New rounds of anti-Russia sanctions followed the Helsinki meeting, and Trump has announced the withdrawal from a key arms control pact signed in 1987 with the then Soviet Union. Putin followed suit. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is set to terminate this summer, raising fears of a new arms race.

Another major nuclear pact — the New Start treaty that entered force in 2012 — is set to expire in 2021 unless Moscow and Washington negotiate an extension.

Ushakov said that both arms treaties are expected to be on the agenda of Friday's meeting.

Fyodor Lukyanov, the chairman of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policies, an influential group of Russian foreign policy experts, said that the past meetings of the two presidents have fueled more infighting in the U.S. and further clouded ties between Moscow and Washington.



"All that has led to nothing and the U.S. has shown an utter lack of respect" that has made Kremlin realize that a rapprochement is elusive, Lukyanov said. "Making a bargain with Trump is a myth. Trump acts in a tough environment that makes any serious deals unlikely."


 https://www.sfgate.com/ne .. 0-14050632.php

 https://www.insideedition .. standoff-53965




Terrifying video shows the tense moment a group of bikers confronted a family during a road rage incident.

The footage taken in Silverado Canyon, California, shows the bikers pulling in front of the family's vehicle, blocking it from passing. The driver, Lee Vogel, honks in an attempt to get them to move, but the bikers just sit there.

Vogel, who was driving his girlfriend and 6-year-old daughter, tries to pull around the bikers — but they cut him off again and even give him the finger.

"I got very nervous and very worried for my family," Vogel told Inside Edition. "You just don't know what's about to happen. ... I thought I was going to be pulled out of my car against my will."

One of the bikers — a woman — then approaches the vehicle.

"What's your f***ing problem?" she says.

"You guys did not see us coming, all right?" Vogel's girlfriend is heard saying, before adding, "Guys, guys, our kid is in here."

Vogel tells the group that he got the whole incident on camera. The female biker becomes so enraged that the other bikers have to pull her away.

"It really scared the heck out of my daughter," Vogel said. "It was a really traumatic day for her, to be honest."

The startling incident is reminding many of the famous road rage incident on New York City's West Side Highway in 2013 when a family in a Range Rover found themselves blocked by bikers.

In that case, the terrified driver took off, plowing into the bikers, including one who was left paralyzed. The bikers gave chase, eventually catching up with the car before busting out a window and beating up the driver in front of his wife and daughter. The driver, who was not charged, needed 20 stitches

SHANGHAI — A number of the United States’ biggest chip makers have sold millions of dollars of products to Huawei despite a Trump administration ban on the sale of American technology to the Chinese telecommunications giant, according to four people with knowledge of the sales.

Since the Commerce Department enacted the ban in May, American companies including Intel and Micron have found ways to sell technology to Huawei, said the people, who spoke on the condition they not be named because they were not authorized to disclose the sales.

The components began to flow to Huawei about three weeks ago, the people said. Goods produced by American companies overseas are not always considered American-made, and the suppliers are taking advantage of this. The sales will help Huawei continue to sell products such as smartphones and servers.

The deals underscore how difficult it is for the Trump administration to clamp down on companies that it considers a national security threat, like Huawei. They also hint at the possible unintended consequences from altering the web of trade relationships that ties together the world’s electronics industry and global commerce.


American companies like Intel may sell technology supporting current Huawei products until mid-August.

American companies like Intel may sell technology supporting current Huawei products until mid-August.CreditAly Song/Reuters
The Commerce Department’s move to block sales to Huawei, by putting it on a so-called entity list, set off confusion within the Chinese company and its many American suppliers, the people said. Many executives lacked deep experience with American trade controls, leading to initial suspensions in shipments to Huawei until lawyers could puzzle out which products could be sent. Decisions about what can and cannot be shipped were also often run by the Commerce Department.

American companies may sell technology supporting current Huawei products until mid-August. But a ban on components for future Huawei products is already in place. It’s not clear what percentage of the current sales were for future products. The sales have most likely already totaled hundreds of millions of dollars, the people estimated.

While the Trump administration has been aware of the sales, officials are split about how to respond, the people said. Some officials feel that the sales violate the spirit of the law and undermine government efforts to pressure Huawei, while others are more supportive because it lightens the blow of the ban for American corporations. Huawei has said it buys around $11 billion in technology from United States companies each year.

Intel and Micron declined to comment.

“As we have discussed with the U.S. government, it is now clear some items may be supplied to Huawei consistent with the entity list and applicable regulations,” John Neuffer, the president of the Semiconductor Industry Association, wrote in a statement on Friday.

“Each company is impacted differently based on their specific products and supply chains, and each company must evaluate how best to conduct its business and remain in compliance.”


The Idaho-based Micron competes with South Korean companies like Samsung to supply memory chips that go into Huawei’s smartphones.CreditKai Pfaffenbach/Reuters

In an earnings call Tuesday afternoon, Micron’s chief executive, Sanjay Mehrotra, said the company stopped shipments to Huawei after the Commerce Department’s action last month. But it resumed sales about two weeks ago after Micron reviewed the entity list rules and “determined that we could lawfully resume” shipping a subset of products, Mr. Mehrotra said. “However, there is considerable ongoing uncertainty around the Huawei situation,” he added.

A spokesman for the Commerce Department, in response to questions about the sales to Huawei, referred to a section of the official notice about the company being added to the entity list, including that the purpose was to “prevent activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.”

The fate of Huawei, a crown jewel of Chinese innovation and technological prowess, has become a symbol of the economic and security standoff between the United States and China. The Trump administration has warned that Chinese companies like Huawei, which makes telecom networking equipment, could intercept or secretly divert information to China. Huawei has denied those charges.

President Xi Jinping of China and President Trump are expected to have an “extended” talk this week during the Group of 20 meetings in Japan, a sign that the two countries are again seeking a compromise after trade discussions broke down in May. After the talks stalled, the Trump administration announced new restrictions on Chinese technology companies.

While the Trump administration has pointed to security and legal concerns to justify its actions, some analysts have worried that Huawei and other Chinese tech companies were becoming pawns in the trade negotiations. Along with Huawei, the administration blocked a Chinese supercomputer maker from buying American tech, and it is considering adding the surveillance technology company Hikvision to the list.


The SK Hynix plant in Icheon, South Korea. American companies are worried about losing market share to foreign rivals.CreditPool photo by Kim Min-hee

Kevin Wolf, a former Commerce Department official and partner at the law firm Akin Gump, has advised several American technology companies that supply Huawei. He said he told executives that Huawei’s addition to the list did not prevent American suppliers from continuing sales, as long as the goods and services weren’t made in the United States.

A chip, for example, can still be supplied to Huawei if it is manufactured outside the United States and doesn’t contain technology that can pose national security risks. But there are limits on sales from American companies. If the chip maker provides services from the United States for troubleshooting or instruction on how to use the product, for example, the company would not be able to sell to Huawei even if the physical chip were made overseas, Mr. Wolf said.

“This is not a loophole or an interpretation because there is no ambiguity,” he said. “It’s just esoteric.”

In some cases, American companies aren’t the only source of important technology, but they want to avoid losing Huawei’s valuable business to a foreign rival. For instance, the Idaho-based Micron competes with South Korean companies like Samsung and SK Hynix to supply memory chips that go into Huawei’s smartphones. If Micron is unable to sell to Huawei, orders could easily be shifted to those rivals.

Beijing has also pressured American companies. This month, the Chinese government said it would create an “unreliable entities list” to punish companies and individuals it perceived as damaging Chinese interests. The following week, China’s chief economic planning agency summoned foreign executives, including representatives from Microsoft, Dell and Apple. It warned them that cutting off sales to Chinese companies could lead to punishment and hinted that the companies should lobby the United States government to stop the bans. The stakes are high for some of the American companies, like Apple, which relies on China for many sales and for much of its production.

A FedEx warehouse in Kernersville, N.C. “FedEx is a transportation company, not a law enforcement agency,” the company said in a complaint against the government.CreditTravis Dove for The New York Times

Mr. Wolf said several companies had scrambled to figure out how to continue sales to Huawei, with some businesses considering a total shift of manufacturing and services of some products overseas. The escalating trade battle between the United States and China is “causing companies to fundamentally rethink their supply chains,” he added.

That could mean that American companies shift their know-how, on top of production, outside the United States, where it would be less easy for the government to control, said Martin Chorzempa, a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

“American companies can move some things out of China if that’s problematic for their supply chain, but they can also move the tech development out of the U.S. if that becomes problematic,” he said. “And China remains a large market.”

“Some of the big winners might be other countries,” Mr. Chorzempa said.

Some American companies have complained that complying with the tight restrictions is difficult or impossible, and will take a toll on their business.

On Monday, FedEx filed a lawsuit against the federal government, claiming that the Commerce Department’s rules placed an “impossible burden” on a company like FedEx to know the origin and technological makeup of all the shipments it handles.

FedEx’s complaint didn’t name Huawei specifically. But it said that the agency’s rules that have prohibited exporting American technology to Chinese companies placed “an unreasonable burden on FedEx to police the millions of shipments that transit our network every day.”

“FedEx is a transportation company, not a law enforcement agency,” the company said.

A Commerce Department spokesman said it had not yet reviewed FedEx’s complaint but would defend the agency’s role in protecting national security.

U.S. Tech Companies Sidestep a Trump Ban, to Keep Selling to Huawei  https://nyti.ms/2KEDcpo

ITS HAPPENING

 https://www.breitbart.com .. he-wall-chant/


I know this one is gonna trigger a lot of the emasculated snowflakes so enjoy!

In a disturbing new poll, the Public Religion Research Institute finds that “while at least two thirds of Americans oppose allowing small business owners to refuse products or services to minority groups based on their religious beliefs, a small but increasing proportion of Americans think it should be permissible to turn away customers based on their sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, or race.”

As one might expect, the big uptick in those willing to refuse service comes among Republicans, but Democrats aren’t immune from the trend to declare that one’s religion permits discrimination against others. “From 2014 to 2019, the partisan gap on this issue has dramatically increased. Nearly half (47%) of Republicans favor such a policy, which is more than double the 21% who favored the policy in 2014. By contrast, today only 18% of Democrats and 24% of independents support these kind of religiously based service refusals. These numbers are also an increase from 2014, when only 11% of Democrats and 16% of independents agreed.”

The difference between the parties is stark:

● More than one in five (22%) Americans say small businesses should be able to refuse to serve Muslims on religious grounds. Men are more likely than women to agree (25% vs. 20%). Around three in ten white evangelical Protestants (32%) and white mainline Protestants (28%) say small businesses should be allowed to refuse to serve Muslims for religious reasons, compared to around one in five nonwhite Protestants (21%), Catholics (19%), and the religiously unaffiliated (17%) who say the same.

● Republicans are more than twice as likely as Democrats to support religiously based refusals to serve gay or lesbian people (47% vs. 18%), transgender people (44% vs. 19%), atheists (37% vs. 17%), and Muslims (32% vs. 14%).


And now 19 percent (up from 12 percent) say it is fine to deny service to Jews, and 15 percent (up from 10 percent) say it is acceptable to deny service to African Americans.

Let’s be clear: President Trump and his evangelical fan base have never been interested in religious freedom, but rather in domination of their own religious beliefs. One cannot favor the Muslim travel ban, suggest Muslims cannot be members of Congress and continue to blame Muslims for terrorist attacks in the United States when, in fact, all terrorist-related deaths in 2018 came at the hands of right-wing extremists and white supremacists. When the president tells the country there were some “very fine” people on both sides in Charlottesville, he empowers racists.

This PRRI poll is not the only troubling sign that Trump’s xenophobic, nationalistic and racist rhetoric has had an impact on popular opinion. In April, the Anti-Defamation League released its survey. “The U.S. Jewish community experienced near-historic levels of anti-Semitism in 2018, including a doubling of anti-Semitic assaults and the single deadliest attack against the Jewish community in American history,” the ADL found. “ADL’s annual Audit of Anti-Semitic incidents recorded a total of 1,879 attacks against Jews and Jewish institutions across the country in 2018, the third-highest year on record since ADL started tracking such data in the 1970s.” The fear of replacement by Jews and those immigrants they assist — whipped up by Trump’s rhetoric and scaremongering about M-13 and “caravans” — was the motive for the Pittsburgh massacre, the deadliest attack on American Jews ever.

Trump has referred to immigrants fleeing violence in their home country as “animals,” likening their arrival to an “infestation.” No wonder the administration’s lawyers feel entitled to argue in court that children in their custody don’t need basic necessities. Once you dehumanize a group, you give license to abuse and mistreat them.


Out of this boiling cauldron of hate, up pops former House speaker Paul D. Ryan to claim that Trump is just terrific since he stands up for the "forgotten man.” Actually, he’s played into their victimology, which convinces them that white males — not women, not LBGTQ Americans, not people of color — are the real victims and therefore have the right to shove back against minority groups. They aren’t “forgotten” but rather encouraged to spew bile, discriminate against minorities and redefine themselves as the “real Americans.” Ryan can rationalize his enabling of a hateful, racist president all he likes, but in fact without the compliance of Republicans like Ryan, Trump’s assault on transgender troops, immigrants, Muslims and others could not take place.

Democrats like to say of the Trump era that “this [racism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, etc.] is not who we are.” But that’s exactly what a growing segment of mostly, but not exclusively, Republicans think about their fellow Americans. Role models matter. Political speech matters. Most of all, elections matter, and unless this trend meets with your approval, it’s incumbent on all Americans of good will to throw Trump, his enablers and his “blood and soil” nationalist ideology out.

Known as "Foodie Calls", two studies were conducted on this topic. The first conducted with 820 women, and the second with 327. 23% of the women copped to it in the first study, 33% in the second. Both studies consisted of women who identify as heterosexual admitted to the fact that they've gone on dates with men and faked romantic interest solely to get a free meal out of it. Foodie calls may happen when moneyÂ’s tight, the grocery store doesn't have anything interesting to you, or a must-try entree is just too extravagant to justify paying for.

Researchers Brian Collisson, Jennifer Howell, and Trista Harig also noted that the woman who felt dating for food was socially acceptable were more likely to exhibit the “dark triad” of personality traits. The traits are psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism.

Foodie callers were also found more likely to engage in manipulative behavior as well as one-night stands, faking orgasms, or sending unsolicited sexual pictures.

A recent poll of US citizens found shocking support for a preemptive nuclear strike against North Korea, with one-third of all respondents endorsing it. Supporters of US President Donald Trump were “particularly likely” to support a nuclear strike.

The US is the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons in war - two bombings of major Japanese cities in August 1945 killed over 200,000 Japanese civilians. If a new poll conducted by YouGov and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is any indicator, the American appetite for what the pollsters called “atomic attraction” still burns as bright as a mushroom cloud.

The online February poll asked 3,000 Americans about six possible scenarios for a nuclear exchange between the United States and the Democratic PeopleÂ’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), with variables including the probability that Pyongyang would be able to retaliate to a US strike and the deaths the two sides would suffer, both civilian and military.

While two-thirds of the respondents wouldnÂ’t support a preemptive attack on North Korea if it had a missile capable of delivering a nuclear weapon to US shores, nearly one in three would.

“For many of these hawks, support for an attack, even in a preventive war, does not significantly decrease when the story says that the United States would use nuclear weapons that are expected to kill 1 million North Korean civilians,” authors Alida Haworth and Scott Sagan of Stanford University and Benjamin Valentino of Dartmouth College wrote in a report on the study.

“As we have previously found, the US public exhibits only limited aversion to nuclear weapons use and a shocking willingness to support the killing of enemy civilians,” they wrote.

The poll was conducted by giving respondents one of six fake news stories about a “surprise North Korean missile test” and the responses being weighed by Pentagon brass and White House leaders, then asking them about how they would respond to that course of action:

The six scenarios were:

A US conventional airstrike has a 90% chance of succeeding, with a 10% chance the DPRK could retaliate, but only against US troops and South Korea. The strike could result in the deaths of 13,500 American servicemembers and 305,000 South Koreans, as well as 5,000 North Korean civilians and 10,000 military personnel.
Same as above, but North Korea also has a 10% chance to retaliate against three US cities, which would kill 300,000 Americans.
A US conventional airstrike has only 50% chance of succeeding, giving a 50% chance of retaliation against three US cities. Same death tolls as above.

Same as option 4, but with an additional 1 million North Korean civilians and 100,000 military personnel being killed.
The US attack is not pre-emptive, but in response to an attack on a US Navy ship off the coast of Korea.

Respondents were asked whether they would prefer to carry out the attack scenario presented as well as if they would approve of such an attack, regardless of their preference, if the US president ordered it. They were also given the opportunity to explain their preference or approval in their own words.

“In all of the preventive war scenarios, the majority of respondents preferred not to strike, instead of launching a large-scale US conventional or nuclear attack,” the study found.

However, in the sixth scenario, when a US Navy ship was attacked first, 52% preferred and 59% approved of a massive US conventional retaliation against North Korea - a phenomenon the authors dubbed “rallying around the flag.”

 https://sputniknews.com/w .. n-north-korea/

Lt. j.g. Michael D. McNeil is serving a 10-year prison term for attempted online enticement of a minor. Yet the Navy still tapped him to run a department


 https://www.militarytimes .. partment-head/


Lt. j.g. Michael Douglas McNeil recently joined dozens of other junior surface warfare officers in getting selected to be a future department head.

The list of those eligible for the afloat position was released Friday by Navy Personnel Command.

But whether news of this career milestone reached the 31-year-old in federal prison remains unknown.

McNeil is currently serving a bid for trying to arrange sex with a 12-year-old deaf girl and is locked up until 2027 at a low-security facility in Texarkana, Texas.

Still active duty and still listed as being assigned to the guided-missile destroyer Lassen, McNeil was sentenced to 10 years in March by a federal judge in Florida



An eagle-eyed reader first alerted Navy Times to McNeilÂ’s inclusion on the list, and Military Times brought it up with the Navy.

When asked why McNeil was tapped as a future department head, Navy officials said his record hadnÂ’t been updated when the board convened



The “civil action report” denoting that McNeil had been convicted had not made its way into his personnel file when the board met, according to Navy Personnel Command spokeswoman Cmdr. Krin Burzynski.

“Only the information contained in a military record is considered at a selection board,” she said in an email Tuesday. “Any outside information that is not part of the official record cannot be considered or introduced. As such, Lt. j.g. McNeil was selected based on the available information at the time of the board.”

The Navy is in the process of administratively separating McNeil, she said.

McNeil likely won’t stay on the list because a future board “will review the records of all previously screened officers for any deviation from the ‘best and fully qualified’ standard,” according to Burzynski.

“Officers are removed, or de-screened, from promotion and selection status depending on the decision of the board members after they have reviewed any newly introduced, adverse information in the officer’s official record,” she said. “The Navy reviews the records and status of all officers to ensure only the ‘best and fully qualified’ are selected.”

McNeil pleaded guilty in December to one count of attempted online enticement of a minor.

As part of his plea deal, he waived his right to a Navy board of inquiry and will receive an “other than honorable” discharge.

The SWO department head board looks at officers with three to five years of commissioned service, and there are several years between selection and the beginning of a department head tour, Burzynski said

A Minneapolis murderer and serial rapist, Darrell Rea, slipped through the fingers of local law enforcement for decades after killing 17-year-old Lorri Mesedahl in 1983—sexually abusing his stepdaughters and raping two more women in the years that followed. On Tuesday, in Hennepin County District Court, Rea was sentenced to 10 years and one month in prison for the second-degree murder of Mesedahl with intent, under Minnesota’s sentencing guidelines from the early 1980s. He will likely serve just over five years before being released under supervision. He is 64 years old.

Rea denied involvement in MesedahlÂ’s death and did not express remorse in the courtroom. (Through his lawyer before the sentencing, Rea broadly denied the criminal accusations against him and declined to answer specific questions or comment further on allegations.)

As detailed in my investigation published this week, Rea could be not be charged for either the rapes of Barbara Briggs or Mary-Scott Hunter, even though there is DNA evidence linking him to the assaults, because of the three-year statute of limitations in effect when the attacks took place. (A similar situation is facing magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll, who last week accused President Donald Trump of raping her in a New York department store in the mid 1990s, according to former Bronx sex crimes prosecutor Roger Canaff.)

Hennepin County prosecutors also declined to charged the sexual abuse of ReaÂ’s stepdaughters, Monique Stevens and Naomie Rondo, which started in the late 1970s.

“Darrell won the game,” said Del Young, Mesedahl’s stepbrother, through tears in his victim impact statement to Judge Tamara Garcia on Tuesday morning. “No matter what happens in this court here today.”

In coming to Rea’s guilty verdict last month, Judge Garcia considered evidence from the 1988 attack on Briggs, whom Rea raped and stabbed in the neck. Still, Briggs was not permitted to read her victim impact statement aloud in the courtroom this week, but she shared it in writing with the judge. “I have come to the conclusion I will never see justice,” she wrote. “This 10 year sentence is just enough to get him madder. A slap on the wrist.” She signed it: “scarred, sad, and feeling hopeless at times.”



Stevens and Rondo, Rea’s stepdaughters, gripped each other’s hands tightly in the courtroom. They too submitted victim impact statements to the judge, but were not permitted to read the statements aloud. “I get out of bed every morning and tell myself I am going to face the day,” Stevens wrote. “I am not going to let this man define me. I am not going to let what happened to me, define who I am.”

“The abuse I suffered changed who I became and shaped my personality,” wrote Rondo. She added, “I am a fighter and refuse to let the abuse control me.”

Just before she read Rea’s sentence, Judge Garcia acknowledged their statements, telling the courtroom, “I would like all of you who wrote to me to know that I have heard each and every one of you.”

Hunter, who was raped by Rea in 1987, told me she is glad she did not have to deliver a victim impact statement in court. “I am not afraid to be vulnerable with people, but I consider it a sign of trust (or a leap of humanistic faith) when I am,” she wrote to me recently. “I believe that when folks are willingly and honestly vulnerable with each other, it’s a real gift. And, for obvious reasons, he doesn’t deserve that from me.”

Though Rea’s sentencing concludes the Mesedahl murder case, the law enforcement team that investigated the crime—and other crimes by Rea—isn’t done. “I think any investigator who worked, even touched this case, or knows anything about it, would agree that the probability that there are other victims out there, either living or dead, is probably pretty good,” Minneapolis Police Sergeant Chris Karakostas told me. As I detail in the investigation:

Now that Rea has been convicted of murder, he will be legally obligated to hand over a new DNA sample. And unlike the bloodstain from Briggs’ shirt, this one will be uploaded to the FBI’s national database. From now on, it will be automatically compared to unknown DNA from crime scenes across the country. When Rea’s DNA enters the system, Karakostas will be waiting to see if more hits come back from cases outside Minnesota. One day, he speculates, there could be another prosecution. In that future case, a judge could rule that the experiences of Hunter and Stevens count as corroborating evidence. Maybe they could still get some kind of day in court. “There’s a lot of women out there that really don’t have some justice for what happened to them,” Karakostas says.

Just before Rea entered the courtroom Tuesday, Karie Gibson, a member of the FBI’s behavioral analysis unit and part of the law enforcement team that worked on the Mesedahl case, leaned over to speak to me. “I don’t think today’s the last day we’ll be hearing about him,” she said.

Read the full investigation here.

 https://www.motherjones.c .. er-sentencing/

Illinois has just become the 11th state to legalize marijuana. Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Tuesday signed into law a legalization bill passed with bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate late last month.

With that signature, Illinois became the first state to get a marijuana legalization bill all the way through the legislative process this year, and it became the first state to create a system of taxed and regulated marijuana commerce through the legislative process rather than through a voter initiative (VermontÂ’s legislature legalized pot possession and cultivation but not sales in early 2018).

After the Senate approved the bill, the House concurred on the last day of the legislative session.

“The state of Illinois just made history, legalizing adult-use cannabis with the most equity-centric approach in the nation,” Pritzker said in a statement upon passage of the bill. “This will have a transformational impact on our state, creating opportunity in the communities that need it most and giving so many a second chance.”

Once the law goes into effect on January 1, Illinois residents 21 and over will be able to legally possess 30 grams of marijuana, 5 grams of concentrate, or 500 milligrams of THC in a marijuana-infused product. Out-of-staters will only be able to possess up to 15 grams of marijuana.

The right to grow oneÂ’s own plants, however, was sacrificed in a bid to assuage critics and get the bill over the hump. The bill originally allowed for the home cultivation of up to five plants, but the loud opposition of law enforcement, who worried that it would make it more difficult to find illegal growers, along with Republican lawmakers and other interests, got that taken out.



Washington is the only other legal adult-use marijuana state that does not allow home cultivation.

It also took weakening of the expungement provision in the bill to bring some needed Republicans on board. When the bill was rolled out in the first week of May, it included language that would have created automatic expungement of criminal records for marijuana offenses that will no longer be a crime, but Republicans objected. Instead, bill sponsors agreed to language that removed automatic expungement and replaced it with language allowing the governor to pardon past offenses “with permission to expunge,” but that will then require the filing of a petition to get it done, making it likely that many past pot offenders will not get their records expunged.

Excluding home grows and scaling back expungement was enough to get Republicans such as Rep. David Welter (R-Morris) on board, and that handful of GOP votes ensured passage of the bill.

“I’m a father of three from a rural district, and I’m standing before you supporting this bill because I do not believe the current policy that we have out there right now is working,” Welter said during House debate. “Prohibition doesn’t work, and we see that. Putting safeguards in place, taxing, regulating it, I believe provides a better market and a safer market.”

The new law creates a system of licensed commercial cultivation operations and retail shops, while also setting up a social equity program to help minority businesses enter the emerging industry. That program will deploy grants and loans to such businesses, as well as establishing a grant fund to aid the communities most disproportionately affected by the war on drugs.

Legal marijuana is expected to generate some $87 million in tax revenues for the coming budget year, with $30 million going into a marijuana business development fund and $57 million headed for general revenues. That money will first pay for regulatory expenses and costs related to expungement. After that, the pot dollars will be divided among the general fund (35 percent), community grants (25 percent), mental health and substance abuse programs (20 percent), paying down the stateÂ’s budget deficit (10 percent), supporting law enforcement (8 percent), and public education (2 percent).

Cook County StateÂ’s Attorney Kim Foxx cheered the passage of the bill even though the expungement provisions were weakened, and vowed to fight to undo damage done by overzealous prosecutors in search of drug convictions.

“I applaud the Illinois General Assembly for passing legislation that legalizes recreational cannabis and provides conviction relief to hundreds of thousands of Illinoisans with low-level charges of cannabis possession,” she said in a statement. “As prosecutors who implemented these convictions, we must own our role in the harm they have caused and we should play a role in reversing them. The failed war on drugs has disproportionately impacted communities of color, and my office will continue to explore ways to provide the broadest relief possible, beyond that provided by this legislation.”

This year has been something of a disappointment for marijuana reformers, with much-touted legalization efforts in states such as Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York stalling out. Illinois was considered something of a dark horse, but now it has beaten everyone else across the finish line.

And the Drug Policy Alliance, which worked hard and ultimately unsuccessfully to try to get that New York bill passed, has taken notice.

“Illinois state representatives had the courage to pass comprehensive marijuana justice—and made it their priority before the close of their legislative session,” said DPA New York deputy director Melissa Moore. Too bad Empire State politicians couldn’t get it together like their Midwest colleagues.

Whether any other state can still get it done this year or not, the fabric of marijuana prohibition grows increasingly frayed. Thoroughly shredded on the West Coast and tattered in the Northeast, it now has a big hole in the heart of the Midwest with Illinois joining Michigan as a legal weed state.

And there’s always next year, where voters in remaining initiative states will have an opportunity to get it done themselves—without having to deal with cumbersome legislative processes where a single committee chairman can kill a bill or with recalcitrant lawmakers still stuck in the last century.

This article was produced by Drug Reporter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

The Drug Policy Alliance is a funder of Drug Reporter.

 https://www.alternet.org/ .. zes-marijuana/

As presidential candidates have campaigned off of Trump administration immigration policies, last week Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) reportedly used his email list not to ask for donations but rather warn voters in cities targeted for proposed Immigration and Customers Enforcement (ICE) raids.

The top-tier 2020 candidate sent an email with the subject line "ICE raids targetting 10 cities start Sunday. Know Your rights," using its campaign list, according to Vox.

The Saturday morning email also reportedly included graphics in English and Spanish with a list of immigrant rights.

The Hill has reached out to the Sanders campaign for comment.

Trump called for the ICE raids that would have deported as many as 2,000 migrant families, but ultimately delayed them "at the request of Democrats," following a reported phone call with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)

Vox reports it's not the first time Sanders used his campaign list to mobilize without seeking donations.

Sanders has fairly consistently remained near the top of the crowded primary field since announcing his candidacy, trailing frontrunner former Vice President Joe Biden.

Sanders and Biden will participate in the second night of the first Democratic primary debate Thursday in Miami, along with eight other contestants. Ten more are debating on Wednesday.

 https://thehill.com/homen .. e-raids-report