US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3954

On June 06 2016 05:30 zlefin wrote:

you sure you're talking about the right la raza group? the one the judge is a part of, and not the other group that also uses the la raza name?

On June 06 2016 05:42 DeepElemBlues wrote:
they're pretty much all connected formally or informally. the la raza lawyers group of san diego the judge is a member of is not an official affiliate of the national council of la raza but it is a part of the larger la raza lawyers of california group which is affiliated with the national council of la raza. people moving in the same circles etc. which would not be acceptable if it were the white lawyers group of san diego a part of the white lawyers group of california which is affiliated with the aryan brotherhood or whatever.

Curiel, however, has no affiliation with this group whatsoever. He is a member of La Raza Lawyers of California – aka the Latino Bar Association of California. They have absolutely no affiliation with National Council of La Raza. As far as I can tell, they appear to be a pretty garden variety special interest lawyers association. Every state has these chapters for Hispanic lawyers, black lawyers, women lawyers, Mormon lawyers, Christian lawyers, Jewish lawyers – you name it, there is a lawyer association for it in every state. They have meetings, everyone comes and eat lunch together, and they serve pretty much exclusively the function of networking, which is the lifeblood of legal business generation.

Forged letters and flyers appearing at gas stations and post offices in tribal lands in Utah are spreading false information about a proposal to create a national monument that protects Native American land.

The proposed Bears Ears national monument, named for the Bears Ears Buttes in south-eastern Utah, would cover up to 1.9m acres of land that is culturally significant to Native American tribes. The land is considered sacred to tribe members, and it contains more than 100,000 archaeological sites and structures.

Supporters of the monument say the fake documents are an attempt to misinform Native Americans and undermine efforts to safeguard the land. Posted on bulletin boards, the documents include a fake letter from Sally Jewell, the interior secretary, stating that about 4m acres of the Navajo reservation will “revert” to the federal government.

The Department of the Interior said last month that Jewell sent no such letter, and that “President Obama has no intentions of reducing the size of the Navajo reservation”.

The false documents also include a flyer announcing that Jewell and Barack Obama will travel to the area in July to attend a party celebrating the designation, but that “no Utah Navajos are invited” to attend.

Cynthia Wilson, community outreach coordinator for Utah Diné Bikéyah, a not-for-profit group working to conserve lands significant to Native Americans, said the documents were “very misleading”. She said she worried people would “get the wrong idea of what the Bears Ears national monument designation would do”.

Wilson first noticed one of the documents when she stopped at a gas station in the town of Mexican Hat and saw a flyer posted on a bulletin board. She suspected there could be more, so she drove to the nearest post office, in the town of Bluff, and saw more posted with printouts that people could take with them.

On June 06 2016 05:42 DeepElemBlues wrote:


they're pretty much all connected formally or informally. the la raza lawyers group of san diego the judge is a member of is not an official affiliate of the national council of la raza but it is a part of the larger la raza lawyers of california group which is affiliated with the national council of la raza. people moving in the same circles etc. which would not be acceptable if it were the white lawyers group of san diego a part of the white lawyers group of california which is affiliated with the aryan brotherhood or whatever.

They were among the nation’s top priorities for deportation, criminals who were supposed to be sent back to their home countries. But instead they were released, one by one, in secret across the United States. Federal officials said that many of the criminals posed little threat to the public, but did little to verify whether that was true.

It wasn’t.

A Globe review of 323 criminals released in New England from 2008 to 2012 found that as many as 30 percent committed new offenses, including rape, attempted murder, and child molestation — a rate that is markedly higher than Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have suggested to Congress in the past.

The names of these criminals have never before been made public and are coming to light now only because the Globe sued the federal government for the list of criminals immigration authorities returned to neighborhoods across the country. A judge ordered the names released in 2013, and the Globe then undertook the work that the federal government didn’t, scouring court records to find out how many released criminals reoffended.

The Globe has also published, in conjunction with this story, a searchable database of the thousands of names that were disclosed to the news organization, so that crime victims, law enforcement officials, and managers of sex offender registries — who are often unaware of these releases — can find out if the criminals may still be in the United States.

Authorities said on Sunday an oil-train derailment and fire has damaged essential city services in a small Oregon town.

The Mosier waste water treatment plant and sewer system are not operational as a result of the spectacular derailment on Friday of 16 of the 96 tank cars on a Union Pacific train.

The area around the train remained evacuated on Sunday, and officials were conducting continuous water and air monitoring.

Authorities were working to clean up an oil sheen in the Columbia river near the scene of the derailment, and the oil inside the remaining tank cars was being moved to trucks.

Residents of Mosier were being asked to boil any water they used for drinking or cooking, as a precaution.

“Today’s priority is focused on safely restoring essential services to the community of Mosier as soon as possible,” incident spokeswoman Judy Smith of the US Environmental Protection Agency said in a statement.

“I want to apologize to the community,” Union Pacific spokeswoman Raquel Espinoza said at a news conference on Saturday, adding that the company would pick up the tab for the response costs. “This is the type of accident we work to prevent every day.”

Including Friday’s incident, at least 26 oil trains have been involved in major fires or derailments during the past decade in the US and Canada, according to Associated Press analysis of accident records from the two countries.

On June 06 2016 06:54 Gorsameth wrote:
Yes the US is big and yes you move around a lot of stuff but why do your trains keep derailing!

On June 06 2016 09:15 farvacola wrote:

Investment in infrastructure has taken a big hit since the delusion behind "small government" began running rampant among state governments.