US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7847

On June 13 2017 14:32 Buckyman wrote:
Is "disabled" part of the gender identity?

On June 13 2017 15:46 Buckyman wrote:
I used to be familiar with the concept of a gender, but then it changed.

On June 13 2017 15:46 Buckyman wrote:
I used to be familiar with the concept of a gender, but then it changed.

The historic meaning of gender, ultimately derived from Latin genus, was of "kind" or "variety". By the 20th century, this meaning was obsolete, and the only formal use of gender was in grammar. This changed in the early 1970s when the work of John Money, particularly the popular college textbook Man & Woman, Boy & Girl, was embraced by feminist theory. This meaning of gender is now prevalent in the social sciences; although in many other contexts, gender includes sex or replaces it.

Late last month, The New York Times published a piece, headlined “Hollywood-Style Heroism Is Latest Trend in Police Videos,” about body camera footage that depicts police officers as paragons of bravery. One video, from the Hamden Police Department in Connecticut, showed an officer pulling a troubled man away from the edge of a building. Another, from the Topeka Police Department in Kansas, showed an officer rescuing a drowning boy from a pond. These videos were not released at the request of journalists or civilians hoping to shed light on police activity. They were instead released by police employees as counter programming — a way to characterize cops positively when tales of “bad apples” overtook the news cycle. “The chief talked to me about how Topeka was really getting beat up in the news with some shootings, some homicides,” an officer told the Times. “Topeka really needed a good story.”

Cops deserve credit when they do good, but these positive police videos emerge as states work to keep less flattering videos hidden.

North Carolina, for example, passed legislation last year excluding body camera video from the public record, so footage is not available through North Carolina’s Public Records Act. That means civilians have no right to view police recordings in the Tar Heel state unless their voice or image was captured in the video.

Louisiana also exempts body camera video from public records laws.

South Carolina will only release body camera footage to criminal defendants and the subjects of recordings.

Kansas classifies body camera video as “criminal investigation documents” available only when investigations are closed. The Topeka Police Department may have wanted positive public relations with the release of its pond rescue video, but if a news outlet had requested that video through Kansas’ Open Records Act, that request would’ve likely been denied.

This opaque state of affairs was not how body cameras were originally pitched. Body cameras have been available to police since at least 2007 when Steve Ward, a salesman for Taser International, broke off from the company, now known as Axon Enterprise. He then formed his own body camera company, Vievu. But body cameras weren’t considered a necessary police tool until the aftermath of Michael Brown’s killing by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014.

As people around the world tried to piece together what occurred in Ferguson between a dead man and a living officer, civilians and police alike began to understand the benefits of body cameras. Representatives of Black Lives Matter called for more body cameras alongside major police organizations. It was a virtually unanimous agreement at first: body cams would hold both police and civilians accountable. But there was a pact underlying those mutual calls — a tacit agreement that taxpayer-purchased body camera videos should be available to taxpayers.

That pact was best explained by police leaders themselves. In a 2014 report from the Police Executive Research Forum, the group’s executive director, Chuck Wexler, wrote that “body-worn camera video footage should be made available to the public upon request not only because the videos are public records but also because doing so enables police departments to demonstrate transparency and openness in their interactions with members of the community.”

The report, released by one of the most respected law enforcement groups in the world, made it clear that body cameras could help police leaders build trust with the communities they served by documenting both the good and the bad. Flattering videos would have to be released along with unflattering ones, videos that exonerated cops along with videos that forced indictments. Transparency was worth it for everyone: civilians would be on camera if they failed to behave themselves in front of cops, and cops would be on camera if they did anything illegal or potentially criminal.

For a while, the rules governing how this would work — how police departments would build policies to let the public view videos and feel comfortable about having a bunch of cops act as roving surveillance cameras — were written by local legislators governing cities. There were good policies and bad, with some cities making it easier than others for civilians to obtain police video. (The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the tech policy group Upturn created a helpful policy scorecard to track which cities were doing what.) But as more police departments spent millions of dollars on body cameras and video storage, police unions, district attorney associations, and other law enforcement lobbying groups began to push for statewide laws restricting transparency. North Carolina, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Kansas, among others, have now instituted counter-transparency body camera laws. Even Missouri — home of Ferguson — classified body camera footage as a “closed record.” If another shooting like the one in Ferguson occurred, and the shooting officer was wearing a body camera, it’s almost certain the footage would be withheld from the public until after a trial.

On June 13 2017 17:48 GreenHorizons wrote:
Danglars are you ever moved by people being oppressed? Because it seems the only stories around these issues you seem to care about is making them seem like they aren't legitimate. Like I don't think you've EVER posted something about oppressed people's rights to draw our attention to oppressed peoples and their oppression. It seems every time you post anything related to oppressed people it's complaining about how they are fighting their oppression.

Is your point in this instance that you support transgender rights but you thought this crossed some line (and those are what you feel isn't represented by others posts), or is it that you don't support transgender rights and so you'll take any opportunity to undermine them?

Because I'm inclined to believe you think you're doing the former, but any and all evidence points towards you doing the latter.

On June 13 2017 13:00 Danglars wrote:

The protestations of open-border and porous-border types are only a slight bonus, I must admit. It would've been solved long ago if the culture produced inveterate Republican voters. But who cares about rule of law when it comes to immigration law, am I right? We're a nation of whoever feels like migrating at this present hour, and the process is more like a set of guidelines.

On June 13 2017 17:48 GreenHorizons wrote:
Danglars are you ever moved by people being oppressed? Because it seems the only stories around these issues you seem to care about is making them seem like they aren't legitimate. Like I don't think you've EVER posted something about oppressed people's rights to draw our attention to oppressed peoples and their oppression. It seems every time you post anything related to oppressed people it's complaining about how they are fighting their oppression.

Is your point in this instance that you support transgender rights but you thought this crossed some line (and those are what you feel isn't represented by others posts), or is it that you don't support transgender rights and so you'll take any opportunity to undermine them?

Because I'm inclined to believe you think you're doing the former, but any and all evidence points towards you doing the latter.

Senior senators in both parties on Monday night reached a bipartisan deal to add new sanctions on Russia and allow Congress to disapprove of any attempt by President Donald Trump to ease penalties on Moscow, the most significant GOP-backed constraint on the White House so far this year.

The agreement negotiated by Foreign Relations and Banking Committee leaders in both parties, with the involvement of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), allows both parties to claim a measure of victory — delivering a legislative win for McConnell while fulfilling the three basic goals Schumer had outlined for a Russia sanctions measure.

The Russia deal, which McConnell teed up for a key vote on Wednesday, would allow for congressional review of any Trump attempt to waive or ease existing sanctions -- which the White House has floated as a possible incentive in order to win further cooperation on anti-terrorism efforts from Vladimir Putin's government.

The agreement, set for consideration as part of a bipartisan Iran sanctions bill, also would codify existing sanctions against Moscow into law, making their removal or rollback potentially more difficult for the Trump administration. The bipartisan deal also would impose new sanctions on multiple sectors of the Russian economy, including on "individuals conducting malicious cyber activity on behalf of the Russian government," according to a summary released Monday night by Senate negotiators in both parties.

A White House spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment Monday night on the prospect of a Russia sanctions deal, which would face an uncertain future in the House.

Before the deal emerged after a day of protracted talks, Schumer reiterated his longstanding conditions to lock in Democratic support for a Russia sanctions vote — all three of which were met by the Monday night agreement.

"Throughout these negotiations, Democrats have insisted that a Russia sanctions amendment accomplishes three things: codify the existing sanctions in law, impose tough new sanctions in response to Russian meddling in our elections, and give Congress a process to review whether they should be lifted," Schumer said in a statement.

Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) assured reporters earlier Monday that the Russia deal would provide for congressional review of any future rollbacks of Russia sanctions, a plan pushed by Schumer as well as Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). The review language would be structured "much like we did in other places," such as the 2015 legislation that required former President Barack Obama to submit his administration's nuclear pact with Iran to Congress, Corker said.

Banking Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), a key player in the Russia sanctions talks, acknowledged that "I have had concerns with" the congressional review provisions but added that "if we can set it up adequately, then I'm open."

Asked about the prospects of a veto threat from Trump, the Foreign Relations panel's top Democrat, Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, told reporters Monday that while "there's no administration that wants Congress interfering" with its sanctions policy, "I think we'll have the support of the administration" for any bipartisan Russia deal that might pass this week.

On June 13 2017 21:57 Nebuchad wrote:
At the risk of stating the obvious in an epic fashion, the real issue in the conversation between someone like Danglars and someone like GH is that they have a fundamental disagreement on the current state of America. Danglars thinks that it's mostly doing ok without denying some small issues, GH thinks it's doing really bad with massive systemic problems. You can have conversations on the details of this forever, but you're never going to get anywhere until you figure out which of these two underlying positions is correct, cause every disagreement that you have is based on following your premise.

To create a simplistic analogy, that's the difference between "not seeing race" in a system that works for everyone and "not seeing race" in a discriminatory system. If your system is doing mostly fine, it's great that you don't see race, it means that you aren't biased: it's a good thing. If you are in a system where some races are systematically put at a disadvantage and you don't see race, you won't be able to see the systemic racism that is happening: it's a bad thing.

If you start from the premise that the system is fine, you can't argue that not seeing race is a bad thing. If you start from the premise that the system is terrible, you can't argue that not seeing race is a good thing.

So just figure out which system you really have, otherwise you won't get anywhere.