Tag: civil rights

Tony Timpa Wrongful Death Trial Ends With 2 Out of 3 Cops Getting Qualified Immunity

At the heart of the civil trial concerning Tony Timpa—who died during a mental health crisis after calling 911 in August 2016—was an appeal made to the jury by the lead defense counsel, Senior Assistant City Attorney Lindsay Wilson Gowin. “Justice here is truth,” she said. Then, invoking allegations that the Timpa family had not been transparent about various dark corners of Timpa’s life, she added: “That’s not how you find the truth.”

She had a point. But that statement, made during closing arguments Tuesday, was a bit ironic, particularly when considering the lengths the government went to in order to obscure basic transparency and keep the events of that summer night a secret. Indeed, the trial, which almost didn’t come to fruition, has come to symbolize how difficult it is for alleged victims of government abuse from stating their case, and the importance of allowing those claims a fair and public hearing, no matter the outcome.

Today, a federal jury rendered their verdict. The panel of eight found that Officer Dustin Dillard, Senior Cpl. Raymond Dominguez, and Officer Danny Vasquez did in fact violate Timpa’s constitutional rights during a roughly 15-minute interaction on Dallas’ Mockingbird Lane. But they gave Dillard and Vasquez qualified immunity, concluding that, while their actions were unlawful, a reasonable officer couldn’t have been expected to know as much. A fourth defendant, Sgt. Kevin Mansell, the highest-ranking officer supervising the scene that evening, was vindicated entirely.

The city will have to pay Timpa’s son $1 million in damages.

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Idaho Christians Are Compensated $300,000 for Rights Violations

Just how untethered to the rule of law did the United States come during the Covid response?

Before March 2020, most Americans would think that monitoring church attendance, banning Easter services, and arresting hymn singers were practices reserved for Eastern-style totalitarianism. The Soviet Union persecuted Christians and the Chinese have Muslim concentration camps, but Americans’ freedom of worship is enshrined in the Bill of Rights.

The free exercise of religion precedes all other liberties in the First Amendment. It was born of a core conviction that the New World could do it better than the Old World of religious wars and persecution. Freedom, the Founders believed, would not diminish religious experience but rather bolster it through toleration and peace. This was a radical conviction at the time, a dramatic departure from centuries and millennia of costly struggle.

Government guaranteed everyone’s religious liberty. And the system worked. Religious conviction did not diminish but rather intensified throughout the 19th century. Most governments in the world followed similar guarantees never to interfere with religious practice. Even in the 21st century, when the country in general had become increasingly secular, few could imagine that political leaders would launch a crusade against organized religion.

Yet that’s exactly what happened. As the Covid creed emerged as the national faith, the American tradition of religious pluralism withered away. Freedom of worship was replaced by widespread demands for conformity.

This wasn’t limited to the devoutly godless shores of Marin County or East Hampton. Christians in Idaho recently reached a $300,000 settlement with a local city after they were arrested for attending outdoor church services in September 2020. Christ Church Pastor Ben Zornes organized the worship. “We were just singing songs,” he explained at the time.

The local police chief had no patience for the violation of corona law. “At some point in time you have to enforce,” he told the press after arresting attendees at the “psalm sing.”

But did they have to enforce the orders? Was arresting Christians legally required, or was it an explicit violation of the First Amendment?

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Circle the Wagons: The Government Is On The Warpath

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”—Harry S. Truman

How many Americans have actually bothered to read the Constitution, let alone the first ten amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights (a quick read at 462 words)?

Take a few minutes and read those words for yourself—rather than having some court or politician translate them for you—and you will be under no illusion about where to draw the line when it comes to speaking your mind, criticizing your government, defending what is yours, doing whatever you want on your own property, and keeping the government’s nose out of your private affairs.

In an age of overcriminalization, where the average citizen unknowingly commits three crimes a day, and even the most mundane activities such as fishing and gardening are regulated, government officials are constantly telling Americans what not to do.

Yet it was not always this way.

It used to be “we the people” giving the orders, telling the government what it could and could not do. Indeed, the three words used most frequently throughout the Bill of Rights in regards to the government are “no,” “not” and “nor.”

Compare the following list of “don’ts” the government is prohibited from doing with the growing list of abuses to which “we the people” are subjected on a daily basis, and you will find that we have reached a state of crisis wherein the government is routinely breaking the law and violating its contractual obligations.

For instance, the government is NOT allowed to restrict free speech, press, assembly or the citizenry’s ability to protest and correct government wrongdoing. Nevertheless, the government continues to prosecute whistleblowers, persecute journalists, criminalize expressive activities, crack down on large gatherings of citizens mobilizing to voice their discontent with government policies, and insulate itself and its agents from any charges of wrongdoing (or what the courts refer to as “qualified immunity”).

The government may NOT infringe on a citizen’s right to defend himself. Nevertheless, in many states, it’s against the law to carry a concealed weapon (gun, knife or even pepper spray), and the average citizen is permitted little self-defense against militarized police officers who shoot first and ask questions later.

The government may NOT enter or occupy a citizen’s house without his consent (the quartering of soldiers). Nevertheless, government soldiers (i.e., militarized police) carry out more than 80,000 no-knock raids on private homes every year, while maiming children, killing dogs and shooting citizens.

The government may NOT carry out unreasonable searches and seizures on the citizenry or their possessions, NOR can government officials issue warrants without some evidence of wrongdoing (probable cause). Unfortunately, what is unreasonable to the average American is completely reasonable to a government agent, for whom the ends justify the means. In such a climate, we have no protection against roadside strip searches, blood draws, DNA collection, SWAT team raids, surveillance or any other privacy-stripping indignity to which the government chooses to subject us.

The government is NOT to deprive anyone of life, liberty or property without due process. Nevertheless, the government continues to incarcerate tens of thousands of Americans whose greatest crime is being poor and not white. The same goes for those who are put to death, some erroneously, by a system weighted in favor of class and wealth.

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Illinois to Allow Noncitizens Access to Standard Driver’s License Regardless of Immigration Status

Under House Bill 3882, signed by Illinois Governor JB Pritzker on Friday , immigrants in the state will now have access to standard driver’s licenses that can be used for identification with or without permission from U.S. immigration authorities.

The current “Temporary Visitor Driver’s License” (TVDL) will be phased out. While TVDLs look similar to a standard driver’s licenses, they contain a purple strip across the top that reads “TVDL” and specifies that the it is not valid for identification.

Capital News Illinois reports:

“This legislation is a significant step in eliminating the barriers to opportunity that many undocumented immigrants face,” Pritzker said in a statement. “We’re ensuring every eligible individual can obtain a driver’s license, making our roads safer, decreasing stigma, and creating more equitable systems for all.”

TVDLs look similar to a standard driver’s licenses, except they have a purple strip across the top that reads “TVDL” above the words “NOT VALID FOR IDENTIFICATION.” Under the new law, those people will qualify for standard licenses that carry the words “Federal Limits Apply” at the top, but which do not qualify as REAL ID for travel purposes.

Immigrant rights advocates say the purple bar on the TVDL stigmatizes the people holding them, creates barriers to other kinds of services that require identification such as picking up medication from a pharmacy or signing an apartment lease, and exposes them to law enforcement action.

Although many in the state  are increasingly outraged by how the crisis brought on by Joe Biden’s broken border policy is being addressed, Illinois continues to provide bills to allow migrants perks regardless of immigration status.

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HOW THE PRISON LITIGATION REFORM ACT BLOCKS JUSTICE FOR PRISONERS

In 2014, Abu Huraira, 45, was transferred to Georgia State Prison after 16 years in the custody of the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC). On his arrival, prison officials failed to give him an initial medical screening, violating GDC policy. Because of that, Huraira went weeks without receiving medication for his chronic pain or dental care for a decaying tooth, despite submitting multiple requests to medical staff at the prison. Additionally, prison officials forced Huraira, a Muslim, to shave his beard using unsanitized clippers, exposing him to the risk of bloodborne diseases, and denied him access to Islamic prayer services, according to a lawsuit he later filed in federal court.

When Huraira sued GDC for violating his rights to medical care and religious liberty, GDC attorneys didn’t dispute the substance of his allegations. Instead, they argued that he had no right to sue at all because he had not filed a formal grievance with prison authorities. Even though Huraira told the court that corrections officers had refused to allow him to file a grievance, a federal judge ruled in GDC’s favor and dismissed Huraira’s lawsuit on the grounds that he had “failed to exhaust administrative remedies.”

All of this was possible thanks to a little-known federal law called the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA). Signed into law in 1996 by President Bill Clinton, the PLRA sought to tamp down on “frivolous” lawsuits filed by prisoners by making it easier for courts to dismiss cases before they ever went to trial. The law also capped the amount of damages prisoners could collect from prison officials who violated their constitutional rights, discouraging professional attorneys from taking on prisoners’ cases.

As a result, the PLRA has made it virtually impossible for prisoners to hold corrections officials accountable for civil rights violations like excessive force or inadequate medical care. Without judicial oversight, corrections officials act with impunity because they rarely face consequences for violating prisoners’ rights.

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DOJ Accuses Louisville Police Of Civil Rights Violations, Discrimination After Breonna Taylor Investigation

Louisville’s police routinely violate constitutional rights and federal law, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said following a two-year investigation following the death of Breonna Taylor.

The DOJ announced the findings of its investigation on Wednesday in a press conference and 90-page report. Federal investigators said their review found that officers of the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) “engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the U.S. Constitution and federal law.”

Some of the report’s findings include use of excessive force, executing search warrants without knocking or announcing, using invalid search warrants, and violating the rights of protesters.

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Large numbers of Americans want a strong, rough, anti-democratic leader

It might be comforting to think that American democracy has made it past the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. But our research shows that a wide range of the American people, of all political stripes, seek leaders who are fundamentally anti-democratic.

It’s true that many who participated in the insurrection are facing consequences, including prison time. Many candidates for state office who falsely claimed that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election lost their races. And the congressional committee investigating the insurrection voted to refer Trump to the Department of Justice for criminal charges.

But more than 100 members of Congress who objected to the results of a free and fair election won their reelection campaigns. And at least seven people who attended the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6 have been elected to state legislatures and two have been elected to Congress.

As scholars interested in how committed citizens are to democracy, we wanted to measure whether regular Americans want someone who will abide by democratic traditions and practices or dispense with them.

Using a nationally representative sample of 1,500 respondents, we found that a large proportion of Americans are willing to support leaders who would violate democratic principles.

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35 of Ayn Rand’s Most Insightful Quotes on Rights, Individualism, and Government

Alisa Rosenbaum was one of the most controversial writers in America’s history. Why, then, have few people heard of her? Because both people’s plaudits and their intemperate attacks have been aimed at the new name she adopted after leaving Russia for America—Ayn Rand. 

Her influence is beyond question. She sold more than 30 million books, and decades after her 1982 death, hundreds of thousands more sell each year. Atlas Shrugged has been ranked behind only the Bible as a book that influenced readers’ lives.

Some are devoted enough that Randian has become a descriptive term. Others use her name only to disparage opponents. Still others disagree with some of her ideas (e.g., while Rand was an often-strident atheist, capitalism is clearly defensible on Christian principles, and most historical defenses of liberty employed Christian rationales which conflict with Rand’s reasoning), yet find a great deal of insight in her analysis of liberty, rights and government.

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The Constitution Has Already Been Terminated

“That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary.”—Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

If there is one point on which there should be no political parsing, no legal jockeying, and no disagreement, it is this: for anyone to advocate terminating or suspending the Constitution is tantamount to a declaration of war against the founding principles of our representative government and the rule of law.

Then again, one could well make the case that the Constitution has already been terminated after years on life support, given the extent to which the safeguards enshrined in the Bill of Rights—adopted 231 years ago as a means of protecting the people against government overreach and abuse—have been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded with the support of Congress, the White House, and the courts.

Consider for yourself.

We are in the grip of martial law. We have what the founders feared most: a “standing” or permanent army on American soil. This de facto standing army is made up of weaponized, militarized domestic police forces which look like, dress like, and act like the military; are armed with guns, ammunition and military-style equipment; are authorized to make arrests; and are trained in military tactics.

We are in the government’s crosshairs. The U.S. government continues to act as judge, jury and executioner over a populace that have been pre-judged and found guilty, stripped of their rights, and left to suffer at the hands of government agents trained to respond with the utmost degree of violence. Consequently, we are at the mercy of law enforcement officers who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to “serve and protect.” With alarming regularity, unarmed men, women, children and even pets are being gunned down by the government’s standing army of militarized police who shoot first and ask questions later.

We are no longer safe in our homes. This present menace comes from the government’s army of bureaucratized, corporatized, militarized SWAT teams who are waging war on the last stronghold left to us as a free people: the sanctity of our homes.

We have no real freedom of speech. We are moving fast down a slippery slope to an authoritarian society in which the only opinions, ideas and speech expressed are the ones permitted by the government and its corporate cohorts. In more and more cases, the government is declaring war on what should be protected political speech whenever it challenges the government’s power, reveals the government’s corruption, exposes the government’s lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices. The ramifications are so far-reaching as to render almost every American who criticizes the government an extremist in word, deed, thought or by association.

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Democrat Lawyer: ACLU ‘Defended Terrorists, Nazis, And They Would Not Touch Covid Issues’

Democrat lawyer Scott Street quit his law firm to legally defend from Joe Biden’s federal vaccine mandate Americans’ right to make their own medical decisions, he told Tucker Carlson in a recent interview for Fox Nation. Medical freedom cases “probably made up two-thirds of my practice last year,” The Federalist contributor and California resident explained.

“I couldn’t sit by and see people get away with this,” he said, “but it was tough, no question.”

Street “couldn’t believe anyone was going along with” lockdown mandates, “because I thought it was blatantly illegal,” the civil rights lawyer told Carlson.

The longtime Democrat strategist and campaign staffer told Carlson he’d worked with liberal legal groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Public Counsel for years and couldn’t believe they refrained from contesting what he saw as obvious mass infringements of Americans’ civil liberties after Covid-19 reached the United States.

“These are groups that defended terrorists after 9/11, Nazis, they’ve defended everything, and they would not touch any of these Covid issues,” Street said.

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