As my parents would say, if you don’t want to be called a weasel, then don’t act like one.
Comey was defending his agency’s actions regarding a federal probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. The investigation drew criticism from Republicans for not recommending charges against the Democratic presidential nominee.
“You can call us wrong, but don’t call us weasels,” he told the House Judiciary Committee. “We are not weasels, we are honest people and we did this in that way.”
“I would think most people in the state would think after the U.S. Supreme Court rules on this that there’s certainly not a lack of work to be done in Milwaukee County on issues related to crime and on other issues,” Walker said. “We hear, not only in that county, but in other counties, about the need for additional district attorneys and additional resources. I think a lot of people wonder, if they continue to spend time after the U.S. Supreme Court were to rule on this, if that’s really necessary, if they have time to spend on this even after the courts have shut it down.”
While the federal government does not track criminals’ use of toy or replica guns, some individual police departments say they’ve noticed an uptick.
In Edmonton, Canada, police said imitation guns were involved in 1,598 incidents in 2015 — up 38 percent from a year earlier.
In Arlington, Texas, suspects are increasingly using lookalike guns, including an incident earlier this year in which a man carjacked a woman using an air gun that resembled a real pistol, and another case involving a teen who threatened an officer with a replica gun. The officer managed to knock it out of the teen’s hand and tackle him.
Arlington police Lt. Christopher Cook said that between March and August, nearly 20 percent of the weapons seized by police after they were used in crimes turned out to be lookalikes.
So far, police haven’t had to use deadly force. But Cook said that could change in an instant.
“There’s no training in the world that we know of where an officer can readily distinguish a real gun from a fake gun,” he said. “That’s not realistic, because officers have to make split-second decisions to ascertain whether it’s a firearm or not.”
It makes sense for the crooks as long as they truly don’t intend to shoot anyone. The fake guns are cheap and easier to get than real ones. Plus, it is not a crime to carry a toy gun if they get caught with one. On the down side, cops and bystanders can’t tell the difference and a crook is more likely to be shot if he or she waves it around.
Of course, the hardened criminals who truly don’t mind shooting people – drug dealers, gang bangers, and the like – still have real guns. Always assume the gun is real.
The 28-year-old man suspected of planting bombs in Manhattan and New Jersey over the weekend was previously arrested for stabbing a person in the leg and possession of a firearm in 2014, DailMail.com has learned.
But a grand jury let him walk, despite a warning from the arresting officer that Rahami was likely ‘a danger to himself or others.’
Ahmad Khan Rahami, who was arrested on Monday in Linden, N.J., after a manhunt ended in a shootout with police, was also a deadbeat dad who didn’t like America and hated gays, according to the mother of his young daughter.
Rahami is accused of planting multiple homemade bombs in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, which injured 29 on Saturday night, as well as explosives near a train station in Elizabeth, N.J. that were disarmed by law enforcement on Sunday.
So he was vocal about hating America, traveled multiple times to Afghanistan, and was arrested for a violent crime. I’m no anti-terrorism expert, but it seems like we spend billions of dollars on government people who should have noticed this guy.
It’s supposed to be a secret investigation. But it never really was.
Leaking like a sieve since Day One, Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm’s politically-fueled John Doe investigation into Wisconsin conservatives saw its biggest leak yet on Wednesday. With weeks left on its legal clock before the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether to take the case, 1,500 pages of documents related to the case were leaked to the U.K. Guardian.
How did that happen? After all, these documents were supposed to be sealed. At one point, they were ordered to be destroyed by the late federal judge Rudolph Randa in May 2014.
Madison — A Dane County judge on Monday ruled a state commission violated the open records law last year when it refused to quickly turn over information about a union election.
[…]
The elections are overseen by the commission and held over 20 days, with ballots cast over the phone and over the Internet. Unions want to monitor who is voting so they can encourage those who haven’t done so to cast their ballots.
The union Madison Teachers Inc. on Nov. 10 sought documents under the open records law that would show who had voted so far in the election that ran from Nov. 4 to Nov. 24. The commission’s chairman, James Scott, denied the request while the election was ongoing.
After the election — which the union won overwhelmingly — the commission released records showing who had voted.
The union then sued the commission, a three-member panel appointed by Republican Gov. Scott Walker, the architect of Act 10.
The commission had to promptly make available information about who had voted because the records law requires documents to be produced “as soon as practicable and without delay,” the union argued in its lawsuit.
Anderson agreed the records were wrongly withheld. He said the matter was important to resolve because it could come up again this fall, when hundreds of public-sector unions will hold elections.
The commission maintained it could not release the records while the election was pending because doing so could result in “voter coercion.” It also contended releasing the records would undermine the secrecy of the ballots because non-votes are considered “no” votes.
If the union truly wanted to just “encourage” people to vote, they wouldn’t need a list. They would just run campaigns encouraging everyone to vote. If they are doing calls, then they can simply mark someone as having voted if they are told so. No, the union wants the ongoing list of who voted while the election is going on so that they can bully and intimidate people.
Defying a seemingly united Congress and risking a public backlash, President Obama will veto legislation allowing relatives of the 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia in U.S. courts, the White House confirmed on Monday. Obama’s rejection of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act will trigger what seems likely to be the first-ever successful congressional vote to override his veto.
“The president feels strongly about this, and I do anticipate that the president will veto the legislation when it’s presented to him,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters at his daily briefing.
The legislation never explicitly mentions Saudi Arabia, which was home to most of the 9/11 hijackers, but that American ally is widely understood to be the main target. The bill would change federal law to allow lawsuits against foreign states or officials for injuries, death or damages stemming from an act of international terrorism. Current law recognizes “sovereign immunity,” which protects governments and government officials from civil cases.
The White House has argued that eroding the legal principle of sovereign immunity could lead other countries to change their laws to permit their courts to try cases against the U.S. government or its diplomats and military personnel.
With all of the House and a third of the Senate on the ballot in November, it’s not surprising that all of them support a bill packed full of so many emotions, but it is bad law. Just think of all of the millions of people in other countries who argue that Americans engage in terrorism every time one of our highly-sophisticated precision weapons misses and kills a bunch of innocent folks. Do we want those nations suing our military personnel or our nation? Sure, they can do it now, but we can rightly cling to international law. We lose that grip if we do it ourselves.
(CNN)Former US Army soldier Chelsea Manning has begun a hunger strike to protest her treatment at the prison where she is serving out a 35-year sentence for leaking a trove of classified documents to WikiLeaks.
On Friday, Manning announced she will not cut her hair or consume food or drink voluntarily except for water and medications unless she is given “minimum standards of dignity, respect, and humanity.”
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Federal agents lacked proper guidance and experience while conducting undercover sting operations in Milwaukee and several other cities that were aimed at disrupting illegal gun sales, according to a U.S. Justice Department report released Thursday.
The Justice Department’s inspector general’s office report examined shortcomings with U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ storefront sting operations in Milwaukee; Pensacola, Florida; St. Louis; Wichita, Kansas; and Boston. The operations were designed to curb illegal gun trafficking by luring people with illegal weapons into the store, where agents could identify them, buy their guns to get the weapons off the street and trace the guns’ histories. According to the report, the ATF established 53 storefront operations throughout the country between 2004 and 2013.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published an expose in 2013 detailing some of the problems with the storefront operation conducted in that city. It found that agents overpaid for guns with taxpayer money, that guns were stolen from an ATF vehicle and that the storefront was burglarized. What’s more, agents left behind an operational plan at the store when they shut it down. The document included undercover agents’ names, vehicle descriptions, cellphone numbers and secret signals.
Most defendants were charged with low-level offenses and the operation failed to capture any major criminals.
The unique outcropping, also known as the Duckbill, has long been a popular destination for tourists visiting Cape Kiwanda park on Oregon’s Pacific coast.
Officials had at first believed that the coastal sandstone pedestal had naturally eroded.
But they are currently re-evaluating that assessment after being shown the video by David Kalas, a visiting beachgoer.
Mr Kalas said that up to eight people participated in toppling it a week ago, but that five had walked away when the remaining group stayed to push it over.
“We confronted them and they said it was a safety hazard,” said Mr Kalas, who had gone there to film a summer holiday video with friends.
“They said one of their friends had broken a leg on it. It’s like their weird revenge thing”, he added.
[…]
Police and parks officials will meet on Tuesday to discuss possible criminal charges.
If these folks did tip over the rocks, it’s an incredibly douchey thing to do, but criminal charges? They tipped over rocks…
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has the power to force the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Health Access Initiative to publicly disclose the names of foreign governments and the millions they donate each year to the charities but he’s not doing it, a Scripps News investigation has found.
Schneiderman’s failure to require compliance with New York law and written instructions from his own office keeps the public in the dark about whether the foreign governments that gave money to the Clinton charities also had special access to Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state, experts in private foundation law say. New York state has long required more transparency from non-profits operating within its borders than many other regulators.
A Scripps Washington Bureau review of tax returns and regulatory filings found that year after year the Clinton charities have ignored New York law and related instructions. However, the office of Attorney General Schneiderman, a Democrat whom Hillary Clinton named to her campaign’s “leadership council” in New York, did not respond to Scripps’ questions about the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), which has never publicly disclosed in New York filings the identity of its foreign government contributors or the amounts they give each year. Scripps also discovered CHAI did not report hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign government donations to the state.
Longtime Milwaukee federal judge Rudolph Randa, whose tough sentences and rulings on the Archdiocese of Milwaukee bankruptcy and the John Doe investigation of Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign thrust him into the spotlight in recent years, has died.
Randa, 76, died early Monday after a battle with cancer that drove him from the bench in February. The veteran judge had surgery in December, and two months later took senior status, a form of semi-retirement for federal judges. At the time, Chief Judge William Griesbach said Randa was expected to recover from the surgery and return to the bench.
Milwaukee County Circuit Judge David Hansher issued a temporary restraining order on Sunday blocking Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. from closing Sherman Park early, and he ordered the removal of bright orange snow fencing that has lined the park for all but a few hours since rioting broke out in the surrounding neighborhood over a two-day period last month.
Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele had sought the injunction on Sunday after he reinstated the county park’s normal operating hours and had the fencing removed — only to have Clarke reinstall the fencing and threaten to arrest anyone, including Abele, who refused to leave the park after 6 p.m.
In issuing the temporary restraining order, Hansher said there have been no incidents in the park for weeks, that the riots and vandalism that erupted after a police shooting took place outside of the park, and that maintaining the shorter hours served no public interest.
Hansher ordered sheriff’s deputies not to impede public access to the park “in the absence of any genuine, bona fide reason related to maintaining law and order and preserving the peace.”
It’s actually an interesting question. While the County Board and County Executive certainly have the authority to set the hours for county parks, does the Sheriff have the authority to override those hours in the name of public safety? It appears that the answer is “yes” because he did so for the past few weeks and nobody complained. But now the County Executive disagrees with the Sheriff’s assessment of the necessity of such a measure, does the County Executive have the authority to overrule the Sheriff? Abele and one county judge seems to think so. Obviously, the Sheriff disagrees. So separate from whether one agrees with Abele or Clarke, the legal clarification of the lines of authority will have an impact for some time.
Just read it. Even you lefties… just read it. The only rational conclusions are that Hillary Clinton is either a lying crook or that she’s a blithering idiot. Is that who you really want as president?
“We’ve had a slight increase in domestic violence homicides this year but the biggest driver of our homicides is arguments and fights and retaliation among people with criminal records,” Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn said Thursday.
“Some of our challenge is simply consistently being able to deter armed offending through the criminal justice system,” he added. “The penalties are too weak.”
The penalties are fine. What’s weak are the prosecutors and judges who too often fail to implement them.
Remember when Clinton swore under oath that she had handed over all of her work-related emails? Yeah, I do too.
The State Department says about 30 emails that may be related to the 2012 attack on U.S. compounds in Benghazi, Libya, are among the thousands of Hillary Clinton emails recovered during the FBI’s recently closed investigation into her use of a private server.
Government lawyers told U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta on Tuesday that an undetermined number of the emails among the 30 were not included in the 55,000 pages previously provided by Clinton. The State Department’s lawyer said it would need until the end of September to review the emails and redact potentially classified information before they are released.
Mehta questioned why it would take so long to release so few documents and urged that the process be sped up. He ordered the department to report to him in a week with more details about why the review process would take a full month.
The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty is representing the Krist Oil Company in a challenge of the state’s Minimum Markup Law, also known as the Unfair Sales Act, which stops businesses from charging a price less than what they paid for most goods and requires that gas, alcohol, and tobacco products be sold at above cost. Critics of the law claim it violates free market principles by forcing consumers to pay more than the competitive price, while its defenders argue it protects smaller businesses from being priced out by larger competitors.
WILL general counsel Rick Essenberg said the law is based upon an “antiquated economic theory,” and that consumers are already protected by state anti-trust laws. “The notion that consumers are somehow served by paying prices that are higher than they otherwise would have to pay is simply implausible,” Essenberg argued during a call with reporters Tuesday.
Of course, it would save a lot of legal time and expense if the Republicans would get off their duffs and repeal this stupid law. They should have done it years ago.
As the West Bend City Council chooses his replacement tonight, a trial date has been set for former West Bend City Administrator, T.J. Justice. He is accused of child enticement-prostitution and soliciting a child for prostitution – both felonies. His jury trial is set for December 13th in Waukesha County.
Here’s some welcome news from the Department of Justice that hit my inbox.
MADISON, WI – On Sunday evening, a federal judge in Texas issued a broad nationwide injunction prohibiting the Obama administration from enforcing its new transgender policy against the states, schools, school boards, and other public institutions that receive federal Title IX funding. This lawsuit, filed by Texas, Wisconsin, and eleven other states stemmed from a May 13, 2016, letter written by the Obama administration claiming Title IX prohibited discrimination based on gender identity. Under the policy, schools and other institutions were threatened with the loss of federal funding if they did not immediately allow students and others to use the bathroom, locker room, and shower of their own choosing, based on their gender identity.
“The Obama administration’s efforts to re-write federal law without congressional approval have been, once again, rejected by a federal court,” said Attorney General Brad Schimel. “This is a victory for the rule of law and a clear statement that the federal government cannot force states to comply with an illegal policy that directly conflicts with existing federal law.”
Federal law currently prohibits sex discrimination but does not address gender identity discrimination, as had been argued by the Obama administration in this case. The court rejected the Obama administration’s position and held that the federal government may not rely on the administration’s position that the term “sex” in Title IX includes “gender identity.”
The case will proceed to trial, and is expected to be completed in the coming months.
