Bloomberg:
Spain will move forward with the process of suspending the powers of the Catalan government after Regional President Carles Puigdemont refused to drop his claim to independence, Bloomberg News reports.In other words, "to restore the legality of self-rule in Catalonia", the Spanish government will deny Catalonia's self-rule.
“The government will continue with the procedures set out in Article 155 of the Constitution to restore the legality of self-rule in Catalonia,” the government said in a statement.
George Orwell is spinning in his grave.
This is what we get when government takes actions presumably in our "best interests", but in reality it is in THEIR best interests.
Case in point:
The New Yorker:
Across America, some prosecutors—arguably with the authority of state and federal laws—are jailing innocent crime victims and witnesses, in hopes of insuring their testimony in court. In Washington State, a sexual-assault victim was arrested and jailed to secure her testimony against the alleged perpetrator. (He was found guilty of kidnapping, attempted rape, and assault with sexual motivation.) In Hillsboro, Oregon, a Mexican immigrant was jailed for more than two years—nine hundred and five days—to obtain his testimony in a murder case. (The case was being brought against his son.) And in Harris County, Texas, a rape survivor suffered a mental breakdown in court while testifying against her assailant. Afraid that the woman would disappear before finishing her testimony, the court jailed her for a month. She has since filed a federal lawsuit against the county and several individuals involved, alleging that she was “abused, neglected, and mentally tortured” while in detention.The use of imprisonment to compel a witness to testify is the use of force against someone who may or may not be innocent. On the surface, this appears to be a crime in itself.
But consider the history:
The right to jail these so-called material witnesses has deep roots in America. (A material witness is an individual considered vital to a case, often because he or she saw a crime unfold or was its victim.) As early as 1789, the Judiciary Act codified the duty of witnesses to appear before the court and testify. From a public-safety perspective, the statute has a clear purpose: the perpetrator of a crime should not escape punishment because of a witness’s reluctance to testify. “The duty to disclose knowledge of crime rests upon all citizens,” a 1953 U.S. Supreme Court opinion, in the case Stein v. New York, reads. “It is so vital that one known to be innocent may be detained, in the absence of bail, as a material witness.” In 1984, Congress reaffirmed the right to jail material witnesses, but also noted that their testimony should be secured by deposition, rather than imprisonment, “whenever possible.” Jailing crime survivors and innocent witnesses, in other words, was legal but undesirable.While most would agree it is our civic duty to testify when we have witnessed a crime, the enforcement of civic duties with threat of criminal offense is comparable to pointing a gun to someone's head and forcing them to vote. The worst part of this is there is no limit to how long you can hold someone in jail for not testifying, clearly violating the Constitution's 8th Amendment.
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft identified the material-witness statute as a convenient weapon for the war on terror. Federal agents could use it to detain individuals of interest, even without sufficient evidence to arrest them as criminal defendants, by deeming them “witnesses” to terrorism-related crimes. In late 2001, the Department of Justice used material-witness laws to target Muslims, often arresting them at gunpoint and later placing some in solitary confinement. According to Human Rights Watch, the U.S. government eventually apologized to at least thirteen people for wrongful detention as material witnesses, and released dozens more without charges. “Holding as ‘witnesses’ people who are in fact suspects sets a disturbing precedent for future use of this extraordinary government power to deprive citizens and others of their liberty,” Human Rights Watch argued. In the face of lawsuits and public scrutiny, the practice slowed.
Recently, however, controversy over the use of material-witness statutes has resurfaced—this time at the state and local level. In parts of the country, prosecutors are using these orders to put crime victims—especially poor victims, and, in cities like New Orleans, victims of color—in jail in order to get swift victories in court, sometimes, puzzlingly, in minor cases.
In other news...
The Globe and Mail:
Quebec has adopted a law that will force people to show their faces when taking the bus or borrowing a book from the library, pushing ahead with legislation that is being criticized for targeting Muslim Canadian women.
Bill 62, which the Justice Minister described as a North American first, requires one's face to be uncovered when giving or receiving public services. The law marks the outcome of a contentious, decade-long debate about the place of religious minorities in Quebec.
Finally, there is recognition of the fact these facial coverings are nothing more than Islam's inherent sexism. "This is part of their culture" is no excuse for misogyny. It is ok to reject parts of another culture which are based on archaic practices, especially when those practices deny human rights.
Speaking of finally, our last news today...
Think Progress:
With less than three weeks to go before Virginia voters elect a new governor, Democratic nominee Ralph Northam sent out a campaign flier this week promoting the top of the party’s ticket that omitted the name and picture of Justin Fairfax, his black running mate.
The decision to remove Fairfax, the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor, came at the request of officials at Laborers’ International Union of North America, or LiUNA, who decided against endorsing Fairfax because of his refusal to support pet projects backed by the union, including two natural gas pipelines that are proposed to cross Virginia.
While this story was covered by the Washington Post, where is the rest of the mainstream media? The Post has to cover it,because it is a local story to them.
If this were the Republican Party doing this, you would hear this screamed nationwide, with the New York Times and CNN harping on it for days. But since it involves the Democrats, not a peep.
There comes a point where loyalty to a group for ideological reasons loses its meaning when the group does something against those reasons. The media needs to hold the Democrats as accountable as they do the Republicans, or else their ideology becomes nothing more than political cheerleading.
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