'Murica

[Witness]

No wolves?

[Anaxagoras]

[gnome]

Well then! I'm going to be living in the state of 2208 black bear observations. Wish me luck!

Last time I went I got this pamphlet that said if a bear approaches you're supposed to play dead. Really, we're going to rely on my acting skills? Play dead? Who came up with that - maybe the bears? 'Play dead, cover yourself in honey, climb on a large white plate. Don't try to run away from us, I mean the bears.'"

[Witness]

Rural America 2020 billboard outside the Des Moines Airport where Trump will hold his hangar rally

[Pyrrho]

https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/loc ... e-of-jesus

A priest in Bay Village says someone called police to report a homeless person. Turns out, it was actually a statue of Jesus.

Within 20 minutes of the sculpture being installed at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, police were called, according to Alex Martin, the pastor at St. Barnabas.

[Doctor X]

Seem that that was suppose to be the point?

His brother Thomas told him to take a hike.

– J.D.

[Pyrrho]

A cynical person might think that they installed the sculpture with full expectation that someone would do exactly what that law-abiding citizen did, thereby getting the church's name and the associated appeal for donations into the news.

[Doctor X]

Well, he does look like a child molester.

– J.D.

[Witness]

Vermont First State Requiring Secondary Schools To Give Out Free Condoms

Vermont will become the first state in the nation to make free condoms available in public middle and high schools next year after Gov. Scott signed a bill last week that expands access to contraceptives across the state.

Some of the country's largest school districts have free condoms available, but no other state requires its secondary schools to have them according to the National Coalition of STD Directors.

Barre Republican Representative Topper McFaun introduced the bill, and says if teenagers have more access to contraceptives and health education; it might lead to a reduction in the number of abortions that are performed.

Vermont's abortion rate for teens ages 15-19 is about seven per 1,000, slightly lower than the national average.

https://www.vpr.org/post/vermont-first- ... s#stream/0

[Witness]

Kindergarten teacher Helen Hulick, who was a witness to a burglary, was given a five-day sentence and sent to jail because she wore pants to her courtroom testimony in Los Angeles, 1938.

https://www.latimes.com/local/californi ... story.html

[shuize]

I think there is reasonable suspicion she wasn't wearing a bra either.

Quite the rebel.

[Witness]

[shuize]

Wrong.

Funny but wrong.

[Witness]

Credit: https://twitter.com/bocachicagal?lang=en

[Witness]

US, Saudi Arabia and Uganda join forces to declare women have no intrinsic right to abortion

Ten of world’s 20 worst countries for women sign declaration organised by Trump administration

The Trump administration has joined 32 illiberal or authoritarian countries in declaring that women have no intrinsic right to abortion.

The Geneva Consensus Declaration, which received no support from America’s liberal allies, calls on states to protect the health and “inalienable rights” of women, but appears largely aimed at curbing global abortion rights and promoting heterosexual family units.

It was co-sponsored by Brazil, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia, Uganda and the US, and was also signed by a host of autocratic countries including Saudi Arabia, Belarus and the United Arab Emirates.

“In no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning,” states the declaration, which was signed during a virtual gathering of countries in Washington DC on Thursday.

It adds: “There is no international right to abortion, nor any international obligation on the part of states to finance or facilitate abortion.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 50419.html

[Witness]

Most Nebraskans voted to abolish slavery as criminal punishment. But 32% voted to keep it

The good news: Nebraskans voted this week to eradicate from the state’s Constitution the provision that slavery could be used as punishment for crimes.

The bad: An electorate the size of Lincoln said they were OK with punitive slavery.

The results left the architect of the constitutional amendment — State Sen. Justin Wayne of Omaha — scratching his head. On the one hand, Nebraska didn’t need two tries to strip prison slavery from its Constitution as Colorado did, finally passing it in 2018.

On the other hand, 274,138 Nebraska voters — nearly one out of three — effectively decided they weren’t ready to eliminate slave labor from prisons.

The vote on Amendment 1 differed sharply along geographic lines and population size.

The strongest support came from the eastern part of the state, and from the largest three counties: Douglas, Lancaster and Sarpy.

The most opposition came from smaller, rural counties — especially in western Nebraska. Of the 10 least populated Nebraska counties, nine voted against Amendment 1.

https://omaha.com/news/state-and-region ... 97865.html

[Witness]

Mississippians adopt new state flag after Confederate emblem flew for 126 years



Mississippi voters, after decades of debate and a failed ballot effort 19 years ago, adopted a new state flag on Tuesday, according to NBC News and Associated Press projections.

The flag, approved by a majority of voters, features the words “In God We Trust” instead of the divisive Confederate battle emblem that previously flew for 126 years.

The Mississippi Legislature in June removed the old flag, which was adopted by racist lawmakers in 1894. It was the last in the nation to carry the divisive Confederate battle emblem. Lawmakers faced growing pressure from religious, business, sports and community leaders to remove the vestige of the state’s Jim Crow past from a flag flying over the state with the largest percentage population of Black residents.

An appointed commission reviewed about 3,000 public submissions for new flag designs over the summer and in September chose the new design with a magnolia and stars — a combination of multiple submissions.

https://mississippitoday.org/2020/11/03 ... 126-years/

[Witness]

Gray wolves to be reintroduced to Colorado in unprecedented vote

Voters in the state narrowly approved a ballot initiative, Proposition 114, paving the way for gray wolves to be reintroduced into Colorado, where they were hunted to extinction by the1940s. This is the first time a state has voted to reintroduce an animal to the ecosystem.

The Colorado Parks and Wildlife department will lead the effort to establish a sustainable population of the animals in the western part of the state beginning in 2022 or 2023. The Southern Rocky Mountains contain millions of acres of suitable habitat—where wolves once thrived—land that could support several hundred wolves or more, biologists say.

Opponents of the initiative conceded they had lost on November 5, but the vote was close: As of Thursday afternoon, with 90 percent of the votes in, there were 1,495,523 votes for and 1,475,235 against. But most of the remaining uncounted votes come from urban areas that strongly support reintroduction.

“Reintroducing wolves will restore Colorado's natural balance,” says Jonathan Proctor, a conservationist with the group Defenders of Wildlife, which assisted the Rocky Mountain Wolf Action Fund in passing the measure.

Supporters say it’s especially timely, since the federal government removed Endangered Species Act protections for the animals in the contiguous U.S. in late October. (Learn more: Gray wolves taken off U.S. endangered species list in controversial move.)

The Colorado reintroduction initiative was opposed by many in rural areas, including ranchers, who worry that wolves will kill their cattle.

Many of these opponents have objected to leaving the question of reintroduction to voters, rather than state wildlife officials.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/anim ... roduction/

[Rob Lister]

It's a noble idea. All will be well up until there is a shortage of field mice and hares. Then, they will remember why these wolves were hunted into extinction in 1940. That may be decades though.

[Grammatron]

Yes, there are reasons why most old world folklore is about the dangers of wolves.

[Witness]

All will be well up until there is a shortage of field mice and hares.

One wonders how Nature ever managed without humans.

---

[Grammatron]

All will be well up until there is a shortage of field mice and hares.

One wonders how Nature ever managed without humans.

Savagely.

[Witness]

↑ Well said, Grammy. When one looks at the details it's often just horrible…

---

[Witness]

https://acleddata.com/2020/09/03/demons ... mmer-2020/ (lots of details, maps, &c.)

[Witness]

[Rob Lister]

I'm not sure what the current rules are but military enlistment is not an automatic path to citizenship. Last I remember it was ten years service.

[Pyrrho]

[Witness]

[Witness]

New Alabama senator struggles with basic WWII history and says US fought ‘socialism and communism’

It’s not his only recent gaffe about history

Tommy Tuberville, the incoming Republican senator from Alabama, doubled down on his erroneous grasp of World War II history in comments on Thursday, telling a news site his father, a US soldier, fought to “free Europe of socialism.”

“I tell people, my dad fought 76 years ago in Europe to free Europe of Socialism,” he told Alabama Daily News. “Today, you look at this election, we have half this country that made some kind of movement, now they might not believe in it 100 per cent, but they made some kind of movement toward socialism.”

Last week, he made a similar remark in a speech to supporters, recounting that his father was part of “liberating Paris from socialism and communism.”

Though the full name of the Nazis was the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, they were fascists, not socialists. And the Soviet Union, a US ally during the war, was communist.

During the campaign, in which Mr Tuberville, the former football coach of Auburn University, defeated Democratic incumbent Doug Jones, the Republican had another factual mix-up, appearing not to understand what the landmark Voting Rights Act is.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 22828.html

Only the best people…

[Witness]

Spoiler:

Congresswoman Deb Haaland of New Mexico photographed with traditional wet plate process (2019)

Photo Shane Balkowitsch.

[Witness]

"The New American Gothic" by Criselda Vasquez (her parents, in fact):

[Witness]

Arizona. Sound on.

[Fid]

Cats...jeez

[Witness]

An interesting read for our gun-touting members: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/sp ... nity-guns/

Excerpt:

Police using deadly force against lawfully armed civilians is an inevitable result of having an “armed society” in the United States, said Adam Winkler, a professor at the UCLA School of Law and an expert on gun policy. “When you have a right to have arms, you have a right to carry around something other people would see as a threat,” Winkler said. “Generally, we allow police officers to use force when they feel threatened. And merely possessing a gun raises that threat.”

In an investigation published in May, Reuters revealed that federal appeals courts have in recent years been granting qualified immunity at an increasing rate to cops sued for excessive force — even when courts determine that police actually did use excessive force. The increase largely reflects the impact of a series of Supreme Court interventions that have made it harder for plaintiffs to breach the immunity defense, prompting widespread calls for the doctrine to be reined in or eliminated altogether on the grounds that it denies justice to victims of police brutality.

Hundreds of appellate court cases Reuters analyzed show that judges granted immunity to cops more often when they used force against a person with a gun — in 55% of cases, compared to 45% when the person was unarmed. Of course, the details of those cases vary greatly, some of them involving violent criminals in chaotic and dangerous encounters with police.

Still, Reuters found multiple cases in which courts granted immunity to cops who killed armed civilians who posed a questionable threat, including people who legally possessed guns for self-defense at home. In all the cases, officers said they acted reasonably in what they perceived to be dangerous situations.

Good luck!

[Witness]

[Witness]

[Witness]

[Rob Lister]

wow. he's going to literally own that company.

[Witness]

↑ Let's hope so.

---

[Witness]

US lawmakers unveil anti-slavery constitutional amendment

National lawmakers introduced a joint resolution Wednesday aimed at striking language from the U.S. Constitution that enshrines a form of slavery in America’s foundational documents.

The resolution, spearheaded and supported by Democratic members of the House and Senate, would amend the 13th Amendment’s ban on chattel enslavement to expressly prohibit involuntary servitude as a punishment for crime. As ratified, the original amendment has permitted exploitation of labor by convicted felons for over 155 years since the abolition of slavery.

The 13th Amendment “continued the process of a white power class gravely mistreating Black Americans, creating generations of poverty, the breakup of families and this wave of mass incarceration that we still wrestle with today,” Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon told The Associated Press ahead of the resolution’s introduction.

A House version is led by outgoing Rep. William Lacy Clay, of St. Louis, who said the amendment “seeks to finish the job that President (Abraham) Lincoln started.”

It would “eliminate the dehumanizing and discriminatory forced labor of prisoners for profit that has been used to drive the over-incarceration of African Americans since the end of the Civil War,” Clay said.

In the Senate, the resolution has Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland signed on as co-sponsors. “This change to the 13th Amendment will finally, fully rid our nation of a form of legalized slavery,” Van Hollen said in an emailed statement.

Constitutional amendments are rare and require approval by two-thirds of the House and Senate, as well as ratification by three-quarters of state legislatures. Should the proposal fail to move out of committee in the remaining weeks of the current Congress, Merkley said he hoped to revive it next year.

The effort has been endorsed by more than a dozen human rights and social justice organizations, including The Sentencing Project, the Anti-Recidivism Coalition and Color of Change.

https://apnews.com/article/lawmakers-an ... b6762771c3