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January 2017

Posted by New Neo on January 07, 2017 37 Comments
Despite some initial hesitation by Chicago authorities to call the torture of a mentally disabled white man by four young black people a hate crime, they were charged with committing one, according to the Cook County State's Attorney's office. Additional charges were: "aggravated kidnapping, aggravated unlawful restraint, [and] aggravated battery...[one was also charged with] robbery and possession of a stolen motor vehicle...[and three] also were charged with residential burglary." Many of the details of what happened to the victim can be found in this post by Professor Jacobson. This would appear to have many of the elements of the type of offense known as a hate crime, obligingly documented and disseminated by the alleged perpetrators themselves.

Posted by Mary Chastain on January 06, 2017 39 Comments
So the American intelligence community has declassified a report that supposedly shows that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a campaign to influence the election in favor of President-elect Donald Trump. However, the report includes circumstantial evidence. They provided no concrete evidence that shows Putin sat down with his Kremlin cronies to orchestrated a campaign to make Hillary Clinton lose. They also concentrated on RT, formerly known as Russia Today, with a brief mention of the phishing schemes that led to Wikileaks publishing emails from the DNC and Hillary campaign chair John Podesta.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 06, 2017 15 Comments
After a lengthy investigation, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reports that two of the three major credit reporting agencies have deceived consumers. Both Equifax and Transunion were dinged for deceit and also for taking advantage of consumers. The agencies were fined over $23 million.

Posted by Mary Chastain on January 06, 2017 28 Comments
Authorities have reported five fatalities and ight injuries in a shooting at the Fort Lauderdale airport. Officers arrested the lone suspect. https://twitter.com/browardsheriff/status/817441537655181313 TSA has stated that an active shooter remains at the airport, but no one has confirmed that yet.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 06, 2017 78 Comments
"We're going to build a big, beautiful wall and Mexico will pay for it!" President-elect Trump bragged while campaigning. Mexico said they would definitely not pay for a wall, but it looks like we might. Trump's transition team indicated the border wall was a top priority and that the incoming administration hopes to have Congressional approval of funding by as early as April.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 06, 2017 19 Comments
WOLVERINES! Or maybe not. The Obama Administration was quick to blame Russian agents for "hacking the election", despite little evidence supporting this conclusion. There's no question Democratic National Convention servers were hacked, nor is it a question whether Hillary campaign advisor and longtime Clintonite John Podesta's email was hacked. This much we know for certain. See Wikileaks. President Obama was confident Russians were to blame for the hacks, which Democrats have also suggested swayed the outcome of the presidential election.

Posted by Mary Chastain on January 06, 2017 33 Comments
The Senate Republicans have ticked off the Senate Democrats because they scheduled six Cabinet confirmation hearings next Wednesday. Oh, and President-elect Donald Trump will also hold his first press conference next Wednesday. Plus, the confirmation schedule includes the nominees the Democrats planned to target the most: attorney general, secretary of state, CIA director, education secretary, and transportation secretary. The Democrats wanted to drag out the process, make it as hard as possible to confirm Trump's Cabinet. On January 1, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told The Washington Post that his party would "resist" any attempts by the Republicans to rush through the process.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on January 06, 2017 14 Comments
On today's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough ripped as "repulsive" Sean Hannity's "bromance" with Julian Assange, and more generally criticized the Republican change of heart on Wikileaks.  Background on the evolution of Hannity's views on Assange here [note: from Daily Beast.] Scarborough noted that when Wikileaks divulged information about a CIA operation some years ago, Assange became the Republican "enemy #1." In 2010, Donald Trump himself tweeted that WikiLeaks was "disgraceful" and that there "should be death penalty or something."

Posted by Leslie Eastman on January 06, 2017 50 Comments
Legal Insurrection has often chronicled the unintended consequences of minimum wage hikes across the country, from worker struggles in Seattle, automation replacing service personnel, the closing of a popular eatery in New York, and the loss of jobs at UC Berkeley. Now, in my home town of San Diego, diners are being served-up a surprise along with their bills as a result of voters approving a minimum wage hike in last June: A dining surcharge.
Girding for the second minimum wage hike in six months and the fourth in 2-½ years, many of San Diego’s full-service restaurants are introducing for the first time an average surcharge of 3 percent of the meal’s cost to help cover increased labor expenses that some operators say amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars in a single year. ...Hoping to preserve what restaurateurs insist are already thin profit
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