#Accountability and Reform

[soberscientistlife]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Gloria Oladipo at The Guardian:

Donald Trump’s second presidential administration shut down a national database that tracked misconduct by federal police, a resource that policing reform advocates hailed as essential to prevent officers with misconduct records from being able to move undetected between agencies. The National Law Enforcement Accountability Database (NLEAD), which stored police records documenting misconduct, is now unavailable, the Washington Post first reported. The US justice department also confirmed the database’s elimination in a statement issued online. “User agencies can no longer query or add data to the NLEAD,” the statement read. “The US Department of Justice is decommissioning the NLEAD in accordance with federal standards.”

A weblink that hosted the database is no longer active. The police misconduct database, the first of its kind, was not publicly available. Law enforcement agencies could use the NLEAD to check if an officer applying for a law enforcement position had committed misconduct, such as excessive force. Several experts celebrated the NLEAD when Joe Biden first created it by an executive order issued in 2023, the third year of his presidency. [...] But Trump has since rescinded Biden’s executive order as part of an ongoing effort to slash federal agencies down. Trump himself initially proposed the database after the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, months before Biden defeated him in the presidential election that November.

Trump Administration shuts down the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database (NLEAD), a vital tool that knowns about police misconduct.

[political-us]

Right after Black History Month no less

[morro-guardian-of-the-departed]

Can you serve cunt?

Obviously. What else do you think I’ve been doing all these years?

[commonsensecommentary]

“Our problems with the F.B.I. and its work typically arise when, often at the request of Congress or partisan appointees, it starts levying criminal charges over issues that are actually social, cultural, political, or religious differences that must be settled in the marketplace of ideas—not the courtroom.”

[idylls-of-the-divine-romance]

Just noticing something: I have seen Calvinists say before that "even babies deserve to go to hell" but I have yet to ever see a Calvinist say that "Yes, there are infants in hell" or "No, there are not infants in hell". (my horrible "reformed" baptist pastor does not count; but he believes in age of accountability)

[fullpenguincupcake]

Delay, deny, depose: lessons for the new year

In the world of healthcare, delay stalls justice, deny erodes trust, and depose dismantles accountability; reminding us of the courage needed to confront broken systems. As we step into the new year, may we resolve to demand transparency, prioritize compassion, and ensure that every life receives the dignity it deserves. Change begins when we refuse to let the cycles of delay, deny, and depose define our future.

[free-luigi]

[alwaysbewoke]

the fix is in!!

[hennethgalad]

AI tells people what they want to hear

Media corporates tell the 1% what they want to hear

and who funds the scientists who are supposed to check? and the AI?

ultimately the only thing anyone hears is what the 1% wants to hear.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

John Knefel at MMFA:

Several right-wing organizations known mostly for opposing abortion, immigration, and trans rights are also involved in supporting and funding election denial groups, a sign of the issue’s centrality to the MAGA movement.

Following former President Donald Trump’s loss in 2020 and subsequent attempts to remain in power, a complicated and sprawling web of organizations emerged to sow doubt about future elections and spread debunked and baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud. Stringing these overlapping efforts together is the Only Citizens Vote Coalition, an umbrella organization connecting state and national election denial efforts with the broader right-wing policy ecosystem. These groups also significantly overlap with Project 2025, an effort organized by The Heritage Foundation to provide the next Republican presidential administration with staffing and policy recommendations.  Even as early as March 2021, mere months after Trump’s multifaceted effort to reverse the 2020 election, socially conservative groups began pouring money into election denial initiatives. That trend has only accelerated in the intervening years, with a host of anti-civil rights groups — often euphemistically characterized as engaged in the “culture wars” — having expanded their operations to include so-called election integrity.

These groups include the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, the anti-trans American Principles Project, a fund run by Hobby Lobby founder David Green, and high-profile right-wing charities National Christian Charitable Foundation and Christian Community Foundation, among others.  One of the primary myths that the election denial movement has spread this cycle concerns noncitizen voting, which experts agree is exceedingly rare. This manufactured scandal synthesizes two key pillars of the MAGA movement — demonizing immigrants and claiming that elections are rigged against right-wing candidates. The partners listed in the Only Citizens Vote Coalition include anti-immigrant groups the Federation for American Immigration Reform and the Immigration Accountability Project, illustrating how election denial groups have incorporated nativism into their movement. Both FAIR and IAP have strong links to the Tanton network, named after John Tanton, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center refers to as the “the racist architect of the modern anti-immigrant movement.”

Right-wing anti-civil rights organizations are going all-in on pushing the nonexistent “noncitizen voter” canard.

[vorthodoxy]

did some slapdash math

in a world where 1 person in 100 is a predator, and the average predator eats a prey every two weeks or so, the population would stay roughly stable if people got pregnant three times as often as they do in our world... and if the average pregnancy produced quintuplets.

in any world with vore as a common phenomenon, hyperpreg is the only reasonable solution to the population problem

[choppedcowboydinosaur]

I've noticed this weird false dichotomy amongst Biden supporters where you can either support lgbt people in America or Palestinians. They choose lgbt people in America over the Palestinians. This is the false dichotomy they fell for. My take on this issue is you can care about both and here's why. I dislike Biden's handling of the Israel-Gaza war because he mollycoddles Netanyahu to give him everything he wants. The way Netanyahu is waging this war might lead to a greater war in the middle east not just in Lebanon to fight Hezbollah but including Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Iran and many others. I fear if this war escalates Iran will become more involved. Despite the fact the Iranians have a new reformer president who wants to make peace with the West I fear he might not be able to stop a bigger war. I worry about this since we are backing the Ukrainians fighting Russia and gearing up for a war with China. This will overstretch our abilities to fight in wars. At best Biden has sanctioned illegal Israeli settlers but that's about it. He has not changed the systemic nature of the war and his current policies with Netanyahu might escalate it. I do not want America getting dragged into another war in the Middle East.

We keep mucking around in places we shouldn't be. This will get service members killed (which include lgbt people by the way) and more people in the Middle East killed. In fact, service members have been killed already like in that Tower 22 base in Jordan near the Syrian border. Where they were killed by drones form Iraqi militia groups. That could be a glimpse of things to come. Which is tragic since it's a region that has suffered over 20 years of conflict and is still suffering from it to this day. We have been at war there the majority of my life. Whether in full military might like the invasion of Iraq or special forces doing black ops like in Syria. Call me chickenshit, call me what you will but I am just sick of the wars in the Middle East which our government constantly gets us involved in. Basically, you can care about both lgbt people, and the Palestinians since Biden seems to just sleepwalk us into more wars.

[raptorrobot]

Please tell me that is actually what you look like cus that fit fucks hard and also the tats are wicked

i mean i like to THINK i draw myself accurately

[shadow-redferne]

people will literally see certain posts talking about how being a bad person doesn't mean you aren't redeemable and that you can still change and will immediately assume it's abuse apologism. you can make a post saying "abusive does not mean the same as irredeemable. there's still a chance to redeem yourself and reevaluate your wrongs and fix them. if you were abusive in the past, don't expect others to forgive you, try to forgive yourself".

and people will respond "so we shouldn't hold abusers and rapists accountable? so we HAVE to forgive our abusers no matter what???" like... no? that's not what we're saying? that's an entirely different sentence. congrats. you missed the entire fucking point.

--a fed up individual who has survived abuse in the past