#but what reg and right as former government fellows?

[flamingredanon]

*collapses from the void with a thought that I may have rambled about before*

You know the idea of Right being with the Government and eventually getting disillusioned with their ideals (and maybe a certain possum twink as well) and leaves to join the Toppats?

May I present the idea of Reginald being formally in the Government?

Maybe he was still pretty low in the ranks despite being hard working (maybe add on Galeforce or Canterbury just telling Reg that the hard work would eventually pay off, many many years later) and after some run ins with some Toppats (and maybe a certain red head) he decides to jump ship.

Or Government spy Reginald who was sent to keep an eye on the Toppats and sees things from their side and decides to join them for real.

Bonus idea of it being a dual spy mission with Terrence but Reginald decides to turn sides and soon has a duel with Terrence to dethrone him or kill him to keep his Government spy secret safe. (And maybe guilt on the damage that was done on purpose by Terrence and their mission)

Either way, the Government would be pissed and maybe a reason a certain Galeforce wants to take the Toppats down and have Reginald arrested.

[lastsonlost]

I HAVE BEEN SAYING THIS SHIT FOREVER!

In 2011, the US Department of Education issued a mandate to post-secondary educational institutions, regarding their handling of allegations of sexual misconduct among students. The department’s guidelines required these institutions to create their own pseudo-justice system wherein allegations would be investigated, and hearings held. The standards laid out by the department were a naked attack on students’ right to due process, dictating broad definitions for types of misconduct that stretched far beyond the legal definitions the criminal justice system uses, and laying out a systematic denial of the due process rights of accused students. In the legal chaos created by the concept of an accuser’s automatic victim status and “right to be believed,” many students, mostly young men, have seen their academic careers interrupted or even ended by mere allegations from fellow students.

Institutions all over the United States had responded to the 2011 “dear colleague” letter with changes to policy and procedures that resulted in disciplinary actions over which hundreds of students sued their universities. TitleIXforall.com is currently tracking 627 of these lawsuits. The site contains a database of these lawsuits, along with a list of helpful organizations or individuals for students experiencing discrimination, and a list of distinguished due process attorneys.

There have been rulings in federal court indicating that the dear colleague standards and the policies they inspired created violations of students’ constitutionally protected civil rights. In one ruling that dramatically contradicted the dear colleague guidelines, the 6th circuit held that in conducting Title IX investigations, colleges and universities are required to provide parties an opportunity to cross-examine witnesses in the presence of a neutral fact-finder in cases hinging on the credibility of such witnesses. In another, the court found that an accused student was deprived of due process rights when university administrators suspended him without first holding an official hearing. If anything, these rulings have made it clear that the dear colleague standards cannot remain in place as an unaltered policy, because they contain unconstitutional requirements.

Trump administration Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, upon accepting her appointment to the office, vowed reform. In late 2018, extending into January 2019, her office accepted commentary from citizens regarding the topic. Last year she released a set of proposed changes intended to restore due process and protect students’ freedom of speech, sending feminists into a panic as her new, updated guidelines were set to roll back or dramatically alter several points of the 2011 dear colleague guidance. Completely ignoring the fact that the 2011 rules were a huge departure from the real court system’s response to criminal allegations, the National Organization for Women accused DeVos of wanting to “turn the government’s response to assault, harassment and rape upside down,” and openly lamented the impending loss of “victims’ rights.”

Unphased by feminist melodrama, on Wednesday, May 6, Secretary DeVos’s office formally announced the new rules.

Robby Suave, writing for Reason.com, stated, “The new rules are similar to what the Department of Education proposed in November 2018. Most notably, the government has abolished the single-investigator model, which previously permitted a sole university official to investigate an accusation of misconduct, decide which evidence to consider, and produce a report recommending an outcome. Under the new rules, the final decision maker must be a different person than the investigator, and a finding of responsibility can only be rendered after a hearing in which a representative for the accused is able to pose questions to the accuser—i.e., cross-examination. Importantly, the new rules narrow the scope of actionable sexual harassment to exclude conduct that ought to be protected under the First Amendment. Obama-era guidance had defined sexual harassment as "any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature." The new rules keep this definition but add that the conduct must be offensive to a reasonable person, severe, and pervasive. In practice, this should mean that schools will no longer initiate Title IX investigations that impugn free speech.

The new rules will also end the pernicious practice of universities initiating Title IX investigations in cases where the alleged victims are not interested in this course of action.”

On May 7, the National Organization for Women published a press release calling the new guidelines an all-out attack on the safety of women and girls. Their article begins with the theatrical line “We don’t see you.  We don’t hear you. We don’t believe you.” That’s the message Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is sending with the sweeping new changes to Title IX…” and only gets worse from there, lamenting that the Devos guidelines are set in law rather than just tied by policy to schools’ funding, labeling long-standing due process standards “new rights,” and calling the changes “draconian.” Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden disavowed the new guidelines, claiming in a statement quoted by Politico that the new rules “shame and silence survivors,” and give colleges “a green light to ignore sexual violence and strip survivors of their rights.” He has vowed to “put a quick end” to these changes if elected. The article goes on to quote Biden, who has recently vehemently denied a sexual assault allegation against himself by former aide Tara Reade, as stating that “Survivors deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and when they step forward they should be heard, not silenced.”

While Biden thinks it is an attack on survivors for universities to carefully scrutinize allegations against their students, regarding his own case, he stated that accusers’ stories “should be subject to appropriate inquiry and scrutiny," and that when reporting on this particular allegation, “Responsible news organizations should examine and evaluate the full and growing record of inconsistencies in her story," a benefit he would not get from campus investigators if he were a student facing the same allegation from a fellow student under Obama-era guidelines.

The feminist response to this has been quite interesting. There doesn’t seem to be anywhere near the same degree of outrage leveled at presidential candidate Biden over this allegation as there was leveled at Donald Trump over his flippant remark about the variability of women’s sensibilities regarding men’s sexual pursuit depending on the subject’s wealth and popularity. In fact, some feminists have even followed up statements that they believe Biden’s accuser, which under today’s standards would mean they view Biden as a confirmed rapist - with declarations that they support his candidacy anyway. But they still oppose DeVos’s Title IX reforms because screw men and their due process rights if they can’t wheel and deal federal funding for feminist initiatives in return for feminists’ political support.

Biden’s history of garnering feminist support by opposing the due process rights of other men accused of sexual misconduct is longstanding and consistent. During his current campaign, he has bragged about his part as a co-author of the Violence Against Women act of 1994, Title IV of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. In 1993, he cited the work of radfem professor Mary P. Koss in support of the passage of his bill. VAWA included multiple attacks on due process and the gender neutrality of federal intimate partner and sexual violence law.

The law used wording that relies on the label “victim” for accusers throughout its text, presuming accusers’ stories to be factual and the accused to be perpetrators, thereby removing the presumption of innocence. This is normal for statutes describing criminal definitions, but VAWA does so in its descriptions of policy and procedures for criminal investigations and hearings, and federally funded social services for accusers whose alleged perpetrators haven’t been convicted.

Under VAWA, federal funding was allocated for indoctrinating every aspect of the justice system with feminist dogma, prejudicing them against the accused. Further, federal funding was allocated to incentivize arrest, prosecution, conviction, and sentencing, without regard to the merits or dubiousness of individual allegations. The law funded advocates to accompany accusers to court, creating a government-supported adversary against the accused that is unique to these types of criminal allegations. This advocate’s job is to support the accuser's interests against the due process rights of the accused, and to provide emotional support throughout the judicial process. The accused is not given any equivalent support. Under the law Biden brags about penning, the law enforcement and judicial systems are essentially ordered to approach criminal sexual misconduct allegations with a presumption of guilt and then cripple the defense of the accused, yet when accused of such misconduct himself, Biden expects the full benefit of the doubt from you peons whose due process rights he eviscerated with that law.

In all of his statements on Reade’s allegations against him, and his opinion of DeVos’s Title IX reforms, 

BIDEN HAS YET TO EXPLAIN WHY HE THINKS HE IS DESERVING OF A BETTER LEVEL OF CIVIL RIGHTS PROTECTIONS THAN YOU ARE.                                                   

In fact, to date, while it’s been posed rhetorically by some in the right-leaning media, he hasn’t even directly faced that question from anybody.

Will anyone in the establishment media have the courage to ask him? Does the presidential candidate have the courage to be interviewed by someone who would?

SOURCES

https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/titleix-regs-unofficial.pdf

https://reason.com/2020/05/06/betsy-devos-title-ix-due-process-college-sexual-misconduct/ https://now.org/media-center/press-release/betsy-devos-new-rule-on-campus-sexual-assault-continues-the-all-out-attack-on-the-safety-and-rights-of-women-and-girls/

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/06/biden-vows-a-quick-end-to-devos-sexual-misconduct-rule-241715

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/01/politics/joe-biden-tara-reade-allegation/index.html

https://www.littler.com/publication-press/publication/sixth-circuit-provides-expansive-due-process-rights-title-ix-cases

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/08/08/ruling-umass-amherst-title-ix-lawsuit-may-lead-supreme-court-case-experts-say

https://now.org/media-center/press-release/see-no-evil-betsy-devos-endangers-survivors-of-campus-sexual-misconduct/

http://www.saveservices.org/2012/08/how-rape-laws-remove-the-presumption-of-innocence/

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-103hr3355enr/pdf/BILLS-103hr3355enr.pdf

https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=w2NPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=XgMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5854%2C2479318

[itsfinancethings]

October 24, 2019 at 08:30PM

A chunk of Congressional Republicans have publicly heeded President Donald Trump’s call to defend him as their Democratic colleagues in the House pursue an impeachment inquiry into his possible abuses of power. But while their outcries may procure some short-term publicity victories, they ultimately just mask a larger problem: a lack of direction and ownership coming from the White House, which is facing serious charges that it linked an aid package to Ukraine with political interests in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

After Trump demanded in a recent Cabinet meeting that his fellow Republicans “get tougher and fight,” he separately summoned more than two dozen lawmakers from the conservative Freedom Caucus to the White House, where he urged a stronger response to slow if not stop the investigation. The next day, Freedom Caucus members were among those who raided the secure room in the U.S. Capitol where the depositions have been conducted, delaying one by five hours.

It was the day after Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, delivered damning testimony. According to a person who was present for his deposition, Taylor had provided “the most compelling case yet” that the White House had withheld military aid to pressure Ukraine to investigate Trump’s political opponents.

The raid was the first indication that, for the time being, Republicans have honed their efforts to demonize the Democrats’ closed-door process rather than the substance of the inquiry. On Thursday, Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham – himself an impeachment manager during President Bill Clinton’s Senate trial two decades ago – introduced a resolution condemning the inquiry, arguing that Democrats are “abandoning more than a century’s worth of precedent and tradition in impeachment proceedings and denying President Trump basic fairness and due process accorded every American.”

“There’s a right way to do it and a wrong way, and they’ve chosen the wrong way,” Graham told reporters, accompanied by a poster board of all of the rights Republicans had provided Clinton during his impeachment process. Democrats, he said, had endangered the future of the Presidency by declining to hold a formal vote on an impeachment inquiry and failing to give Trump what he deemed adequate rights.

But Republicans held closed door-depositions during Clinton’s impeachment too. And nothing in the Constitution mandates that Democrats do any of the things Graham mentioned; Congress has fairly wide latitude over impeachment proceedings, and lawmakers have not agreed to any rules package to govern the actual votes on impeachment. Congressional investigations are often done behind closed doors, and House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff has explained that the committee is operating with increased caution to avoid witnesses coordinating testimony.

But the resolution represented yet another attempt by Republicans to fight back as it becomes increasingly clear the White House isn’t providing clear direction, and as the facts that are trickling out paint a dire picture for the President.

“If the facts are not on your side, if the policy is not on your side, then you have to talk process,” said one former Republican member of Congress who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “If you’re talking process, if you’re talking procedure, you’re losing.”

“What the hell is the defense on substance?” the former member continued. “The Republicans are in a spot where they cannot defend the President.”

That doesn’t mean, however, that Republicans still won’t put up a fight. When Republicans barged into the secure room where the inquiry was being conducted Wednesday to decry the process, they not only violated House rules but delayed a deposition from Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Laura Cooper by over five hours.

Republicans know these demonstrations were solely for the optics. Several of the lawmakers complaining about the restricted access are on the committees that can sit in on these depositions, and Republican leaders had defended the privacy of the Benghazi hearings half a decade ago. But they still provided the short-term optical effect they were seeking. For at least a few hours, they — and not the allegations swirling around President Trump and the impeachment inquiry — were the story, with some Democrats lamenting the coverage it received over Taylor’s potentially game-changing testimony the previous day.

Democrats, meanwhile, were quick to use Wednesday’s chaos orchestrated by some Republicans to point to what they feel are recent victories. “Witnesses are now coming forward to testify under oath and providing devastating testimony about the corruption of this President and I think this was part of the effort to stop the process,” Rep. David Cicilline, who attended Cooper’s deposition Thursday, told reporters.

But Republicans have clearly decided focusing on the process is paramount. “I don’t know that this is a messaging problem, this is a process problem,” Rep. Mark Meadows, an ally of the President and leader of the Freedom Caucus that met with Trump before Wednesday’s slow-motion basement raid that Trump loved, told TIME. “If you focus on communication and not process you’re focusing on the wrong thing.”

Even so, there are risks associated with that strategy. Once all of the information is publicized, the GOP will be forced to come up with a new line of defense. Democrats have said multiple times they will release the transcripts from the depositions and hold public hearings, although they will not to commit to a timeline. But whenever that happens, Republicans won’t be able to point to a closed-door process as a point of contention. Right now, Republicans are largely declining to talk about what has emerged from the inquiry, claiming they will not comment on items that have been leaked. When Republicans do acknowledge the leaks appear to make Trump look weak, it is accompanied by an assertion that it is only part of the story.

“Quite frankly, I’m not going to vote to convict or un-convict based on an article,” Republican Rep. Mark Amodei told TIME. Amodei had made headlines when he replied to a question about impeachment by saying: “let’s put it through the process and see what happens,” although he later clarified and said he wanted House committees to investigate the whistleblower complaint that Trump was linking foreign aid to a request of a “favor” to dig up dirt on the Bidens.

When asked Thursday how the messaging would shift once there was more transparency in the inquiry, Graham evaded the question and pivoted back to the argument that Democrats are selectively leaking from the depositions to undermine Trump’s poll numbers.

Part of the reason Republicans may continue to struggle is not only because of the facts that could emerge, but because of a lack of strategy at the White House. Even Graham – one of Trump’s staunchest defenders – has said the White House needs to do a better job with messaging as it fights not just impeachment but also critics of the President’s sudden Syria policy shift.

Graham praised the messaging model then-President Clinton followed during his impeachment, where his staff created a “war room” solely dedicated to that topic while the rest of the administration proceeded with business as usual. “I think one of the reasons that [Clinton] survived is that the public may not have liked what the President had done but believed he was still able to do his job as he governed during impeachment,” Graham told reporters.

Recognizing the potential peril that comes with criticizing this White House in any way, Graham subsequently clarified his remarks on Twitter, claiming the White House was working on a new strategy, not a new team.

Regardless, Graham was still espousing the view of several Republicans both inside and outside the White House that there needs to be stronger messaging from the top down. So far, the White House has been doling out most of the responsibilities to the White House Counsel’s Office. This has left Republicans on the Hill feeling like they have virtually no direction, aside from the President’s desire to feel in control of a situation largely out of his hands.

In the Senate, Republicans are watching the House closely and preparing for the circus to cross the Capitol. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been prepping with lawmakers, teaching them the process by which they would serve as a jury in an impeachment trial. His staff has been consulting histories of past procedures, especially the Clinton saga. Several aides at the Capitol are reading journalist Peter Baker’s The Breach, a history of Bill Clinton’s impeachment and trial, because it is widely expected that the Senate would emulate — if not copy — what is now seen as an orderly and bipartisan blueprint for how to run such a politically charged process.

McConnell and his leadership team are preaching unity in the face of Democrats’ incoming fire. He successfully held off on a Republican letter rebuking Trump over his shift in Syria policy, and instead suggested a bipartisan resolution tougher than a version that already cleared the House.

Graham’s resolution, introduced Thursday, was hardly united. Nine incumbent Republican Senators declined to become a co-sponsor of Graham’s measure: retiring lawmakers Lamar Alexander, Mike Enzi and Johnny Isakson; in tough re-election-bids Cory Gardner and Susan Collins; and independent-minded Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, Dan Sullivan and Rob Portman.

It’s not that those nine support impeaching and removing Trump, or alone are sufficient to band with Democrats. Instead, they represent a sense in the Senate that they should know if the President is abusing his power, regardless of his political affiliation. The pursuit of that fact, in the end, may be what keeps the process on track.

— With reporting by John Walcott and Brian Bennett