Category Archives: Mop

Chris Christie Used to Be Against Terrorist Suspects Getting Guns

by EzraNevile Posted on December 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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Days after a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, killed 14 people, and one day after President Barack Obama called for more gun safety measures in a speech addressing the attack, GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie bolstered his support of gun rights. As news surfaced that the assault weapons used in San Bernardino were purchased legally due to a loophole in California’s assault weapons ban, Christie said during a radio interview that Obama’s call for limits on assault weapons was “absurd.”

This was one of the New Jersey governor’s many recent efforts to showcase his pro-guns stance. Last month, he conditionally vetoed a bill that would have made it harder for domestic abusers to own guns. He also recently vetoed a bill that would have required law enforcement to be notified when a person who had been institutionalized for mental illness seeks to expunge his mental health record when applying for a gun permit. And in the past year, he pardoned five people in New Jersey who were charged with unlawful possession of a firearm.

But for most of his two decades in politics, Christie has been a supporter of gun safety measures. In 1993, during his failed campaign for state Senate, he cited Republican efforts to repeal New Jersey’s assault weapon ban as his inspiration for entering politics. He repeated his support of the assault weapons ban in 1995 when running for the state Assembly. In his 2009 gubernatorial campaign, Christie voiced his opposition to a federal bill that would have made it easier for permit holders to carry firearms across state lines. As governor, he signed nearly a dozen pieces of legislation restricting guns in 2013, including one that barred individuals on the federal terror watch list from obtaining a permit to buying a gun in New Jersey. His consistent support for gun control has earned him a C, the lowest rating from the National Rifle Association among the top GOP presidential candidates. In 2014, New Jersey was voted one of the worst states for gun owners by Guns & Ammo magazine.

Yet late last month on CNN, Christie refused to express support a proposed bill in Congress that seeks to close this same terror watch list loophole nationwide, saying that he believes this sort of rule-making should be left to states.

When he’s been questioned about his newfound support of gun rights, Christie has insisted it’s an authentic evolution. “I have grown up a bit and changed my view and been educated on it,” Christie said on Face the Nation last Sunday, when asked about his previous support for an assault weapons ban. Christie said his views began to change when he became a prosecutor and saw that firearms are necessary for law enforcement to manage crime.

Though the NRA has yet to revise its rating for the candidate, Christie has won critical support in New Hampshire—a key primary state and also a GOP electorate that tends to oppose stricter gun control. Last month, Christie won the endorsement of the state’s largest newspaper, the New Hampshire Union Leader. He’s since been endorsed by the state’s House and Senate majority leaders, and several other political figures.

Christie’s revamped position on guns seems to have convinced many of New Hampshire’s leaders that he could win a pro-gun constituency. But the most fervently pro-gun groups in the state aren’t sold. On Wednesday, the New Hampshire Firearms Coalition, one of two major gun rights groups in the state, sent an email blast to its members warning them to be wary of Christie’s purported Second Amendment bona fides.

“Don’t be fooled!” writes NHFC in its message, outlining Christie’s pro-gun-control history. “The truth is Chris Christie has been an anti-gun activist for his entire political career…Being pro-gun is doing the right thing when no one is looking.”

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Chris Christie Used to Be Against Terrorist Suspects Getting Guns

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After Laquan McDonald’s Shooting, Chicago Targets Police Contract Protections

by RubenVergara Posted on December 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story appears courtesy of the Chicago Reporter, a nonprofit investigative news organization that focuses on race, poverty, and income inequality.

In the fallout from the release of the Laquan McDonald video, Chicago’s top cop lost his job. But the police officer who shot the teenager 16 times is still employed.

Officer Jason Van Dyke, who is captured on police dash cam video shooting McDonald, can thank the police union.

The Fraternal Order of Police contract with the city shapes how Chicago handles police misconduct allegations, disciplines rank-and-file officers, as well as when the city pays legal costs for police officers accused of wrongdoing. While activists have long called for changes to the contract, many people in local government have not been eager to take on that fight—until now.

With cries of reform ringing louder than before and a federal investigation of the police department, aldermen are demanding changes to a union contract that breezed through the City Council in 2014.

“Yes, the FOP is strong,” said Dick Simpson, a political science professor and former Chicago alderman. “But there is huge public pressure at the moment to provide oversight for police and to curb police abuse and corruption.”

The police contract expires in 2017. The Black Caucus is demanding that an officer’s liability risk be tied to their employment, as well as other changes, including tougher punishment for misconduct.

Ald. Howard Brookins (21st) said the contract makes it harder to cut ties with cops like Van Dyke who had numerous citizen complaints against him and had reportedly cost the city more than $500,000 in legal settlements and fees. And critics said the evidence against Van Dyke was damning enough for him to be fired immediately.

“We have to be able to get rid of bad police officers,” Brookins said. “Maybe that’s something we shouldn’t have to bargain for.”

The union contends that changes to the contract would discourage people from becoming cops.

FOP President Dean Angelo said the contract contains fair and necessary protections for cops and doesn’t tie authorities’ hands in misconduct cases such as Van Dyke’s as much as some people think. He cast the aldermen as opportunists riding the wave of public outrage over a white cop shooting a black youth.

“It’s easy now in this environment to point fingers at us,” Angelo said.

Brookins acknowledged that there hasn’t been momentum on the council to change the contract. But now, he said, “There is a political will.”

The police contract

The current police contract, which was approved by the City Council unanimously in November 2014, sets the bar high for firing or suspending a cop.

Part of the agreement, known as the police bill of rights, gives cops a layer of due process beyond what most citizens enjoy. The contract allows officers to get in writing information about an investigation, including who will question them and what they’ll be asked. Cops who shoot civilians can delay making an official statement for several days, and investigators can’t interview them without providing transcripts of every prior interviews or notifying them.

Another union protection came into play in McDonald’s death. Experts suggested the officers who saw the shooting—whose accounts clash with the video—should have been subject to lie detector tests, but the police bill of rights in the contract gives them the right to refuse the tests. In addition, police complaint and disciplinary records must be destroyed in five or seven years based on the type of alleged offense, making it harder to show a pattern of misconduct.

The union recently halted a city effort to grant requests for police misconduct records dating back to the 1960s, arguing that the city violated the union agreement by keeping the files. Investigators are also limited in how they can use past allegations of abuse to resolve new claims, according to the contract.

The superintendent has to file charges with the Chicago Police Board and win an evidentiary hearing to fire an officer or issue a lengthy suspension. Even when investigators sustain allegations against an officer, the contract allows police to skirt the police board. For example, if the Independent Police Review Authority recommends suspending an officer, the contract lets him appeal the decision through arbitration, a process that experts characterize as heavily stacked in favor of cops.

“The incentives of the chief of police on down are further dampened by the knowledge that anything they do can be undone easily in arbitration,” said Max Schanzenbach, a law professor at Northwestern University. “So they have these cops well known to have numerous citizen complaints and settlements paid out for them, but they’re not dismissed from the force.”

Angelo contends that the FOP shields its officers from unfair discipline due to unfounded allegations just as any union would do for its members. He said the life or death stakes many cops operate under and the possibility of false complaints affords them special consideration.

While the public has expressed outrage over cops like Van Dyke, who, until recently, collected a check on desk duty, there’s little the city can do if the cop hasn’t been charged with a crime or had a complaint against them sustained.

The police department was able to suspend Van Dyke without pay when he got charged with murder by the State’s Attorney’s office a year after McDonald’s death, but the department did not fire him. The Independent Police Review Authority froze its investigation after forwarding the case to county prosecutors.

A call for contract reform

Ald. Ameya Pawar (47th) said he wants a separate expedited disciplinary process in the contract for fatal shooting cases like Van Dyke’s where evidence of excessive force is obvious, even without criminal charges or a drawn out investigation.

“There are a lot of questions around why this officer was not removed,” Pawar said.

Some aldermen are scrutinizing the issue of indemnification, or covering legal costs for cops sued for alleged misconduct.

Ald. Pat Dowell (3rd) released a statement calling for the police union to chip in for misconduct settlements, which cost the city more than $50 million last year. She argued that “residents of Chicago should not be solely responsible for the cost of settlements in police cases.”

Ald. Will Burns (4th) a close ally of the mayor, also issued a statement that said “officers with a high number of complaints are a liability for the city of Chicago, and erode the critical trust between police and community.” He said the contract should be reviewed to allow authorities to suspend or fire cops with too many complaint as well as officers subject to excessive force lawsuits settled by the city.

Alderman Howard Brookins at City Hall. Photo by Grace Donnelly

Brookins suggested the city should take a cue from the private sector and write risk management clauses into the union contract.

“If you kept getting your company sued and cost them millions of dollars, you would be out of there,” he said. “And if you kept getting in too many car accidents, even if you said they weren’t your fault, your insurance company would drop you as a liability risk.”

But Angelo said that making an officer’s liability risk cause for termination would discourage people from signing up for a job that is inherently risky.

“We do a job less and less people want,” Angelo said. “That would minimize the population of people who want to perform this calling.”

Critics of the union contract don’t just want to change what’s in the agreement. They also want to change the negotiation process and give the public a forum to air concerns well in advance of a City Council vote on the contract.

Not much public input, if any, goes into union contract negotiations. The FOP and the city’s negotiators typically hammer out an agreement in private, sometimes with the help of an independent arbitrator, and present it to City Council for a vote.

Several experts said the city should hold public hearings about the police contract before negotiations are finalized.

“We need to put some sunlight on those union provisions that are offensive and which ones need to be changed, and then organize at the local level to get city council and mayors who won’t yield to union demands,” said police misconduct expert Sam Walker. “The police union is very effective in playing the crime card against their critics: ‘Oh, you’re against the police, you support the criminals.’ They’ve been doing that for decades.”

Despite increasing national scrutiny of police union contracts and how they affect police accountability, Walker said that they are still an underrated issue. That’s partly because much of the public isn’t aware of their problematic provisions, he said, but also because police unions have proven adept at getting their way in city halls and statehouses across the country.

Brookins and Schanzenbach both said that some of the most challenging concerns about the contract would require changes to state law. Illinois requires cities to negotiate disciplinary procedures as part of collective bargaining and foot the bill for cops sued for misconduct. A state law known as the police officer bill of rights was modeled after one of the most criticized parts of the contract.

But there’s still a lot officials and residents in Chicago can do, Walker said, including targeting the next round of contract negotiations.

“When a contract comes up for a vote by City Council,” Walker said, “it’s too late.”

Angelo said FOP has not been twisting the city’s arm in negotiations.

“The contract has been negotiated for almost 35 years,” he said, “and we certainly didn’t pull the wool over officials in the city of Chicago’s eyes time and time again.”

Political will to take on the FOP

Fighting the FOP isn’t easy. Matthew Piers, who was a top city lawyer under Mayor Harold Washington, said he lost his battle against the union in the 1980s. When Piers, now 64, joined the Chicago Law Department in 1984, the city had approved Chicago’s first FOP contract several years earlier. He had to work within the framework of union agreements made by Washington’s predecessor, Jane Byrne. One of those agreements was the indemnification clause, and Piers was charged with deciding whether the city would pay legal costs for police officers accused of misconduct.

Piers quickly ran afoul of the union for his refusal in numerous cases to foot the bill for cops he believed had intentionally harmed civilians. One such case involved a cop who was accused of raping a woman in the back of his car. The physical evidence, Piers said, left little doubt that nonconsensual sex had occurred, so he declined to represent the officer. But the FOP, which blasted him as anti-police for his stance, took the case to arbitration, citing the union contract. The arbitrator ordered the city to pay legal bills for the officer, who Piers said kept his job.

“Your conduct could cost the city millions with there being no repercussions for you as an individual,” Piers said. “That disconnect—I found it troubling then, and I find it troubling now.”

There have been several versions of the FOP contract ratified since the 1980s, but the provisions that City Council members want to put under a microscope aren’t new.

Angelo wonders why aldermen are talking so tough about a contract that they approved just last year. Aldermen could have questioned the contract or raised the issue of discipline, but, Angelo said, “I didn’t hear a word from any of them.”

“I don’t know if those people read what they voted on,” he said. “But if they didn’t read this contract before they voted on it and now are blaming us—shame on them.”

Brookins said he has raised concerns about the FOP contract in the past, but didn’t feel he had the political capital to be more vocal or force a change until now.

“Even when I was first elected in 2004, it was not popular or desirable to talk against the police,” Brookins said. “Everybody wanted to be the friend of law enforcement, to be tougher on crime, and going against the police, they equated that as siding with the criminals. So lawmaker after lawmaker has been tougher and tougher on crime, saying we support our police officers. So almost anything they wanted they got that they bargained for.”

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After Laquan McDonald’s Shooting, Chicago Targets Police Contract Protections

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These Are the People Who Really Run the NRA

by Daniela3623 Posted on December 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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The National Rifle Association claims to speak for more than 5 million gun owners. But most of the shots at the organization are called by a hush-hush board of 76 directors. The majority are nominated by a top-down process and elected by a small fraction of the organization’s life members.

Since 2013, when we last looked at the NRA’s board, only five new members have joined. Two of them, Timothy Knight and Sean Maloney, played roles in the successful 2013 effort to recall two Colorado lawmakers who had voted for stronger gun laws. (A complete list of current board members is at the bottom of the page.)

by the numbers

Overall, the NRA board members are 93 percent white and 86 percent men. Most are hunters and/or shoot competitively or for sport. About a third are current or former lawmakers or government officials. About one-tenth are entertainers or athletes; nine percent own, work for, or promote gun companies. Here’s a breakdown of the current board, based on bios posted by the NRA (since deleted) and other sources:

According to the NRA’s own tax documents, all of its board members reside at the office of its general counsel. Here’s where they actually hail from:

notable members

Some noteworthy members of the current board of directors include celebrities, politicians, and a few whose family history with firearms the NRA prefers not to publicize.

Tom Selleck in Magnum P.I. Globe Photos/Zumapress

Tom Selleck
The Magnum, P.I. star, gun buff, prolific water user, and vocal gun-rights supporter was the top vote-getter in 2008’s board election. (Fellow ’80s TV heartthrob Erik Estrada sought a seat on the NRA board in 2011 but eventually withdrew his candidacy when the chips were down.)

Grover Norquist
The president of Americans for Tax Reform is a NRA Life Member and member of the Fifty Caliber Shooters Association. After Newtown, he echoed the NRA’s line: “We have got to calm down and not take tragedies like this, crimes like this, and use them for political purposes.”

J. William “Bill” Carter
Carter is a retired Border Patrol agent whose record was cited in a 1994 New York Times investigation into “the agency’s historic failure to hold managers accountable for egregious wrongdoing.” He is the son of former NRA executive vice president Harlon Carter, who helped set the organization on its current hardline course, and who, as a teenager, shot and killed a 15-year-old boy in Laredo, Texas.

Larry Craig
The former Idaho senator sponsored a 2005 law protecting gun makers from liability in connection with their products being used by criminals. He is the longest serving member of the NRA board.

Ted Nugent Amy Harris/Zumapress

Ted Nugent
At the NRA’s 2012 annual conference, the Nuge announced, “If Barack Obama becomes the next president in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year,” prompting the Secret Service to meet with the R-word dropping, “tiger dick” eating Motor City Madman.

Gage Skidmore

Mercedes Viana Schlapp
Schlapp, a new board member, is a former Bush administration spokeswoman. She runs a Virginia public-affairs firm with her husband, Matthew, who is a former Koch Industries vice president and is the current chairman of the American Conservative Union.

H. Joaquin Jackson
Jackson is a retired 27-year veteran of the Texas Rangers. His son Don Joaquin is currently serving a 48-year prison sentence for his involvement in a double homicide. In his memoir, One Ranger, Jackson quotes his son’s partner in crime, who said that he had committed the murder because he was “drunk and the gun was available.”

Oliver North Globe Photos/Zumapress

Oliver North
“I love speaking out for the NRA in large part because it drives the left a little bit nuts,” says the Iran-Contra conspirator-turned-conservative pundit, who was once better known for invoking the Fifth Amendment rather than the Second.

Karl Malone
In 2010, the retired NBA player upset some gun fans when he penned a column for Sports Illustrated in which he opined, “The big picture is that guns won’t protect you. If someone really wanted to get you, they would…For you to say you need a gun for your protection? My goodness gracious, how are you living that you need that?”

Patricia Clark
A record-holding shooter, Clark has been on the NRA board since 1999 and is the head of the NRA’s nominating committee, which helps pick the majority of board members. She lived in Newtown, Connecticut at the time of the 2012 school massacre there.

Ronnie G. Barrett
Founder of Barrett Firearms Manufacturing and inventor of the .50 sniper rifle, which can penetrate armor from more than 4,500 feet and is legal for civilian purchase in 49 states.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush hands a pen to Marion Hammer at a 1999 gun bill signing. AP Photo/Eric Tournay

Marion Hammer
Hammer, a former NRA president, helped craft and implement Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, which provided a model for similar self-defense laws in 24 other states.

David Keene
He is the former president of the NRA and the former chairman of the American Conservative Union. In 2003, his son was sentenced to 10 years in prison for shooting at another driver during a road rage incident.

Carl T. Rowan Jr.
Rowan was formerly a cop, FBI agent, and vice president of the private security firm Securitas. He is the son of columnist Carl Rowan Sr., who once caught a teenager swimming in his backyard pool and wounded him with an unlicensed handgun.

R. Lee “The Gunny” Ermey Gene Blevins/Zuma Wire

R. Lee “The Gunny” Ermey
Former Marine gunnery sergeant turned actor is best known for his turn as a drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket (who is gunned down by a suicidal recruit). He’s also a spokesman for Glock.

Robert K. Brown
The former Special Forces soldier and big-game hunter is the founder and publisher of Soldier of Fortune, which was sued in the late ’80s for running want ads for mercenaries and guns for hire.

Roy Innis
The head of the Congress of Racial Equality, a civil rights organization that’s morphed as a climate-denying astroturf outfit. While representing the United States at a United Nations arms conference in 2001, Innis explained, “The Rwanda genocide would not have happened if the Tutsis had had even one or two pistols to fight back with.”

the current board

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These Are the People Who Really Run the NRA

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Here’s How ISIS Gets Its Guns

by EbonyGilmore61 Posted on December 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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When ISIS captured the Iraqi city of Mosul last summer, it also nabbed a bonanza of weapons, ammunition, and vehicles from the fleeing Iraqi army. The Islamic’s State’s embarrassing seizure of military gear ranging from American M-16s to armored Humvees made headlines around the world. But that incident was only the tip of the iceberg in terms of how many weapons the group has pilfered from the Iraqi military, says a new report released this week by Amnesty International.

The report says the Iraqi army has indirectly supplied ISIS and other fighting groups for more than a decade thanks to lax systems of weapons control and accountability. The 2014 incident, Amnesty says, is only the latest in a long pattern of arms supplied to Iraq by the United States and other nations that then disappeared into the hands of militants.

“That very spectacular looting in 2014…was just the endpoint of a very long history of hemorrhaging of supplies that started in 2003,” says Patrick Wilcken, a London-based arms control researcher for Amnesty. “That has made the whole issue of weapons proliferation incredibly serious in Iraq and spilling over into Syria, and has armed not just the Islamic State but many other armed groups.” During last June alone, according to the UN Security Council, ISIS captured enough weapons, ammunition, and vehicles to arm three Iraqi divisions, or 40,000 to 50,000 soldiers.

Wilcken explains the blame is shared not only by Iraq’s dysfunctional military but by the wide range of countries, including the United States, that have given arms to Iraq throughout the years without ensuring proper monitoring of where they ended up. “The quantity and range of ISIS stocks of arms and ammunition ultimately reflect decades of irresponsible arms transfers to Iraq and multiple failures by the US-led occupation administration to manage arm deliveries and stocks securely,” the report’s summary says. That includes not only small arms and bullets, which Wilcken and other arms control monitors admit are difficult to track, but larger vehicles and equipment, including surface-to-air and anti-tank missiles, Humvees, and even modern American M1A1 tanks.

Amnesty says that providing arms to Iraq without effective monitoring and control could be a violation of international law. The Arms Trade Treaty, approved by the UN General Assembly in 2013, says states have “legal obligations to prevent transfers of arms that could be used to commit or facilitate serious human rights violations and to take measure to prevent the diversion of arms,” according to the report. While the Senate hasn’t ratified that treaty, the United States is still a signatory, meaning it cannot take actions that run counter to treaty obligations.

And, on paper, the United States has made efforts to comply with that treaty and conduct “end-use monitoring“—to see where weapons end up and who is using them. “The US does place a lot of restrictions in theory on transfers…and they do have people on the ground,” Wilcken says. Some European countries he studied for the report have admitted they simply were taking Iraq’s word that their supplies were being used properly, he says. But the Iraqi government’s own tracking systems are almost nonexistent—rather than a database, Wilcken says Iraq uses “scraps of paper” to log items—and severely limit the United States’ ability to do its own monitoring.

The Defense Department did not comment on the international-law implications of its weapons monitoring program, but Army Major Robert Cabiness, a Pentagon spokesman, said the United States does have programs in place “to prevent and detect illegal transfers to third parties, in order to protect American technology, and, where relevant, to ensure partner compliance with requirements placed on all recipients of US defense articles.”

Many of the arms discussed in the report were supplied to Iraq before the fall of Saddam Hussein and during the early years of the US occupation. But Wilcken warns that the pattern of poor oversight and large losses is still firmly in place, and is especially relevant now that the United States is trying to ramp up the delivery of arms to anti-ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria. Congress approved $1.6 billion in funding in December 2014 for weapons and military assistance to Iraq in the fight against ISIS, and this year the Pentagon has provided at least 10 million rounds of M-16 ammunition as well as donations of tanks, artillery, and Humvees. If not carefully watched, those urgently needed items could also go missing, whether to ISIS, the Shiite militias upon which the government in Baghdad relies for much of its combat power, or other armed factions.

“This is where you get into the classic scenario where you meet a crisis with a rapid transfer of arms and then there are no systems in place to control them, and that kind of deepens the crisis,” Wilcken says. “That’s the risk now.”

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Here’s How ISIS Gets Its Guns

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Oklahoma Cop Convicted of Raping Four Black Women and Assaulting Four Others

by NorineHumphery Posted on December 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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An Oklahoma police officer was found guilty of 18 counts of sexual assault against 8 women in a case that largely escaped national media attention. He could be sentenced to up to 263 years in prison. Here’s what you need to know about the case.

The allegations: Daniel Holtzclaw, a 29-year-old former college football player, was accused of raping and sexually assaulting 13 women—at least 12 of them black—over a 7-month period from December 2013 to June 2014. All the attacks occurred in a predominantly black, low income neighborhood in Oklahoma City that Holtzclaw regularly patrolled, police say. His victims ranged in age from 17 to 57—the youngest a high school student and the oldest a grandmother.

The women testified that Holtzclaw stopped them while they were walking or driving alone. He often forced his victims into his squad car and drove them to isolated areas such as empty lots, fields, or an abandoned school, according to court testimony. Some said that Holtzclaw assaulted them in their homes while wearing his police uniform and with his department-issued gun holstered at his side. One woman, who testified she was 17 at the time of the attack, told the jury that Holtzclaw used a drug search as a pretense to grope her. He later raped the teen on her mother’s front porch while she was home alone. Another—the grandmother—said Holtzclaw forced her to perform oral sex on him during a traffic stop. Holtzclaw was placed on administrative leave during the investigation and was eventually fired. He was arrested in August 2014 after investigators used GPS tracking devices to corroborate his accusers’ stories.

The charges: Holtzclaw was charged with 36 counts, including rape, forcible oral sodomy, burglary, stalking, and sexual battery. He pleaded not guilty to all of the allegations. He faces the possibility of spending multiple life sentences in prison.

The prosecution strategy: Prosecutors argued Holtzclaw deliberately selected his victims. They were almost all poor and black. (Holtzclaw’s father is white. His mother is Japanese.) Some were suspected or convicted of drug possession or prostitution, and others had active warrants. Holtzclaw thought they would be too afraid to report him or no one would believe them if they did, prosecutors argued in court. The officer often threatened victims with arrest and violence if they did not cooperate.

Some of his victims were hesitant to come forward. The youngest accuser asked while on the witness stand, “What’s the point of telling on the police?” Another testified that she never told anyone because she had “never been on the right side of the law.” Police began investigating the case only after the 57-year-old victim came forward. Prosecutors said that she had no criminal record and thus no reason to fear going to the police. A middle-class woman, she was passing through the neighborhood where Holtzclaw stopped her but did not live there.

The defense: The defense argued that all of the sexual acts were consensual. They argued that Holtzclaw is an upstanding, three-year veteran of the police force and an “all-American good guy.” According to media reports from the courtroom, the defense attempted to discredit Holtzclaw’s accusers by grilling them about their past drug use and criminal histories. Holtzclaw did not take the stand.

The jury: The jury included eight men and four women. All of the jurors were white.

The verdict: The jury found Holtzclaw guilty on 18 counts involving 8 of his accusers. The convictions included five counts of rape and several counts of sexual assault, such as sexual battery and forcible oral sodomy. The jury recommended a sentence of 263 years in prison. Holtzclaw will go before the judge for sentencing Jan. 21. He faces multiple life sentences.

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Oklahoma Cop Convicted of Raping Four Black Women and Assaulting Four Others

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We Talked to Hope Solo About Why the US Women’s Soccer Team Skipped a Game in Protest

by NickiSpeegle Posted on December 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Saturday, Hope Solo and the US women’s national soccer team were getting ready for practice at Honolulu’s Aloha Stadium, where they were scheduled to play Trinidad and Tobago on Sunday in the seventh game of their World Cup Victory Tour. As the goalkeeper surveyed the artificial-turf field, she noticed the hardened white paint on the football yardage markings near her goal and the rocky surface that made practicing her footwork all the more difficult. Solo even reached down and pulled up the turf:

Megan Rapinoe, the team’s star midfielder, was on the players’ minds—just a day earlier, she’d torn the ACL in her right knee while training at the grassy practice field without contact. On top of that, there was the months-long fight with FIFA and the Canadian Soccer Association over the use of artificial turf at women’s soccer venues.

And so the team decided not to play Sunday, laying out its decision in an open letter on the Players’ Tribune. On Tuesday, US Soccer president Sunil Gulati apologized, noting that the federation had “screwed up” and had failed to make sure field conditions were adequate for the Trinidad and Tobago match. In Gulati’s apology, Solo says that she saw the federation pushing for change. Gulati said that all US games leading up to the Olympics would be played on grass.

In the run-up to tonight’s game against Trinidad and Tobago at San Antonio’s Alamodome—on another artificial-turf pitch—we spoke to Solo about the team’s decision to not play and the larger issue of inequality between men’s and women’s sports.

Mother Jones: How do the field conditions at the Alamodome compare to that of Aloha Stadium?

Hope Solo: Laughs. They are night and day. I mean, it’s playable. That’s a huge difference in itself. But it’s still turf, and one day I just hope we could move away from turf. Maybe not completely, but maybe 80 percent of the time, I think I might be okay with that. I can speak for myself and the players: Nobody likes to play on turf.

MJ: Why do players prefer natural grass to turf?

HS: We’ve been fighting this battle for quite some time. Soccer, to be honest, is not meant to be played on turf. The ball rolls differently. There are dead spots on every turf field that you play on. It’s a lot harder on the joints, on the body, on the shoulders, on the knees. It’s a just a different playing game. With that said, you don’t see the men ever playing on turf. You don’t see any World Cups being played on turf—even when the major club teams come to America to play on a turf stadium, they lay sod.

MJ: I saw some stats that showed that 100 percent of men’s national games in the United States were played on grass since 2014, whereas 70 percent of your team’s games were played on grass. What do you make of that disparity?

HS: It’s not just the field conditions. There are major disparities between men’s and women’s sports across the board, but the playing conditions are a major one for us. The field that we stepped out on in Hawaii, that wasn’t just turf versus grass. That had to do with player safety. We knew we couldn’t risk ourselves with the Olympic Games being around the corner. We have careers to protect, and we knew that in Hawaii, we absolutely had to take a stand. We lost Megan Rapinoe to a subpar practice field, although it was grass. It was pretty magnified what was at stake for us, and it was time to be vocal about it.

MJ: Who on the team was the person who said “enough was enough”?

HS: Megan Rapinoe hurt herself a day before. There was this weird feeling at practice of “What the hell is going on?” We knew the drainage grates was way to close too the line. Our fields were bumpy. We weren’t sure if Rapinoe stepped on the grate or in the hole beside it, but it was a noncontact injury. It was really scary. The players were upset. The coaches were upset. The staff was upset. And right then, I started taking pictures of the practice field. You know, there were rumblings amongst the players.

We go to the stadium field. We start looking a little bit more at the field and bending over and picking up the little rocks. We see the huge bumps in the line, and the field turf actually pulls up. The media’s behind the goal, and they start seeing us looking at the field. And then we see our coach yelling at somebody, and our general manager starts thinking, “This isn’t okay.” We still practiced, because the fans were right there. I remember saying, “I’m not going to practice in that goal.” The far end was worse than the near end, so we moved everything to one end. But I told my goalkeeper coach, “I will not go into that goal.” I think I just had visions of another knee injury. We shortened the practice, and then right when we got on the bus, it was kind of like, “Hey guys, what are we doing?” We all discussed it right there on the bus, and right there we were just like, “We can’t do this.”

MJ: And like you said before, it’s not just the field conditions that are troublesome.

HS: It’s a number of different things. You look at the marketing money put into the men’s team vs. the women’s team. You really have to kind of tip your hat to the women’s team for selling out stadiums, because oftentimes you do that with less marketing dollars. We did a side by side analysis of the men’s contract and the women’s contract, and it’s very unbalanced, just the way that US Soccer’s money is invested from year to year. It’s just completely unbalanced. The argument is, well, women should not get paid as much as men, because they don’t bring in as much revenue. We hear it all the time. Our argument back is that we have the best ratings between the men’s team and the women’s team, and had we gotten more marketing dollars, we would have more ticket revenue. When we push for equality, we don’t want the exact same thing. We just want it more balanced.

When you look at the salaries for the men versus the women, when you look at the bonuses, and particularly for the men’s World Cup versus the women’s World Cup, we got a $1.8 million dollar bonus for winning the World Cup, and we had to disburse it among the 23 players. And then we piece out some bonuses for our support staff who don’t get paid a whole bunch. The men, for losing, got $8 million to share among the players, and they also received millions of dollars for every point that they received in the World Cup. We got paid nothing per point in group play. We got paid nothing for making it into the knockout round. We basically didn’t get a bonus until we won the entire thing, which is incredibly difficult thing to do, and that bonus was quite a bit less than what the men got.

MJ: What has the federation done to address that since the World Cup ended?

HS: We were able to take the side-by-side analysis, and we were able to say to US Soccer, “These are the facts. It is unbalanced. What are we going to do about it? Because you guys are a progressive federation, and you value the women’s team. Well, show us that you value us. Don’t just tell us. Show us.” We are able to have more meaningful conversations.

It’s a great starting point that they are willing to have these conversations. Before, we’ve tried to have these conversations, and the door had been shut. But I think right now, it has to do with the players being unified, but I also think it’s the times that we live in. We have some of these incredible female role models who are standing up and feeling unapologetic about it. And I think it’s empowered us to do the same.

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We Talked to Hope Solo About Why the US Women’s Soccer Team Skipped a Game in Protest

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The US May Finally Give Puerto Rico a Financial Lifeline. Here’s What’s Happening.

by ZenaidaNeblett Posted on December 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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After months of pleading by the governor of Puerto Rico and the island’s representative to Congress, lawmakers have introduced legislation in both the House and Senate that would offer tangible help for the island’s debt crisis. On Wednesday, the Republican chairs of three Senate committees proposed $3 billion in cash relief, a 50 percent payroll tax cut for Puerto Rico residents for the next five years, and the creation of an independent “assistance authority” that would help the government of Puerto Rico with its short-term and long-term budgeting process.

A separate House bill introduced Wednesday by Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.) would permit the island’s cities to restructure mounting debts through bankruptcy reorganization, an option available to cities in the United States but not in Puerto Rico. The legislation comes as the US territory grapples with ballooning debt payments on roughly $72 billion in borrowing that the island’s governor, Alejandro García Padilla, has said the island cannot pay. According to Bloomberg, Puerto Rico is in danger of defaulting on $957 million in interest payments that are due on January 1.

The Senate proposal comes from a trio of Republicans who chair committees with various oversight responsibilities for Puerto Rico: Finance Committee Chair Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), and Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chair Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).

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The US May Finally Give Puerto Rico a Financial Lifeline. Here’s What’s Happening.

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6 Signs the NRA Is Losing Its Stranglehold on Gun Policy

by ChristiBriley Posted on December 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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For gun control advocates, this year’s doom has been compounded by an ample dose of gloom. Even after a series of high-profile mass shootings and a reported death toll from gun violence topping 12,000 last year, Congress remains deadlocked and unlikely to pass any laws aimed at reducing gun deaths.

But beneath the morass of bad news are glimpses of progress. In schools, communities, states, and even in the federal government, people are taking action to curb the gun violence epidemic. Here are six areas in which gun control is actually advancing in America.

1. The Supreme Court opted not to expand Second Amendment protections.

On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to hear a case that could have cemented an even wider interpretation of the Second Amendment into national law. The decision came less than a week after shooters in San Bernardino, California, used semi-automatic weapons to slaughter 14 people at an office party in what the FBI is now investigating as an act of terrorism.

In the case, the Illinois branch of the National Rifle Association argued that a Chicago suburb’s ban on semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines violated the Second Amendment. Although there was no official ruling, the court’s decision to turn down the case effectively affirmed the lower court’s decision not to expand Second Amendment protections—thereby opening the door to further local regulation.

In its last two gun cases, in 2008 and 2010, the Supreme Court had significantly expanded the reach of the Second Amendment. In 2008, the court overturned a ban on handguns in the District of Columbia; in 2010, it did the same for a handgun ban in Chicago.

Now, by contrast, the court may be indicating that the much-contested right to bear arms should have its limitations.

2. States are taking action.

The court’s decision looks even more significant in light of the fact that state governments are already taking many of the steps that Congress won’t.

In the year following the tragic 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, eight states passed major gun reform laws. The momentum has continued into 2015: Voters in Washington state last month resoundingly approved universal background checks for gun purchases, and several states have moved to restrict domestic abusers’ access to firearms.

Next November, Nevada residents will also vote on a background-check initiative, which made it onto the state ballot with the support of Michael Bloomberg’s gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety. In California, which already has some of the most stringent gun control laws in the country, a gubernatorial candidate is working to put even tighter legislation on the ballot.

Want to see how your own state ranks on gun control? The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence has created this handy scorecard.

3. Most Americans, including gun owners, support some degree of gun control.

Congress may not be able to come to a productive compromise, but Americans do agree on some key gun control policies. A survey last month found that a striking 83 percent of gun owners, including many NRA members, support requiring all prospective gun buyers to undergo a background check. A Gallup poll released in October—after the shootings at Umpqua Community College in Oregon but before last week’s attack in Sen Bernardino—found that 55 percent of Americans favored stricter control of gun sales.

Support for gun control has traditionally peaked following mass shootings, only to subside later. Recent polls suggest that fear of terrorism has edged out fear of guns in the popular psyche—despite the fact that jihadist terrorists have killed just 45 people in the United States since September 11, 2001, compared with the more than 12,000 people killed last year alone by gun violence.

4. More and more people say gun violence should be researched as a public health issue.

Last Wednesday, mere hours before the attack in San Bernardino, 2,000 doctors publicly urged Congress to repeal an amendment that has blocked government research on gun violence for nearly two decades.

The so-called Dickey Amendment was propelled through Congress by Republican legislators in 1996 under pressure from the NRA. Due to the provision, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health have been unable to put any federal funds toward gun violence research, leaving attempts to curb gun violence hogtied by a lack of information.

But opposition to the amendment is growing. Democratic lawmakers in both the House and the Senate have appealed for a return to federal gun violence research in recent months. Even the amendment’s author, former Rep. Jay Dickey (R-Ark.), has publicly called for it to be overturned.

5. Schools across the country are talking to their students about guns.

Tens of thousands of students across the country have signed their names to an anti-gun-violence pledge this year, promising not to bear arms at school and to resolve conflicts by nonviolent means.

The pledge was born in the mid-1990s, when creator Mary Lewis Grow realized that the conversation about gun violence rarely reached the nation’s youth. Determined to change that, she founded the Student Pledge Against Gun Violence in 1996. It enjoyed a decade of popularity before fading from public view.

Widespread dismay at the lack of government action following the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary rekindled interest in the pledge, Grow told gun news website The Trace. “I think people started looking for other ways to address gun violence,” she said. Students in at least five states have taken the pledge this year, including 59,000 in Georgia and 21,000 in Louisiana.

The pledge goes as follows: “I will never bring a gun to school. I will never use a gun to settle a personal problem or dispute. I will use my influence with friends to keep them from using guns to settle disputes. My individual choices and actions, when multiplied by those of young people throughout the country, will make a difference. Together, by honoring this pledge, we can reverse the violence and grow up in safety.”

6. Gun control is now firmly part of our national debate.

President Barack Obama now calls for gun control legislation after every major shooting. The New York Times last week published a pro-gun-control editorial on its front page—its first page-one editorial since 1920. And while she shied away from the issue eight years ago, Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has made curbing gun violence a central plank in her 2016 platform.

America’s gun violence crisis has clearly made its way into the highest levels of our national debate. What comes of that debate remains to be seen, but a whopping $229 billion a year—and, more important, thousands of lives—depend on it.

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6 Signs the NRA Is Losing Its Stranglehold on Gun Policy

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The Government’s New Food Rules Will Be a Huge Deal. Bacon Lovers Are Not Going to Be Happy.

by GilbertV90 Posted on December 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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The Obama administration is soon expected to reveal its new dietary guidelines for Americans, with advice about which foods to pile onto your plate—and which ones to avoid—if you want to stay healthy.

Evidence suggests dairy doesn’t do a body good—so why does the government still push three servings a day?

Once illustrated by the Food Pyramid (and now by a circular graphic called MyPlate), the guidelines are updated every five years, and they’re hugely influential, affecting everything from school lunch menus and government agricultural subsidies to aid programs for low-income families and research priorities at health agencies. They’re supposed to be based on scientific studies and recommendations from nutrition experts, but given all the different theories about what makes a healthy diet—not to mention all the different stakeholders, including Big Ag—past guidelines have sparked plenty of controversy. This year’s drafting process has been particularly contentious. Here’s a primer:

Meat eaters, take note. The government has cautioned in the past against eating too much red meat. But this year, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee—which reviews scientific studies and gives the government advice about how to write its guidelines—has recommended that you watch your intake of all meats, including leaner options like chicken, as my colleague Maddie Oatman reported in February. Seafood will probably still be considered healthy, though, and the government will likely scrap its previous advice about limiting cholesterol—which means that you can replace your breakfast sausage and bacon with a hearty helping of eggs.

Watch that sweet tooth. The new guidelines will likely recommend that you cut down your sugar intake—big time. The Advisory Committee concluded that most people shouldn’t consume more than about four to nine teaspoons of sugar per day, depending on your body mass index. What does that mean for your snacking? A single eight-ounce cup of low-fat strawberry yogurt has six teaspoons of sugar, to put things in perspective. Right now, some studies suggest we eat as many as 30 teaspoons of sugar every day. Here’s a look at several surprisingly high sources.

Shoddy science? In September, food writer and activist Nina Teicholz ruffled feathers by questioning the scientific integrity of the dietary guidelines. In an investigation published by a major British medical journal, she claimed that the Advisory Committee had used some studies by outside professional organizations with backing from Big Food, like the American Heart Association. She also claimed that some members of the committee had received support from groups like the International Tree Nut Council, Unilever, and Lluminari, a health media company that works with General Mills and PepsiCo. The government fired back, arguing that Teicholz’s claims were based on factual errors and that the Advisory Committee had conducted “a rigorous, systematic and transparent review of the current body of nutrition science.” More than 180 scientists called for a retraction of Teicholz’s investigation, but others have agreed that the food industry plays too big a role in what the government tells us to eat. (Check out this Mother Jones feature about how Big Dairy has convinced the government to promote milk, despite evidence showing that too much of it may be harmful for adults.)

Sorry, tree huggers. This year’s dietary guidelines won’t consider the environmental footprint of foods—and that’ll make Big Ag happy. Back in February, the Advisory Committee published a report urging the government to focus on sustainability as a component of healthy eating. Committee members argued that if we don’t think about the planet now—by promoting diets high in fruits and vegetables and lower in meat products—we’ll likely face problems later on. “Access to sufficient, nutritious, and safe food is an essential element of food security for the U.S. population,” they wrote. “A sustainable diet is one that assures this access for both the current population and future populations.” That advice didn’t please Big Ag, whose backers sent letters to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, arguing that environmental impact was beyond the scope of the dietary guidelines. And he listened: In October, Vilsack made it known that the guidelines would pinpoint good foods for human health—not foods with a light impact on the planet.

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The Government’s New Food Rules Will Be a Huge Deal. Bacon Lovers Are Not Going to Be Happy.

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This Is What the Alleged Planned Parenthood Shooter Shouted in Court

by FlorenePhc Posted on December 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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Before he was formally charged with first-degree murder in court, Robert Lewis Dear—who is accused of killing three people and injuring nine others in a shooting at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic last month—began yelling.

“I am a warrior for the babies,” he shouted, according to the New York Times.

He also yelled, “I am guilty. There will be no trial,” and “Seal the truth, kill the babies. That’s what Planned Parenthood does,” according to Rick Sallinger, a reporter with CBS4 news in Denver who was in the courtroom.

These outbursts could be an indication of Dear’s motives for the clinic attack.

Law enforcement officials in Colorado Springs have been hesitant to talk publicly about what may have spurred Dear to act. Several media interviews with people who know Dear have revealed that Dear passionately opposed abortion. After he was arrested, he reportedly told the police, “no more baby parts.” Also, one of Dear’s ex-wives said he had vandalized a South Carolina abortion clinic years ago by putting glue in the locks on its doors.

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This Is What the Alleged Planned Parenthood Shooter Shouted in Court

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