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What Happens When a Campus Rape Expert Gets Accused of Sexual Assault?

by UteAunger29908 Posted on February 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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Jason Casares, the associate dean of students and deputy Title IX coordinator at Indiana University’s flagship campus in Bloomington, has built a reputation as an expert on college sexual assault. He’s well known enough among his peers to have been voted president, in November 2014, of the Association for Student Conduct Administration, a professional group of around 2,700 college officials. Last year, he helped write the curriculum for the group’s training program for campus rape investigators.

For the ASCA’s annual conference this month, Casares had planned to teach seminars on Title IX and on using a “trauma-informed approach” in sexual misconduct investigations. Then, during the conference keynote on February 3, ASCA board member Jill Creighton circulated a letter accusing him of sexual assault.

Creighton’s letter described an evening last December when the two had drinks at a convention for fraternity and sorority advisers in Fort Worth, Texas. “I made the mistake of letting my guard down while socializing with Jason about Association business,” Creighton wrote. “Jason took advantage of me after I had had too much to drink…I did not consent to sexual contact.”

Casares declined to be interviewed, but a statement released by his lawyer says that he “categorically denies the false accusations of sexual misconduct leveled against him by a colleague.”

Creighton, an administrator at New York University who had recently been voted the ASCA’s next president, provided Mother Jones a statement detailing her experience in the days after the alleged assault. According to the statement, she confronted Casares in a text message, requesting that he resign from the ASCA—they were slated to work together on the board for at least two more years—and step back from his position as a public leader on the issue of sexual assault. When Casares refused, Creighton filed an incident report with law enforcement in Fort Worth on December 9.

Detectives are still reviewing the report, officer Tamara Pena confirmed. Meanwhile, IU has placed Casares on paid administrative leave. A school spokesman said that IU also is conducting its own investigation and will review all student sexual-misconduct hearings in which Casares participated this academic year.

Perhaps the most troubling development, though, came when Creighton asked the ASCA board to impeach Casares after she filed her police complaint. The organization—which is made up of people trained in investigating campus sexual assault—mounted an investigation resembling an on-campus sexual-assault inquiry, but, Creighton says, without the same concern for protecting the accuser.

“I was repeatedly told that this isn’t a Title IX matter, and while I understand that, I am speaking my truth to make sure that our Association takes a hard look in the mirror before it claims national leadership on sexual misconduct,” Creighton wrote in her letter.

The ASCA’s leadership had never been faced with a claim like Creighton’s before, according to Anthony Icenogle, the group’s attorney. As student conduct officials, they knew how to investigate sexual assault without the involvement of law enforcement. But in an interview with Mother Jones, Creighton says the inquiry did not reflect their training. “The processes that we run on our campuses are designed to be fundamentally fair to everyone involved,” she says. “At no moment was I provided with fairness.” Among other things, Creighton says that Casares was allowed to hear and respond to her presentation to the board, while she wasn’t allowed to do the same for his.

“The scope of our process was to determine whether or not there was board member misconduct,” says Jennifer Waller, the ASCA’s executive director. “Although we completely adhere to as much as possible the principles of fundamental fairness, the process that ensues from that is very different from a campus process.” (The ASCA later released a letter outlining the procedures they followed in Creighton’s case).

Upon receiving Creighton’s claim, the board’s first move was to temporarily suspend both her and Casares. The ASCA then hired an independent investigator, attorney Shannon Hutcheson, to help determine whether the board should impeach him.

Hutcheson’s investigation, however, leaned on “ancillary witnesses,” Icenogle says—people who could testify to Creighton and Casares’s general honesty. Icenogle made a point to say that Casares and Creighton had gone to multiple bars. (“This wasn’t a one-transaction event.”) Still, Hutcheson “didn’t go through the process of going to the bars,” Icenogle said. “There’s a possibility there could have been third-party witnesses, but nobody was identified to us.” After almost six weeks and at least $30,000 in expenses, Hutcheson presented her conclusion to the ASCA board: Creighton’s story “could not be substantiated.”

When Creighton received an excerpt of Hutcheson’s report, she says she was shocked: “The report blames me for being in the same hotel room, blames me for not crying out for help in the moment, blames me for not taking physical pictures of my injuries…and blames me for confronting him.”

The board’s deliberations remain under wraps, but Casares stepped down on January 29, according to an ASCA letter released on February 4. He remains a member, with “the same rights as other members to attend and present at ASCA events,” the letter says.

The decision to allow Casares to appear at last week’s conference is part of what prompted Creighton to go public with her story. She posted the letter to her Twitter timeline on February 3, after Casares’ presentation on “trauma-informed” sexual-assault investigations. “I felt unsafe in ASCA,” Creighton’s letter says. “I also could not stand the hypocrisy of Jason parading his expertise on Title IX, knowing how he had behaved with me,” she wrote, adding:

This is not something the Association can afford to be ambivalent about. We cannot claim national leadership in addressing sexual misconduct, only to fail miserably in our first test within our own Association…I don’t want to hurt the Association by speaking out, I want to strengthen it, cause us introspection that this can happen even within our own profession, and challenge us to walk our talk not just on our campuses, but in all phases of our professional engagement.

Casares’ lawyer has discussed a possible defamation suit against Creighton. And if an ASCA member makes a complaint about Creighton’s conduct, Waller confirms, she could receive a warning or even face impeachment from the board.

For now, Creighton remains the ASCA’s newest president-elect, though she will take a leave of absence from the organization rather than immediately stepping into the role of president. “These are my friends and colleagues and my professional family,” Creighton says. “To me, it felt like the safest place in the world where I could have possibly reported, and it turned out to be the exact opposite.”

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What Happens When a Campus Rape Expert Gets Accused of Sexual Assault?

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Here Are Six All-Important Cases Now Pretty Much Decided After Scalia’s Death

by ElizbethCardwel Posted on February 14, 2016

Mother Jones

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The last time a sitting Supreme Court justice expired on the job was in 2005, when Chief Justice William Rehnquist died of cancer. But Rehnquist’s death was somewhat expected, and he died in September, before the start of the October term, and before the court was in full swing with oral arguments and case decisions. Justice Antonin Scalia, unfortunately, has died smack in the middle of a blockbuster court term, with a host of hot-button cases argued, or about to be argued, and all to be decided by the end of June.

Because of the polarized nature of the court, Scalia’s death makes it all but certain that in most of those cases, the votes will result in a 4-4 tie, which means that the decision of the lower courts will likely stand unless one of the justices goes off the reservation and votes with the opposite side. That means we can probably predict the outcome of several key cases without having to wait until June.

The results are a mixed bag. The Obama administration is likely to lose an important fight over immigration. Unions win. Reproductive rights for women could suffer. And challenges to redistricting are likely to founder.

Here’s a rundown of how six of those cases are likely to unfold:

Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association: Perhaps the biggest beneficiaries of Scalia’s death are public sector unions. This case, which produced one of the more contentious oral arguments of the term, was headed towards a 5-4 decision in favor of Rebecca Friedrichs and the other plaintiffs who were challenging the California’s teachers’ union’s right to charge public school employees fees to cover the costs of the collective bargaining it did on their behalf, even though they aren’t members of the union. The case was teed up by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, and labor supporters feared a ruling against the union could devastate what’s left of labor’s power. The lawyers for Friedrichs asked the lower court to rule against them to hasten the case’s arrival at the Supreme Court. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals complied, and now that decision is likely to stand if the liberal-conservative split on the court delivers a 4-4 vote. Labor wins.

US v Texas: Texas and nearly two dozen other states filed suit to block the implementation of President Barack Obama’s orders to the Department of Homeland Security to defer the deportation of about 5.5 million immigrants, especially children brought to the US illegally by their parents. In November, the ultra-conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, upholding a lower court decision, ruled that Obama had exceeded his authority to make such sweeping changes to the immigration system without an act of Congress. Obama’s move was in trouble even with Scalia on the court, but now it seems likely that a tie vote will result in the Fifth Circuit’s ruling holding fast. Immigrants lose.

Evenwel v Abbott and Harris v Arizona Independent Redistricting: These cases both involve attacks on the drawing of legislative districts and involve the sorts of political issues that the court has historically avoided, preferring to leave politics and redistricting fights to the politicians. Rulings in favor of the plaintiffs–mostly tea party activists–would likely result in political districts more tilted to favor rural, white Republican voters. Both cases came to the court on appeal from unusual three-judge courts that are specifically delegated to hear certain sorts of election law and voting rights cases. Those trial courts are different in that appeals of their decisions go straight to the US Supreme Court, bypassing the traditional federal appellate courts. Conservatives in recent years have used these courts as a way of fast-tracking their cases to the now-very conservative Supreme Court. The landmark Citizens United case came to the court this way. Now, though, that fast track is going to grind to a halt, as the plaintiffs in both cases lost in the three-judge courts, whose decisions are likely to now stand. Tea partiers lose.

Women’s Whole Health v Hellerstedt and Zubik v Burwell: The court is poised to hear several major challenges involving women’s reproductive health rights. In Women’s Whole Health, the court will decide whether Texas’s restrictive abortion law, which has already resulted in the closure of many clinics and, if fully enforced, would close even more clinics and force women in Texas to travel long distances or leave the state in search of a legal abortion, is constitutional. The conservative Fifth Circuit upheld most of the law, but the Supreme Court blocked parts of it from taking effect until the case could be heard. If there’s a tie at the Supreme Court, the abortion clinics are all but doomed.

In Zubik, a host of religious organizations, including the Little Sisters of the Poor, have asked the court to block a requirement by the Obama administration that they sign a form asking for a religious exemption for providing mandatory contraception coverage in their insurance plans for employees that’s required by the Affordable Care Act. Virtually all of the lower courts have ruled against the nuns and the other organizations, declaring that signing a piece of paper isn’t much of a burden on religious liberty. So a tied Supreme Court vote is likely to result in a victory for the Obama administration. Nuns lose.

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Here Are Six All-Important Cases Now Pretty Much Decided After Scalia’s Death

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Kasich’s Spiritual Adviser Thinks Gay Rights Activists Are Fascist "Thought Nazis"

by ParthenBucher Posted on February 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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After his strong second-place finish in the New Hampshire Republican primary Tuesday, Ohio Gov. John Kasich is being lauded as the race’s most viable compassionate conservative and an antidote to candidates such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Donald Trump who have campaigned on their harshness toward, well, just about everyone.

But Kasich’s views on social issues aren’t so far apart from those of the rest of the GOP field. Take gay rights and gay marriage, issues for which Kasich is considered more moderate than his opponents. Kasich won kudos in August for his thoughtful response during a Republican debate to a question about gay marriage. He said that while he doesn’t agree with the idea in principle, that didn’t keep him from attending the same-sex wedding of a good friend. He also insisted that if one of his daughters turned out to be gay, he would certainly still love her. Kasich called on people to “treat everybody with respect and let them share in this great American dream.”

Despite his calls for tolerance, Kasich is part of a religious community that was built almost entirely on opposition to liberalized religious views on gays and lesbians. Kasich attends St. Augustine Anglican Church, in Westerville, Ohio, a church that was created in 2011 as part of a splinter group, the Anglican Church in North America, that broke with the Episcopal Church after it ordained Gene Robinson, a gay man, as a bishop. Kasich’s denomination doesn’t allow women to serve as bishops or ordain gays and lesbians as clergy, as it considers noncelibate homosexual relationships to be sinful.

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Kasich’s Spiritual Adviser Thinks Gay Rights Activists Are Fascist "Thought Nazis"

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Watch Donald Trump’s Concession Speech After Losing GOP Iowa Caucus to Ted Cruz

by Bettye39Wqhk Posted on February 2, 2016

Mother Jones

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Ted Cruz defeated Donald Trump in the Republican Iowa caucus tonight. Cruz’s victory comes as a major surprise, as the final two polls preceding Monday’s caucus projected a clear win for Trump.

Below is Trump’s unusually humble concession speech, which even included a rare congratulatory message for the Texas senator.

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Watch Donald Trump’s Concession Speech After Losing GOP Iowa Caucus to Ted Cruz

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Cruz’s Closing Argument in Iowa: Trump Is a Liberal in Disguise

by Julio88I8384980 Posted on January 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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Remember this summer when Ted Cruz refused to attack Donald Trump? Now, it seems, the Cruz campaign is making up for lost time. With polls showing Trump in the lead in Iowa—and only a few days left for Cruz to overtake him—Cruz and his surrogates are now tearing into Trump with all they’ve got. The game plan: Convince Iowans that Trump is a liberal masquerading as a Republican.

On Wednesday night, a jam-packed rally for Cruz in West Des Moines started to feel a lot like an anti-Trump rally.

Whether or not the Trump attacks will win the day for Cruz, the audience at Wednesday’s gathering ate them up. The rally, which was billed as a pro-life event, drew leaders of the religious right and other socially conservative Cruz backers, such as Rep. Steve King of Iowa and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Here are the top attacks on Trump from the event.

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Cruz’s Closing Argument in Iowa: Trump Is a Liberal in Disguise

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Are Immigration Agents Defying the President?

by CharoletteCambe Posted on January 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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As you all know, the Supreme Court has agreed to rule on the legality of President Obama’s 2014 immigration program—Deferred Action for Parental Accountability, or DAPA. Like DACA, the “mini-DREAM” rule that Obama established in 2012, DAPA codifies the president’s ability to direct prosecutorial resources by explicitly telling immigration agents to do what they’ve mostly been doing anyway: ignore undocumented immigrants who have clean records and have been in the US for a long time. The key word here is “mostly.” Nearly all immigrants who fit the DAPA criteria are left untouched, but immigration agents continue to randomly deport some of them. Over at the New Republic, Spencer Amdur makes an interesting argument that this is at the core of the legal case:

As the administration tries to rationalize its immigration policy, the biggest challenge has actually come from within….In 2011, the head of ICE, John Morton, issued a memorandum directing agents not to focus their limited resources on immigrants with clean records, long-time residence, and families in the United States….Morton issued several of these “priorities” memos, and line-level agents almost universally ignored them, continuing to deport immigrants with deep roots here and no convictions.

….Later in 2011, the administration instructed immigration prosecutors to close cases of people who were not priorities for deportation; little changed. In 2012, the administration asked agents to stop sending detention requests to local police for immigrants without criminal records. Still nothing.

….This pattern of defiance is not mentioned in any of the briefs or court decisions in United States v. Texas. But it was an essential antecedent for DAPA, which effectively forces immigration agents to follow the previous policies….This is the elephant in the courtroom. The lawsuit is not just about the balance of power between the president and Congress, as the briefs suggest. It’s about democratic control of the police. Do our elected officials have the right to control the enforcement bureaucracy?

The fact that this isn’t mentioned in any of the briefs suggests it’s not taken seriously by anyone. Should it be?

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Are Immigration Agents Defying the President?

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Texas Governor Wants to Add 9 New Amendments to the Constitution

by AnnetteA71 Posted on January 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has a plan to make America great again: Add nine new amendments to the Constitution. On Friday, fed up with Supreme Court rulings that have gone against conservatives as well as the regulatory actions of the Obama administration, the first-term Republican issued a 92-page report outlining his proposed tweaks to the founding document and calling for a national constitutional convention to make it happen.

The “Texas Plan” is as follows:

I. Prohibit Congress from regulating activity that occurs wholly within one State.

II. Require Congress to balance its budget.

III. Prohibit administrative agencies—and the unelected bureaucrats that staff them—from creating federal law.

IV. Prohibit administrative agencies—and the unelected bureaucrats that staff them—from preempting state law.

V. Allow a two-thirds majority of the States to override a U.S. Supreme Court decision.

VI. Require a seven-justice super-majority vote for U.S. Supreme Court decisions that invalidate a democratically enacted law.

VII. Restore the balance of power between the federal and state governments by limiting the former to the powers expressly delegated to it in the Constitution.

VIII. Give state officials the power to sue in federal court when federal officials overstep their bounds.

IX. Allow a two-thirds majority of the States to override a federal law or regulation.

Clearly, Abbott has been listening to way too much of the Hamilton soundtrack.

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Texas Governor Wants to Add 9 New Amendments to the Constitution

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The Texas Trooper Who Pulled Over Sandra Bland Was Just Indicted

by ConstanBarreras Posted on January 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Wednesday, nearly five months after Sandra Bland was found dead in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas, a grand jury has charged the state trooper who initially arrested the 28-year-old black woman with perjury.

Trooper Brian Encinia pulled over Bland in Prairie View on July 20, citing an improper lane change. Dash cam footage later released by county officials showed that the encounter quickly escalated after Encinia ordered Bland out of her car. In the video, Encinia can be heard saying, “I’m going to drag you out of here,” as he reached into Bland’s vehicle. He then pulled out what appeared to be a Taser, yelling, “I will light you up!” Encinia eventually forced Bland to the ground as she protested the arrest. Encinia arrested Bland for “assault on a public servant” and booked her into the Waller County jail, where she was found dead three days later.

The video raised questions about how a woman who was on her way to start a new job wound up dying in custody. An autopsy determined that Bland died of “suicide by hanging,” but Bland’s family countered that suicide seemed “unfathomable” and asked the US Department of Justice to investigate the incident. County officials said Bland had asked to use the phone about an hour before she was found hanging in her cell. Bland’s family said they had been trying to help her post bail.

Encinia’s class A misdemeanor perjury charge, punishable by up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine, relates to a statement he made in the incident report following Bland’s arrest. It comes a few weeks after the Waller County grand jury concluded that no felony had been committed in Bland’s death by the county sheriff or jail staff.

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The Texas Trooper Who Pulled Over Sandra Bland Was Just Indicted

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The Supreme Court Just Got Deluged With Arguments Against Texas’ Stupid Anti-Abortion Law

by KraigHailey3 Posted on January 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, a wide-ranging group of organizations and individuals asked the Supreme Court to overturn the Texas anti-abortion law that threatens to close the majority of clinics in the state. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments for the case in March and make a decision this summer.

The groups, which included medical professionals, legal experts, economists, religious organizations, the Obama administration, and more than 160 members of Congress, filed 45 briefs explaining their opposition to HB 2, the sweeping 2013 anti-abortion law that has been caught up in legal battles ever since it was passed. More than half of the state’s 41 clinics have closed as a result of the law. If the Supreme Court does not overturn HB 2, the number of clinics in the state could drop to just 10.

“For many women in Texas, HB 2 would create a legal regime in which a real choice about whether to carry a pregnancy to full term ‘exists in theory but not in fact,” argued attorneys at the Department of Justice in a brief, adding that the restrictions imposed by the law “do not serve—in fact, they disserve—the government’s interest in protecting women’s health.”

Both abortion rights opponents and advocates say the case will affect existing restrictions on abortion across the country and will also determine to what extent states can restrict abortion. The case, Whole Women’s Health v. Cole focuses on two aspects of HB 2: one that requires abortion facilities to meet hospital-like architectural standards, and another requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges with a nearby hospital.

“There is incontrovertible evidence that imposing these unjustified burdens on abortion providers is impeding women’s access to quality, evidence-based medicine,” wrote a number of the leading physician’s organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, in their brief. “HB 2 has delayed, and in some cases blocked, women’s access to legal abortion. Both outcomes jeopardize women’s health.”

The 45 briefs filed on Tuesday were an unprecedented demonstration of opposition to anti-abortion laws, according to Nancy Northrup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights.

“Never before has such a diverse array of organizations and leaders from the fields of medicine, government, law, business, and religion stepped forward to condemn abortion restrictions at the US Supreme Court,” Northrup told reporters. “These briefs present a thorough record of the undeniable damage Texas’ sham law has and will continue to cause, and an indisputable legal argument for why it must be struck down. This deceptive law is an affront to science-based medicine, an insult to women’s dignity, and reflects a total disregard for the rule of law and the rights of millions.”

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The Supreme Court Just Got Deluged With Arguments Against Texas’ Stupid Anti-Abortion Law

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Here’s a Video Showing the Very Worst Anti-Science Bullshit of 2015

by Myrna Posted on December 23, 2015

Snowballs, witch-hunts, and a big measles outbreak. In 2015, science was a favorite punching bag for many of America’s politicians. While leaders of nearly 200 nations met in Paris to hammer out a historic deal to combat climate change, the US Senate held a hearing—hosted by presidential hopeful Ted Cruz (R-Texas)—to debunk the science. It had a subtle title: “Data or Dogma?” In fact, 2015 did nothing to alter the notion that one whole American political party—and nearly all of its candidates for the White House—remains stuck on a murky spectrum from outright climate denial to the policy version of ¯_(ツ)_/¯, as we wrote about all-too often this year. There was, of course, the infamous snowball thrown on the floor of the Senate. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) claimed that global warming wasn’t happening because it was cold when he made the snowball. (Repeat after me: Weather does not a climate trend make.) But perhaps the more insidious attack on science was directed by Congressman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. Smith accused government scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of rigging climate data to disprove the so-called “global warming pause” (a contested but popular talking point often used to attack the science). He then attempted to depose the scientists and subpoena their documents. “Political operatives and other NOAA employees likely played a large role in approving NOAA’s decision to adjust data that allegedly refutes the hiatus in warming,” he told the Washington Post. But if you can’t fight the science outright in public, why not simply try to ban the words? That was the ingenious tactic allegedly employed by the state of Florida, under Gov. Rick Scott (R). Employees from several state departments said they had been told not to use the phrases “climate change” and “global warming” in official state business. (The governor denied the allegations.) 2015 also saw yet another round of measles outbreaks, including one that spread at Disneyland in California. Public health officials blamed parents who don’t vaccinate their kids. That anti-vaxxer sentiment found a powerful megaphone in Republican front-runner Donald Trump, who at September’s televised GOP debate repeated the totally discredited—and dangerous—theory that vaccines cause autism. “Autism has become an epidemic,” Trump claimed. “Twenty-five years ago, 35 years ago, you look at the statistics, not even close. It has gotten totally out of control.” (Trump insisted he’s still in favor of vaccines, despite warning a national TV audience that they are endangering children.) Watch the whole, not-so-splendid, anti-science show above. Front-page image credit: Smoke: Claire McAdams/Shutterstock; Man: Everett Collection/Shutterstock Follow this link:  Here’s a Video Showing the Very Worst Anti-Science Bullshit of 2015 ; ; ;

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Here’s a Video Showing the Very Worst Anti-Science Bullshit of 2015

Posted in eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, Hagen, LAI, Monterey, ONA, OXO, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s a Video Showing the Very Worst Anti-Science Bullshit of 2015