From the Committee to Protect Journalists:

The New York City Police Department should drop all charges against photojournalist Amr Alfiky and provide a public explanation for his arrest, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Police arrested Alfiky, a photo editor at ABC news and a contributor to Reuters and The New York Times, at about 7 p.m. yesterday in New York’s Lower East Side neighborhood as he was filming the arrest on the street of another individual, according to the journalist’s friend, Mostafa Bassim, who captured Alfiky’s arrest on video and spoke with CPJ in a phone interview.

Police held Alfiky at Manhattan’s seventh precinct station for about 3.5 hours, where he was given access to a

He thinks he has “the absolute right” to interfere in criminal prosecutions. He thinks wrong. It would be nice if he knew the basics of this job he decided to pretend to do.

Also, “aberition.”

Asked about Roger Stone, Trump says he has an “absolute right” to tell the Justice Department what to do pic.twitter.com/AZRv9Aff7P

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 11, 2020

… Read the rest

So much for law and order, which used to be a Republican lodestar.

The entire team prosecuting Roger Stone abruptly resigned from the criminal case on Tuesday after the Justice Department said it planned to reduce the recommended sentence for Stone, a longtime Trump associate.

The Justice Department on Tuesday said it was pulling back on its request to sentence Stone to seven to nine years in prison after President Donald Trump blasted the sentencing proposal as “a miscarriage of justice.”

…

After reports that a softer sentencing recommendation was imminent, lead prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky withdrew as a prosecutor in the case. A footnote in his court filing noted that “the undersigned attorney has resigned effective immediately.”

Zelinsky, who was

Have YOU signed?

Labour leadership contender Rebecca Long-Bailey has signed up to a pledge to expel party members who have expressed “transphobic” views.

#ExpelMe.

It is part of a 12-point plan by the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights.

The plan has also been backed by deputy leader hopeful Angela Rayner – but critics say it could lead to a “witch hunt” of party members.

It could and it will. You know it will.

The pledges include accepting that there is “no material conflict between trans rights and women’s rights” – and supporting the expulsion of Labour members who “express bigoted, transphobic views”.

The group states that “trans women are women, trans men are men”.

But they’re not and they’re not, … Read the rest

#ExpelMe is trending on Twitter. What’s it about?

There’s this:

Which we can read here.

Below find our founding statement and pledges for all Labour Party members who support trans rights to sign.

Meaning, I guess, if you don’t sign, you don’t support trans rights.

The Labour Campaign for Trans Rights has been founded by transgender and non-binary Labour members in order to advance trans liberation through the Labour Party. Trans people today are disproportionately affected by the evils of homelessness, unemployment, poverty and hate crime. We live under a Conservative government which restricts our rights and puts those with transphobic views in positions of power; whilst we are attacked relentlessly by a reactionary press.

Liberation from what, … Read the rest

The gangsters are inside the house.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) has faced a bitter GOP backlash after casting the lone Republican vote for President Trump’s impeachment. There have been angry tweets and calls for the party to expel the man it once nominated to lead the country.

On Sunday, one influential conservative went so far as to say he could not be sure of Romney’s safety at a major right-wing gathering, alarming some of the Utah senator’s defenders and — in some critics’ eyes — crossing a line from outrage to threat.

Matt Schlapp, chairman of the Conservative Political Action Conference, made the controversial comments Sunday as he explained why Romney would be excluded from this year’s four-day event.

He’s an anthropologist so he must know.

[Editing to add: Actually, after a bit of googling, I suspect he’s not an anthropologist but a guy with a BA in anthropology. Maybe he’s filling or playing or performing the role of anthropologist and therefore, according to him, he is one.]

Putting on a dress doesn't do either. A person's gender is a characterization of the role that they play in society, and is a specific type of role modulated by sex. https://t.co/DJzVZUEdYf

— Daniel Goldman (@alc_anthro) February 5, 2020

That act alone does not. Correct. If I put on a dress, I don't automatically become a woman. If I fill the gender role of "woman" then I am a woman.

—

Biden: let’s not.

After a New Hampshire voter asks @JoeBiden why they should trust he can turn his campaign around, he asks if she’s ever been to a caucus before; when she says yes, Biden snaps: "No you haven’t. You’re a lying dog-faced pony soldier." pic.twitter.com/3uxOAu0Ues

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 9, 2020

Anna North at Vox elaborates:

The phrase immediately got attention, with many confused by Biden’s choice of words. As it turns out, “lying dog-faced pony soldier” is a phrase Biden has used before. He attributes it to John Wayne, though its actual provenance is somewhat unclear.

And whether it is John Wayne or not, why say it? When campaigning for the presidency? To a very … Read the rest

Er…Don…you missed the point.

TOUGH GUYS FOR TRUMP! pic.twitter.com/DbjZjGzLWU

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 11, 2020

… Read the rest

We had a hell of a sunset here last night. This fella captured it (the second one).

West Seattle sunset pic.twitter.com/Yq4VACPmJe

— morganf (@patentdawg) February 10, 2020

… Read the rest

NPR tells us:

The Justice Department’s door is open if President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, wants to pass along information from Ukraine connected with Joe Biden and his family, Attorney General William Barr said Monday.

Why? Why is the door open?

“As I did say to Senator Graham, we have to be very careful with respect to any information from the Ukraine,” Barr said. “There are a lot of agendas in the Ukraine, a lot of cross currents, and we can’t take anything we receive from Ukraine at face value.”

Seeing as how it might be coming not from Ukraine but from Putin’s bag of tricks. Good call.… Read the rest

Hilarity ensued.

On reflection I unreservedly apologise for my tweet on @jameelajamil’s coming out. It is not up to me to determine who is or who is not part of our wonderful #LGBTQ community. We all make mistakes and that tweet was wrong .I fully realise I came across as biphobic and I apologise

— Anthony Watson CBE (@AnthonyWatson) February 9, 2020

If it is not up to him to determine who is or who is not part of his/their/our/your LGBTQ community does that mean he can’t say TERFs are not part of it? Or no?… Read the rest

The US is a major human rights violator.

Migrants, for instance, face extreme brutality here.

In the early morning of June 12, 2017, a group of eight Central American migrants decided to go on a hunger strike to protest conditions at the immigration detention center where they were being held in California.

When detainees arrive at the facility, they’re given a handbook that states explicitly, “Detention is NOT prison.” Immigration detention is where the government holds people while deciding whether to deport them, and most detainees have no criminal record. But this group said the conditions felt like those of a penitentiary.

And that would be a penitentiary that itself violates human rights.

The group complained that… Read the rest

Kenan Malik considers the “cultural appropriation” question.

“What insults my soul,” Zadie Smith has written, “is the idea… that we can and should write only about people who are fundamentally ‘like’ us: racially, sexually, genetically, nationally, politically, personally.”

Both as novelist and essayist, Smith is one of the most subtle guides to the fraught terrain of culture and identity. The problem of “cultural appropriation” – writers and artists being called out for having stepped beyond their permitted cultural boundaries to explore themes about people who are not “fundamentally ‘like’ us” – is an issue that particularly troubles her. Too often these days, on opening a book or on viewing a painting, we are as likely to ask: “Did the

Aw, sad, Trump and Johnson aren’t besties any more.

Donald Trump’s previously close relationship with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson looks close to collapse, following new revelations that the president slammed down the phone on him.

Trump’s behaviour during last week’s call was described by officials as “apoplectic,” and Johnson has now reportedly shelved plans for an imminent visit to Washington.

So I guess there’s a downside to having an unstable bad-tempered moronic self-dealing hack as president?

[R]elations broke down following a series of high-profile threats from Trump and a series of pointed interventions against Trump by Johnson and senior members of his government.

What, because of a few threats? Losers.

Why did Trump get mad?

The call, which

That’s remarkable.

Asked whether the summary firing of LTC Alexander Vindman was justified Graham says Vindman was part of broader plot against President Trump by FBI Agents, CIA Agents and DOJ Lawyers. pic.twitter.com/AwgimKjlky

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) February 9, 2020

… Read the rest

How cozy.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that he spoke to Attorney General Bill Barr on Sunday and that the Department of Justice has “created a process” to receive and verify information that Rudy Giuliani gathered about the Bidens in Ukraine.

He did, yes.

Lindsey Graham says new DOJ "process" will let Giuliani turn over info on the Bidens https://t.co/MdEfWz8RKp pic.twitter.com/o1bb5KxSXo

— CBS News (@CBSNews) February 9, 2020

“Rudy,” he says, chummily, as if we’re all playing nicely in the sandbox together.

GRAHAM: “We’re going to make sure Hunter Biden’s conflict of interest is explored because this is legitimate. How could Joe Biden really fight corruption when his son’s sitting on the Burisma board?