The projection defense:

It is Donald Trump’s habitual practice to accuse political opponents of misconduct he excels at, from self-dealing to the use of nasty language to telling lies.

At the impeachment trial Trump’s legal team has invented a twist on the projection tactic, taking the charges against the president and seeking to turn them back on the impeachment managers, using the precise language of the prosecution.

No you’re the corrupt lying cheating sacks of shit!

Thus Trump’s lawyers have accused the House of Representatives of abusing its power by pursuing impeachment and of obstructing justice by running the impeachment process in a way the White House objects to.

Which is just stupid, but no doubt it will work all the same, because we’re stuck in Stupidworld.

In one provocative example, lawyers for Trump have taken on the Senate floor to accusing House managers of engaging in “election interference” by advancing a process that could take Trump’s name off the ballot in 2020.

Just as a woman who struggles free from a man raping her is committing assault.

From last week: Trump and his goons changed the definition of domestic violence so that there will be less of it to do anything about.

The Trump administration quietly changed the definition of both domestic violence and sexual assault back in April but the move has only just surfaced.

The change could have significant repercussions for millions of victims of gender-based violence.

That is, victims of violence against women. The “gender” in question is female.

The Trump Justice Department’s definition only considers physical harm that constitutes a felony or misdemeanour to be domestic violence – meaning other forms of domestic violence such as psychological abuse, coercive control and manipulation no longer fall under the department’s definition. 

Lisa Page, anyone? DoJ employee hounded out by non-criminal psychological abuse from the president of the United States?

Holly Taylor-Dunn, a senior lecturer at the University of Worcester who has been working in the field of domestic and sexual violence for 17 years, said she was shocked by the move.

The academic, who has worked in frontline roles in the domestic violence sector and used to be a domestic abuse officer for the police, argued the Trump administration’s decision turned the clock back 50 years. 

“I was massively surprised and really shocked,” she said. “It is quite scary how quietly it has happened. It is a massive step backwards. We have literally gone back to the 70s. We have worked so hard since the 60s and 70s to get domestic abuse and sexual violence understood as being about more than physical violence. Changing the definition to take it back to being about physical harm completely undermines what domestic abuse is about”.

Dominance doesn’t necessarily ever raise a finger; it doesn’t have to. If you’re visibly carrying a gun, you don’t have to wave it around all the time; just the visible presence is quite enough to intimidate.

Suzanne Jacob, of UK domestic violence charity Safe Lives, said: “These changes are a huge step backwards that will have very real consequences for victims and survivors of domestic abuse in the States.

“Wherever you live, if you’ve experienced domestic abuse or listened to those who have, you know all too well that physical violence is never the whole picture – and many survivors tell us that the emotional and psychological abuse takes much longer to recover from.”

There is also the fact that dominance aka psychological abuse can be a step toward physical violence.

Some 43.5 million women have experienced “psychological aggression” from an intimate partner in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than half of women murdered each year in the US are killed by an intimate partner.

The two are not separated as if by a gulf.

Khadija Khan writes:

A recent independent review into child grooming and abuse in Manchester in the mid-2000s has revealed horrific details of how the victims were denied protection, and turned away by British police officers and social workers. The victims had been deliberately hooked on drugs, groomed, and sexually abused for years by grooming gangs predominantly comprised of Pakistani men, while the authorities involved looked the other way. These revelations of institutionalized criminal negligence were soon followed by denials, accusations, regrets, and excuses.

Apparently, the neglect of the sexual exploitation of women and girls at least partly arose to avoid creating racial tensions in the area. Some still believe that discussion of paedophile gangs of Asian men grooming and sexually abusing white working-class girls should be avoided, because it could stir up racial hatred and disrupt British society.

This is where the magic word “intersectionality” really comes into play, isn’t it. Let’s look the other way when it comes to this thing because it might be bad for The Muslim Community if we paid attention. Let’s look the other way when it comes to this thing because it might be bad for The Trans Community if we paid attention.

I can’t help noticing a commonality. In both cases it’s women who have to give way, women who are considered less important than this other Community we want to protect. Also in both cases it’s men who are doing bad things to women so they’re the ones shielded by the intersectional decision to look away from what they’re doing.

It’s all made trickier by the fact that it’s not wrong to worry about racism or hostility to Muslims, just as it’s not wrong to worry about abuse of trans people.

The Manchester report is no different from earlier child abuse scandals in Rotherham and Telford, or over 20 other UK communities in which grooming gangs operated with impunity. According to the review, the girls were subjected to ‘the most profound abuse and exploitation.’ They were groomed and sexually abused by South Asian men of all ages, who would drug them, rape them and pass them around at sex parties like meat on a platter.

Given these horrific and inhuman revelations,  it is shocking that some people find discussion of the perpetrators’ backgrounds more disturbing than the scandalous nature of the abuse itself. The review revealed that Greater Manchester Police’s concern about ‘sensitive’ community issues was a reason why the perpetrators were not held accountable for their crimes.

The sensitive community issues matter, but so do those girls.

It is imperative to note that British authorities feared offending vocal, self-appointed Muslim leaders who represent a highly conservative cultural and religious viewpoint, and who do not welcome any kind of scrutiny or criticism from outside – or even within – the community. 

That, on the other hand, matters a whole lot less than concern about hostility directed at South Asians in general. Conservative theocratic men are pretty much the last people the cops should be protecting at the expense of girls abused by their fellow conservative theocratic men.

It is safe to say that the cover-up of the sexual exploitation of vulnerable women and girls was done to protect the sensibilities of a highly conservative section of Muslim communities, which view any criticisms as a direct attack on Islam and their culture.

Protecting multicultural sensitivities cannot justify the criminal cover-up of a scandal that has affected British women and girls for over a decade.  Progressive voices, and especially dissenters within Muslim communities, face harsh criticism from the liberal fringe as well as from hard-line Muslims. Muslim reformers calling out deep rooted misogyny in their communities are constantly slandered, and accused of fuelling tensions between communities.

Wrong turn at the intersection.

Kathleen Stock explains the power and influence of Stonewall in many UK institutions:

The main protagonist in this war on free speech in the UK is Stonewall, a campaigning charity that was founded to promote the rights of the same-sex attracted, but which in recent years has switched its focus to an unconditional defence of (what it views as) transgender equality. Its website declares that “Trans women are women and trans men are men”, and—somewhat surprisingly to many gay people, given the charity’s original mission—that “of course” a lesbian can have “a trans woman as a lesbian partner” or “a gay man be with a trans man”.

And by “can” they mean “had better not refuse to.”

A central aim of Stonewall is now to bring the public to agree with these pronouncements; and a major instrument is its “Diversity Champions” scheme. Many organisations see the association as useful branding and are keen to sign up. In 2018, Stonewall made more than £2.7 million in fees—a significant part of the organisation’s £8.7 million income—from membership of the Diversity Champions scheme and similar programmes, including providing speakers and consultancy. But scheme membership requires a host of further conditions upon institutional structure and provision that go well beyond existing law, and seek to control speech and attitudes about transgenderism and gender identity.

In 2020, several legal cases will challenge Stonewall-sponsored policy within organisations. One is against Oxfordshire County Council for its “Trans Inclusion Toolkit For Schools”; another is against NHS England and the Tavistock NHS Trust, for allegedly pursuing experimental medical treatment on under-18 trans-identifying children (see Helen Joyce, “Speaking up for female eunuchs”); and another against Girlguiding for allegedly expelling a leader for gender-critical beliefs. A further case being explored is against the National Theatre (unlike the other defendants, not a “Diversity Champion”, but currently selling Stonewall merchandise in its bookshop) for refusing to serve women wearing T-shirts bearing the (apparently) provocative words: “Lesbian: a woman who loves other women.”

Stonewall used to stand for lesbian and gay rights, but now it stands for a very different brand of “rights” which is in sharp tension with the existing ones, especially of women and gay men.

Stonewall’s big policy shift came in 2015. In its “Vision for Change: Acceptance without Exception for Trans People” document, it argued that trans people have the right “to determine their own gender” rather than leaving “intrusive and demeaning” medical panels or legal experts to decide for them.

That’s not a right though. They mean “gender” to include sex, and you can’t determine your own sex, any more than you can determine your own species or phylum. You can determine your own preferences in clothes and haircut and mannerisms, but you can’t easily determine other people’s reception of your preferences. That last one is somewhat subject to reform via campaigning of the kind Stonewall is doing, but it’s a slow and difficult process. Is it a right? Kind of, up to a point, but it’s somewhat tricky. You can see why lawyers aren’t encouraged to wear clown suits in court, for instance. If it is a right it’s a mushy sort of right, not one enforceable with a call to the nearest Community Officer.

It simultaneously lobbied to have an inner feeling of gender identity (in Stonewall terminology: “a person’s innate sense of their own gender, which may or may not correspond to the sex assigned at birth”) replace gender reassignment as a protected characteristic in the Equality Act; and to have non-binary identities (roughly, an inner feeling of being neither man nor woman) legally recognised.

That on the other hand is an absurd candidate for a “right.” It makes no kind of sense to try to make it a right – an enforceable right – to require other people to validate one’s Inner Feelings. “A person’s innate sense of their own gender” is necessarily internal to that person, so it cannot be imposed on all other people. Innate senses of this or that are not something that can be legislated.

And anyway it’s bullshit. Stonewall is just wrong about the “innate sense.” There is no such innate sense, there’s only what we learn from infancy onwards. We learn it far too early to be able to remember learning it, so if we don’t think about it much we may conclude that it’s “innate,” but the solution for that is to think about it more. Sure, some kids think no, that’s a mistake, I’m the other one, I’m like my brother not my sister or vice versa; some grow out of it and maybe some don’t. I say “maybe” because there’s so much fad-pushing right now that it’s impossible to tell. Either way, though, that’s just an idea in the head and it’s not something that can be forced on everyone else.

Perhaps most controversially of all, it lobbied to have exemptions for single-sex services and spaces removed from the Equality Act, so that there could be no space or resource designated only on the basis of biological sex. Goodbye, “exclusionary” bathrooms, changing rooms, and sport—or so Stonewall hoped.

Which wasn’t very considerate of it.

And so Stonewall’s lucrative diversity champions scheme ploughs onwards. In the education sector, most British universities are Diversity Champions, and so have been instructed to produce dedicated trans policies. These policies tend not to be confined to personnel matters, but also dictate what acceptably may be taught and said on campus about trans people. Some university policies require that “any materials within relevant courses and modules will positively represent trans people and trans lives”. (No such clause appears in university policy for any other group, to my knowledge.) Training reinforces such messages, during which people with PhDs are shown diagrams such as the “genderbread person”, shaped like a gingerbread man but with sex depicted between the legs and gender identity in the head. A glossy Stonewall document entitled “Delivering LGBT-inclusive Higher Education” tells universities that inviting “anti-LGBT” speakers who deny “that trans people exist as the gender they say they are” causes LGBT people “to feel deeply unsafe”. In this document Stonewall announces: “The most inclusive universities find ways to consistently communicate their support for LGBT equality throughout the year, in digital communications, at university events, and in their buildings and grounds.”

In this context of course “LGBT” means T.

Stonewall is also active in primary and secondary schools. It provides “toolkits” for early years, in order to “prevent children from developing . . . transphobic attitudes”. It provides assembly plans and various other guides aimed at teachers, and holds conferences for children and young people. Another significant indirect source of influence is via local authorities, whose own membership of the Diversity Scheme leads them to insist on policies and toolkits in local schools, provided by Stonewall or other like-minded organisations. One such toolkit (not one of Stonewall’s) tells children: “Remember that a pupil who identifies as a girl but was assigned male at birth is not a ‘boy dressed as a girl’ but is a girl.” In a society with increasing numbers of children and teens identifying as trans—sometimes with lifelong medical consequences—this degree of discourse control has worrying implications.

Children are told by their schools that a boy is a girl if he “identifies as” a girl, even though that statement is factually untrue, aka a lie. Schools telling children that a boy thinks of himself as a girl would be one thing; telling them he is one is another.

The next bit is horrifying in its scope.

With local variations, a similar-looking story can be told about most major public and third-sector institutions in this country, as well as many big companies. Membership of the Stonewall Diversity Champions scheme brings policies, training, propaganda, the regular marking of special days, and attempts to control language and ultimately thought. Among the 750-plus members of the Diversity Champions scheme are the Crown Prosecution Service, several police forces, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the Office for National Statistics, the Scottish Prison Service, the Ministry of Justice, the Foreign Office, the Department for Education, NHS Trusts, the Scottish Government, the Labour Party, the Bank of England, the Serious Fraud Office, city and county councils, London boroughs, the Department for Health, Sport England, the Football Association, and the Royal Navy and other armed services; as well as businesses such as Marks & Spencer, law firms (Allen and Overy), financial services (J.P. Morgan) and arts and heritage organisations like the Tate and the National Trust. No doubt most of these outfits originally came, laudably, for the gay rights and associated warm fuzzy feelings; but they stay for mandatory trans policies and training for staff and stakeholders. The Diversity Champions scheme now allows Stonewall to exert a chilling grip on free thought and expression about gender identity. While the government consults the public on whether to reform gender laws, it simultaneously pays Stonewall to lobby to change them.

Pervasive, ain’t it.

Argument creep: don’t do it.

Also everyone else! Don’t do this!

1. (Jon Pike [↩]
2. (Jon Pike [↩]

I missed this one back in October:

Ironically, or aptly, what Jefferson was complaining of there was not an invention.

Maybe that’s what Vonky meant!

Hahaha no, just kidding. The odds that Princess I has ever heard of Sally Hemings are slim.

Metro UK reports:

A transgender police community support officer was left feeling ‘upset and embarrassed’ after a teen yelled out:’ Is it a boy or is it a girl?’

Declan Armstrong, 19, saw PSCO Connor Freel when he was on duty in Mold, North Wales on October 16 last year.

When the officer looked over at him, he repeated the comment ‘very loudly’, Rhian Jackson, prosecuting, said.

Ms Jackson said: ‘Due to his transgender, when Connor heard Declan say what he said, it left him feeling upset and embarrassed.’

Armstrong was given a curfew requirement and ordered to pay £590 at Mold Magistrates’ Court today after he was found guilty of making the comments to PCSO Connor Freel following an earlier trial.

People shouldn’t yell taunts or insults at people in the street.

However.

£590???

I wonder how often men have to pay £590 for shouting insults and taunts at women in Mold, North Wales (or anywhere else).

Armstrong, of Victory Court, Mold, was convicted of a public order offence following a trial earlier this month but the court heard he still denied making the comments.

Gary Harvey, defending, said: ‘He doesn’t hold any prejudice against anyone in society.’

The court heard Armstrong, who acts as a carer for a man he considers his father, had been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome and suffered from anxiety and depression.

Sentencing, district judge Roger Lowe said the aggravating features of the case were that Mr Freel was performing a public service as a PCSO and the incident was in a busy town centre where other people could hear what was said.

He said the sentence had been uplifted from a low level to a medium level community order because of its transphobic nature.

Does that apply to misogynist taunts in the street? Racist taunts in the street? Xenophobic taunts in the street? Anti-Semitic taunts in the street? Anti-Muslim taunts in the street? Homophobic taunts in the street? Or is it just transphobia that results in a £590 fine?

Another man who “identifies as” a woman says this is all fine and poses no harm to women.

Alex Sharpe is “a social and legal theorist, legal historian and gender, sexuality and law scholar and activist”; source Garden Court Chambers. Sharpe is also a trans woman.

The article is pay-walled, and very expensively so – $42 for a single article! – but we can read the abstract.

This article considers and rejects claims [that] reform of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (GRA) to allow gender self‐declaration will undermine non‐trans women’s rights and lead to an increase in harms to non‐trans women.

Note that he calls us “non-trans women” as opposed to just women. We’re just one category of women now, and being explained to ourselves by men who say they are women. It’s not getting more convincing or persuasive over time.

Trump’s buddy Eddie Gallagher has publicly outed the SEALS who reported him.

Former Navy SEAL and accused war criminal Eddie Gallagher put service members in jeopardy with a new video attack launched from his social media accounts on Monday. Gallagher’s video revealed sensitive information about the Navy SEALS who testified against him in his war crimes trial, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

In the three-minute-long video posted to his Facebook and Instagram pages, Gallagher identified his accusers by posting their names, photographs, duty status, and the units they serve in — which experts said jeopardizes those Navy SEALS’ safety.

The identities of SEALS are always kept secret, from everyone, by everyone. It’s a rule.

“As a matter of policy we do not identify our special operators,” Capt. Tamara Lawrence, a spokesperson for Naval Special Warfare Command, told the Union-Tribune. “We don’t identify them by name, or by any other manner, due to the nature of their work, for the protection of their teammates and their families, and to protect on-going and future missions.”

Trump’s wonder boy blew through that rule in order to retaliate.

In the video, Gallagher calls the service members “cowards” for testifying about his actions in Iraq. Those service members accused Gallagher of shooting civilians and killing an ISIS fighter by stabbing him in the neck — both of which are considered war crimes. Gallagher was acquitted on some of the charges but was convicted of posing with the corpse of a dead ISIS fighter.

Fox News hosts lobbied Trump to pardon Gallagher for his conviction, which Trump eventually did.

We definitely want Fox News hosts setting government policy.

Trump also forced out the secretary of the Navy who did not agree with Trump’s order to go over Navy leadership’s head to demand the restoration of Gallagher’s rank — which had been reduced thanks to his conviction.

MAGA!!

He speaks!

But not well. Not well at all. What he says is rather breathtaking.

He does say that, and before he says that, he says, starting at 2:29:

…when we talk about random individuals who don’t have a lot of say or maybe knowledge or who have tried and failed –

Yes, really, Jared Kushner, real estate hustler, called other people random individuals who don’t have a lot of say or maybe knowledge. Amanpour interrupted him where the dash is to say

Jared, he was a negotiator and a former Israeli cabinet minister.

Not a real estate hustler who works for his wife’s father.

He also says, starting at 3:55:

…who do you know that runs a state that when they don’t get what they want they call for a day of rage, that’s not how people who are capable of running a state work…

I know this one. Donald Trump, that’s who. He calls for a day of rage every day, and every night too. Not, to be fair, a general day of rage, a day of rage for him. But he does that more often than he tells the truth, or thanks someone, or eats two scoops of ice cream.

Kushner’s calm confident arrogance is stunning to watch.

A little excitement.

I don’t know what “intersectionality” insists or thinks or says, because I don’t think it’s a person, but I do think it’s pretty weird to tell Twitter “I passed a black woman in the store today!!”

Oh look, a new way to torment women, and starve their babies while you’re at it.

Men drinking their partners’ breast milk is not uncommon in some areas of Uganda, and in parts of Tanzania and Kenya. It is now being linked to gender violence and coercive behaviour and there are concerns over the impact on babies’ nutrition. Little was known about the practice until Uganda’s minister of state for health, Sarah Opendi, broke the silence in parliament in 2018 and warned against “a growing culture of men demanding to suckle, which was becoming a problem for some breastfeeding mothers and their babies”.

Or, you know, all breastfeeding mothers and their babies.

The preliminary research suggested that men often drink before the child is fed, usually once a day, sometimes more frequently, and for about an hour at a time.

An hour…but no doubt there are still gallons and gallons left for the baby, and the mother has nothing better to do than let the man use her as a beverage dispenser.

Women did not seem to have much choice in the matter. “It appears to be a hugely coerced behaviour from the people we spoke to,” added Merritt.

When asked what might happen if she said no, one woman replied: “I fear that my husband might go elsewhere if I wouldn’t let it happen.”

How about he buys a cow or a goat?

Health professionals, including midwives and nutritionists, told researchers about cases where babies had to be given formula milk because partners wanted the breast milk, and where women came to clinic with infected or bitten nipples caused by a man suckling. There are also risks to babies of cross-infection from the man’s saliva.

Oh well, it’s only women.

They don’t have the votes.

Senator Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) on Tuesday said he doesn’t have the votes to block a resolution to allow witnesses in the Senate impeachment trial, according to multiple reports.

McConnell made the admission in talks with Senate Republicans after President Trump’s defense team concluded its arguments.

If the Senate votes to summon witnesses, Democrats will likely attempt to call on former White House national security adviser John Bolton to give testimony in the trial…

Republicans may react to a subpoena of Bolton by summoning Hunter Biden and the government whistleblower, whose complaint sparked the impeachment inquiry, to testify.

Why yes, likely they will.

I still imagine a scenario in which several of them say to themselves “Oh fuck this shit” and give it up. I’m sure being a Senator is lots of fun and I know it’s very lucrative, what with all the lobbying choices available upon retirement or losing an election, but even so there’s a limit to what people can stomach. Trump is bound to be ruining most of the fun, and the lobbying gigs will still be there.

Their big response as of now is to say “Well then we’ll subpoena Hunter Biden so ha!” Which…ok, go ahead. What’s their point? His taking that job was grotesque, Joe Biden’s failure to tell him not to was grotesque, but that doesn’t change anything about what Trump has done.

Also, Hunter Biden shouldn’t have taken that job, but that goes times a billion for Trump, let alone his gruesome children and fixers and pretend lawyers.

First there was this:

Steve Krakauer is (or, rather, pretends to be) disgusted at the “elitism” and “arrogance” of three guys (two of whom are black, you might notice) mocking the ignorance of Trump and the evil of Pompeo, as if that’s more shocking and reprehensible than Trump’s ignorance and malevolence and Pompeo’s bullying and evil.

Then there was Act Two, when Princess Ivanka seconded the fake outrage of Steve Krakauer.

The president’s daughter said: “The arrogance, mocking accents and smug ridicule of this nation’s ‘real elites’ is disgusting.”

Amid backlash to the CNN clip and Ivanka’s Tuesday morning tweet, one of the CNN guests, Rick Wilson, a Republican consultant turned Trump critic and author, responded with characteristic force.

Wilson said in a message to the Guardian: “Her hypocrisy is breathtaking. She went to Chapin and never worked for anyone not called Daddy.”

She’s filthy rich. She’s filthy rich via her father’s corrupt practices; she’s filthy rich via profiteering from her father’s horrific destructive presidency; she’s filthy rich via fraud (see: Trump Soho). You don’t see her hanging out with poor people or doing anything to make poor people not so poor. She is every inch a princess.

Chapin is an exclusive all-girls school in Manhattan, which the first daughter attended before boarding at Choate Rosemary Hall in Connecticut. She joined the Trump Organization from college, appeared with her billionaire father on TV in The Apprentice and is now a senior White House adviser.

It’s all been handed to her on a gold plate, and she thinks somehow that makes her talented and important.

Donald Trump, a president who has by one count made more than 16,000 false or misleading claims since entering office, has excoriated CNN as a bastion of supposed “Fake News” media. On Monday night he retweeted the clip and criticized Lemon in familiar fashion, calling him “the dumbest man on television (with terrible ratings!)”.

Amid predictable furore, Wilson and Ali responded in kind.

“I believe we have ‘triggered’ the ‘snowflakes’ just by doing a short segment on TV with some levity,” Ali wrote. “Did I use the terminology correctly?”

Things took a more serious turn in Ali’s penultimate tweet of the night, however, when he wrote: “Trump tweeted our CNN clip from [two] days ago. Friends are now concerned about my safety. I refuse to be intimidated [and] bullied by bad faith actors who cry fake victimhood, whining about a harmless, silly 30-second clip while endorsing Trump, a cruel vulgarian who debases everyone.”

Princess Ivanka, meanwhile, was busy counting her money.

A good job on her.

This is nuts. The Guardian:

Anyone who films a partner during sex without their consent is committing the criminal offence of voyeurism, the court of appeal has ruled in a case that may affect the Crown Prosecution Service’s apparent reluctance to bring charges.

In other words the CPS thinks filming a partner during sex without their consent is and should be legal legal legal.

The ruling by three judges came at the end of an unsuccessful appeal by a man convicted of filming himself having sex with prostitutes. His lawyers argued that the voyeurism law allowed him to do so since even a bedroom is not a private place if he was there legitimately.

And he was totally there legitimately because by god he was paying for it.

In a highly unusual development in a criminal case, the court allowed someone not directly involved in events to intervene in the hearing to develop arguments that consent should be the primary issue when considering cases under the 2003 Sexual Offences Act.

…

Jon Rees QC, for Richards, told the court that even though the two women may not have consented to being filmed, if Richards was entitled to be in their bedrooms they could not have a reasonable expectation to privacy.

So he could have invited a film crew in over the women’s protests? Put the whole thing on live tv while they objected?

Emily Hunt was supported in her legal campaign by the Centre for Women’s Justice. Later on Tuesday, she said she had been told by her lawyers that the CPS was no longer resisting her judicial review claim and was now re-examining its decision not to prosecute.

A CPS spokesperson said: “What constitutes a ‘private act’ for the purposes of the offence of voyeurism had never been conclusively defined by a higher court until today.

“The CPS does not make or decide the law; that is the remit of parliament and the courts respectively. Now that this new authoritative judgment has clarified this point of law, the CPS will review its position in the judicial review brought by Emily Hunt.”

Isn’t this phobic toward guys who like to film naked women without their consent so they can share on Twitter?

Don’t mention the war.

Yesterday, Washington Post reporter Felicia Sonmez tweeted a link to a 2016 Daily Beast story about the rape allegations. The story recounts, in excruciating detail, the accuser’s version of events of what happened the night of June 30th at the Lodge and Spa at Coridellera in Colorado, where she worked as a hotel desk clerk. According to her version of events, after Bryant, then 24, invited her into his hotel room, where the two shared a consensual kiss. After that point, she told police, he allegedly barred her from leaving the room, held her by the neck and forced her to have sex with him, then told her not to tell anybody. A subsequent medical examination at a hospital in Colorado found that the victim had multiple lacerations in the vaginal area that were “consistent with perpetuating genital trauma….not consistent with consensual sex,” and that Bryant’s T-shirt had blood spots around the waistline that matched the victim’s DNA.

Presumably “perpetrating” genital trauma, not “perpetuating.”

During interviews with police, the story goes on to mention, Bryant claimed that the sex was consensual, disputed police officer’s characterization that the victim was an “attractive” woman, and threw a semen-covered T-shirt (where he claimed to have ejaculated during the encounter) at a cop when he requested it as evidence. At a subsequent press conference, however, he was much more sanguine*, apologizing to the woman and stating, “Although I truly believe this encounter between us was consensual, I recognize now that she did not and does not view this incident the same way I did.” *[sanguine is not the right word; something like “conciliatory” appears to be the intention]

Call me crazy but I still think the difference between enthusiastic participation and “No” is not all that blurry and hard to detect.

In her tweet, Sonmez did not recount any of the allegations, merely tweeting the article without context. In a follow-up tweet, which was screengrabbed by independent journalist Matthew Keys, she said that she had received death threats following her tweets, urging people to read the article. “Any public figure is worth remembering in their totality, even if that public figure is beloved and that totality unsettling,” she wrote. Another tweet included a screenshot of an email she had received containing death threats and abuse, which showed the full names of the sender. “Piece of shit. Go fuck yourself. Cunt,” the email said. She tweeted the email to underscore “the pressure people come under to stay silent in these cases.”

It’s also the “pressure” women come under to stay silent pretty much all the time. That’s not consensual either, by the way.

Mediaite later reported that the Washington Post had suspended Sonmez for her tweets, though there are conflicting interpretations as to how and why this happened. Keys quoted an anonymous Washington Post reporter stating that Sonmez was suspended not for tweeting the  Daily Beast link, but for posting an unredacted version of a screengrab of the harassing emails to her which showed the sender’s full name. In a statement to Rolling Stone, managing editor Tracy Grant did not offer much clarification. “National political reporter Felicia Sonmez was placed on administrative leave while The Post reviews whether tweets about the death of Kobe Bryant violated The Post newsroom’s social media policy,” she wrote. “The tweets displayed poor judgment that undermined the work of her colleagues.”

Is that so. Washington Post reporters need their colleagues to refrain from talking about rape allegations if they’re about a popular sports star? Why would that be?

It’s also very much worth noting that the Washington Post has received intense criticism for historically displaying “bias or favoritism” in its own coverage of Bryant specifically. In 2018, the paper was lambasted for publishing a glowing profile of Bryant that, among other things, downplayed the sexual assault case by claiming he created his persona “the Black Mamba” in response to the allegation. “When Bryant returned to the court, the wholesome young athlete was gone. In his place was a man who could no longer convincingly portray innocence, and Bryant says he felt free to reveal the darkness that had always lurked inside him,” WaPo’s Kent Babb writes. “Creating an alternate persona, he says now, was the only way he could mentally move beyond the events of Colorado.”

The profile was criticized for being “stuffed to the gills with utter lunacy, somehow both the goofiest and most unsettling profile of an athlete I’ve ever read,” the Daily Beast’s Corbin Smith wrote. Earlier that year, Bryant had won an Oscar for his documentary short “Dear Basketball,” which had reinvigorated the debate surrounding the 2003 allegation and raised questions of whether his reputation deserved to be rehabilitated. Sonmez does not appear to make mention of the WaPo profile or the backlash to it in her tweets, but according to WaPo staffers who spoke with Rolling Stone, there was internal criticism within the newsroom after Bryant visited the office in October 2018, where he was given a tour and a warm reception. (Neither the Washington Post nor the Washington Post Guild, the union representing WaPo staffers, immediately responded to this claim.)

In a statement, the Washington Post Guild harshly criticized the paper’s handling of Sonmez and her tweets. “We understand the hours after Bryant’s death Sunday were a fraught time to share reporting about past accusations of sexual assault. The loss of such a beloved figure, and of so many other lives, is a tragedy,” the Guild wrote. “But we believe it is our responsibility as a news organization to tell the public the whole truth as we know it — about figures and institutions both popular and unpopular, at moments timely and untimely.”

Yes but that’s the union. Management likes its sports stars.

Because Pompeo wasn’t looking childish and vindictive enough yet.

The State Department on Monday removed a National Public Radio reporter from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s upcoming trip following a days long spat with a different NPR reporter, who said Pompeo berated and cursed [her] after an interview.

It wasn’t a “spat” and it wasn’t “with” – it was Pompeo bullying a reporter. Period.

The State Department Correspondents’ Association in a statement confirmed the decision to remove NPR correspondent Michele Kelemen from Pompeo’s plane on his upcoming trip to Europe and Central Asia, calling the move “retaliation” after Pompeo’s public attack on NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly.

In other words Pompeo publicly attacked Kelly and then in “retaliation” against Kelly [for being bullied I guess] the State Department kicked out a colleague. That’s not “retaliation,” it’s just another installment of bullying.

“The removal of Michele, who was in rotation as the radio pool reporter, comes days after Secretary Pompeo harshly criticized the work of an NPR host. We can only conclude that the State Department is retaliating against National Public Radio as a result of this exchange,” Shaun Tandon, the association’s president, said in a statement.

Retaliating against NPR for…being bullied?

These people are the dregs.