A couple of guys go to Starbucks to meet a friend. They asked to use the restroom and were told it was only for paying customers. (Fun fact: I’ve used the restroom at various Starbuckses without buying anything, and no one batted an eye.) They hung out quietly chatting while waiting for their friend, and then…the police arrived and handcuffed them and arrested them.

Lauren, who asked that her last name not be used, shot video of the two men being arrested at the Starbucks just before 5 p.m. on April 12. She said the incident began after the men asked to use the bathroom and were told that it was only available for paying customers, which Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross later confirmed.

After the men had been “quietly hanging out, chatting and waiting for their friend,” she said officers entered the restaurant and asked the two men to leave, saying that they would be trespassing if they did not leave.

“The two young men politely asked why they were being told to leave and were not given a reason other than the manager wanted them to leave,” she told ABC in an email.

The men told the officer that they were waiting for a friend to arrive and offered to call that friend to prove that they had legitimate business at the restaurant, she said.

At that point, she said several officers began to move tables and chairs around the two men and take them into custody.

Notice something missing? The part where the manager asks them to buy something or leave. That never happened.

The friend for whom the men were waiting then arrived and attempted to intervene, but police told him the men “were not paying customers and thus were trespassing,” Lauren recalled.

“The two men stayed calm and did not raise their voices once. Everyone else in the Starbucks, however, was appalled,” she added.

Lauren said another woman had entered the Starbucks minutes before the men were arrested and was given the bathroom code without having to buy anything and that another person in the restaurant at the time of the incident “announced that she had been sitting at Starbucks for the past couple of hours without buying anything.”

Yeah but she had been sitting at Starbucks for the past couple of hours without buying anything while white. Apparently it makes all the difference.

Meanwhile everyone is cross with Theresa May.

Time and again at a press conference at Downing Street this morning the prime minister spelled out the strikes that took place overnight were limited, targeted and a response to the suspected use of chemical weapons in Douma.

With no clear indication of public support or consent, she time and again was at pains to say that she had authorised action for a specific reason – to punish President Assad for gassing his own people, as the government believes he has.

She will face an almighty row in the coming days over going ahead without consulting Parliament.

Her defence is that “security and operational reasons” meant the attack had to go ahead overnight.

But her critics are pushing back.

To try to close down a giant fight, the government is publishing a summary of the legal advice later today.

But while the strikes themselves were limited, Theresa May’s mission is a broader one – to force a return to respect for the international rules that are meant to prevent the use of chemical weapons.

No stinks, just bangs.

As suspected, Trump exaggerated with his “Mission Accomplished” tweet. Assad still has chemical weapons at his diposal.

President Donald Trump on Saturday declared “Mission Accomplished” for a U.S.-led allied missile attack on Syria’s chemical weapons program, but the Pentagon said the pummeling of three chemical-related facilities left enough others intact to enable the Assad government to use banned weapons against civilians if it chooses.

So it’s part of mission partly accomplished, but that doesn’t sound quite so perky.

Dana W. White, the chief Pentagon spokeswoman, said that to her knowledge no one in the Defense Department communicated with Moscow in advance, other than the acknowledged use of a military-to-military hotline that has routinely helped minimize the risk of U.S.-Russian collisions or confrontations in Syrian airspace. Officials said this did not include giving Russian advance notice of where or when allied airstrikes would happen.

Russia has military forces, including air defenses, in several areas of Syria to support President Bashar Assad in his long war against anti-government rebels.

Maybe Trump is hoping to get into a war with Russia by way of distracting us from all these pesky legal issues. I wonder if he’s forgotten that his dear friend Putin is Russian.

A former officer in Syria’s chemical program, Adulsalam Abdulrazek, said Saturday the joint U.S., British, and French strikes hit “parts of but not the heart” of the program. He said the strikes were unlikely to curb the government’s ability to produce or launch new attacks. Speaking from rebel-held northern Syria, Abdulrazek told The Associated Press there were perhaps 50 warehouses in Syria that stored chemical weapons before the program was dismantled in 2013.

The military people say the strike is nevertheless a discouraging signal to the Assad regime. Maybe they’re right.

Asifa Bano.

Asifa Bano was 8 years old and wearing a purple salwar kameez when she disappeared on Jan. 10.

A week later, on Jan. 17, her mutilated and lifeless body was found in a forest near Kathua in the Indian-controlled region of Kashmir. It was a mile away from Rasana, the village where her family was currently living.

Reports say she was abducted while grazing her horses in a meadow, taken to a prayer hall nearby, sedated for three days, tortured and brutally gang-raped. She was eventually strangled and hit on the head several times with a stone to ensure that she was dead.

On Wednesday, graphic details of the crime and its perpetrators emerged in a charge sheet filed by the Jammu and Kashmir state police. Its contents sparked massive outrage across the country. People gathered for candlelight vigils in protest. And using the hashtag #JusticeForAsifa on social media, citizens are condemning the crime and encouraging each other to speak up to authorities.

Her family is Muslim; there is tension between Muslims and Hindus in the area. (Kashmir has been tense af since Partition, from what I can tell.)

Indians were furious that politicians were silent over the issue and that some locals even defended the accused, since they were Hindu. Two Bharatiya Janata Party ministers from India’s ruling party, who seek to preserve Hindu ideals, even attended a rally to support the accused. They have since resigned.

“Who seek to preserve Hindu ideals” is a very anodyne way of describing the BJP. It’s neither that simple nor that benign.

It seems the country had not learned its lesson after the brutal gang rape and death of physiotherapy student Jyothi Singh in 2012, says Jasodhara Dasgupta, human rights activist and founder of SAHAYOG, an advocacy group for gender equality and women’s rights based in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.

“We thought we had made progress in preventing violence against women, but this is a cruel reminder of how little has changed,” she says.

…

Laws against sexual violence aren’t enough, says Jayshree Bajoria, author of the Human Rights Watch report Everyone Blames Me—Barriers to Justice and support Services for Sexual Assault Survivors in India — they must also be enforced. “Police often try to shield influential perpetrators. And there are numerous instances in which victims are unduly pressured to withdraw complaints. We are clearly lacking in fair, transparent, time-bound investigations,” she says.

Asifa Bano.

Well they’re saying it was a big success, no planes shot down or missiles intercepted, the targets were hit, the things went bang. Whether or not that means the production of chemical weapons is disabled is not yet known, but they’re not talking about that. Trump himself was stupid enough or defiant enough to use the two words that got Bush into so much grief.

A perfectly executed strike last night. Thank you to France and the United Kingdom for their wisdom and the power of their fine Military. Could not have had a better result. Mission Accomplished!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 14, 2018

Mission of course accomplished only if the sole mission was to break some things. We know that’s not the sole mission because that’s what they’re saying – the mission is to prevent future chemical attacks.

Meanwhile the trolls have gone into action.

The Pentagon says a Russian “disinformation campaign” has already begun over the U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria.

Chief Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said Saturday that “there has been a 2,000 percent increase in Russian trolls in the past 24 hours.”

And Trump is bragging about having the biggest best killingest guns.

So proud of our great Military which will soon be, after the spending of billions of fully approved dollars, the finest that our Country has ever had. There won’t be anything, or anyone, even close!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 14, 2018

Personal feelings?

A federal judicial nominee refused to say whether she agreed with the outcome of the landmark civil rights ruling Brown v. Board of Educationduring her confirmation hearing on Wednesday.

Wendy Vitter, a Louisiana lawyer nominated for a federal judgeship by President Donald Trump, would not say if she supported the 1954 Supreme Court decision that famously outlawed racial segregation in schools. During her confirmation hearing to be the district judge for Louisiana’s Eastern District, Vitter repeatedly said she could not comment on her personal feelings about Supreme Court decisions.

“Do you believe that Brown v. Board of Education was correctly decided,” Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, asked.

“I don’t mean to be coy,” Vitter responded. “But I think I get into a difficult area when I start commenting on Supreme Court decisions which are correctly decided and which I may disagree with. Again, my personal, political or religious views I would set aside. That is Supreme Court precedent. It is binding. If I were honored to be confirmed I would be bound by it, and of course I would uphold it.”

Come on. It’s a confirmation hearing. They’re not interested in her personal feelings about the daisies and the sunsets, they’re interested in her judicial views. Nominees aren’t supposed to say “Oh I can’t tell you that, that’s personal.” No, it’s not personal, it’s a federal judgeship.

Trying, belatedly, to learn some background on Comey. I frankly had paid no attention to him until the October surprise and then the firing. The Times did a backgrounder in April last year.

They start with the decision to do the October surprise.

Mr. Comey’s plan was to tell Congress that the F.B.I. had received new evidence and was reopening its investigation into Hillary Clinton, the presidential front-runner. The move would violate the policies of an agency that does not reveal its investigations or do anything that may influence an election. But Mr. Comey had declared the case closed, and he believed he was obligated to tell Congress that had changed.

“Should you consider what you’re about to do may help elect Donald Trump president?” an adviser asked him, Mr. Comey recalled recently at a closed meeting with F.B.I. agents.

He could not let politics affect his decision, he replied. “If we ever start considering who might be affected, and in what way, by what we do, we’re done,” he told the agents.

I guess I see the logic of thinking that because he had declared the case closed, he was obliged to report that it was open again. At least, I see it in the abstract, but I don’t know how it compares to other cases of that kind. Maybe there are no other cases of the kind; maybe they never do say a case is closed, and the Clinton investigation was unique. I don’t know.

Fearing the backlash that would come if it were revealed after the election that the F.B.I. had been investigating the next president and had kept it a secret, Mr. Comey sent a letter informing Congress that the case was reopened.

What he did not say was that the F.B.I. was also investigating the campaign of Donald J. Trump. Just weeks before, Mr. Comey had declined to answer a question from Congress about whether there was such an investigation. Only in March, long after the election, did Mr. Comey confirm that there was one.

Why? Why the different rules? Why the different actions? Maybe we’ll find out during all these upcoming interviews. Maybe there is no why – in which case Comey got a monster elected for no reason. That’s hard to take.

An examination by The New York Times, based on interviews with more than 30 current and former law enforcement, congressional and other government officials, found that while partisanship was not a factor in Mr. Comey’s approach to the two investigations, he handled them in starkly different ways. In the case of Mrs. Clinton, he rewrote the script, partly based on the F.B.I.’s expectation that she would win and fearing the bureau would be accused of helping her. In the case of Mr. Trump, he conducted the investigation by the book, with the F.B.I.’s traditional secrecy.

Ok; why? Clinton wonders the same thing in her book, by the way. Why such grotesquely mismatched treatment?

Am I thinking it’s buried misogyny? Not particularly. I wonder if maybe it’s to do with insiderism – with the entitlement of these family members of former president using their insider status to get a boost on running for president themselves. I hate that insiderism myself and wish people would stop doing it – I wish Bushes and Clintons had just considered themselves ineligible all along, and none of this would have happened.

Mr. Comey made those decisions with the supreme self-confidence of a former prosecutor who, in a distinguished career, has cultivated a reputation for what supporters see as fierce independence, and detractors view as media-savvy arrogance.

The Times found that this go-it-alone strategy was shaped by his distrust of senior officials at the Justice Department, who he and other F.B.I. officials felt had provided Mrs. Clinton with political cover. The distrust extended to his boss, Loretta E. Lynch, the attorney general, who Mr. Comey believed had subtly helped play down the Clinton investigation.

Now there’s a piece I didn’t know, because of that not paying attention thing.

Years [after the Ashcroft moment], when Mr. Obama was looking for a new F.B.I. director, Mr. Comey seemed an inspired bipartisan choice. But his style eventually grated on his bosses at the Justice Department.

In 2015, as prosecutors pushed for greater accountability for police misconduct, Mr. Comey embraced the controversial theory that scrutiny of police officers led to increases in crime — the so-called Ferguson effect. “We were really caught off guard,” said Vanita Gupta, the Justice Department’s top civil rights prosecutor at the time. “He lobbed a fairly inflammatory statement, without data to back it up, and walked away.”

Another piece.

On other issues, Mr. Comey bucked the administration but won praise from his agents, who saw him as someone who did what he believed was right, regardless of the political ramifications.

Aka “has cultivated a reputation for what supporters see as fierce independence, and detractors view as media-savvy arrogance.”

In September of that year, as Mr. Comey prepared for his first public questions about the case at congressional hearings and press briefings, he went across the street to the Justice Department to meet with Ms. Lynch and her staff.

Both had been federal prosecutors in New York — Mr. Comey in the Manhattan limelight, Ms. Lynch in the lower-wattage Brooklyn office. The 6-foot-8 Mr. Comey commanded a room and the spotlight. Ms. Lynch, 5 feet tall, was known for being cautious and relentlessly on message. In her five months as attorney general, she had shown no sign of changing her style.

At the meeting, everyone agreed that Mr. Comey should not reveal details about the Clinton investigation. But Ms. Lynch told him to be even more circumspect: Do not even call it an investigation, she said, according to three people who attended the meeting. Call it a “matter.”

Ms. Lynch reasoned that the word “investigation” would raise other questions: What charges were being investigated? Who was the target? But most important, she believed that the department should stick by its policy of not confirming investigations.

It was a by-the-book decision. But Mr. Comey and other F.B.I. officials regarded it as disingenuous in an investigation that was so widely known. And Mr. Comey was concerned that a Democratic attorney general was asking him to be misleading and line up his talking points with Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, according to people who spoke with him afterward.

Which hints at the entitled insider problem again.

Tangled web.

Originally a comment by iknklast on He calls all of them “welfare.”

Of course, it isn’t just conservatives who refer to that all as welfare; I see the same pattern in my liberal (or so-called liberal) friends who often describe situations of people being “on welfare” for life, even though welfare benefits are only available for 5 years under the Clinton-era “reforms”.

And the way they do the work requirement under TANF is disgusting and counterproductive. When I was unemployed, having just come off an extended period of disability (complete with Social Security, so I was recognized by the government as disabled), I tried to apply for TANF to help support myself and my teenage son until I could find work. It was…an eye-opener.

This was right after the new laws were passed, in the mid-late 90s. I was told I was eligible for $75/month, but could not receive that unless I applied for and interviewed for 10 jobs a week…and I could not tell them that there were any hours I could not work. I had to take any job that was offered, regardless of pay or schedule, or I would lose any benefits. I asked if they were saying I needed to drop out of college; they said, well, it doesn’t always come to that, but…yes. Job training was an integral part of that “reform”, but…they got to select what sort of jobs you could be trained for. And I wasn’t eligible for that, anyway, since I already had a bachelor’s degree and was working on my masters – which was my hope for lifting myself out of the poverty we were living in.

In the end, I turned down the $75. I struggled for a few months, and nearly lost my home, but managed to find a job at the eleventh hour. It wasn’t a great job, but it was decent pay, above minimum, and I was still eligible for food stamps, so that worked for me. But a lot of people wouldn’t be so lucky. I was fortunate to have the requisite skills to look for, and find, a job that would pay me a below-poverty level wage that was just enough to keep us from drowning. And it gave me just enough to talk to a lawyer and file papers on my ex to get him to start paying child support, which gave us a little breathing room once the checks started arriving.

The goal of these programs isn’t to end poverty, it is to maintain it by forcing people into ever lower-paying jobs. It feeds the job pool with desperate applicants who won’t say much about working conditions or salaries because they have too much to lose. It stigmatizes poverty, a condition in many ways created by those who support these obnoxious views. It generates a permanent class of citizens who are unable to enjoy the full rights of citizenship because they are unable to participate significantly in the market economy that serves as the God to which our country genuflects. They are (I was) disposable humans, not worth giving any thought to, and seen as a suck on the money that the corporate leaders believe rightfully belongs in the pockets of the already wealthy.

The entire system is a disgrace. In the richest country in the world, no one should be going to bed hungry at night. And no one should be callously covering the world with cheap, tacky gold while refusing to give even a crumb of food to the starving people that go largely unnoticed in our world.

Have I said today that I hate these people? If not, it’s time to rectify that. I hate him. I hate them. I want to see them pushed out of office, and preferably thrown onto the tender mercies of the programs that they have gutted, while their assets are redistributed among those who once populated those programs.

They’re attacking welfare, while Scott Pruitt stays in luxury hotels on our dime.

Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, insisted on staying in luxury hotels that were costlier than allowed by government standards, while also pushing to fly on an airline not on the government’s approved list so he could accrue more frequent flier miles, one of his top former deputies at agency has told congressional investigators.

The new allegations are detailed in a scathing six-page letter signed by two senators and three House lawmakers — all Democrats — whose staff members met this week with Kevin Chmielewski, who served as the E.P.A.’s deputy chief of staff until he was removed from his post after raising objections to this and other spending.

Isn’t there a law against firing whistleblowers?

Mr. Chmielewski told congressional staff members during a meeting this week that Mr. Pruitt would often seek to schedule trips back to Oklahoma, where he still owns a home, so he could stay there for weekends. “Find me something to do,” were the instructions Mr. Pruitt gave his staff, after telling them he wanted to travel to particular destinations, the letter says, quoting Mr. Chmielewski, who was expected to sign off on the trips.

When planning a trip to Italy, Mr. Pruitt “refused to stay at hotels recommended by the U.S. Embassy, although the recommended hotel had law enforcement and other U.S. resources on site,” according to the letter, which was written and sent to Mr. Pruitt, asking him to turn over documents related to the letter’s claims. Instead, Mr. Pruitt chose to stay “at more expensive hotels with fewer standard security resources,” while bringing along his own security team “at taxpayer expense.”

He sounds like a real prince, doesn’t he.

The letter says that while Mr. Pruitt was living last year in a Capitol Hill condominium rented from the wife of an energy lobbyist, complaints came in to the E.P.A. from the lobbyist, J. Steven Hart, that “you had never paid any rent to him, and that your daughter damaged his hardwood floors by repeatedly rolling her luggage across the unit when she was staying there.”

Takes after daddy.

Pruitt made one of his aides “act as your personal real estate representative, spending weeks improperly using federal government resources and time to contact rental and seller’s agents, and touring numerous properties in which you might wish to reside.” He also retaliated against people who objected to all this.

A prince among men.

The Post has more on the RNC plan to save Trump by vilifying the Republican former FBI director.

With the Mueller probe escalating — including the FBI raid this week of Trump’s personal lawyer’s home and office in Manhattan — Comey’s media appearances could pose a major public relations challenge for the White House.

“I’ve been around politics a long time, and I know fear when I see it,” said Jim Manley, a lobbyist and former senior aide to former Senate minority leader Harry M. Reid. “This White House reeks of fear. … This shows me that they are prepared to use a scorched-earth strategy to undermine the FBI’s credibility. The party of law and order has become the party of trying to protect Trump at all costs.”

That’s the part that’s so astonishing – Republicans pissing all over a Republican prosecutor turned Deputy Attorney General in the Bush 2 admin turned FBI director. You can’t get much better Republican cred than that! Yet they’re willing to go on the record calling him Lyin’ Comey in a desperate attempt to defend the lying cheating thieving corrupt bullying pussygrabbing fraud that is Donald Trump. It’s like turning away from a meal prepared by a four star French chef to jump into a cesspit to pluck out and eat a Big Mac.

Except it’s not even like that because this will be on their record forever. They’re placing all their bets on corrupt incompetent bullying monstrosity. It seems a tad shortsighted.

Trump loves being on the cover of TIME but something tells me he's not going to love this pic.twitter.com/v0KssV43iz

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) April 12, 2018