>“He could have done that, but it didn’t happen. Yes, the question probably wasn’t pressing at the time because there was no full-scale invasion. >“But our territories were occupied.” of course, we all know what Trump *did* do: he tried to extort Zalenskyy for dirt on Hunter Biden by withholding relief funding that the US Congress had already authorized to send to Ukraine. He was even impeached over it.

>- Lauren Boebert missed the vote to raise the debt ceiling after criticizing the deal for weeks. >- The House passed the bill 314-117, but Boebert failed to appear and vote no as pledged. >- Boebert's absence sparked criticism and questions about her effectiveness as a Congressman.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1147983 > >- Lauren Boebert on Wednesday failed to vote on a major bill that raised the federal debt ceiling. > >- She had vocally opposed the bill, and on Saturday called her failure to vote "a protest." > >- But video from Wednesday shows her frantically trying to make it inside the Capitol on time. > > Sorry, boo-boo. ya busted!

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis could pursue charges using the state’s RICO law

> Our analysis of police body-worn camera footage reveals that stops ultimately resulting in escalation differ in their conversational structure in the earliest moments of the encounter: in as little as the first 45 words the officer speaks.

>“I’ll be happy to tell you I’m very fucking comfortable talking politics. If you vote for Ron DeSantis, you’re fucking dead to me. Is that comfortable enough for anyone?”

FYI, Musk has a trans kid who hates him

[Staire] >UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (The Borowitz Report)—As Chris Christie prepares to announce a 2024 White House bid, Americans are struggling to remember who he is again.

>The decision could leave more than 11,000 students without a social studies textbook.

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/424962 > Have you ever wondered why officers like to ask how much cash someone has that they have pulled over? > > Probably one of the worst laws that is easily abused (as written) in the U.S. is Civil Asset Forfeiture. A simple way to describe it is legalized robbery by law enforcement. This is one of the ways that the law essentially treats the victim (property owner) as guilty before a trial has even begun. **Law enforcement does not even need to charge you with a crime to take your money.** > > In order to get your money back the property owner would have to sue the federal/police organization. This means spending your own time and money to fight in court to prove your innocence (rather than law enforcement having to prove you guilty). > > In most cases the property owner will spend more money fighting in court than they would get back if they won their court case. In other cases, law enforcement will generally offer a small percentage of the money back. > > I get that these can be useful laws when actually taking down criminal organizations, but we really need to fix the laws so that law enforcement only gets the money/assets when the offending party is actually guilty of a crime. > > As of 2021, only Maine, Nebraska, New Mexico, and North Carolina have completely overhauled their laws to require that prosecutors prove the owner's guilt. 36 States (and the District of Colombia) have taken steps to scale back these forfeiture laws, however, the vast majority of them have a major loophole in which law enforcement can partner with federal departments (such as the U.S. Justice and Treasury) and split the earnings from a forfeiture. > https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/08/19/states-work-scale-back-civil-forfeiture-laws-amid-federal-loophole/8181774002/ > > A little over a week ago a jury rejected a truckers claim to money that had been seized (even though no criminal charges have been brought against him). They took $40k that he had gathered together and was on his way to buy a truck. > > https://landline.media/texas-jury-rejects-truckers-claim-to-seized-money/ > > Additional Sources: https://ij.org/report/policing-for-profit-first-edition/part-i-policing-for-profit/ > > John Oliver also did a video on this 8 years ago: https://youtu.be/3kEpZWGgJks

Of course, it's standard GOP clown-show tactics, because they obviously know they won't win if they play fair.

They whine about the country being in such debt, and then they refuse to pay their taxes.