Month: April 2019

“Extreme Environmentalist” Couple Set To Sue Tesla For Model 3 Bluetooth Issue

Tesla’s less than impeccable customer service reputation is being firmly held in tact by another recent example of the “disruptive” company’s ignorance toward excited owners. New Tesla owners Jeff and Jennifer Salvage considered themselves to be “fairly extreme environmentalists” and excited Tesla owners, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

“For every reason under the sun, it was the perfect car,” Jeff had even said.

But six years after the purchase of their first Tesla and about a year after the purchase of their Model 3, the Salvages are ready to take Tesla to court over their $56,000 car that will not pair with Jennifer’s smartphone. It should be a relatively simple problem to fix, though it is one that prevents Jennifer from receiving hands-free phone calls and entering the car without a key.

Tesla, instead, has blamed Jennifer’s phone and has refused to re-purchase the car from the couple.

Jennifer said of Tesla’s response:

“It was insulting. Despite the fact that I’m insulted, I want to be in a Tesla. I want them to do the right thing.”

The couple argued that the problems with Bluetooth cause safety issues and harm the value of the vehicle. Tesla disregarded the Bluetooth capabilities as mere “convenience features”. The couple’s lawsuit is being prepared right now. “We’re not letting it go away,” Jeff said.

Tesla has serviced the car for seven months, according to invoices and text messages that were shown to the Philadelphia Inquirer. The company looked at it in July, serviced it in September, again in October, diagnosed it in December and sent somebody to the couple’s house in January. They also kept the Model 3 at a service center for all of February. After all of those appointments, Tesla concluded that there was nothing wrong with the car but it was, instead, an issue with Jennifer’s phone, a Samsung Galaxy Note 8.

A Tesla service manager wrote in a March 7 email the “root cause of the problem” is “a compatibility issue that Samsung Galaxy phones have with vehicle Bluetooth devices.” The employee also pointed to an online forum post from an anonymous Samsung customer to back up their point.

But Samsung says there’s no known compatibility issues, and the forum post the Tesla employee pointed to dealt with a different phone – and a different car. The post highlighted issues a Galaxy Note 9 (not 8) was having with a Toyota, not a Tesla.

Jennifer also says her phone works just fine with a loaner Model 3 she was given.

According to Jeff, the car had been in service for about 100 days after several repair attempts. As is usually the case after Autopilot related accidents, Tesla is blaming the owner, saying that the car was needed for far less time and that the owners didn’t immediately pick up the vehicle.

Tesla did not address the Cherry Hill service manager’s claim of Samsung phones having a compatibility issue with the car. The company instead said in a statement: “Our service evaluation of the vehicle, which we confirmed with a review of the vehicle’s logs, showed that every time the Bluetooth pairing became disconnected, the break in connectivity was initiated by the customer’s phone, not by the car.”

New Jersey’s lemon law requires “consumers to prove an unfixed defect ‘substantially impairs the use, value, or safety of the new motor vehicle’ to qualify for relief.”

Jeff concluded: 

“The number one issue is the safety issue. When the car and phone disconnect, incoming calls come through the phone instead of the dashboard. You look down at your phone because that’s where the noise is, and now you’ve taken your eyes off the road.”

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Pf0uBx Tyler Durden

Texas Cops Arrest About 45,000 Drivers a Year for Minor Traffic Offenses

The practice of arresting drivers for minor traffic violations in Texas first received wide national attention as a result of the 2001 Supreme Court decision in Atwater v. Lago Vista, which upheld the handcuffing, booking, and jailing of a woman who violated a state law requiring drivers and front-seat passengers to wear seat belts. In 2016 such rough treatment of motorists became even more controversial when a 28-year-old woman named Sandra Bland, who was arrested after a state trooper stopped her for failing to signal a lane change, died of an apparent suicide in the Waller County jail. A new report from the Texas group Just Liberty, based on data reported under a 2017 state law passed in response to the Bland incident, estimates that “more than 45,000 Texas drivers were arrested at traffic stops for Class C misdemeanors last year” and were therefore unnecessarily exposed to the risk of injury as well as the trauma of being hauled off to jail in handcuffs.

Class C misdemeanors are traffic and city ordinance violations that are typically handled with citations. Based on Just Liberty’s analysis of 2018 data from cities with populations of more than 50,000, that is what happens more than 99 percent of the time. But because there are so many traffic stops—3 million in the data set used for this report—the absolute number of arrests is large.

Among traffic stops by local police departments, arrests for Class C misdemeanors were most common in Waco, at 451 per 10,000 stops (4.5 percent), nearly seven times the average of 67 (0.7 percent). Injuries associated with police use of force during such arrests were most common in Houston, where they were reported in 53 per 10,000 stops, three times the average rate of 17 per 10,000. The injury rate for the Texas Department of Public Safety, which was responsible for Bland’s arrest, was more than double that average. Just Liberty notes that cases where injuries were reported are “likely a small subset of all force incidents at traffic stops.”

Breaion King’s arrest

In 2015, for instance, an Austin police officer stopped a 26-year-old elementary school teacher named Breaion King for speeding and ended up yanking her from her car, pulling her across the parking lot, and throwing her to the ground. The incident, which was the focus of the Oscar-nominated HBO documentary Traffic Stop, was highly traumatic for King. But because she “wasn’t seriously injured,” Just Liberty says, “her arrest, while disturbing, would not have been included in this data.”

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Ron Paul: “As Long As Assange Is In Prison, We Are All In Prison”

Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

Last week’s arrest of Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange by the British government on a US extradition order is an attack on all of us. It is an attack on the US Constitution. It is an attack on the free press. It is an attack on free speech. It is an attack on our right to know what our government is doing with our money in our name. Julian Assange is every bit as much a political prisoner as was Cardinal Mindszenty in Hungary or Nelson Mandela in South Africa.

They, and so many more, were imprisoned because they told the truth about their governments.

Repressive governments do not want their citizens to know that they are up to so they insist on controlling the media. We are taught, at the same time, that we have a free press whose job it is to uncover the corruption in our system so that we can demand our political leaders make some changes or face unemployment. That, we are told, is what makes us different from the totalitarian.

The arrest of Assange is a canary in a coal mine to warn us that something is very wrong with our system.

What’s wrong? The US mainstream media always seems to do the bidding of the US government. That is why they rushed to confirm Washington’s claim that the Assange indictment was not in any way about journalism. It was only about hacking government computers!

As the New York Times said in an editorial, sounding like a mouthpiece of the US government, Julian Assange committed “an indisputable crime.” But was it? As actual journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote last week, what Julian Assange did in 2010, for which he is facing extradition to the US, is no different from what New York Times and other journalists do every day! He attempted to help Chelsea Manning shield his identity as he blew the whistle on US government crimes to a publisher. The information in question included a video showing US military personnel participating in and cheering the murder of Iraqi civilians. Why is it criminal for us to know this?

The difference is that what Assange and Manning did embarrassed the US government, which was lying to us that it was “liberating” Iraq and Afghanistan when it was actually doing the opposite. Mainstream journalists publish “leaks” that help bolster the neocon or other vested narratives of the different factions of the US government. That’s why the US media wants to see Assange in prison, or worse: he upset their apple cart.

The lesson is clear: when you bolster the government’s narrative you are a “brave journalist.” When you expose corruption in government you are a criminal. Do we really want to live in a country where it is illegal to learn that our government is engaged in criminal acts? I thought we had an obligation as an engaged citizenry to hold our government accountable!

As long as Julian Assange is in prison, we are all in prison. When the government has the power to tell us what we we allowed to see, hear, and know, we no longer live in a free society. Julian Assange will be extradited to the US and he will have dozens of charges piled on. They want him to disappear so that the next Assange will think twice before informing us of our government’s crimes. Are we going to let them steal our freedom?

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2v4m4PY Tyler Durden

Justice Department Decides Not to Appeal Court Ruling Striking Down Federal Law Banning Female Genital Mutilation

On Friday, the Justice Department announced that it will not appeal a federal trial court decision ruling that the federal law banning female genital mutilation (FGM) is unconstitutional. This is likely to be an unpopular move. But it is right thing to do nonetheless. The federal FGM ban exceeds the scope of Congress’ power under the Constitution. I summarized the reasons why in this post on the trial court decision:

Article I of the Constitution does not give Congress any general power to suppress crime or child abuse. Therefore, the federal government tried to shoehorn the FGM ban into the Commerce Clause, which gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. On first principles, it is pretty obvious that, at least in most cases, FGM is not a form of interstate commerce. It is generally performed within one state and often isn’t even a commercial transaction. However, misguided Supreme Court decisions have interpreted the Commerce Clause so broadly that they now allow Congress to regulate virtually any form of “economic activity,” even if it is only performed within a single state, and even some forms of “noneconomic” activity, so long as banning it is part of a broader “regulatory scheme” aimed at an interstate market. But… the FGM ban does not fit even these broad criteria, and is also at odds with previous Supreme Court decisions, including United States v. Morrison (2000), which make it clear that the Commerce Clause does not give Congress the power to ban local violent crime…

If Congress does not have a general power to forbid violence against women or other violent crime – such as rape and murder – it also does not have the power to ban FGM. Like other crime, FGM, of course, has some effect on interstate commerce. But if the Commerce Clause gave Congress the power to forbid any activity that affects interstate commerce in some way, it would have the power to ban virtually anything, as almost any type of human behavior has some effect on what people buy, sell, or transport in interstate trade.

As Judge Bernard Friedman explained in the trial court decision:

FGM cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be classified as an economic or commercial activity. There is no suggestion that the procedure is done for money…. Nor is there any suggestion that this “service” is offered within anything approaching an established interstate market, as exists for illegal drugs and pornography. Committing FGM is comparable to possessing a gun at school, i.e., a criminal act that “has nothing to do with commerce or any sort of economic enterprise.” [United States v.] Lopez, 514 U.S. at 561.

The federal government also claimed that the law is authorized by a combination of the treaty power and the Necessary and Proper Clause, as an exercise of Congress’ authority to enforce US obligations under Article 3 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which requires states to “to ensure the equal right of men and women to the enjoyment of all civil and political rights set forth in the present Covenant,” and Article 24,  which states that “[e]very child shall have, without any discrimination as to race, colour, sex, language, religion, national or social origin, property or birth, the right to such measures of protection as are required by his status as a minor, on the part of his family, society and the State.” These are stronger arguments than the Commerce Clause theory. But they still fall short for reasons explained in Judge Friedman’s opinion and in my earlier post on the case.

Female genital mutilation is a terrible crime. But that does not mean it has to be dealt with by the federal government. As Judge Friedman explains, FGM is already illegal in every state. It is either banned by targeted anti-FGM laws, or by general laws against child abuse and assault. Just as there is no need for a federal law against murder or assault, so there is no need for a federal anti-FGM law.

Some experts who agree that the anti-FGM law is unconstitutional nonetheless condemn the Justice Department’s decision not to appeal, because they believe DOJ has a duty to defend the constitutionality of any federal law for which a plausible defense can be offered. I disagree for reasons outlined here and here. The Justice Department’s highest legal duty is to defend the Constitution, not federal laws that violate it.

For what it is worth, I have maintained that view under both the Obama administration (with respect to its decision not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act) and the Trump administration (respecting its refusal to defend Obamacare). My objection to elements of the latter policy was due to the fact that DOJ’s position was wrong on the merits, not the idea that the Department has a duty to defend the constitutionality of all federal laws that have a plausible legal rationale.

DOJ’s decision on the FGM case is a welcome departure from the Trump Justice Department’s generally awful record on constitutional federalism, lowlighted by its policies targeting “sanctuary cities,” which have been ruled unconstitutional in numerous court decisions by both Democratic and Republican-appointed federal judges. The Trump administration also supports passage of the Protect and Serve Act, which would make it a federal crime to assault a police officer. The proposed act is unconstitutional for much the same reasons as the federal anti-FGM law. The Protect and Serve Act failed to pass last year, because it was bottled up in the Senate, but was recently reintroduced in the House of Representatives.

It is, therefore, a mistake to conclude that the Trump DOJ is a consistent champion of federalism. Very far from it. That said, Friday’s decision may be the result of the influence of the Attorney General William Barr, who appears to be more supportive of federalism than his predecessor, Jeff Sessions. Being better than Sessions in this respect is, of course, a pretty low bar for Barr to exceed. But a small measure of progress is much better than nothing.

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Cryptos Suddenly Plunge As Bloomberg Exposes Algos Running Wild

Just minutes after Bloomberg reported that ‘Flash Boys’-like trading manipulation is rampant on certain cryptocurrency exchanges, the entire crypto space tumbled on heavy volume.

According to a paper from researchers at Cornell Tech and several other universities, special arbitrage bots are anticipating and profiting from ordinary users’ trades on decentralized exchanges, which let them trade more directly.

“We have no idea what the extent of the malfeasance is on centralized exchanges,” he said in a presentation last week during a blockchain conference at Cornell Tech’s New York City campus.

“If we extrapolate from what we’ve seen on DEXes, it could well be on the order of billions of dollars.”

Bitcoin tumbled to exactly $5,000 before bouncing (nope, no algos here at all)…

As Bloomberg concludes, the study is the latest red flag in a market that has been beset by allegations of manipulation since its onset a decade ago, including a recent report that said nearly 90 percent of exchange volume was suspect.

Of course, when this occurs in the equity market space, as long as prices go up, no one worries.

 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2VL6Nzt Tyler Durden

Ecuador’s Moreno: Assange Asylum Revoked Because He Used Embassy As ‘Center For Spying’

Aside from releasing a brief video statement where he attributed the decision to revoke Julian Assange’s asylum to the Wikileaks’ founders’ repeated rule violations, as well as Assange’s refusal to stop interfering in global affairs, Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno has remained conspicuously silent in the days since British police entered his country’s London mission and arrested Assange on charges of skipping his bail and conspiring to break into a government computer.

But that changed on Sunday, when the Guardian published Moreno’s first interview with an English language news organization since Assange’s arrest. And in a revelation that appeared to undermine his insistence that Ecuador’s decision to revoke Assange’s asylum and citizenship wasn’t influenced by foreign powers, Moreno changed his story once again, telling the Guardian that Assange had tried to use the embassy as “a center for spying.”

Moreno

This is the first time Moreno has made this allegation.

“Any attempt to destabilize is a reprehensible act for Ecuador, because we are a sovereign nation and respectful of the politics of each country,” Moreno said. It is unfortunate that, from our territory and with the permission of authorities of the previous government, facilities have been provided within the Ecuadorian embassy in London to interfere in processes of other states.”

“We cannot allow our house, the house that opened its doors, to become a center for spying.”

Of course, Assange’s arrest came just one day after Wikileaks held a press conference to accuse Ecuador of illegally spying on Assange. Critics, including Moreno’s predecessor Rafael Correa, have accused Moreno of bowing to pressure from the US, hoping Assange’s arrest would help Ecuador secure a lucrative trade deal or convince the superpower to cancel some of his country’s debt. Correa, who championed Assange and was responsible for initially granting him asylum back in 2012, accused Moreno of committing “a crime that humanity will never forget” in deciding to turn over Assange.

Responding to these claims, Moreno called them a “fallacy”.

“It is a fallacy that there will be debt relief in exchange of Assange. This statement has been generated and disseminated by groups related to the previous regime that did not want to find a solution to the Assange case beyond having him locked up in our embassy. With the United States, we work on issues of cooperation, trade, culture and security. At no time has Assange’s status been negotiated with that country.”

Moreno denied that his decision was retribution for Wikileaks’ publication of intimate family photos, as well as Wikileaks’ drawing attention to documents pertaining to the INA scandal, which has stoked suspicions of corruption after Moreno was linked to offshore accounts believed to have been started by his brother. Others have argued that the Assange arrest may have been an effort to distract from the scandal.

Moreno also blamed Assange’s “unhygienic” habits and belligerence toward embassy staff for making his asylum “untenable.”

Moreno lambasted Assange’s treatment of his diplomatic staff in London. “Assange’s attitude was absolutely reprehensible and outrageous after all the protection provided by the Ecuadorian state for almost seven years. He mistreated our officials in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, abused the patience of Ecuadorians. He developed an aggressive campaign against Ecuador and started to make legal threats even against who was helping him.”

Any form of coexistence with Assange in the embassy became a headache, Moreno added.

“He maintained constant improper hygienic behaviour throughout his stay, which affected his own health and affecting the internal climate of the diplomatic mission. In addition, Assange had health problems that should also be resolved.”

“We never tried to expel Assange, as some political actors want everyone to believe. Given the constant violations of protocols and threats, political asylum became untenable.”

He also claimed that the UK had provided Ecuador with written assurances that Assange wouldn’t be turned over to any country where he could face torture of the death penalty, something that the UN has warned about should he be handed over to the US.

Rebutting Moreno’s claims, Assange’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson said these were self-serving arguments that sought to paper over the fact that Ecuador had violated international law.

“I think the first thing to say is Ecuador has been making some pretty outrageous allegations over the past few days to justify what was an unlawful and extraordinary act in allowing British police to come inside an embassy,” she told Sky. Pressed over the veracity of the allegations, Robinson said: “That’s not true.”

Of course, as Gateway Pundit journalist Cassandra Fairbanks has reported, Ecuador’s claims that Assange’s room at the embassy had been transformed into a “fetid lair” have been greatly exaggerated. Meanwhile, Ecuador’s former London consul has accused Moreno of breaking the law by ousting Assange.

Meanwhile, Fairbanks and other supporters of Assange are preparing to vociferously protest Moreno when he arrives in Washington later this month. Whether he is granted a meeting with President Trump will be closely watched.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2KBU3tz Tyler Durden

Stunning Images Show France’s Historic Notre Dame Cathedral Engulfed In Flames

It’s unclear how it started or what, exactly, is going on, but the historic Notre Dame cathedral caught fire on Monday, and photos and video circulating on social media suggest that conflagration has engulfed the historic monument.

Developing…

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2UDgGCE Tyler Durden

My Money, My Choice: Remember Taxation Is Theft On April 15th

Authored by Andrew Moran via Liberty Nation,

Today is the most dreaded day of the year for Americans…

Over the years, wise men have said a lot about the iniquitous nature of taxation. Chief Justice John Marshall likened the power of taxation to the power of destruction. Novelist Herman Wouk said the greatest fiction of all time is an income tax return. Most recently, conservative commentator Andrew Wilkow called taxpayers the new permanent underclass. While these morose words might have you ordering a new prescription for Prozac, if you subscribe to Keynesian economic philosophy, then at least you’re stimulating a sector of the market!

Today is Tax Day. This is the annual tradition when conservatives and libertarians realize that they have forked over a significant portion of their income to the federal government. Leftists, however, may not even know what day it is because they’re too busy demanding President Donald Trump’s tax returns and tweeting, “Impeach Drumpf Now!”

Tax Day

Americans can anticipate a somewhat different tragedy compared to previous years. In an attempt to show that Trump and the GOP’s tax cuts did not help the average household, the media has regularly reported that filers can expect smaller refunds. While this is technically correct, it is only true because income earners experienced less confiscation from their paychecks over the last year.

Does it make it any better? Well, the answer to that question depends on how you respond to this one: Would you rather be stuck in a room with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) reading the 6,500 pages of the U.S. tax code or would you rather spend eternity watching the Counterfeit News Network?

Yeah, it doesn’t really matter. Both scenarios are torturous. The only good thing that comes out of this legalized larceny is to once again discover how egregious, soul-sucking, and time-consuming the whole affair of filing taxes really is.

For instance, Americans spent more than eight billion hours preparing their tax returns. As another example of this drain on the economy, the total cost burden of IRS paperwork neared $200 billion. And, what did the American people get for this? Not much, except a bill of $200 just to file a 1040 and more than five minutes wasted calling the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Just think of the opportunity cost.

You can only imagine what the population would have been able to do with that extra money and that little bit of additional time. Why, taxpayers could have donated a couple of hundred bucks to the Treasury Department or spent those five minutes reading libertarian memes!

Don’t worry. The IRS is paying you back with new and more complicated W4 forms.

Perhaps the Japanese system is superior to the American version. In early spring, the Kokuzeicho sends you a postcard with how much you earned, how much tax you owed, and how much was withheld. Disagree? Saunter into a tax office and dispute it. That’s it. No tax accountants, no attorneys, and no annoying H&R Block commercials.

Abolish The 16th

Defenders of the IRS often espouse the fallacy that taxes are how we pay for a civilized society. If it weren’t for the government, who would pave the roads? Who would educate the children? Who would confiscate your earnings? But here’s a better question, one that suits the state much better: If it weren’t for the government breaking your legs, who would give you a crutch? That’s the real nature of government; it’s not the benevolent force out to do good that some statists believe is the case.

In the Declaration of Independence, it is said that every American has the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” If everyone has a right to life, then it is also logical to concede that the population is entitled to enjoy the fruits of their labor, otherwise known as a property right. So, why is the government violating your property by forcefully extracting part of of your earnings? You can’t have a right to life if you don’t have a right to what you make and what you own.

Abortion proponents often say, “My body, my choice,” and that the government has no business inside a woman’s uterus. Well, 16th Amendment abolitionists should shout, “My money, my choice,” and Washington and state capitols nationwide do not have a right to your wallet.

Sorry President John F. Kennedy, it’s not what you can do for your country. Instead, it’s what the country can do to leave you alone and stay out of your bank account. Let’s hop in a time machine and travel back to 1912 when Ethel Barrymore was dominating the stage, Fenway Park had its inaugural season, and the income tax was non-existent.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2UJ7OM0 Tyler Durden

Beto O’Rourke: U.S. ‘Has Completely Forgotten Its Constitutional Responsibility to Lawfully Declare and End These Wars’

Beto O’Rourke’s criticisms of U.S. foreign policy don’t get as much attention as those of his fellow Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard. But in a recent interview with The Nation, the former Texas congressman makes a point of listing several U.S. interventions that didn’t go well. “Look at [the 1953 CIA-orchestrated overthrow of Mohammad] Mosaddegh in Iran,” O’Rourke says. “Coming on 19 years in Afghanistan. Twenty-seven years in Iraq, [five] successive presidential administrations. Tell me that any of those wars or covert actions or interventions have made those countries, the world, or our foreign-policy prospects any better. They haven’t.”

Twenty-seven years isn’t the right year count for America’s presence in Iraq—more on that here—but the underlying point is valid. O’Rourke’s criticism of the Afghan intervention is especially welcome. The U.S. has lost 2,400 American lives and $900 billion in that war, yet Afghanistan faces worsening violence and instability.

The key to avoiding these types of conflicts “is to lead with diplomacy, holding the card of military involvement as the last resort,” argues O’Rourke. “We need to bring these wars to a close. We need to follow the lead of [Democratic Reps.] Mark Pocan (Wis.) and Ro Khanna (Calif.), who are trying to prevent us from going into new wars or continuing the wars that we are effectively in, in places like Yemen,” he tells The Nation.

Pocan and Khanna have been vocal opponents of U.S. involvement in the Yemen war. They were among the members of Congress to cosponsor legislation, which has now passed both houses of Congress, that tries to ensure that the president only commits U.S. military forces to conflicts abroad if he has congressional approval.

“This country has completely forgotten its constitutional responsibility to lawfully declare and end these wars, as prescribed in the first article of the U.S. Constitution,” O’Rourke tells The Nation. “I don’t think there’s been a meaningful vote on the wars since 9/11, since the ones we had in 2001 and 2002, and I think that’s desperately needed right now.”

O’Rourke is referring to a pair of congressional resolutions that easily passed in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks. The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) gives the president power to take military action against any nation or person he believes to have been involved in the 9/11 attacks. It’s been used to justify military intervention not only in Afghanistan but in Syria, Somalia, the Philippines, and Niger. The 2002 Authorization of for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution, meanwhile, allowed the U.S. to invade Iraq.

Some in Congress have tried to address this issue. Last month, for instance, Sens. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) and Tom Udall (D–N.M.) introduced legislation that would withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan and repeal the AUMF. The AFGHAN Service Act has yet to gain much traction the Senate.

In decrying unauthorized U.S. intervention abroad, O’Rourke echoed Paul, who warned Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week that wars must be approved by Congress. “You do not have the permission of Congress to go to war in Iran. If you want a war in Iran, you have to come to us. It’s the way the Constitution was written, and it needs to be very clear,” the senator told Pompeo, who was testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Paul was specifically addressing a possible U.S. intervention in Iran, but the concept applies to other potential conflicts too: If the president wants to go to war, he needs congressional approval.

This sort of anti-interventionist sentiment is not unusual for O’Rourke, who has criticized Washington’s intervention in Iraq and Syria and has rightly called the AUMF “a blank check for endless war.” O’Rourke has come under fire from some on the left for not being progressive enough, but when it comes to foreign policy, he’s at least as much of an anti-war candidate as Sanders.

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Buttigieg May Have A ‘Secret Tapes’ Problem As Accusations Of Racism Taint 2020 Bid

Pete Buttigieg has seemingly come out of nowhere to become one of the left’s most promising Democratic 2020 contenders – but he may have a problem following him around from his years as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, according to an investigation by The Hill. 

In short: Shortly after Buttigieg became mayor of South Bend, Indiana in 2012, the city’s first black police chief, Darryl Boykins, allowed a detective’s phone to be secretly recorded. The director of the dispatch center, Karen DePaepe, listened to the recordings and allegedly discovered racist conversations, which she brought to Boykins. After the detective was confronted with the tapes, he got a lawyer and sued over being illegally recorded. 

The incident prompted Buttigieg to ask Boykins to resign, which the chief agreed to initially – however after consulting with attorneys, Boykins said that he only stepped down under “the false pretense that the Mayor was being directed into this course of action by the U.S. Attorney’s office.”

Buttigieg backpedaled – though Boykins was demoted to captain. The Mayor also fired DePaepe, believing she had intentionally eavesdropped on the officers to obtain dirt on them. DePaepe says that’s BS, and that she “inadvertently stumbled upon conversations” between officers. 

The firing and demotion resulted in a flurry of lawsuits. Boykins sued the city for racial discrimination – arguing that the taping had begun under his white predecessors. 

Boykins sued the city for racial discrimination, arguing that the taping policy existed under previous police chiefs, who were white.

In a court filing, Boykins argued that Buttigieg had used the taping scandal as an excuse to get rid of him. Boykins said that since Buttigieg had been elected, the top three ranking African-American officials in the city had retired, been forced out or demoted. The men who replaced them, Boykins said, were white. The Hill

DePaepe sued for wrongful termination – claiming that the recordings contained “racially derogatory statements relating to other ranking officers,” and a plot to oust Boykins. 

A third lawsuit was filed by four police officers and one officer’s wife who said they had been illegally recorded and defamed. 

The city settled – with Boykins receiving $75,000, DePaepe $235,000 and the group of officers who got $500,000. 

Buttigieg – a 37-year-old Harvard graduate, Rhodes scholar and Afghanistan veteran who announced his presidential campaign on Sunday, justified the settlements by saying that going to court would have been more expensive for the city’s taxpayers. 

“Even though I’m confident our administration did the right thing, there is still a big cost, financially and in terms of energy and attention, to defending and winning these claims in court,” said Buttigieg. “Each passing day these cases were lingering was bad for the city, and a chance to reach an agreement and resolve them was in the best interest of the city.”

According to his critics, however, Buttigieg is going to great lengths to conceal the content of the tapes – which an Indiana judge is about to rule on whether they should be released or not. 

An Indiana judge will rule soon on whether to release five cassette tapes of secretly recorded conversations between South Bend police officers that led to the 2012 demotion of Police Chief Darryl Boykins, the city’s first ever black police chief.
 
The South Bend City Council subpoenaed Buttigieg to win release of the tapes, which were at the center of a police department shake-up and a series of lawsuits. –The Hill

Black leaders in South Bend say that if evidence of racism exists, it calls into question scores of convictions that were a result of investigations conducted by white police officers. In 2014, members of Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH coalition met with Buttigieg to urge him to ask for a federal investigation into allegations of police misconduct. 

The US Attorney eventually closed the case, saying there was no evidence that a crime has been committed by recording the officers. 

Suing for the tapes

The officers involved in the tapings are suing former City Council member Henry Davis Jr., a Democrat, who originally asked for a federal investigation in 2012 in a letter to Tom Perez – then the DOJ’s assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division. 

The police officers are suing Davis for defamation. Dan Pfeiffer, an attorney for the police officers, told The Hill there is nothing criminal on the recordings. Pfeiffer accused Boykins of using the tapes as blackmail to threaten his political rivals, some of whom were angling for the police chief job in the new administration.
  
The City Council issued a subpoena for the tapes. An attorney for the council members argued that there is no expectation of privacy inside a police station and that officers are told as part of their training that they should expect their phone lines are being recorded. –The Hill

The mayor challenged the subpoena in federal court – leaving the decision over whether the recordings should be made public in the hands of a judge. 

Buttigieg’s defenders say he has made strides in repairing the racial divide, according to the report. 

“This happened very early on in his administration and the mayor has since spent a lot of quantity time with communities of color to build trust,” said one unnamed ally. “It was really hard, especially happening so early on in his time in office. But he’s been able to build deeper relationships because of it.”

Others think Buttigieg mishandled the situation – particularly with Boykins, who is well-regarded in South Bend. 

“I personally felt it could have been handled differently with Chief Boykins,” said Democratic city councilwoman Karen White. “There was a perception within the community that Boykins … was painted to be someone that was not in line with his character.” 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2GjzwVt Tyler Durden