This is What Happens After Elections

After refusing to resign, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara has been fired.

There will be a lot of hand wringing about this, and I am disappointed that this will likely slow the progress of the investigations of Andrew Cuomo and Roger Ailes, but this what happens when there are elections.

It’s something that has been drilled into my head by my dad, who worked for in the cabinet of Bill Egan, Governor of Alaska, and when Wally Hickel took over he was offered the opportunity to stay on, he politely declined.

His judgement was reaffirmed when the Hickel administration fired one of his coworkers for getting a hunting license at the in-state rate a few months early.

This is what happens when someone new takes over, particularly when they are of the opposing party:

The call to Preet Bharara’s office from President Trump’s assistant came on Thursday. Would Mr. Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, please call back?

The following day, Mr. Bharara was one of 46 United States attorneys appointed by President Barack Obama asked to resign — and to immediately clean out their offices. The request took many in his office by surprise because, in a meeting in November, Mr. Bharara was asked by the then-president-elect to stay on.

Mr. Bharara refused to resign. On Saturday, he announced on Twitter that he had been fired.

………

Mr. Bharara was a highly public prosecutor who relished the spotlight throughout more than seven years in office. He pursued several high-profile cases involving Wall Street, and he was in the midst of investigating fund-raising by Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York, and preparing to try former top aides to the governor of New York, Andrew M. Cuomo, who are both Democrats. It was not immediately clear how his departure would affect those cases and others that were pending.

Mr. Bharara stayed quiet until Saturday afternoon. Then, on his personal Twitter account, which he set up eight days ago, he wrote: “I did not resign. Moments ago I was fired.” Referring to the Southern District of New York, he continued, “Being the US Attorney in SDNY will forever be the greatest honor of my professional life.”
 

………
 
Mr. Bharara’s job had appeared to be secure. In November, he met at Trump Tower with the president-elect and several of his advisers, including Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, according to two people briefed on that discussion who requested anonymity.

At the meeting, according to those briefed, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Bharara to remain in the job, which Mr. Bharara relayed to reporters and television cameras in the Trump Tower lobby.

Then came the order to resign on Friday, creating what was described as a feeling of whiplash in the prosecutor’s Manhattan office. One person familiar with the views of current prosecutors described an oddly subdued reaction mixed with anxiety as the events unfolded. “You have a sense of how it’s going to end, and it’s not going to end well,” the person said.

But Mr. Bharara, unlike his fellow United States attorneys, publicly refused to leave. He gave no statement citing a policy or legal issue affecting his decision to refuse the resignation order.
 
………

Mr. Bharara’s office is overseeing the case against the former aides to Mr. Cuomo and the inquiry into fund-raising by Mr. de Blasio, who has been a target of Mr. Trump’s ire as he has positioned himself as a vocal opponent of the president’s on the left.

His office is also overseeing an investigation into whether Fox News, which is owned by the media magnate Rupert Murdoch, failed to properly alert shareholders of settlements with female employees who had accused the channel’s former chief, Roger Ailes, of sexual harassment.

It’s not how I would have liked this to turn out, but this is very much business as usual.

Once Again, Their Evil Outstrips My Fertile Imagination

The Republicans are proposing a bill that would allow employers to coerce genetic testing from their employers and share the data with whomever they please:

A little-noticed bill moving through Congress would allow companies to require employees to undergo genetic testing or risk paying a penalty of thousands of dollars, and would let employers see that genetic and other health information.

Giving employers such power is now prohibited by legislation including the 2008 genetic privacy and nondiscrimination law known as GINA. The new bill gets around that landmark law by stating explicitly that GINA and other protections do not apply when genetic tests are part of a “workplace wellness” program.

The bill, HR 1313, was approved by a House committee on Wednesday, with all 22 Republicans supporting it and all 17 Democrats opposed. It has been overshadowed by the debate over the House GOP proposal to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, but the genetic testing bill is expected to be folded into a second ACA-related measure containing a grab-bag of provisions that do not affect federal spending, as the main bill does.

“What this bill would do is completely take away the protections of existing laws,” said Jennifer Mathis, director of policy and legal advocacy at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, a civil rights group. In particular, privacy and other protections for genetic and health information in GINA and the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act “would be pretty much eviscerated,” she said.

………

Employers got virtually everything they wanted for their workplace wellness programs during the Obama administration. The ACA allowed them to charge employees 30 percent, and possibly 50 percent, more for health insurance if they declined to participate in the “voluntary” programs, which typically include cholesterol and other screenings; health questionnaires that ask about personal habits, including plans to get pregnant; and sometimes weight loss and smoking cessation classes. And in rules that Obama’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued last year, a workplace wellness program counts as “voluntary” even if workers have to pay thousands of dollars more in premiums and deductibles if they don’t participate.

Actually, this explains a lot about Obamacare.

It appears that it was drawn up under the assumption that the average American was a fat ignorant slob with no agency, and so they needed to be coerced.

And people wonder why, even as people support almost all the parts of the ACA, they hate the whole package.

Because it was delivered to the American public dripping with contempt.  (“Deplorables”)

Welcome to Operation Unbelievable Clusterf%$#

It looks like we are sending ground troops into Syria, specifically Marines artillery and armored vehicles, which is a significant escalation from the special forces previously in Syria:

The United States, feeling confident enough about its war on the totalitarian Islamic State, has upped the stakes by deploying a detachment of Marine artillery into Syria.

To be sure, U.S. troops are certainly in combat in Syria, although the deployment of artillery is a step further than Special Operations Forces working with local U.S. allies in the country. Commandos often travel in smaller numbers, can move faster and do not need as much security as artillery units.

………

Pentagon officials stated that the deployment of the troops and their 155-millimeter M-777 howitzers, summoned from the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, has “been in the works for sometime,” according to The Washington Post.

………

Meanwhile, in a highly visible — and deliberately visible — move, U.S. soldiers riding in Stryker armored vehicles flying American flags drove into the Syrian city of Manbij to prevent a clash between the SDF and the Turkish-backed FSA brigades.

This will not end well.

Human Sacrifice, Dogs and Cats Living Together… Mass Hysteria!

It appears that we are now having Pennsylvania Mennonites protesting Donald Trump policies:

Mary Beth Martin and Lindsey Martin Corbo each held one side of the large cardboard poster, the mother and her adult daughter eager to deliver a personal if unconventional message to their congressman, Republican Rep. Lloyd Smucker.

“Hey Smucker,” said the sign, written in red, green, and blue marker. “300 years ago our Mennonite family took sanctuary in PA, just like yours did.

“Lancaster values immigrants.”

The anger might have been directed at Smucker, but Martin and Corbo were really there – like 100 others – because of President Donald Trump.

The two women were among a hundred newly engaged activists assembled in Republican-heavy Lancaster County – an area that went to Trump in November by 57 percent – braving toe-freezing temperatures to protest Trump and the lawmaker, who was 200 yards away at a chamber of commerce breakfast.

That Martin and Corbo were protesters was – by their own admission – a remarkable development. Both are members of the Mennonite Church, a religion that encourages its members to stay away from politics just as it asks them to shun the wider culture.

This is like a half step away from the Amish engaging in civil disobedience, and I ain’t talking about Rumspringa here.

H/t Charlie Pierce.

Tweet of the Day

Heritage Foundation: It sucks.
FreedomWorks: It sucks.
Club for Growth: It sucks.
Democrats: Needs some tweaking! https://t.co/ezpXEskarD

— Bodega Fats (@GarbageApe) March 8, 2017

This is, of course the comments on Paul Ryan’s Obamacare repeal plan.

I’m beginning to think that if you took every member of the DNC and examined them, you would not find enough testicles to match those of the eunuchs corps at Topkapı Palace.

This is truly pathetic.

H/t Ny Mag

Linkage

Have some classic George Carlin:

Why Running Helathcare Like a Business Does Not Work, Part LVXXI

The Department of Health and Human Services decided to tie reimbursement rates to hospitals to patient satisfaction.

The result was happier but sicker and deader patients:

When Department of Health and Human Services administrators decided to base 30 percent of hospitals’ Medicare reimbursement on patient satisfaction survey scores, they likely figured that transparency and accountability would improve healthcare. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) officials wrote, rather reasonably, “Delivery of high-quality, patient-centered care requires us to carefully consider the patient’s experience in the hospital inpatient setting.” They probably had no idea that their methods could end up indirectly harming patients.

Beginning in October 2012, the Affordable Care Act implemented a policy withholding 1 percent of total Medicare reimbursements—approximately $850 million—from hospitals (that percentage will double in 2017). Each year, only hospitals with high patient-satisfaction scores and a measure of certain basic care standards will earn that money back, and the top performers will receive bonus money from the pool.

………

In fact, a national study revealed that patients who reported being most satisfied with their doctors actually had higher healthcare and prescription costs and were more likely to be hospitalized than patients who were not as satisfied. Worse, the most satisfied patients were significantly more likely to die in the next four years.

………

As a Missouri clinical instructor told me, “Patients can be very satisfied and dead an hour later. Sometimes hearing bad news is not going to result in a satisfied patient, yet the patient could be a well-informed, prepared patient.”

We don’t need to market incentivize healthcare, we need to take the market out of healthcare.

Not Enough Bullets

California is seeing the rise of for fee luxury jails:

………

Instead, Wurtzel, who also had been convicted of sexual battery in a previous case, found a better option: For $100 a night, he was permitted by the court to avoid county jail entirely. He did his time in the small jail in the nearby city of Seal Beach, with amenities that included flat-screen TVs, a computer room and new beds. He served six months, at a cost of $18,250, according to jail records.

Markin learned about Wurtzel’s upgraded jail stay only recently, from a reporter. “I feel like, ‘Why did I go through this?’” she said.

In what is commonly called “pay-to-stay” or “private jail,” a constellation of small city jails — at least 26 of them in Los Angeles and Orange counties — open their doors to defendants who can afford the option. But what started out as an antidote to overcrowding has evolved into a two-tiered justice system that allows people convicted of serious crimes to buy their way into safer and more comfortable jail stays.

Madam la guillotine needs to come back.

Quote of the Day

To be fair, and to be scientific about it, we should choose another subpopulation for equal focus, so we can measure the effects of our added attention. I suggest starting with politicians.

—Cathy O’Neil

She is noting that the Trump administration is engaging in an effort to find more crime committee by immigrants, and she notes that when you look for this, you will generally find it.

It’s what I call a self-licking ice cream cone, and her suggestion to focus on politicians as a statistical control is both methodologically reasonable and delicious snark.

I am Surprised and Impressed

It appears that Wikileaks is exercising a bit more due diligence in its releases, as it is making the CIA hacks leaked to it available to the tech firms that were targeted before making them available to the general public:

Technology firms will get “exclusive access” to details of the CIA’s cyber-warfare programme, Wikileaks has said.

 The anti-secrecy website has published thousands of the US spy agency’s secret documents, including what it says are the CIA’s hacking tools.

 Founder Julian Assange said that, after some thought, he had decided to give the tech community further leaks first.

 “Once the material is effectively disarmed, we will publish additional details,” Mr Assange said.

 ………

 Mr Assange said that his organisation had “a lot more information on the cyber-weapons programme”.

 He added that while Wikileaks maintained a neutral position on most of its leaks, in this case it did take a strong stance.

 “We want to secure communications technology because, without it, journalists aren’t able to hold the state to account,” he said.

 Mr Assange also claimed that the intelligence service had known for weeks that Wikileaks had access to the material and done nothing about it.

 He also spoke more about the Umbrage programme, revealed in the first leaked documents.

 He said that a whole section of the CIA is working on Umbrage, a system that attempts to trick people into thinking that they had been hacked by other groups or countries by collecting malware from other nation states, such as Russia.

 “The technology is designed to be unaccountable,” he said.

 He claimed that an anti-virus expert, who was not named, had come forward to say that he believed sophisticated malware that he had previously attributed to Iran, Russia and China, now looked like something that the CIA had developed.

This is why cyber security needs to be completely separate from any intelligence agency.

Otherwise, there is too much pressure to cover up the bugs so that the folks on the other side of the office spy on the rest of us.

Any hole which the CIA, NSA, DIA, or other TLA* can exploit can also be exploited by criminals, the Chinese, the Russians, terrorists, or the New England Patriots.

*Three letter acronym.

Linkage

I would argue that this was the best video of the 1980s:

Wikileaks Explains Why the Internet of Things Sucks

Another document dump from Wikileaks, this revealing how the CIA hacks into PCs, phones, and smart televisions:

In what appears to be the largest leak of C.I.A documents in history, WikiLeaks released on Tuesday thousands of pages describing sophisticated software tools and techniques used by the agency to break into smartphones, computers and even Internet-connected televisions.

The documents amount to a detailed, highly technical catalog of tools. They include instructions for compromising a wide range of common computer tools for use in spying: the online calling service Skype; Wi-Fi networks; documents in PDF format; and even commercial antivirus programs of the kind used by millions of people to protect their computers.

A program called Wrecking Crew explains how to crash a targeted computer, and another tells how to steal passwords using the autocomplete function on Internet Explorer. Other programs were called CrunchyLimeSkies, ElderPiggy, AngerQuake and McNugget.

The document dump was the latest coup for the antisecrecy organization and a serious blow to the C.I.A., which uses its hacking abilities to carry out espionage against foreign targets.

The initial release, which WikiLeaks said was only the first installment in a larger collection of secret C.I.A. material, included 7,818 web pages with 943 attachments, many of them partly redacted by WikiLeaks editors to avoid disclosing the actual code for cyberweapons. The entire archive of C.I.A. material consists of several hundred million lines of computer code, the group claimed.

In one revelation that may especially trouble the tech world if confirmed, WikiLeaks said that the C.I.A. and allied intelligence services have managed to compromise both Apple and Android smartphones, allowing their officers to bypass the encryption on popular services such as Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram. According to WikiLeaks, government hackers can penetrate smartphones and collect “audio and message traffic before encryption is applied.”

If you are wondering why you are constantly hearing of some large organization being hacked, one reason is that our state security apparatus refuses to patch holes, because they use them to spy on the rest of us:

………

 Some of the attacks are what are known as “zero days” — exploitation paths hackers can use that vendors are completely unaware of, giving the vendors no time — zero days — to fix their products. WikiLeaks said the documents indicate the CIA has violated commitments made by the Obama administration to disclose serious software vulnerabilities to vendors to improve the security of their products. The administration developed a system called the Vulnerabilities Equities Process to allow various government entities to help determine when it’s better for national security to disclose unpatched vulnerabilities and when it’s better to take advantage of them to hunt targets.

At least some civil liberties advocates agree with the WikiLeaks assessment. “Access Now condemns the stockpiling of vulnerabilities, calls for limits on government hacking and protections for human rights, and urges immediate reforms to the Vulnerabilities Equities Process,” Nathan White, senior legislative manager for digital rights group Access Now, wrote in response to the new leak in a press release.

Iterestingly enough, it appears that the hacking tools were not actually classified:

………

But Wikileaks also suggests that, because the CIA doesn’t classify its attack tools, it leaves them more vulnerable to theft.

In what is surely one of the most astounding intelligence own goals in living memory, the CIA structured its classification regime such that for the most market valuable part of “Vault 7” — the CIA’s weaponized malware (implants + zero days), Listening Posts (LP), and Command and Control (C2) systems — the agency has little legal recourse.

The CIA made these systems unclassified.

Why the CIA chose to make its cyberarsenal unclassified reveals how concepts developed for military use do not easily crossover to the ‘battlefield’ of cyber ‘war’.

To attack its targets, the CIA usually requires that its implants communicate with their control programs over the internet. If CIA implants, Command & Control and Listening Post software were classified, then CIA officers could be prosecuted or dismissed for violating rules that prohibit placing classified information onto the Internet. Consequently the CIA has secretly made most of its cyber spying/war code unclassified. The U.S. government is not able to assert copyright either, due to restrictions in the U.S. Constitution. This means that cyber ‘arms’ manufactures and computer hackers can freely “pirate” these ‘weapons’ if they are obtained. The CIA has primarily had to rely on obfuscation to protect its malware secrets.

This is why offensive cyber war is something to be avoided, because any weapon you devise becomes immediately available to the enemy to be deployed against you.

If you find a bug, it should get fixed, because if you can use, so can anyone else.

The Pentagon Acquisition System in a Nut Shell

The GAO wrote a report detailing the massive cost overrun for its over priced and under performing Littoral Combat Ship.

This information was promptly classified to prevent public disclosure:

The Pentagon office that reviews information to determine whether it’s classified has blocked publication of potentially embarrassing data on cost overruns for the first two vessels bought under the Navy’s primary Littoral Combat Ship contracts, according to a new congressional audit.

In a report examining Navy shipbuilding contracts, the U.S. Government Accountability Office deleted overrun information on two of the Littoral Combat Ships launched in late 2014 — the USS Milwaukee built by Lockheed Martin Corp. and the USS Jackson built by Austal Ltd. — at the request of the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review.

The GAO said the Defense Department “deemed the cost growth” on both vessels “to be sensitive but unclassified information, which is excluded from this public report. However, the percent difference” in cost for each ship “was above target cost.” Other types of ships were listed with specific data on cost increases that ranged from 4 percent to 45 percent.

“This seems to be an overly broad reading of competition-sensitive information,” said Mandy Smithberger, a director for the Project On Government Oversight’s military reform initiative. “Taxpayers are footing the bill for these overruns. They deserve to know the costs.”

We desperately need to get the military out of the business of defense acquisition, as the Swedes have with FMV.

Uh-Oh

The Latest Fed Data

The latest financial data is out, and it appears that banks are pulling back, which would indicate that a recession may be on the horizon:

Starting to look seriously ominous:

When delinquencies start going up, banks tend to start tightening up lending standards a bit to keep them in check, which tends to slow down lending, which causes the economy to soften, resulting in a downward spiral that doesn’t end until public sector deficit spending increases sufficiently:

It looks like banks might be retrenching and delinquencies are rising.

You can click the images for larger popups.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen

It appears that everyone’s second least favorite bureaucracy (Comcast is worse) is warning local police that its new pat down procedures may produce allegations of sexual assault:

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration has declined to say exactly where—and how—employees will be touching air travelers as part of the more invasive physical pat-down procedure it recently ordered.

But the agency does expect some passengers to consider the examination unusual. In fact, the TSA decided to inform local police in case anyone calls to report an “abnormal” federal frisking, according to a memo from an airport trade association obtained by Bloomberg News. The physical search, for those selected to have one, is what the agency described as a more “comprehensive” screening, replacing five separate kinds of pat-downs it previously used.

The decision to alert local and airport police raises a question of just how intimate the agency’s employees may get. On its website, the TSA says employees “use the back of the hands for pat-downs over sensitive areas of the body. In limited cases, additional screening involving a sensitive area pat-down with the front of the hand may be needed to determine that a threat does not exist.”

Now security screeners will use the front of their hands on a passenger in a private screening area if one of the prior screening methods indicates the presence of explosives, according to a “security notice” that the Airports Council International-North America (ACI-NA) sent its U.S. members following a March 1 conference call with TSA officials. “Due to this change, TSA asked FSDs [field security directors] to contact airport law enforcement and brief them on the procedures in case they are notified that a passenger believes a [TSA employee] has subjected them to an abnormal screening practice,” ACI wrote.

So basically, the TSA is asking local law enforcement for pre-approval to sexually assault you.

If I want to see the Mona Lisa, I am swimming to Europe.

Good Advice on Privacy

Over at The Intercept, they have an article on how to run an anonymous twitter account with as much security as possible.

This is important if you are, for example, a disloyal bureaucrat serving under your Trumpian overlords

The basic steps are as follows:  (with my comments indented with lower case letters)

  1. Buy a burner prepaid phone with CASH.
    1. Get a cheap feature (non-smart) phone.  Some of them actually have keyboards.
    2. Remember, your face will probably be recorded at the 7-Eleven, or whatever, so wait 2-3 weeks until they overwrite the old records, or at least wear a hoodie and sunglasses.  (Parking a few blocks away would be a good idea as well)
    3. Don’t turn on the phone at home at work.  Better yet pull the battery.
    4. If you want to use the phone, choose a place, a very public place (like the Lexington Market Metro stop, and ONLY use it there.  I used to take the Lexington stop to work every day, which is why I know the location)
    5. Don’t buy a smart phone as a burner, they are privacy sink holes.
  2. Get a TOR compatible browser.
    1. Use a browser designed for this from the start, and not to rely on addins.
    2. You could also use I2P instead of TOR, I do not know the relative merits. 
    3. Note that there is significant evidence that much of TOR’s funding might have come via the US state security apparatus, so be careful.
  3. Get a TOR based email service.
    1.  Again, you could use I2P.
    2. Listed in the article are SIGAINT, Riseup, and ProtonMail.
  4.  Activate the phone using the TOR browser.
  5. Determine your phone number.
  6. Create your Twitter account using your the TOR browser, and enter in the phone’s number.
  7. Go to your special place (1. d.) and get the confirmation text, and then enter it into the confirmation.
    1. In the Lexington Market case, there is a Starbucks down the street, so TOR the wifi, and probably do the hoodie and sunglasses thing.
  8. Be circumspect about who you talk to.
  9. Be circumspect about who you might communicate with via TOR.
  10. Consider rebooting your machine into a secure operating system before accessing Twitter, such as “Tails, or  Qubes with Whonix,” which can boot from a memory stick.
  11. (on edit) I shouldn’t need to say this, but never use the phone for anything else but your tweeting, or in the case elucidated below for that.

Read the rest of the article, and then leak away.

BTW, all of part 1 should also apply to giving a burner phone to a reporter to leak.  Only use it at a specific place, and have it off, or better yet, the battery out, when not in use.

You don’t want someone using traffic analysis to figure out who your are.

This has been a public service announcement of Matthew’s Saroff’s Beer (and Laptop) Fund and Tip Jar.

Please give generously. 

    Racism is Bad: 8 5 — Who Cares: 3

    The Supreme Court just ruled, with Alito, Roberts, and Thomas dissenting, that a juror making racist comments in during deliberations is misconduct:

    A Colorado man who was required to register as a sex offender after being convicted of unlawful sexual contact with two teenage girls will get a shot at a new trial, a divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled today. Miguel Peña-Rodriguez had asked a state trial court for a new trial after two jurors told his lawyers that a third juror had made racially biased remarks about Peña-Rodriguez and his main witness, who are both Hispanic. But the state trial court rejected Peña-Rodriguez’s request, citing a state evidentiary rule that generally bars jurors from testifying about statements made during deliberations that might call the verdict into question. In a major ruling on juror bias and fair trials, the Supreme Court reversed that holding by a vote of 5-3 and sent Peña-Rodriguez’s case back to the lower courts for them to consider the two jurors’ testimony for the first time.

    Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court, in a decision joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayo, and Elena Kagan. The court began by acknowledging that Colorado’s “no impeachment” rule – which mirrors similar rules in the federal system and around the country – serves important purposes: It allows “full and vigorous discussions” among jurors, who do not need to worry about later efforts to pry into those deliberations, and it “gives stability and finality to verdicts.”

    But those considerations, the court determined, must yield when there is evidence that a juror has relied on racial stereotypes or prejudice to convict a defendant. Racial bias, the court explained, is different and more serious than the concerns that led the court to reject proposed exceptions to the “no impeachment” rule in its earlier cases. Although the prior cases involved behavior that was “troubling and unacceptable,” the court continued, the conduct in those cases was “anomalous,” resulting from “a single jury—or juror—gone off course.” In contrast, racial bias in jury deliberations threatens not only the proceeding in which it occurs but also the administration of justice more broadly.

    ………

    The court took pains to emphasize that defendants who allege that a juror was racially biased must meet a high bar. “Not every offhand comment indicating racial bias or hostility will justify setting aside the no-impeachment bar to allow further judicial inquiry,” the court stressed. Instead, the defendant must show “that one or more jurors made statements exhibiting overt racial bias that cast serious doubt on the fairness and impartiality of the jury’s deliberations and resulting verdict. To qualify,” the court continued, “the statement must tend to show that racial animus was a significant motivating factor in the juror’s vote to convict.”

    Although the court made clear that, as a general rule, trial courts have significant discretion in deciding whether the jurors’ statements are sufficiently serious to warrant further examination, it also left little doubt that Peña-Rodriguez had satisfied the stringent standard it established today. The juror’s statements – which included saying that, in his experience, “nine times out of ten Mexican men were guilty of being aggressive toward women and young girls,” and that “Mexican men had a bravado that caused them to believe they could do whatever they wanted with women” – were, the court noted, “egregious and unmistakable in their reliance on racial bias.” The juror had not only used “a dangerous racial stereotype to conclude” that Peña-Rodriguez “was guilty and his alibi witness should not be believed, but he also encouraged other jurors to join him in convicting on that basis.” “When jurors disclose an instance of racial bias as serious as the one involved in this case,” the court concluded, “the law must not wholly disregard its occurrence.”

    I’m not surprised by the dissents, and I’m sure that Gorsuch, if confirmed to the court, would be on their side as well.

    One of the sacraments of the modern conservative movement is that there is no racism anymore, because Obama was elected President, so they are free to ignore civil rights and voting rights for heavily pigmented people.

    Well, This is Profoundly Disturbing

    Khizr Khan, the parent of a soldier killed in Iraq who was killed in Iraq, has canceled a speech in Toronto because he has been told that limitations have or will be placed on his travel:

    The father of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq has cancelled a speech planned for Toronto on Tuesday, with the event organizer suggesting Khizr Khan was concerned about travelling outside the United States.

    In an email to ticket holders on Monday, organizer Bob Ramsay said Khan was “notified that his travel privilege (sic) are being reviewed” Sunday evening.

    “This turn of events is not just of deep concern to me, but to all my fellow Americans who cherish our freedom to travel abroad,” Khan said, according to Ramsay’s statement.

    “I have not been given any reason as to why.”

    It’s not clear what “review” Khan was referring to. While the Trump administration continues to try to implement a travel ban for citizens from six Muslim-majority countries and deport illegal immigrants, neither initiative would apply to Khan, who became a U.S. citizen in 1986.

    Actually, US citizens were forbidden from entering the US under Barack Obama, so this is not only something that could be done, it is something that has been done by the FBI in an attempt to coerce testimony or service as an informant.

    This was done by putting people on the no-fly list, but given the complete embrace of bigotry and lawlessness recently demonstrated by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (it used to be called the INS), Mr. Khan would likely encounter extreme harassment if he were to attempt to re-enter on a land crossing.

    I think that the INS is the only federal bureaucracy that is ecstatic about Trump being in the White House, and I’m thinking that it’s 50-50 that this was the brain child of some minor functionary in la migra, rather than someone in the Trump administration.

    The past few weeks have indicated that it is an organization that is rotten to the core, so I hope that someone is keeping notes for the next administration.