In Guam. Standing by. Still not worried about it. Flying to Japan on Tuesday, not worried about that either. As usual much hype about nothing in particular.
A few days ago the St Louis clergy delivered a message to the judge in the Jason Stockley case that the blood and violence following a not guilty verdict will be on his hands. St. Louis closed schools and cancelled events in preparation for the verdict today. The verdict is in: Not guilty. This could be very nasty.
Damn. Baltimore's Freddie Gray ruling came down, and not a peep. One of my buddies is a cop, and they've been put on mandatory overtime until they get that whole murder problem under control, so that might be correlated.
What's their problem? It's as if a public servant can't kill somebody and plant a gun on them without everybody getting all bent out of shape over it.
Not only that: https://twitter.com/chriskingstl/status/908713073770299394 Seriously this judge better find himself an escort home.
For those interested, the link I posted earlier has live, continuing local coverage of the response to the verdict. The St. Louis Post Dispatch also has a lot of info.
http://realtimepolitics.com/2017/09/15/congress-strips-justice-department/ Ability of DoJ to seize assets from people not charged with a crime has been modified by Congress.
Maybe when they can't just take money from "drug dealers" and the money dries up a little this war on drugs will end. Did anyone else see that video of the police officer taking all the cash from the hotdog cart guy because he didn't have a permit to sell? I was unaware of the scope of the ramifications of the civil forfeiture laws we have here. Where's the due process?
Asset Forfeiture laws are fucking scary. There's quite literally nothing you can do, and they will seize your shit immediately. AF laws have very little recourse or due process.
I went back and read a little more, as the first article I read when I was at work and didn't get a good picture of the changes. It looks like AF is still a thing but they can't really do it for amounts under 10k, and have to provide more reasoning and documentation for the things they do seize. It is a step in the right direction.