Inland Empire Progressive

What we’re witnessing now is a full-blown conservative assault on the institutions meant to restrain raw power. The conservative strategy is simple: prosecution of political enemies, stack the courts with activist judges, intimidate rivals, and then begin the imperial rule. The recent case of  James Comey  offers a grim blueprint. Lindsey Halligan, a Trump loyalist who has no trail court experience was handpicked for the U.S. Attorney’s post to push the indictment forward despite justice department alarm bells.  That is how you subvert the rule of law. In a functioning legal system, you don’t indict someone unless the evidence can survive the harshest judicial tests. In this case, the evidence looks so flimsy even prosecutors privately felt the case would unravel. Yet Trump overrides them. That’s not justice; it's a sham trial. You don’t have to fight over whether Halligan is competent or not the real point is that she was chosen for loyalty, not objectivity. This is the ...

Increasing awareness of the disparities of our judicial system will eventually lead to systemic changes in that process. Officer invovled shootings or OIFs in the judicial parlance are rarely deemed unjustified. In San Bernardino County, there have been no charges brought against officers who were involved in shootings even in the most egregious of circumstances. Being shot 5, 6, or 17 times are instances of overkill that should not be deem justified because law enforcement have semi-lethal methods to defend themselves. However, the District Attorney fails to prosecute because politically he needs the support of law enforcement to get reelected. As the chart above notes, black men are 21 times as likely to get shot by police than whites. 31 folks per 1 million might seem low, but multiplied by the total population of the United States (approximately 300 million) those numbers jump to 9405 black teenage men killed every year by law enforcement. To break this vicious cycle, we have to v...