Biden fucking up already

[Cuddles]

Kyle is every Biden voter right now:

 

[Tony Stark]

Kyle is every Biden voter right now:

He nailed it.

 

[Cuddles]

Biden’s Justice Department Throws Support Behind Religious Schools on LGBTQ Discrimination
https://www.thedailybeast.com/justi...ind-religious-schools-on-lgbtq-discrimination

The Justice Department has offered its full-throated support to religious schools that want to discriminate against LGBTQ students. According to The Washington Post, the Biden administration confirmed in a Tuesday court filing that it will “vigorously” defend a religious exemption from federal civil-rights law that permits religious schools to discriminate against LGBTQ students—even if those schools receive federal funding. The filing said that Education Department and Christian schools “share the same ‘ultimate objective’... namely, to uphold the Religious Exemption as it is currently applied.” The filing has shocked LGBTQ advocates—Paul Carlos Southwick, director of the Religious Exemption Accountability Project, told the Post: “The government is now aligning itself with anti-LGBTQ hate in order to vigorously defend an exemption that everyone knows causes severe harm to LGBTQ students using taxpayer money.” Southwick said the religious exemption leaves students at risk of conversion therapy and expulsion, as well as “shame, fear, anxiety, and loneliness.”

Read it at Washington Post

 

[Cuddles]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...13c840-bfb3-11eb-b26e-53663e6be6ff_story.html
Justice Dept. asks judge to toss lawsuit against Trump, Barr for violent clearing of Lafayette Square

This statement from the Garland DOJ may explain the DOJ position regarding the Lafayette Square lawsuit. (All according to the Washington Post Article)

Trump and other U.S. officials are immune from civil lawsuits over police actions taken to protect a president and to secure his movements, government lawyers said of the actions
​

One can certainly take issue with the notion that tear gassing those in Lafayette Square is consistent with the need to protect the President and U.S. Officials, when these officials had no need to go anywhere near Lafayette Square for anything other than a purely political Photo Op. Nevertheless, this DOJ position may be on firmer legal footing then we realize. The DOJ's support for such a suit might be correctly labeled as "purely political".. . We have strong indications already that the Garland DOJ wants to steer clear of anything that smacks of being on weak legal grounds and thus subject to labeling as "purely political."

On a related matter, there was an opinion piece on Bloomberg this past week pointing out that the Garland DOJ wanted to return to the days when investigations by the DOJ were carried out in strict secrecy until the decision to seek an indictment had been reached. That seems like a very wise policy to me, and quite consistent with our Bill of Rights.

 

[piezoe]

Thanks. I heard that, just today, as well.

 

[Cuddles]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/26/politics/biden-mohammed-bin-salman-jamal-khashoggi/index.html
Biden doesn't penalize crown prince despite promise to punish senior Saudi leaders

(CNN)Despite promising to punish senior Saudi leaders while on the campaign trail, President Joe Biden declined to apply sanctions to the one the US intelligence community determined is responsible for the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The choice not to punish Prince Mohammed directly puts into sharp relief the type of decision-making that becomes more complicated for a president versus a candidate, and demonstrates the difficulty in breaking with a troublesome ally in a volatile region.

On Friday, Biden's administration released an unclassified intelligence report on Khashoggi's death, an action his predecessor refused to take as he downplayed US intelligence. The report from the director of national intelligence says the crown prince, known as MBS, directly approved the killing of Khashoggi. But while Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced visa restrictions that affected 76 Saudis involved in harassing activists and journalists, he didn't announce measures that touch the prince. And while a sanctions list from the Treasury Department named a former deputy intelligence chief and the Saudi Royal Guard's rapid intervention force, the crown prince wasn't mentioned.

Two administration officials said sanctioning MBS was never really an option, operating under the belief it would have been "too complicated" and could have jeopardized US military interests in Saudi Arabia. As a result, the administration did not even request the State Department to work up options for how to target MBS with sanctions, one State Department official said.

In November 2019, Biden promised to punish senior Saudi leaders in a way former President Donald Trump wouldn't.

"Yes," he said when directly asked if he would. "And I said it at the time. Khashoggi was, in fact, murdered and dismembered, and I believe on the order of the crown prince. And I would make it very clear we were not going to, in fact, sell more weapons to them, we were going to, in fact, make them pay the price and make them the pariah that they are."

"There's very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia," he said. "They have to be held accountable."

The Biden administration's definition of accountability is now coming into sharper view. The President has ended US support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen and ordered an end to some weapons sales to the kingdom, while top aides say he wants to "recalibrate" the relationship.

Administration officials acknowledge it will be tricky. In an exclusive interview with NPR set to air Friday afternoon, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines conceded the report could complicate US-Saudi relations going forward.

"I am sure it is not going to make things easier," she said. "But I think it's also fair to say that it is not unexpected."

A senior administration official, in explaining the decision to forgo punishment for the crown prince in light of the report, said the information released Friday was not new and had been known to the US government for more than a year.

Responding to the report, the Saudi foreign ministry said it "completely rejects the negative, false and unacceptable assessment in the report pertaining to the Kingdom's leadership."

The relationship with Riyadh itself appears too valuable for the Biden administration to abandon altogether by punishing the man who is widely viewed as running the kingdom. State Department officials said that the Biden administration made a point not to upend any working-level discussions between the two countries because the security relationship is so important.

In many ways that calculation is the same one the Trump administration made in deciding to stop short of punishing MBS.

Officials in both the Trump and Biden administrations have acknowledged privately that Saudi Arabia is a critical partner on counterterrorism actions and as a regional counterweight to Iran, making any attempt at distance nearly impossible.

"It's hard to imagine any issue in the region where Saudi partnership and support doesn't play a significant role," Dennis Ross, a former special Middle East coordinator, told CNN.

Gerald Feierstein, a former principal deputy assistant decretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs now with the Middle East Institute, said the administration is balancing its response against its other priorities, such as ending the conflict in Yemen, lowering tensions in the Gulf region and counter-terrorism efforts are also factors, and all require a stable US-Saudi bilateral relationship.

Most crucially, "with US-Iran negotiations likely to restart later this year, Biden will need Saudi acquiescence, if not enthusiasm, to sell an eventual deal in the region," said Ayham Kamel, the Practice Head, Middle East and North Africa at the Eurasia Group.

Another factor that analysts point to: the crown prince does serve to further some US goals, among them his attempt to modernize and overhaul the Saudi economy.

"While the crown prince comes with serious baggage, his reforms are productive channels of modernizing the kingdom, limiting the influence of the Wahhabi clerical establishment, promoting a greater degree of religious tolerance and empowering the youth," Kamel said.

"We have a stake in seeing him succeed in making his modernization drive a success, we have a stake in their transition from fossil fuels," Ross said.
Kamel said that "the Biden team is not looking to deepen direct US political influence in Saudi Arabia and impact the debate over succession in the house of al Saud," and that the Saudis are willing to listen -- to a degree.

"The Saudi leadership has firmly decided to adopt a constructive position over the short term to limit tensions with the US," Kamel said, pointing to the release of human rights activists as "an olive branch."

And while Saudi officials understand that Biden is under pressure in Washington to act, "they are not convinced that Riyadh lacks leverage," Kamel said, referencing their security relationships they have developed with countries such as France and Russia and their ability to leverage ties with China to counter the US

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...164ea0-cf84-11eb-8cd2-4e95230cfac2_story.html
Opinion: Biden gave Mohammed bin Salman a pass. Now his victims are piling up.

WHEN PRESIDENT BIDEN chose in February not to hold Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman accountable for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi despite a CIA conclusion that he approved the operation, we were among those who warned that the result would be more victims. Sadly, that has proved true. Before Mr. Biden’s decision, the Saudi regime released several political prisoners, including two U.S. citizens and a prominent women’s rights activist. Since March, it has sentenced at least three more activists to lengthy prison terms and opened investigations of others. “Repression of dissidents, human rights activists, and independent critics,” concluded a recent report by Human Rights Watch, “remains at full force.”

One of those sentenced was Abdulrahman Al-Sadhan, a 37-year-old aid worker and son of a U.S. citizen, who was arrested and tortured in 2018 after a Saudi spy operation at Twitter identified him as the author of anonymous tweets criticizing the regime. In late February, Mr. Sadhan told his family in a phone call that he would soon be released. Instead, following Mr. Biden’s decision, he was hauled into court on April 5 and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Such stories are particularly disturbing in light of new revelations about the Khashoggi case. Michael Isikoff, the chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo News, reports in a new podcast that the team of Saudi operatives sent to ambush Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018, made a side trip to Cairo, where they picked up the narcotics used in the killing. That implicates the regime of Abdel Fatah al-Sissi in the plot against Khashoggi, who contributed columns to The Post. But Mr. Sissi, too, has been held harmless by Mr. Biden, even though he promised “no more blank checks” for the dictator during his presidential campaign.

The Egyptian connection came to light in a closed 2019 trial held in Riyadh for some of those involved in the killing; notes taken by Turkish diplomats allowed to observe the proceedings were subsequently filed in an Istanbul court. According to Mr. Isikoff, they show that the decision to kill Khashoggi was initiated by Maher Mutreb, a bodyguard to Mohammed bin Salman, who after reviewing the layout of the Saudi Consulate concluded that it would not be possible to capture and extract the journalist alive. Instead, Khashoggi was drugged and his body was dismembered with a bone saw.

Mr. Mutreb and Salah Tubaigy, the doctor who administered the lethal dose of drugs to Khashoggi, were among those put on trial. Five people were eventually sentenced to death, but their penalties were later commuted to 20 years, and Mr. Isikoff cites Saudi sources as saying the convicts are living in a luxury compound near Riyadh, where Mr. Tubaigy has been sighted at a gym. Meanwhile, the man who directly oversaw the operation for Mohammed bin Salman, Saud al-Qahtani, was exonerated and has faced no punishment.

According to U.S. intelligence, Mr. Qahtani directed a special intelligence unit that abducted dissidents from abroad. He also supervised the arrest and torture of women who had campaigned for the right to drive. He remains a key aide to Mohammed bin Salman, who has repeatedly rejected U.S. demands that he be brought to justice. As long as the Saudi ruler and his henchmen continue to enjoy that impunity, their victims will continue to pile up.

 

[Overnight]

...He also supervised the arrest and torture of women who had campaigned for the right to drive..

Because...Women.

All Saudi men who believe that shit must die an evil death.

 

[Cuddles]

Thanks. I heard that, just today, as well.

update:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics...ayette-square-protesters-first-amendment.html
Federal Judge Dismisses Civil Suit’s Claims Against Trump for Clearing Lafayette Square Protesters

A federal judge dismissed a civil lawsuit Monday that alleged former President Donald Trump and a host of other government officials acted unlawfully when they forcibly cleared Lafayette Square of protesters last summer. A handful of plaintiffs, including the ACLU and Black Lives Matter, alleged in four overlapping suits that Trump and administration officials conspired to violate the First Amendment rights of the anti-police brutality protesters in removing more than 1,000 demonstrators that day so that Trump could stride out Bible in hand for a photo-op in front of nearby St. John’s Episcopal Church. In a 51-page ruling, however, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich of Washington threw out the conspiracy claim as “simply too speculative” and ruled that federal defendants—such as Attorney General William Barr and the acting Park Police chief, who were both named in the suit—were immune from civil liability.

Judge Friedrich, a 2017 Trump appointee, “acknowledged claims that Trump tweeted threats and encouragement of violence against protesters, and ordered Barr take charge of the situation before Barr mobilized law enforcement and appeared at the square just before it was cleared,” the Washington Post notes. “The judge also said the square was cleared right before Trump, Barr and Esper’s walk to the church. But these events weren’t enough to allow conspiracy claims to go forward without further, specific factual allegations, Friedrich wrote.”

“Today’s ruling essentially gives the federal government a green light to use violence, including lethal force against demonstrators, as long as federal officials claim to be protecting national security,” legal director for the ACLU of the District of Columbia Scott Michelman said of the decision. The Department of Justice supported the dismissal of the suit. Friedrich did allow the suit’s claims against local police forces in Washington, D.C. and Arlington to proceed because they are not federal agencies and therefore not covered by the federal immunity statute.

 

[piezoe]

update:

Despite an order being given to clear the park well before the Ridiculous procession to the Church got underway, culminating in Trump acting like the JACKASS he is by holding a Bible upside down, the physical and timing proximity of the gassing of protestors to the Trump Stunt leaves me very suspicious. Regardless, that absurd performance of Trump and his entourage in front of the Church remains disgraceful, as is the unnecessary use of teargas on a bunch of peaceful protestors. My suspicions are heightened by knowledge that the authorities first lied about teargas being used. What else might they be lying about.

 

[Cuddles]

Despite an order being given to clear the park well before the Ridiculous procession to the Church got underway, culminating in Trump acting like the JACKASS he is by holding a Bible upside down, the physical and timing proximity of the gassing of protestors to the Trump Stunt leaves me very suspicious. Regardless, that absurd performance of Trump and his entourage in front of the Church remains disgraceful, as is the unnecessary use of teargas on a bunch of peaceful protestors. My suspicions are heightened by knowledge that the authorities first lied about teargas being used. What else might they be lying about.

Notice Trumpy judge had no qualms keeping the lawsuit in place for the local authorities violating the people's 1st.