Merrick Garland must immediately launch a Justice Department investigation. What’s happened in Kansas is a microcosm of what Republicans like Trump would do nationwide.
As decimated as local media is, journalists across the country are still trying to report the news and especially hold local officials to account.
Merrick Garland must immediately launch a Justice Department investigation. What’s happened in Kansas is a microcosm of what Republicans like Trump would do nationwide.
As decimated as local media is, journalists across the country are still trying to report the news and especially hold local officials to account.
I fully agree. Imma retired law enforcement officer and it pisses me off when officers take the law into their own hands. These officers, the magistrate that issued the warrants, all should be held accountable and charged with this woman’s death.
Those responsible for this outrage will rue the day they decided to stomp on the Constitution. Instead of suppressing revelations involving them, they have kicked the proverbial hornets nest. Media from around the country will descend on Marion, Kansas and find out more than the local journalists might have otherwise — and create a firestorm of publicity sure to trigger criminal investigations and lawsuits.
I speak from experience: take tangible steps to keep journalists from doing their job, especially when they're hot on a story like this, and you motivate them more than you can imagine.
Michael, I sure hope this comes to pass. I am so so so saddened that her last hours were fear and angst-ridden. I would have wished for her a more gentle passing, hopefully after a full life well lived. I can only imagine that those who precipitated this will carry the burden of “knowing” the impact of their actions.
The illegal raid produced the death of an elderly lucid woman whose dedication to truth now becomes a victim of murder. These so-called law and order henchmen must face a jury of their peers. If capital punishment still existed, they would each be executed. They must be made to serve imprisonment for a very long long time. Unconscionable!
Here's a good overview of what's happened, including reaction from various media outlets. It's by Tom Jones, who writes about journalism for the Poynter Institute.
Thank you. When those entrusted with law enforcement neglect or abuse the law, how can respect for law and rule of law be sustained in a society? A nation of laws, not of the whims of those with power. Respect is cooperative, and cuts both ways.
I was thinking the same thing, Ally, and you should know. Here in Salem and Keizer, we have a police problem in terms of too often some of them have sided with people like the Proud Boys. The ones in Keizer were particularly bad when the Flynn/Stone hatred show was in Keizer. I had read about the raid in Kansas, but had not realized that it had resulted in the death of editor's mother. That alone is a travesty aside from a completely illegal raid of a newspaper and the illegal seizure of computers, etc. I hope somehow all involved are brought to justice. Our local newspaper is a Gannett rag as is yours now. We do have some independent online newspapers and writers who give us some information. We take the local rag online mostly for the obits. Of course, since the SJ charges an enormous amount, often there is no obit although I see now and then a reference to look on a funeral home site.
Michele, I had a dear friend whose Mom passed this January; her mom was an avid genealogy enthusiast . When Fletcher wrote the original obit, it would have been $500. She rewrote it at said in the obit “the only reason for publication is to honor my mother’s wishes based on her interest in genealogy; the exorbitant price makes this an impossibility for my family.”
She. Went several rounds with the RG, but ended up with a good obit for $150.
I paid 120 for the bare basics several years ago in the SJ for an elderly friend. When the funeral person asked me if I wanted to write more, I said I wasn't going to give that rag any more than I had to. Good for your friend.
Ally, this must be painful for you to see and read about. I am certain you came across a few jerks in law enforcement but this is outrageous! No soul amongst thieves.
It has and hasn't as far as I can see, but corruption has become wide and deep. We are still not at the totalitarian state level across the board, but not for lack of trying my plutocrats, and POC still bear the brunt of our state-supported despotism.
"Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people."
– John Adams
FINALLY pursuing the crimes of powerful civil servants, after about four decades of throwing up our hands, may have turned a corner. Even impeaching Trump on substantiated grounds, while knowing that Republicans would cynically and corruptly kill the inquiry, was a step in that direction. Since the birth of the Republic, there has never been more at stake.
Prof. Richardson's letter today is chilling from the first paragraph. Then she moves effectively to the fight for "liberty of the press" in the Missouri and Illinois of that brave defender who paid with his life, Lovejoy. She concludes with the breathtaking calmness of the man who saved the country, Abraham Lincoln. Move over Gibbon. Make room for Richardson.
Michael, exactly. Freedom of the press is essential to having a vibrant democracy. It smacks of local authorities overreaching. I’m very glad that HCR is bringing it to our attention as well as sharing a historical parallel.
"No inference is here intended that the laws provided by the states against false & defamatory publications, should not be enforced. he who has time renders a service to public morals, & public tranquility, in reforming these abuses by the salutary coercions of the law. but the experiment is noted to prove that, since truth & reason have maintained their ground against false opinions, in league with false facts, the Press, confined to truth, needs no other legal restraint. the public judgment will correct false reasonings & opinions, on a full hearing of all parties; and no other definite line can be drawn between the inestimable liberty of the press, and it’s demoralising licentiousness. if there be still improprieties which this rule would not restrain, it’s Supplement must be sought in the Censorship of Public opinion." - Jefferson
Don’t hold your breath waiting for the obsequious Garland to do the proper thing. Given a few months of journalistic pressure, perhaps he will appoint a special prosecutor to investigate this travesty.
Such is the state of equal protection under the law in America today. Trumpism has indelibly stained the Constitution and moral values of our nation. It will take many years of dedicated work to remove the stench.
“As decimated as local media is, journalists across the country are still trying to report the news and especially hold local officials to account.”
Not as much as one might hope this to be real. Many local newspapers and radio stations have been bought out by large corporations. These corporations then gut the staff including reporters to such an extent that there is little reporting of “local” news.
These newspapers are so short staffed the reporters still working at them have little to no time to do any investigative reporting.
I believe Gannett is one of the corporations that have bought out a large amount of the “local” media throughout the country. One affect of the monopolies of newspaper ownership is much (if not most) of the printed stories come from one source. The news becomes homogenized. Where I live the “local” newspapers stories (90+%) come from “USA Today”.
In that regard what you wrote (below) rings of truth. IMHO It’s not so much a ‘would do’ as an ‘already are doing’
“What’s happened in Kansas is a microcosm of what Republicans like Trump would do nationwide.“
We need anti-trust laws to be enforced to counter these media take overs by large corporations. I think I read the majority of all media in our country is currently owned by only four corporations. I’ll see if I can find the article which discusses / reports on the mass take over of the media by large corporations in the USA.
Found the article but it’s about the demise of newspapers. Here’s the title and the first two of paragraphs. Note the quote of Walter Lippmann in between the two paragraphs!
———-
What the Death of Newspapers Really Means
What fills the void is what’s threatening democracy.
by Eric Alterman
People treat the death of newspapers as a matter of concern only to journalists. This could hardly be more misguided. Responsible journalism is the foundation of our collective ability to address our problems as a society: to improve “the common good.” Almost all of that collective ability, historically, has come from newspaper reporting. As the then-wunderkind Walter Lippmann wrote in one of the most prescient articles ever, in a 1919 edition of The Atlantic:
“Men who have lost their grip upon the relevant facts of their environment are the inevitable victims of agitation and propaganda. The quack, the charlatan, the jingo, and the terrorist, can flourish only where the audience is deprived of independent access to information. But where all news comes at second-hand, where all the testimony is uncertain, men cease to respond to truths, and respond simply to opinions. The environment in which they act is not the realities themselves, but the pseudo-environment of reports, rumors, and guesses. The whole reference of thought comes to be what somebody asserts, not what actually is.”
But Lippmann was living in a relative informational paradise compared to today. Sure, there were those in his day who would eagerly excite the passions of the masses for nefarious purposes. But there were multiple daily newspapers in virtually every major city; dozens in New York City if you count the foreign-language press. Most important, sources of deliberate disinformation were as ants to the elephants when compared to today’s Murdoch empire, the Koch network, just about all of talk radio, pretty much every one of Facebook’s most visited sites, and all of the various sources promoting racism, sexism, antisemitism, islamophobia, and so on, in the wake of Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party. Their purpose is to undermine truth specifically for the reasons laid out in Lippmann’s prophetic piece, with predictably deleterious results for what remains of our democracy.
Agreed, with both positions. This is a microcosm of what the RepubliQans are doing nationwide, and the Justice Department must investigate. Local media has been decimated, both by the decline of local newspapers and by the acquisition of most of broadcast local news (at least in my corner of the world) by Sinclair media.
I think MTG should be charged with any “revenge porn” statutes that may exist, I was really stunned that she pulled this egregious stunt. The woman is shameless and should be held accountable for her actions.
Amen to that, i think she should be held accountable and should be put in jail,, I have never seen anyone so ignorant and so arrogant in my life, she is a horrible insult to all the good women in the world, sometimes, I don't even think she is s woman, she is something that crawled out of a swamp somewhere and is some unknown species of a monster. She should be caged in a zoo somewhere.
The MTG exhibit, “Here, ladies and gentlemen is a MAGArilla. Caught in the wild while roaming the Mall in Washington D.C., c2023.
Although there are many archetypes of this creature in the area, they are varied in appearance but have similar qualities and temperament. This particular example displays the basic behaviors of M-rillas found in this species.
They usually appear human in form with slight but detectable differences.
More mature M-rillas have pronounced features such as “The Oligarch Hump”. Where it appears as if another group of humanlike creatures ride upon their backs. Another common feature is “Lying Mouth”. This feature is something both heard and seen. A shrill noise emits from a round (pie hole shaped) opening located in the head when appearing on the FOX entertainment savanna. No one is exactly sure of it purpose but some theories suggest it may double as a sphincter.
The geriatric MAGArillas are known to resemble rotted out tree stumps, dumpster fires and ATM machines that only accept deposits.
The MTG ‘rilla has low functioning cognitive abilities. It appears to have the usual MAGArilla penchant for violence and grossly exaggerated grievance issues along with deep rooted fantasies of being “above the law”. It also possesses a brain one third the size of its fully human counterparts, scientifically referred to as “Pea Brained.”
It can reach land speeds of up to 2 pipe bombs per insurrection.
The most outstanding features of the MTG MAGArilla are the 3 toed feet and frequent mispronunciation and use of the common language, something even the honking MAGA-gaggle find repulsive. Abandoned by its own, the MTG MAGArilla was found starving for attention and hiding from one of its natural enemies, Karma.
I so agree. As a female, I am embarrassed by her behavior and the behavior of some of the other female pols. I do agree with your assessment that she is a swamp monster. She belongs in jail.
Saw that…and why am I not surprised? No wonder she and her buddies are so smitten w/ TFFG. Of course, as I recall, the article did not implicate her directly, so am only responding based on the company she keeps, the folks she professes to admire and the hateful BS she spews.
BK.....horrible to hear about the theft....this personal attack on President Joe Biden's daughter.....stealing her personal property. Instead of working on building up our country and encouraging our citizens and healing relationships here and worldwide....this is what the Republicans are spending their time and resources on.....
No wonder our "Good-standing " throughout the world is diminishing!!!
Merrick Garland must immediately launch a Justice Department investigation. What’s happened in Kansas is a microcosm of what Republicans like Trump would do nationwide.
As decimated as local media is, journalists across the country are still trying to report the news and especially hold local officials to account.
I fully agree. Imma retired law enforcement officer and it pisses me off when officers take the law into their own hands. These officers, the magistrate that issued the warrants, all should be held accountable and charged with this woman’s death.
Those responsible for this outrage will rue the day they decided to stomp on the Constitution. Instead of suppressing revelations involving them, they have kicked the proverbial hornets nest. Media from around the country will descend on Marion, Kansas and find out more than the local journalists might have otherwise — and create a firestorm of publicity sure to trigger criminal investigations and lawsuits.
I speak from experience: take tangible steps to keep journalists from doing their job, especially when they're hot on a story like this, and you motivate them more than you can imagine.
Michael, I sure hope this comes to pass. I am so so so saddened that her last hours were fear and angst-ridden. I would have wished for her a more gentle passing, hopefully after a full life well lived. I can only imagine that those who precipitated this will carry the burden of “knowing” the impact of their actions.
The illegal raid produced the death of an elderly lucid woman whose dedication to truth now becomes a victim of murder. These so-called law and order henchmen must face a jury of their peers. If capital punishment still existed, they would each be executed. They must be made to serve imprisonment for a very long long time. Unconscionable!
Here's a good overview of what's happened, including reaction from various media outlets. It's by Tom Jones, who writes about journalism for the Poynter Institute.
https://mailchi.mp/poynter/ko344mf6tf?e=6d6692c838
Thank you. When those entrusted with law enforcement neglect or abuse the law, how can respect for law and rule of law be sustained in a society? A nation of laws, not of the whims of those with power. Respect is cooperative, and cuts both ways.
It cannot be sustained with what we are seeing over the past few years. Law enforcement has lost its collective way.
I was thinking the same thing, Ally, and you should know. Here in Salem and Keizer, we have a police problem in terms of too often some of them have sided with people like the Proud Boys. The ones in Keizer were particularly bad when the Flynn/Stone hatred show was in Keizer. I had read about the raid in Kansas, but had not realized that it had resulted in the death of editor's mother. That alone is a travesty aside from a completely illegal raid of a newspaper and the illegal seizure of computers, etc. I hope somehow all involved are brought to justice. Our local newspaper is a Gannett rag as is yours now. We do have some independent online newspapers and writers who give us some information. We take the local rag online mostly for the obits. Of course, since the SJ charges an enormous amount, often there is no obit although I see now and then a reference to look on a funeral home site.
Michele, I had a dear friend whose Mom passed this January; her mom was an avid genealogy enthusiast . When Fletcher wrote the original obit, it would have been $500. She rewrote it at said in the obit “the only reason for publication is to honor my mother’s wishes based on her interest in genealogy; the exorbitant price makes this an impossibility for my family.”
She. Went several rounds with the RG, but ended up with a good obit for $150.
I paid 120 for the bare basics several years ago in the SJ for an elderly friend. When the funeral person asked me if I wanted to write more, I said I wasn't going to give that rag any more than I had to. Good for your friend.
Weren’t obits free years ago?
Ally, this must be painful for you to see and read about. I am certain you came across a few jerks in law enforcement but this is outrageous! No soul amongst thieves.
Marlene, my profession is tarnished beyond repair, I’m afraid.
As am I, Ally. It’s totally disgusting to see the actions of some of these law enforcement agencies today. Allowing their officers to act as they do.
It has and hasn't as far as I can see, but corruption has become wide and deep. We are still not at the totalitarian state level across the board, but not for lack of trying my plutocrats, and POC still bear the brunt of our state-supported despotism.
"Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people."
– John Adams
FINALLY pursuing the crimes of powerful civil servants, after about four decades of throwing up our hands, may have turned a corner. Even impeaching Trump on substantiated grounds, while knowing that Republicans would cynically and corruptly kill the inquiry, was a step in that direction. Since the birth of the Republic, there has never been more at stake.
Just as in the Nuremburg trials, they probably will say they were just "following orders."
Daniel, agreed! This was a lawless action in every way against an innocent citizen.....everything about it was wrong.
I am so thankful there are journalists working hard everyday to report the truth. I am fearful that the "truth" is becoming more difficult to find.
Thank you HEATHER (and JOYCE VANCE) and others who "now a days"......may be taking their lives into their hands to report the truth.
Prof. Richardson's letter today is chilling from the first paragraph. Then she moves effectively to the fight for "liberty of the press" in the Missouri and Illinois of that brave defender who paid with his life, Lovejoy. She concludes with the breathtaking calmness of the man who saved the country, Abraham Lincoln. Move over Gibbon. Make room for Richardson.
Daniel; the ghost of Sheriff Buford T Justice rides again
I have been thinking that exact same thing!
Thank you Daniel...well said!
🙏
I wanted to add…”get’em Daniel” 🤣
👍🔥
Michael, exactly. Freedom of the press is essential to having a vibrant democracy. It smacks of local authorities overreaching. I’m very glad that HCR is bringing it to our attention as well as sharing a historical parallel.
"No inference is here intended that the laws provided by the states against false & defamatory publications, should not be enforced. he who has time renders a service to public morals, & public tranquility, in reforming these abuses by the salutary coercions of the law. but the experiment is noted to prove that, since truth & reason have maintained their ground against false opinions, in league with false facts, the Press, confined to truth, needs no other legal restraint. the public judgment will correct false reasonings & opinions, on a full hearing of all parties; and no other definite line can be drawn between the inestimable liberty of the press, and it’s demoralising licentiousness. if there be still improprieties which this rule would not restrain, it’s Supplement must be sought in the Censorship of Public opinion." - Jefferson
They are suing. Subscribing might be useful support. $35/year. https://marionrecord.com/credit/subscription:MARION+COUNTY+RECORD
Done..thanks for link.Trying to be careful with my resources for political action, this subscription seemed an easy and just action.
The paper could also initiate a crowdfunding campaign to attract attention and financial support.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for the obsequious Garland to do the proper thing. Given a few months of journalistic pressure, perhaps he will appoint a special prosecutor to investigate this travesty.
Such is the state of equal protection under the law in America today. Trumpism has indelibly stained the Constitution and moral values of our nation. It will take many years of dedicated work to remove the stench.
“As decimated as local media is, journalists across the country are still trying to report the news and especially hold local officials to account.”
Not as much as one might hope this to be real. Many local newspapers and radio stations have been bought out by large corporations. These corporations then gut the staff including reporters to such an extent that there is little reporting of “local” news.
These newspapers are so short staffed the reporters still working at them have little to no time to do any investigative reporting.
I believe Gannett is one of the corporations that have bought out a large amount of the “local” media throughout the country. One affect of the monopolies of newspaper ownership is much (if not most) of the printed stories come from one source. The news becomes homogenized. Where I live the “local” newspapers stories (90+%) come from “USA Today”.
In that regard what you wrote (below) rings of truth. IMHO It’s not so much a ‘would do’ as an ‘already are doing’
“What’s happened in Kansas is a microcosm of what Republicans like Trump would do nationwide.“
We need anti-trust laws to be enforced to counter these media take overs by large corporations. I think I read the majority of all media in our country is currently owned by only four corporations. I’ll see if I can find the article which discusses / reports on the mass take over of the media by large corporations in the USA.
Found the article but it’s about the demise of newspapers. Here’s the title and the first two of paragraphs. Note the quote of Walter Lippmann in between the two paragraphs!
———-
What the Death of Newspapers Really Means
What fills the void is what’s threatening democracy.
by Eric Alterman
People treat the death of newspapers as a matter of concern only to journalists. This could hardly be more misguided. Responsible journalism is the foundation of our collective ability to address our problems as a society: to improve “the common good.” Almost all of that collective ability, historically, has come from newspaper reporting. As the then-wunderkind Walter Lippmann wrote in one of the most prescient articles ever, in a 1919 edition of The Atlantic:
“Men who have lost their grip upon the relevant facts of their environment are the inevitable victims of agitation and propaganda. The quack, the charlatan, the jingo, and the terrorist, can flourish only where the audience is deprived of independent access to information. But where all news comes at second-hand, where all the testimony is uncertain, men cease to respond to truths, and respond simply to opinions. The environment in which they act is not the realities themselves, but the pseudo-environment of reports, rumors, and guesses. The whole reference of thought comes to be what somebody asserts, not what actually is.”
But Lippmann was living in a relative informational paradise compared to today. Sure, there were those in his day who would eagerly excite the passions of the masses for nefarious purposes. But there were multiple daily newspapers in virtually every major city; dozens in New York City if you count the foreign-language press. Most important, sources of deliberate disinformation were as ants to the elephants when compared to today’s Murdoch empire, the Koch network, just about all of talk radio, pretty much every one of Facebook’s most visited sites, and all of the various sources promoting racism, sexism, antisemitism, islamophobia, and so on, in the wake of Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party. Their purpose is to undermine truth specifically for the reasons laid out in Lippmann’s prophetic piece, with predictably deleterious results for what remains of our democracy.
Agreed, with both positions. This is a microcosm of what the RepubliQans are doing nationwide, and the Justice Department must investigate. Local media has been decimated, both by the decline of local newspapers and by the acquisition of most of broadcast local news (at least in my corner of the world) by Sinclair media.
Merrick Garland and "immediately" don't really go well together. Not at all.
Garland may well be more accurately defined by the words "sloth like".
This goes beyond party politics. It is a serious and dangerous abuse of power and must be prosecuted as such. People need to go to jail.
Milquetoast Merrick will have to be shamed into doing anything and even then it’ll take him years sadly.
I think MTG should be charged with any “revenge porn” statutes that may exist, I was really stunned that she pulled this egregious stunt. The woman is shameless and should be held accountable for her actions.
Amen to that, i think she should be held accountable and should be put in jail,, I have never seen anyone so ignorant and so arrogant in my life, she is a horrible insult to all the good women in the world, sometimes, I don't even think she is s woman, she is something that crawled out of a swamp somewhere and is some unknown species of a monster. She should be caged in a zoo somewhere.
We’d all like to see that.
The MTG exhibit, “Here, ladies and gentlemen is a MAGArilla. Caught in the wild while roaming the Mall in Washington D.C., c2023.
Although there are many archetypes of this creature in the area, they are varied in appearance but have similar qualities and temperament. This particular example displays the basic behaviors of M-rillas found in this species.
They usually appear human in form with slight but detectable differences.
More mature M-rillas have pronounced features such as “The Oligarch Hump”. Where it appears as if another group of humanlike creatures ride upon their backs. Another common feature is “Lying Mouth”. This feature is something both heard and seen. A shrill noise emits from a round (pie hole shaped) opening located in the head when appearing on the FOX entertainment savanna. No one is exactly sure of it purpose but some theories suggest it may double as a sphincter.
The geriatric MAGArillas are known to resemble rotted out tree stumps, dumpster fires and ATM machines that only accept deposits.
The MTG ‘rilla has low functioning cognitive abilities. It appears to have the usual MAGArilla penchant for violence and grossly exaggerated grievance issues along with deep rooted fantasies of being “above the law”. It also possesses a brain one third the size of its fully human counterparts, scientifically referred to as “Pea Brained.”
It can reach land speeds of up to 2 pipe bombs per insurrection.
The most outstanding features of the MTG MAGArilla are the 3 toed feet and frequent mispronunciation and use of the common language, something even the honking MAGA-gaggle find repulsive. Abandoned by its own, the MTG MAGArilla was found starving for attention and hiding from one of its natural enemies, Karma.
(Sorry, up early and bored).
You nailed it Karen.
Up early usually makes me a slug, good on you
Here's to boredom 👏👏👏 Nicely done!
Enjoyed this....you should be up early and bored often.
I have no idea about being bored, or up early. Looks, and reads, like you need to be up early and bored a lot more often!
Ignorant and arrogant, what a popular combo…
I so agree. As a female, I am embarrassed by her behavior and the behavior of some of the other female pols. I do agree with your assessment that she is a swamp monster. She belongs in jail.
Saw that…and why am I not surprised? No wonder she and her buddies are so smitten w/ TFFG. Of course, as I recall, the article did not implicate her directly, so am only responding based on the company she keeps, the folks she professes to admire and the hateful BS she spews.
BK.....horrible to hear about the theft....this personal attack on President Joe Biden's daughter.....stealing her personal property. Instead of working on building up our country and encouraging our citizens and healing relationships here and worldwide....this is what the Republicans are spending their time and resources on.....
No wonder our "Good-standing " throughout the world is diminishing!!!
Thank you for reminding us of the earlier theft. The Republicans have no shame.