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https://apnews.com/c546e9c139234778...on&utm_source=Twitter&utm_campaign=SocialFlow

DeVos to students: Don’t hide behind a Twitter handle

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Monday encouraged students to engage others with respect and not to “be nasty” while hiding behind Twitter handles, leading one student to wonder why her boss, President Donald Trump, doesn’t appear to abide by those rules.

DeVos appeared at the National Constitution Center at a student Town Hall to talk about the First Amendment as part of the center’s annual Constitution Day, commemorating the 231st anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution.

Free speech on college campuses is being threatened, she said, and listening to people with differing views is an important part of education.

College administrators too often try to shield students from ideas they “subjectively decide are hateful or offensive” and wrongly assume students are incapable of grappling with or learning from these ideas, she told the students, ranging from elementary to college age.

Part of the problem, she said, is that as a nation “we have abandoned truth,” and it’s now often seen as a personal point of view.

“Learning is about thinking, reasoned argument and discovering facts,” she said. “If there is no objective truth, then there is no real learning.”

She urged students to take it upon themselves to approach others with respect and to engage with those who might have differing views.

“It is easy to be nasty hiding behind screens and Twitter handles,” she said. “It’s not so easy face to face.”

In a question-and-answer session, one college student, 21-year-old Kaileigh Murphy, told DeVos that Trump, well known for his Twitter screeds, doesn’t appear to be following that advice.

DeVos responded that “the separation that occurs between someone who puts something out on social media without really considering the receiving end of that communication doesn’t help with the overall discourse.” People are best off, she said, when they can sit down and talk together.

Murphy, a senior majoring in education at the College of New Jersey, said after the town hall that she agreed with much of what DeVos said about the importance of free speech and being open to people with differing opinions.

“It just seems like our current president is the prime example of hiding behind Twitter handles,” she said. “So I wanted to ask her, if she feels this way, why isn’t it coming out in the other levels of our government?”

Other questions included an 11-year-old public school boy asking: “Did your parents motivate you to become what you are?”

Answer: Yes, they wanted her to pursue what she was interested in, but they didn’t love that she played the drums in high school.
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In a surprising plot twist.....politicians aren't keeping the same energy for another Iowa white woman murdered......not by an illegal immigrant but this time by a white man

https://www.yahoo.com/news/slain-go...ntrasting-lives-iowa-city-045634748--spt.html

Similar slayings draw vastly different political reaction
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IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — The cases are strikingly similar: Two talented young women were stabbed to death by male strangers while doing athletic activities alone in normally safe parts of Iowa.

But politicians who quickly expressed outrage about the immigrant suspect charged with killing runner Mollie Tibbetts have been silent or more restrained about the white homeless man accused in the death of a college golf star from Spain.

Hours after Cristhian Bahena Rivera was arrested last month in Tibbetts' death, President Donald Trump declared that the farmhand had killed the "beautiful" young woman because of the nation's "disgraceful" immigration laws. The president recorded a video citing Tibbetts' slaying in his case for building a wall on the border with Mexico and adopting other policies intended to keep immigrants from entering illegally.

So far, Trump and many others who followed his lead have not weighed in on the death of Celia Barquin Arozamena, who was attacked Monday while golfing on a course near Iowa State University. The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday on Barquin, who was the Big 12 women's golf champion this year and a 22-year-old engineering student.

Neither has Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican who tweeted that Tibbetts would be alive if immigration laws were enforced and added: "Leftists sacrificed thousands, including their own, on the altar of Political Correctness."

King represents Ames, which includes the university, and a part of western Iowa where the suspect accused in Barquin's death lived as a teenager and young adult in small towns. Court records show that 22-year-old Collin Richards repeatedly received chances to turn his life around but instead kept committing crimes and violated probation again and again.

Richards once threatened to "shoot up" a convenience store where he was caught shoplifting. He dragged his ex-girlfriend out of a home in a headlock, allegedly cutting off her airway and leaving her injured. He got high and stole a pickup truck after wrecking his own car. He burglarized a gas station to steal tobacco and beer and stole from his own grandparents' home. He was found with an illegally long knife during a traffic stop, and he injured a police officer during a scuffle.

None of that earned Richards prison time or a felony conviction, in part because prosecutors agreed to plea deals that reduced charges to misdemeanors and judges imposed sentences of probation.

Richards was sent to prison last year only after he tested positive for methamphetamine and marijuana, failed to complete an anger-management course he started four times and didn't pay court-ordered fees to a halfway house, court records show.

Even then, the two-year sentence was reduced to about seven months after credit for good behavior and some jail time already served.

After his release, Richards was arrested weeks later for public intoxication. Soon, he was living in a tent in a homeless encampment in the woods near the Coldwater Golf Links in Ames. He told an acquaintance that he had an urge to "rape and kill a woman," police said. He allegedly stabbed Barquin and left her body in a pond near the ninth hole.

Rivera followed a different path, allegedly entering the country from Mexico illegally as a teenager and later getting hired at a dairy farm by providing false identification documents. He was described as a reliable worker.

He had no prior criminal record in Iowa before, police say, he followed Tibbetts, a 20-year-old University of Iowa student, in a car while she was running on July 18 in the small town of Brooklyn. He's accused of killing her and leaving her body in a cornfield. He pleaded not guilty Wednesday, and his trial is scheduled for April.

After Tibbetts' death, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said residents were angry "that a broken immigration system allowed a predator like this to live in our community." She also said she might be open to considering a plan to require Iowa employers to use the government's E-Verify system to check their workers' eligibility to be in the U.S., although it's not clear whether that would have prevented the farm from hiring Rivera.

On Tuesday, Reynolds referred to Barquin's death as "horrific" and "senseless" but said it was premature to determine whether any changes needed to be made to keep young women safe.

"As we all learn more about what happened in this senseless tragedy again, we will look for opportunities and ways that we can do better," she told reporters, according to the Des Moines Register.

On Wednesday, she urged Iowa State fans to wear yellow to Saturday's football game to honor Barquin.

Meanwhile, a third slaying of a young woman was drawing attention in the nation's capital. Wendy K. Martinez, 35, was jogging in Washington's Logan Circle neighborhood Tuesday evening when she was fatally stabbed in what police said was probably a random attack. She staggered into a restaurant where customers tried to save her life.
 
https://www.mediaite.com/online/gop...gop-rep-ron-desantis-calls-obama-a-muslim-nr/

GOP Donor Who Gave $20,000 to GOP Rep. Ron DeSantis Calls Obama a ‘Muslim N****r’

Steven Alembik, a Republican donor who has given $20,000 to GOP Rep. Ron DeSantis, referred to former President Barack Obama as a “MUSLIM N*GGER,” according to a Politico report.

“FUCK THE MUSLIM NIGGER,” tweeted Alembik in response to a post from the RNC that read, “Without a hint of irony, Obama smears President Trump’s 63 million Republican voters as divisive & resentful.”

He has since deleted the tweet and claimed that he is “absolutely not” racist, despite being a racist.

DeSantis, who is running as the Republican nominee for governor in Florida, distanced himself from the donor after the incident.

“We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: we adamantly denounce this sort of disgusting rhetoric,” DeSantis flack Stephen Lawson said in response to the Politico piece.

As for the DeSantis campaign, his run against the Democratic nominee AndrewGillum — an African-American — has become increasingly racially charged.

The day after the Florida gubernatorial primary election, DeSantis infamously told Florida voters not to “monkey this up” and elect Gillum, which many viewed as a racist remark about Gillum’s race. The Republican lawmaker denies this characterization of his comment.

DeSantis was also a moderator of a massive far-right Facebook group in-which racist comments and conspiracy theories were promoted. He has since left the page.

Additionally, a white supremacist group from Idaho has attacked Gillum for his race, buying up robocalls that include a person impersonating the black candidate as he talks over jungle sounds. DeSantis has condemned these calls.
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/roy-moore-take-stand-kavanaugh

Moral Authority Roy Moore Urges GOP To ‘Take A Stand’ And Back Kavanaugh

Failed Senate candidate Roy Moore, who was accused of sexual misconduct by nine women, has decided that the time is ripe to throw his support to fellow accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

“I think they need to take a stand. I think they need to do what their conscience dictates,” Moore said in an interview with One America News Wednesday. “They know what’s happening. It’s so obvious that these tactics are used just days before a very important event… before an election or a confirmation, and I think the Republicans need to take a stand. I think a lot of them don’t. They don’t like criticism.”

“I think they don’t care about transparency, they just use it because its effective,” he continued. “They know that on the one hand you offend women if you believe somebody that says they weren’t guilty of sexual misconduct. On the other hand, if you don’t believe them, you’re condemning the person accused of guilt to prove his own innocence. It’s a Catch-22.”

Moore’s Alabama Senate bid was ultimately sunk last December due to the mounting allegations, most from the 1970s and some from women who were teenagers when they say the much-older Moore sexually assaulted them.

Despite Moore’s denials, nearly every prominent Republican (except President Donald Trump, coincidentally) leapt from the sinking ship, and Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) snatched the seat.
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http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/ma...ons-consent-decree-speech-20180919-story.html

Wrongly saying Baltimore reached a deal with the ACLU, Jeff Sessions links rising crime to consent decree


Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in speech Wednesday that a civil rights decree designed to reform the Baltimore Police Department was linked to rising crime, calling the city “one of the most tragic examples” of how such agreements impose restrictions on police officers.

“Colossal mistakes have been made by politicians and leaders that have had particular catastrophic consequences for the people of cities like Chicago, Baltimore, and St. Louis,” Sessions said, according to a transcript of the speech.

But in assailing court-enforced civil rights agreements, Sessions erroneously said Baltimore’s consent decree was between the city and the American Civil Liberties Union. It’s actually with his own department and was signed off by a federal judge two months after Sessions was confirmed as attorney general.

The decree followed a lengthy investigation by the Justice Department during the Obama administration that concluded Baltimore Police were routinely violating people’s constitutional rights.

The election of President Donald Trump appeared as though it might imperil the process of turning those findings into a legally binding agreement between the city and the federal government.

Lawyers for the Justice Department sought to delay the finalization of the decree shortly after Sessions took over, saying they had concerns about rising crime. But U.S. District Judge James Bredar moved ahead despite their opposition.

Sessions spoke Wednesday at a training event for law enforcement officers in Illinois. He initially focused on rising crime rates in Chicago, which does have a decree with the ACLU. He said that police in the city were trying to help reverse the trend but that their “hands still remained tied.”

Sessions then turned to Baltimore.

“After the death of Freddie Gray, violence and riots followed,” he said. “City leadership signed a consent decree with the ACLU. The results were the same as in Chicago.”

Sessions pointed to data from 2014 — the year before Gray’s death in police custody — and 2017 that showed declining arrest rates and other measures of police activity. At the same time, he said, murder, assault and car theft increased.

But on one claim the attorney general appears to have erred. Sessions said that rapes in Baltimore tripled between 2014 and 2017. The police department’s data contradicts him, although it does show an increase. City records show 249 rapes were reported in 2014 compared with 375 in 2017.

The most recent state numbers, from 2016, do show a tripling of rape reports in Baltimore County — from 100 in 2014 to 319 in 2016. The FBI changed the definition of rape in 2015 to be more expansive.

Baltimore County police were criticized in late 2016 after an investigation by BuzzFeed News found detectives declaring large numbers of rape allegations “unfounded.” County officials promised to undertake changes.

The Justice Department didn’t respond to a request for clarification on Sessions’ comments. The Baltimore mayor’s office declined to comment, and the independent monitor who oversees the consent decree could not be reached.

In the speech, Sessions said the Justice Department would continue to hold officers who violate the law accountable, but would not “malign entire police departments.”

Sessions said cities around the country face a stark choice.

“There’s a clear lesson here: if you want more shootings and more death, then listen to the ACLU, Black Lives Matter, or Antifa,” he said. “If you want public safety, then listen to the police professionals who have been studying this for 35 years.”
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