To preserve (themselves) and protect (themselves)

What apparently passes for good police work in Ohio (and undoubtedly elsewhere):

Police aggressively questioned the tearful girlfriend of a young black man they had just shot dead as he held a BB gun in an Ohio supermarket – accusing her of lying, threatening her with jail, and suggesting that she was high on drugs.

Tasha Thomas was reduced to swearing on the lives of her relatives that John Crawford III had not been carrying a firearm when they entered the Walmart in Beavercreek, near Dayton, to buy crackers, marshmallows and chocolate bars on the evening of 5 August.

“You lie to me and you might be on your way to jail,” detective Rodney Curd told Thomas, as she wept and repeatedly offered to take a lie-detector test. After more than an hour and a half of questioning and statement-taking, Curd finally told Thomas that Crawford, 22, had died.

But it's people wearing t-shirts that are the real problem.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

At least Operation Paperclip

Had arguably redeeming qualities...it wasn't an out-and-out sequel.

The CIA officer tasked with interrogating the most important prisoners in America's secret detention programme allegedly abused captives during the agency's covert operations in Latin America in the 1980s, it has emerged. The US Senate's three-year inquiry into the CIA's use of torture after September 11 reveals that a senior agent involved in the programme was recommended for censure decades earlier for “inappropriate use of interrogation techniques”.

Inspiring.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Nah..."one parting rectal probe" would be more accurate

Mr. Turtle has gummed:

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) bashed a CIA torture report released by Democrats on Tuesday as just one last "thumb in the eye of the Bush administration."

Might want to work on that quality control...

Ugh.

A woman in Los Angeles discovered a swastika in the design of a roll of wrapping paper while she was shopping on Saturday in the Hanukkah section of a Walgreens, television station KNBC reported.

Naturally

And guess what ethnicity that guy is?

On Wednesday, a Staten Island grand jury decided not to return an indictment for the police officer who put Eric Garner, an unarmed black man, in a chokehold shortly before his death. A different Staten Island grand jury was less sympathetic to Ramsey Orta, however, the man who filmed the entire incident. In August, less than a month after filming the fatal July 17 encounter in which Daniel Pantaleo and other NYPD police officers confronted Garner for allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes, a grand jury indicted Orta on weapons charges stemming from an arrest by undercover officers earlier that month.

You know, maybe Mr. Orta deserved to be indicted...just like Daniel Pantaleo?

Well that's rich...

From a walking moral calamity.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) said on Wednesday that slain Ferguson, Mo. teenager Michael Brown would still be alive if he'd acted "like something other than a thug."

Which is rich considering...

As governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee had a hand pardoning or commuting many more prisoners than his three immediate predecessors combined. Maurice Clemmons, the suspect in Sunday's slaying of four Seattle-area police officers, was among them.

I suppose if Mike Huckabee had a conscience these sorts of statements would bother him. Fortunately... [cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Priorities people! Not, "priorities, people"

Sounds like at least a good start.

The New York City mayor wants to spend $130 million over four years to overhaul how the nation's most populous city deals with mentally ill and drug-addicted suspects, diverting many to treatment instead of the city's troubled Rikers Island jail complex. Mayor Bill de Blasio's plans, announced Tuesday, are based on the recommendations of a task force he appointed following a series of reports by The Associated Press detailing problems at Rikers, including the deaths of two inmates suffering from serious mental illness.

Undoubtedly this amount will be decried as a massive waste of tax-payer dollars. As opposed to the incredible value that comes from spending $1.8 billion on a pair of baseball stadiums. [cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Assange's Revenge...served cold...and at Ikea.

Karl Rove is gonna be so mad...it is after all undoubtedly part of Sweden's plan for global domination.

Whistleblower Edward Snowden received several standing ovations in the Swedish parliament after being given the Right Livelihood award for his revelations of the scale of state surveillance. Snowden, who is in exile in Russia, addressed the parliament by video from Moscow. In a symbolic gesture, his family and supporters said no one picked up the award on his behalf in the hope that one day he might be free to travel to Sweden to receive it in person.

Meanwhile, America is about a month away from giving Michelle Duggar's womb a Medal of Freedom. [cross-posted at Firedoglake]

It takes a hypocrite to know one

Every county on Earth can pretty much point an accusatory finger at another nation for its history of abuses or current awfulness.

However, some hit home more than others.

Condemned at the UN for rights abuses, North Korea hit back Friday, describing the United States as a human rights "tundra" where racial discrimination flourishes.

..."This is clear proof of the real picture of the US as a tundra of human rights, where extreme racial discrimination acts are openly practised," the spokesman was quoted as saying by the North's official KCNA news agency.

His remarks came a week after the UN adopted a landmark resolution urging the Security Council to refer North Korea's leaders to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for possible indictment on crimes against humanity.

The have a point. Ferguson isn’t about black rage against cops. It’s white rage against progress. [cross-posted at Firedoglake]