> The statute requires that a person knowingly circulate a false report. Combs says she was repeating what people told her. Gregory says she should have verified it with the hospitals first
It would be a violation of HIPAA for a medical system to disclose that to a private individual. The State Health Services or TCEQ would need to conduct that investigation and ask those questions. Both of those are state level agencies and would require significant momentum for a small town like Trinidad to trigger their attention. Ironically, it sounds like her social media post and the Streisand effect around it have triggered a TCEQ boil water notice and (likely) an investigation.
It is absolutely bizarre for a municipal or county law enforcement agency to take interest in this kind of thing. Texas Rangers and federal authorities should be looking at what triggered her arrest and whatever investigation came before it. That's assuming Greg Abbot, Dan Patrick, or Ken Paxton haven't totally compromised them at this point.
HIPAA or not, I assume the hospital wouldn’t tell a private citizen anything concerning anyone else, just on general principles. There’s no FOIA or something like that to force them to.
But they don't have to disclose identifying information to say, "yeah, we've had more XYZ cases," or some other statistic. I'm not saying she should have to contact the hospital to exercise her right to free speech. I'm just saying that HIPAA doesn't mean healthcare institutions are a black box. I find that idea strange because I can immediately see how to ask questions to work around it while still protecting individuals.
> It would be a violation of HIPAA for a medical system to disclose that to a private individual.
If multiple people told her they were hospitalized then you could ask and answer about that in a general way without violating HIPPA. "Were the multiple cases of hospitalization due to water quality issues in the recent month?" As long as individual data isn't revealed then there is no violation. Which is obvious when you think about any generalized health statistics.
Which isn't to defend the Trinidad Police department, but to point out, if their concern was community awareness, then they could have asked any news outlet to do this same reporting as a matter of public interest.
Instead the police decide that it's better to use their limited resources to take a citizen into custody over factually ambiguous statements. We live in disappointing times so it's not hard to imagine a friend or colleague pressured the police into violating this woman's civil rights in an effort to shut everyone up about the sorry state of their infrastructure.
Texas is a quasi fascist state at this point. I wouldn’t hold your breath about Greg Abbott coming to the rescue. This type of interaction with their constituents is common now.
What do you mean? Abbott and politicians like him are well known for disregarding the law for their own advancement/benefit. There's a long list of court cases they've lost if you want to look this up.
Your desire that more politicians behave this way doesn't make them not corrupt.
Didn't greg abbot spend a lot of time trying to make political hay out of persecuting a Muslim charity? Not from the state, so correct me if I am wrong.
I assume she will get a settlement, the city (the taxpayer) will pay for it and nothing else changes. There will be even less money for infrastructure repair and people will keep voting for the same people.
The point of the arrest was not to win. The point was to inconvenience the whistleblower, cause her grief, and maybe as a bonus make her spend a night or two in jail. Nobody doing this remotely believed that they wouldn't have to settle. They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother.
Same for the guy in TN who got arrested for posting that anti-conservative meme. Nobody thought they would win, but they want to make everyone else think twice about criticizing a particular political side.
>They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother.
some of my students have expressed that they wish they could get arrested for a meme and walk away with a couple hundred grand.
i, of course, have told them that they would be playing with fire. but they are still viewing it as a potentially life-changing payday. so, for some subset of people, they might be having to opposite of the desired chilling effect.
> They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother.
That needs reiterating because an uncomfortable amount of people think this sort of thing simply doesn't affect them.
Much like peter thiel’s lawsuits against Gawker, which included funding a guy who dubiously claimed to have invented email and sued Gawker for pointing out this was absurd.
That's not a fair assumption in the current political environment.
Those who have lots of money will get fair hearings under the court, but those with less power might not. There's a reason people like Elon Musk write into agreements that they must be settled in particular Texas courts.
I don't think that's the full picture. Activist judges have been a problem for awhile now, and it seems to be mostly influenced by ideology rather than purely money.
I think everything is consistent with the perspective Texas represents toward the united states. It's fine if Texas doesn't implement reforms and fails. (There are 49 other states and may the ones that invent or adopt the best practices survive.)
What do you think “fails” means exactly? How does Texas fail in a way that doesn’t harm innocent people in both Texas and the rest of the country/world?
Texas is larger (in both population and economy) than most countries in the world.
fine for who? Texans? this is a silly mentality, no need to compare any other location, Texas as a standalone entity and the many stakeholders wouldn’t reasonably think it’s fine
I was immediately reminded of this old piece on water quality issues and local politics...
> An Enemy of the People [..] is an 1882 play [..] that [..] centers on Dr. Thomas Stockmann, who discovers a serious contamination issue in his town's new spas, endangering public health. His courageous decision to expose this truth brings severe backlash from local leaders [..]
This is the sort of comment that really enriches my life. Not only would I not have known about this author (I'm an english-only speaker), but I clicked onto another work ("Ghosts" in english, possibly more accurate as "Again Walkers" per the wiki), and this quickly grabs my interest:
"Because of its subject matter, which includes religion, venereal disease, incest, and euthanasia, it immediately generated strong controversy and adverse criticism."
This author wrote stuff that broke norms with taboo. That alone doesn't make the work meaningful, but the accolades mentioned in the article make me think of him as a P.T. Anderson of his time. Thanks for the reference and link!
It seems suspicious to me that they do not include the "offending" Facebook post. It seems like this is it, and it seems completely in the realm of journalism,
It's facebook post. Firefox's "copy text from image" gives this unformatted blob:
> Southern Belle Watch • 1h • 2 Author We have received reports that some citizens have been hospitalized due to bacteria in the water. This is a serious public health concern that deserves immediate attention. If your water looks discolored, contains sediment, has a strong odor, or you have experienced related health issues, please send us a message. We are gathering information and reporting findings to the state. We are aware that not all areas of Trinidad are experiencing these issues. However, if your water is affected, your information could help identify patterns and ensure the problem is addressed properly. Please include: • Your area or neighborhood (no exact address needed • Photos or videos of the water (if available) • Dates and times the issue occurred • Any notices you may have received • Any health concerns you're willing to share Your information can help bring attention to the issue and support efforts to improve water quality for everyone. If you have information or your water looks like this, please send us a message Reply
I'm not a lawyer, but I think qualified immunity should not apply to constitutional violations. Giving an opt-out for those violations is antithetical to the very substance of our (US) constitution.
It literally is not supposed to. The ruling that is currently used for the precedent is Harlow v Fitzgerald, which states:
> The Court held that "government officials performing discretionary functions, generally are shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known."
It seems to me that a reasonable person would know this violates constitutional rights if you arrest people that criticize the government.
It's weird to me that courts don't at-least attempt to review if the conduct was in good faith and plausibly reasonable given the facts know at the time.
The idea that officials aren't personally liable for mistakes made in good faith isn't bad.
But somehow the US tends to produce a lot of cases where good faith requires a lot of faith :)
Qualified immunity, as a concept, makes perfect sense. Police officers are not jurists, and they will make mistakes in enforcing the law. Making those officers personally liable for honest mistakes is, IMO, excessive.
The issue isn't qualified immunity itself, but rather the maximalist interpretation that seems pervasive in the US justice system, and the overwhelmingly broad definition of "honest mistake" that seemingly applies to the police, and the police alone.
yup, i think a majority of people would agree with you, so why hasn't it happened? I think the answer is that elected representatives are more beholden to public sector unions than their constituents.
The problem with that is sometimes it's not clear if something is a constitutional violation. Here, it was clear, but in general you don't want to do that.
Something that should be exempt from qualified immunity are actions that go against court orders.
Bonus points if they can ransack the person's car or house searching for evidence of the crime. They could also seize all weapons and cash they find since those were used in the commission of a crime.
Yikes, they’ll have to arrest most of the current federal administration if they ever set foot in Texas if that post meets the criteria for that particular law. That’s going to cause problems.
“We have received reports that some citizens have been hospitalized due to bacteria in the water. This is a serious public health concern that deserves immediate attention. If your water looks discolored, contains sediment, has a strong odor, or you have experienced related health issues, please send us a message. We are gathering information and reporting findings to the state.”
that is pretty solidly "free speech", not defamation, not allegations of anything, not "libel"‡
‡libel
noun
1. a published false statement that is damaging to a person's reputation; a written defamation
Example: he was found guilty of a libel on a Liverpool inspector of taxes
-defamation
-defamation of character
-character assassination
2. (in admiralty and ecclesiastical law) a plaintiff's written declaration
verb
1. defame (someone) by publishing a libel
Example: the jury found that he was libelled by a newspaper
----
But law can be complex and "injustices" happen all the time, so we'll see...
Everything is an accident, an anecdote, only trust the state with your authoritative quantitative data! There's surely no philosophical issues with that! There's no issues with definitional authority!
This is dumb af. There should be an extremely small subset of things you can say online that get you arrested. This is definitely not one of them. I hope she she’s and it’s sets a precedent for cases after. I’d hate to see a ruling like the UK. While is vervently disagree with some of the awful things they post they shouldn’t be arrested for it.
> "[Chief Charles] Gregory says she should have verified it with the hospitals first."
What is a hospital going to tell a member of the public with HIPPA laws? As police chief he has a great deal of deferred power. Officials will talk to him. Private citizen making an inquiry is going to get crickets. Heck--have you ever been walking down the street or walked outside your home and found a police or fire department cordon? Asked what's going on and the fire department won't respond to your questions and the police department will tell you to go back in your house or move along.
One point of Devil's Advocate. Social media, YouTube and mobile phone video has created a very difficult situation. People who are untrained in reporting are making wild statements. And Evil People are undermining good faith everywhere (news, politics, public safety, health, citizenship, the rule of law).
I've never ever seen so many legal cases taking this strong line against free speech in my lifetime. These are extraordinary times.
I once stated to one of my fathers aqaintences in the local town council that I was considering refuseing to pay my water bill on the grounds that water is defined as a coulorless, odourless liquid, and what comes out of my tap is niether, his imediate request was "can I use that?"
and so, not too long after we got a significant upgrade to the towns water, which is now of a much better quality, withmore upgrades all the time.
All the criticism the UK and European countries get from American tech billionaires for censorship…then…this. No one anywhere could argue this post is some sort of hate speech to even mildly cover their arses.
The difference with Europe may be that in this case the charges have already been dropped. Not saying it's great, but at least it was stopped, and she may sue for reparations. I don't think the "hateful posts" cases in the UK or Germany end up like this.
Water is handled at the city level, not the federal level. If you have incompetent local leadership, this can happen. Incompetent local leaders can (and have!) bankrupted their cities.
The US is a huge country. In general it has excellent water; the US averages better than the EU. The Environmental Performance Index is a report that measures many things, and they have a handy section where they measure DALYs lost from sanitation and drinking water. For this section the US scores 96, within a few points of Switzerland (100), Sweden (97), Austria (96), Denmark (94), Belgium (93) and comfortably above the Netherlands (91), France (88), Poland (80), Czechia (79) and Japan (78.)
There are isolated incidents of poor water quality in each of those countries, and especially in small towns of eight hundred people in rural areas, but generally speaking, clear drinking water that is free of bacteria is standard.
On the other hand the US often relies on relatively crude chlorination to reach those levels, which those 'top' European countries don't. They instead put a strong emphasis on protecting the source water and then treating it via ozone, UV, biofiltration and slow sand filtration.
The taste of chlorinated water generally isn't tolerated.
>How can X in the richest nation in the history of the planet be...
I've honestly grown absolutely sick of this type of comment as I get older. If you're not from the states, it's maybe understandable, but throughout my life most of the folks with me on the left that make these statements are completely ignorant of how their own government works and just assume "shit should be taken care of" without actually having to put any work in. It drives me crazy.
The vast majority of our electorate doesn't pay attention to politics, and then votes for feel-good measures (often very expensive), and almost universally avoid actual long-term net positive investments, like urban density and avoiding bond issuances wherever they are impractical.
As you see small towns welcoming -- even courting -- data centers while everyone in the town hates and protests them... yea, it's almost certainly because the town is broke, and the only folks who realize it are the city officials.
>How does a town ... not have the resources to get clear drinking water flowing through their taps?
Many, many, many, towns in America are functionally insolvent! The amount of cost it takes to maintain our road/sewer/water/refuse/emergency/energy systems is very often more than the tax revenue that the town can bring in. This is literally the entire point of the Strong Towns organization: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020-5-14-americas-growt...
Rebuilding a water system is one of the most significant municipal finance events that a city will have to deal with, and more and more cities across the nation are requiring federal bailouts; e.g., the Jackson, Mississippi water crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson,_Mississippi,_water_cr....
It's just so frustrating as someone who cares about municipal finances that American cities' sustainability that most people think that it's just supposed to work itself out when cities are just lighting money on fires... often to the cheers of the electorate who voted for it.
Well I'm not from the states and I stopped reading at that point. If you're "absolutely sick" of this conversation don't participate in it, but if you're going to you should do so politely and in good faith, not starting with a tirade like that.
We have more than enough resources, but a lot of people don't want to pay taxes to clean it or restrain corporations from polluting our water supply inn the first place. I'm guessing that plenty of people in this woman's own town were cheering Trump's slashing of the EPA's budget and deregulating clean air and water. Just this week the administration announced plans to kill off or delay limits in the amount of PFAS in the drinking water. They argue it's too expensive to limit or filter the poison but then give no-bid contracts out to their unqualified friends for tens of millions of dollars and spend a trillion bombing other countries for no reason so it's pretty clear where the priorities are and it isn't with us.
complete and utter incompetence by local elected officials. If one of the richest towns in America (average home price of >$2m) can do it - just imagine how bad it can be in "average" towns...
The country is the richest, but the money is not distributed equally. One factor to keep in mind is that the state would rather give the richest man in the world tax breaks rather than make sure everyone has safe drinking water.
Because the US is a third world country cosplaying as a developed nation. Much like their president is a corrupt and morally bankrupt fool cosplaying as a politician.
I see so many shitpost twitter and facebook pages that claim actually harmful misinformation, absolutely disgusting levels of picking one and ignoring the other. Especially when given the evidence now, she was sharing legitimate information.
If you look at the legal system through the lens of "what benefits the wealthy or powerful?" you will more accurately guess what is going to happen and this goes from local issues such as this one all the way to the Supreme Court.
We just had the Broadview 6 case dismissed (with prejudice) this week. The Broadview 6 included former Chicago Congressional primary contender, Kat Abugazaleh. It was a bullshit set of charges for daring to protest an ICE facility. It was always going away but what was more disturbing is the prosecutorial misconduct [1]. The level of misconduct should rise to the level of disbarment. It will get referred to the bar and it'll probably be some slap-on-the-wrist sanctions however.
Prosecutors hold a lot of power and can make your life hell. They need to be held to a very high standard and any whiff of this kind of misconduct should forever bar you from being a prosecutor or a judge.
In this case the prosecutor basically engaged in witness tampering (effectively) with the grand jury proceedings and then tried to cover it up by redacting those parts of the grand jury transcripts. Those redactions basically amount to committing perjury, making false filings to the court under oath.
That's the lengths prosecutors will go to to crush protests. This goes equally for exposing incompetence, negligence or corruption by the town for mismanaging the water supply. This kind of overreach and misconduct is all too common.
Not surprised. Tarrant County told the US Marshals my styrofoam cooler with vomit in it was a “bomb threat” and charged me with use of a DEADLY WEAPON. Honestly. If my public defender hadn’t colluded with the Prosecution it wouldn’t be on my record today.
This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better in the US. I’m a nonviolent cripple. Meanwhile a pardoned Jan 6 rioter just told a City Counsel “they should be strung up” and isn’t even being charged. Totally depends what team you’re on right now.
It said they were covering up abuse by a Deputy and that they should clean house old school out front of their HQ. There was a drawing of a noose on it. At no point did the note say anything about action being planned or threatened against them, only that they should do it themselves. I’ve got a copy of it if you’re interested to see the real thing. that.sam.cliff via the mail service of the company under alphabet.
Even my public defender read it line by line with me and admitted “there’s no threat here” but he’s a fat drunk dependent on them giving him work. He even told me about his “chats” with the Prosecution attorney to “negotiate” the plea deal. Totally rotten. Turned my life around since then but by no means was justice served…I keep my squeaky clean self out of the County as much as possible.
FWIW 70 inmates have died in custody in the past 5 years. Place is understaffed by 100+ officers.
I got to admit, whoever at the town hall or whatever sent the cop to this woman's door really has some balls considering the color of the water. I feel like when this is the water your citizens get out of the faucet you should be busy doing something else instead of trying to jail people who complain about it.
The craziest part is the police defending this action as a “cut and dry” case. Meanwhile the lawsuit this woman just filed will hurt taxpayers and not the corrupt city officials and police that caused this. We need to ban all forms of immunity - none for cops, politicians, or judges. They need to be personally liable for their actions.
It's absolutely not the slightest bit crazy if you've paid attention to how cops behave at any point in the last history of the country. 100% agree about personal responsibility. You must understand that when the cops says that oversight means they can't do their job, that means they view their job as bullying, harassing and killing citizens, so yea, we should put a stop to that. 1312
I will not put the blame on the bobbies, that's too convenient. Someone had to order them to do this. That's who needs to be permanently ousted from all levels of government and their voting rights rescinded.
I hear you, but there has to be some balance between full immunity and no immunity at all. The one thing that comes to mind is rich and powerful people, because they have unlimited resources to sue and ruin the lives of cops, judges and politicians, which would lead to these officials avoiding to hold rich and powerful individuals accountable even when they have committed crimes.
I'm not a lawyer, but what you're describing sounds to me like an example of strategic lawsuits against public participation, just where the targeted "public" isn't a member of the general public but a public servant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...
"would"? There is currently a disparity in how rich and poor people are policed.
I get the point that there should be some limited immunity so they can do their jobs. Debatable, but worth the debate.
The argument about the repercussions of eliminating immunity is logical. It just seems like one of those things where there are multiple factors contributing to undesirable outcomes, and that makes it necessary to talk to experts.
You're so close! Instead of patching the issue maybe let's solve the root problem of spiky power distribution among humans. We don't need to make sure cops have immunity to prosecute powerful people. We need to not have powerful people.
(though realistically speaking yes there's probably some level of procedural immunity that probably makes sense, similarly with business bankruptcies not ruining the people who start the business)
Exactly which types of politicians, judges etc would be targeted by liability do you think? The unrighteous politicians? The judges in favour of those in power?
I mean that when someone files a lawsuit to defend their civil/constitutional rights and wins, the penalty must be paid by the offenders and not taxpayers. For example the police who made the arrest and their supervisors.
In my experience (I sued my town for violating my first amendment rights), the city will have insurance that will cover any damages or settlement they have to pay. Their premiums will likely go up, but the impact to taxpayers is probably minimal.
This entire debacle weirds me out. Surely the police is aware of the water issues. They drink from the same tap as the locals do. What would a sane person call arresting people that publicly call out that your water supply is obviously contaminated?
I hope she sues the city and everyone involved personally for tens of millions. This is insane. The water is brown. Do not drink it. Instead boil it. Posts that it’s bad. Get jailed. Wtf?
Since at least the 70s everyone knew that it caused lung cancer. It's just that industry spending prevented anyone from doing something about it, in the exactly the same way that we've been seeing with global warming.
This type of treatment of citizenry by the State of Texas, and its various (and especially red) localities should be all one needs to see of where conservatives (and Christian Naitonalism) will take our country in the future -- should they get their way. Republicans hope to enable just such a future by scaring Americans with made-up visions of transsexuals 'grooming' their children, yet they cleverly hide what awaits behind the curtain. The is the same curtain that hides why Israel is supposed to be so very, very important to the U.S. but not so much that we make them state #51. This is the magical (read: Biblical) rationale that the U.S. makes excuses for Israel's attack on its own USS Liberty in 1967.
Saying nothing of the future of abortion & contraception, U.S. conservatives base their worldview on sexuality & reproduction and seek to burden it with fixtures that we have already spent hundreds of year to free ourselves from. At the same time, they take their eye off the ball of keeping our country competitive in the world. How embarrassing it is now to have the Chinese president suggest that the U.S. is in decline and that it shouldn't get caught in a Thucydides Trap.
> the U.S. makes excuses for Israel's attack on its own USS Liberty in 1967.
It's strange how this 59-year-old incident keeps getting brought up. Friendly fire happens all the time, and Israel apologized and paid reparations ages ago.
Except they don't happen all the time, because this incident killed 34 Americans & wounded 171. Is that not remarkable enough for a 'blue-ribbon' commission of investigation? If one of our European allies had done this, wouldn't a commission be held to review all the evidence and make a determination as to cause?
One needn't dig too deep to see there isn't too much wiggle room for mere misunderstanding. The nearly defenseless ship suffered 2 hours of withering attack by both waves of jets and torpedo boats; this with an American flag and its hull number in open display as it operated in international waters. The context was that this ship was an intelligence ship bristling with antennas and recording everything it could from the combatants in the ongoing six-day-war in 1967.
If there's any conspiracy, its how for years afterward whenever a congressman sought an investigation as requested by one of the family of those killed, the effort was silently killed despite its impact, over and over.
There are a lot of details involved and many actions to be assessed on both sides, but it should merit more than a Navy Court of Inquiry. When the captain of the ship received his Medal of Honor for saving his ship while injured, it was awarded to him by the Secretary of the Navy quietly at the Washington Navy Yard. The usual procedure is that the MoH be presented by the president in the White House in a ceremony. So, there's that.
This is newsworthy because it's a clear and flagrant violation of her rights.
Source: I was threatened with a lawsuit by my own town for criticizing them online, but the ACLU helped me counter sue and win a settlement for violating my first amendment rights.
These small towns are often just armed HOAs and the law is usually secondary to administration whim. One would imagine that state and federal police are the weapons to bring to bear on them.
> The statute requires that a person knowingly circulate a false report. Combs says she was repeating what people told her. Gregory says she should have verified it with the hospitals first
It would be a violation of HIPAA for a medical system to disclose that to a private individual. The State Health Services or TCEQ would need to conduct that investigation and ask those questions. Both of those are state level agencies and would require significant momentum for a small town like Trinidad to trigger their attention. Ironically, it sounds like her social media post and the Streisand effect around it have triggered a TCEQ boil water notice and (likely) an investigation.
It is absolutely bizarre for a municipal or county law enforcement agency to take interest in this kind of thing. Texas Rangers and federal authorities should be looking at what triggered her arrest and whatever investigation came before it. That's assuming Greg Abbot, Dan Patrick, or Ken Paxton haven't totally compromised them at this point.
HIPAA or not, I assume the hospital wouldn’t tell a private citizen anything concerning anyone else, just on general principles. There’s no FOIA or something like that to force them to.
But they don't have to disclose identifying information to say, "yeah, we've had more XYZ cases," or some other statistic. I'm not saying she should have to contact the hospital to exercise her right to free speech. I'm just saying that HIPAA doesn't mean healthcare institutions are a black box. I find that idea strange because I can immediately see how to ask questions to work around it while still protecting individuals.
> It would be a violation of HIPAA for a medical system to disclose that to a private individual.
If multiple people told her they were hospitalized then you could ask and answer about that in a general way without violating HIPPA. "Were the multiple cases of hospitalization due to water quality issues in the recent month?" As long as individual data isn't revealed then there is no violation. Which is obvious when you think about any generalized health statistics.
Which isn't to defend the Trinidad Police department, but to point out, if their concern was community awareness, then they could have asked any news outlet to do this same reporting as a matter of public interest.
Instead the police decide that it's better to use their limited resources to take a citizen into custody over factually ambiguous statements. We live in disappointing times so it's not hard to imagine a friend or colleague pressured the police into violating this woman's civil rights in an effort to shut everyone up about the sorry state of their infrastructure.
Texas is a quasi fascist state at this point. I wouldn’t hold your breath about Greg Abbott coming to the rescue. This type of interaction with their constituents is common now.
hippa is not that. well, it more than one person was involved.
it only prevents personably identifiable information to be shared with institutions that are not hippa compliant. nothing else.
Why would those politicians have compromised them? I wish my state had more politicians like Abbott.
What do you mean? Abbott and politicians like him are well known for disregarding the law for their own advancement/benefit. There's a long list of court cases they've lost if you want to look this up.
Your desire that more politicians behave this way doesn't make them not corrupt.
Didn't greg abbot spend a lot of time trying to make political hay out of persecuting a Muslim charity? Not from the state, so correct me if I am wrong.
You wish your state had more politicians that disregarded the constitution?
I assume she will get a settlement, the city (the taxpayer) will pay for it and nothing else changes. There will be even less money for infrastructure repair and people will keep voting for the same people.
The point of the arrest was not to win. The point was to inconvenience the whistleblower, cause her grief, and maybe as a bonus make her spend a night or two in jail. Nobody doing this remotely believed that they wouldn't have to settle. They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother.
Same for the guy in TN who got arrested for posting that anti-conservative meme. Nobody thought they would win, but they want to make everyone else think twice about criticizing a particular political side.
>They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother.
some of my students have expressed that they wish they could get arrested for a meme and walk away with a couple hundred grand.
i, of course, have told them that they would be playing with fire. but they are still viewing it as a potentially life-changing payday. so, for some subset of people, they might be having to opposite of the desired chilling effect.
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Mostly this
> They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother.
That needs reiterating because an uncomfortable amount of people think this sort of thing simply doesn't affect them.
This is why the saying “you can beat the rap but you can’t beat the ride” exists.
They know the charges won’t stick, they are using the process of fighting the charges itself as the punishment.
The process is the punishment.
Much like peter thiel’s lawsuits against Gawker, which included funding a guy who dubiously claimed to have invented email and sued Gawker for pointing out this was absurd.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/peter-thiel-email-inventor_n_...
YC and its founders worship him like a hero.
That's not a fair assumption in the current political environment.
Those who have lots of money will get fair hearings under the court, but those with less power might not. There's a reason people like Elon Musk write into agreements that they must be settled in particular Texas courts.
I don't think that's the full picture. Activist judges have been a problem for awhile now, and it seems to be mostly influenced by ideology rather than purely money.
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I think everything is consistent with the perspective Texas represents toward the united states. It's fine if Texas doesn't implement reforms and fails. (There are 49 other states and may the ones that invent or adopt the best practices survive.)
What do you think “fails” means exactly? How does Texas fail in a way that doesn’t harm innocent people in both Texas and the rest of the country/world?
Texas is larger (in both population and economy) than most countries in the world.
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fine for who? Texans? this is a silly mentality, no need to compare any other location, Texas as a standalone entity and the many stakeholders wouldn’t reasonably think it’s fine
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I was immediately reminded of this old piece on water quality issues and local politics...
> An Enemy of the People [..] is an 1882 play [..] that [..] centers on Dr. Thomas Stockmann, who discovers a serious contamination issue in his town's new spas, endangering public health. His courageous decision to expose this truth brings severe backlash from local leaders [..]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Enemy_of_the_People
This is the sort of comment that really enriches my life. Not only would I not have known about this author (I'm an english-only speaker), but I clicked onto another work ("Ghosts" in english, possibly more accurate as "Again Walkers" per the wiki), and this quickly grabs my interest:
"Because of its subject matter, which includes religion, venereal disease, incest, and euthanasia, it immediately generated strong controversy and adverse criticism."
This author wrote stuff that broke norms with taboo. That alone doesn't make the work meaningful, but the accolades mentioned in the article make me think of him as a P.T. Anderson of his time. Thanks for the reference and link!
It seems suspicious to me that they do not include the "offending" Facebook post. It seems like this is it, and it seems completely in the realm of journalism,
https://scontent.fcps4-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/6654022...
It's in the article. The pictured post by "Southern Belle Watch".
This link doesn't seem to load
Not sure why they used that link (though it works fine for me). Here's the same screenshot from the article
https://media.reclaimthenet.org/2026/05/N35Bezr1GdxG.jpg
It's facebook post. Firefox's "copy text from image" gives this unformatted blob:
> Southern Belle Watch • 1h • 2 Author We have received reports that some citizens have been hospitalized due to bacteria in the water. This is a serious public health concern that deserves immediate attention. If your water looks discolored, contains sediment, has a strong odor, or you have experienced related health issues, please send us a message. We are gathering information and reporting findings to the state. We are aware that not all areas of Trinidad are experiencing these issues. However, if your water is affected, your information could help identify patterns and ensure the problem is addressed properly. Please include: • Your area or neighborhood (no exact address needed • Photos or videos of the water (if available) • Dates and times the issue occurred • Any notices you may have received • Any health concerns you're willing to share Your information can help bring attention to the issue and support efforts to improve water quality for everyone. If you have information or your water looks like this, please send us a message Reply
The domain only has an IPv6 address, so the link doesn't work on IPv4.
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wouldn't they be guilty of the same crime?
I'm not a lawyer, but I think qualified immunity should not apply to constitutional violations. Giving an opt-out for those violations is antithetical to the very substance of our (US) constitution.
It literally is not supposed to. The ruling that is currently used for the precedent is Harlow v Fitzgerald, which states:
> The Court held that "government officials performing discretionary functions, generally are shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known."
It seems to me that a reasonable person would know this violates constitutional rights if you arrest people that criticize the government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlow_v._Fitzgerald
Qualified immunity shouldn't even be a thing at all, as far as state and local officials are concerned. It was a "mistake" (emphasis on the quotes).
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/15/us/politics/qualified-imm...
It's weird to me that courts don't at-least attempt to review if the conduct was in good faith and plausibly reasonable given the facts know at the time.
The idea that officials aren't personally liable for mistakes made in good faith isn't bad. But somehow the US tends to produce a lot of cases where good faith requires a lot of faith :)
You would think using your office to file false charges against someone would be corruption just like using your office to embezzle money.
Qualified Immunity should not apply ever. Period. No one should be above the law for any reason ever.
Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Qualified immunity, as a concept, makes perfect sense. Police officers are not jurists, and they will make mistakes in enforcing the law. Making those officers personally liable for honest mistakes is, IMO, excessive.
The issue isn't qualified immunity itself, but rather the maximalist interpretation that seems pervasive in the US justice system, and the overwhelmingly broad definition of "honest mistake" that seemingly applies to the police, and the police alone.
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yup, i think a majority of people would agree with you, so why hasn't it happened? I think the answer is that elected representatives are more beholden to public sector unions than their constituents.
Texas: Famously pro-union
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The problem with that is sometimes it's not clear if something is a constitutional violation. Here, it was clear, but in general you don't want to do that.
Something that should be exempt from qualified immunity are actions that go against court orders.
The charges have already been dismissed: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/charges-dismissed-against-...
Good on the grand jury for not indicting this ham sandwich.
They always knew the charges wouldn’t stick. The punishment they were handing out was she had to spend a night in jail and spend money on a lawyer.
They already dished out the punishment, so they don’t care that it was dismissed.
Bonus points if they can ransack the person's car or house searching for evidence of the crime. They could also seize all weapons and cash they find since those were used in the commission of a crime.
"The punishment is the process."
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That town now has not just a bad water problem, but a large free speech lawsuit problem.
Maybe they could dock the Chief's retirement account?
Should be a “cut and dry” decision just like how he described the arrest
The chief of police stands proudly by his decision. This will happen again.
Yikes, they’ll have to arrest most of the current federal administration if they ever set foot in Texas if that post meets the criteria for that particular law. That’s going to cause problems.
Oh don't worry, the enforcement is extremely selective.
Never heard of Ken Paxton, I suppose?
ahem, that's senator paxton /s
who?
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"For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law."
I predict it won't stand.
“We have received reports that some citizens have been hospitalized due to bacteria in the water. This is a serious public health concern that deserves immediate attention. If your water looks discolored, contains sediment, has a strong odor, or you have experienced related health issues, please send us a message. We are gathering information and reporting findings to the state.”
that is pretty solidly "free speech", not defamation, not allegations of anything, not "libel"‡
‡libel noun 1. a published false statement that is damaging to a person's reputation; a written defamation
Example: he was found guilty of a libel on a Liverpool inspector of taxes
-defamation -defamation of character -character assassination
2. (in admiralty and ecclesiastical law) a plaintiff's written declaration
verb 1. defame (someone) by publishing a libel
Example: the jury found that he was libelled by a newspaper
---- But law can be complex and "injustices" happen all the time, so we'll see...
This week, there was two different settlement close to $800K related to someone posting and getting arrested about what charlie kirk said.
This woman shouldn't settle for anything less.
Do you have information on this? I’m curious to see.
Here's a post about it from FIRE, the org that defended him https://www.fire.org/news/victory-tennessee-man-jailed-37-da...
https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/17/politics/retired-cop-jailed-o...
The city issued a boil water advisory about about 13 or 14 days after her arrest.
they said to make sure you boil it slowly though, so the local frogs don’t jump out! /s
Somewhat similar premise to the recent settlement that came out for the man arrested for posting a meme in Tennessee https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/a-tennessee-man-was-ja...
And they said it wouldn't happen.
Everything is an accident, an anecdote, only trust the state with your authoritative quantitative data! There's surely no philosophical issues with that! There's no issues with definitional authority!
All arrests that don't result in a conviction should be completely expunged.
"We have received reports..." Is factually true and plausible given the accompanying photo and statements from city officials.
This is dumb af. There should be an extremely small subset of things you can say online that get you arrested. This is definitely not one of them. I hope she she’s and it’s sets a precedent for cases after. I’d hate to see a ruling like the UK. While is vervently disagree with some of the awful things they post they shouldn’t be arrested for it.
I would love to hire myself as legal professional in cases like this.
In fact I've already started collecting evidence on a no-win-no-fee basis.
Ready for action
Wow, many dictatorships wouldn't mind this level of speech.
> "[Chief Charles] Gregory says she should have verified it with the hospitals first."
What is a hospital going to tell a member of the public with HIPPA laws? As police chief he has a great deal of deferred power. Officials will talk to him. Private citizen making an inquiry is going to get crickets. Heck--have you ever been walking down the street or walked outside your home and found a police or fire department cordon? Asked what's going on and the fire department won't respond to your questions and the police department will tell you to go back in your house or move along.
One point of Devil's Advocate. Social media, YouTube and mobile phone video has created a very difficult situation. People who are untrained in reporting are making wild statements. And Evil People are undermining good faith everywhere (news, politics, public safety, health, citizenship, the rule of law).
I've never ever seen so many legal cases taking this strong line against free speech in my lifetime. These are extraordinary times.
I once stated to one of my fathers aqaintences in the local town council that I was considering refuseing to pay my water bill on the grounds that water is defined as a coulorless, odourless liquid, and what comes out of my tap is niether, his imediate request was "can I use that?" and so, not too long after we got a significant upgrade to the towns water, which is now of a much better quality, withmore upgrades all the time.
Looks to me like a pre-emptive fence electrification
“Don’t share concern about water quality online, or else”
All the criticism the UK and European countries get from American tech billionaires for censorship…then…this. No one anywhere could argue this post is some sort of hate speech to even mildly cover their arses.
The difference with Europe may be that in this case the charges have already been dropped. Not saying it's great, but at least it was stopped, and she may sue for reparations. I don't think the "hateful posts" cases in the UK or Germany end up like this.
> The city’s mayor, Dennis Haws, told reporters the pipes date back to the 1950s
How long should water pipes remain useful? Am I outrageously naive to think more than 75 years?
Perhaps they have been doing no maintenance....
How does a town in the richest nation in the history of the planet not have the resources to get clear drinking water flowing through their taps?
Presumably because they are spending their money prosecuting people complaining about bad water.
Money does not grow on trees, you know!
Water is handled at the city level, not the federal level. If you have incompetent local leadership, this can happen. Incompetent local leaders can (and have!) bankrupted their cities.
Texas also is all about no/low taxes.
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The US is a huge country. In general it has excellent water; the US averages better than the EU. The Environmental Performance Index is a report that measures many things, and they have a handy section where they measure DALYs lost from sanitation and drinking water. For this section the US scores 96, within a few points of Switzerland (100), Sweden (97), Austria (96), Denmark (94), Belgium (93) and comfortably above the Netherlands (91), France (88), Poland (80), Czechia (79) and Japan (78.)
There are isolated incidents of poor water quality in each of those countries, and especially in small towns of eight hundred people in rural areas, but generally speaking, clear drinking water that is free of bacteria is standard.
On the other hand the US often relies on relatively crude chlorination to reach those levels, which those 'top' European countries don't. They instead put a strong emphasis on protecting the source water and then treating it via ozone, UV, biofiltration and slow sand filtration.
The taste of chlorinated water generally isn't tolerated.
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> How does a town in the richest nation [...] not have the resources to get clear drinking water
It's a large country. Texas is a very large state, larger in size than France.
Texas recently voted to approve a $20 billion investment in water.
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/11/04/texas-elections-2025...
>How can X in the richest nation in the history of the planet be...
I've honestly grown absolutely sick of this type of comment as I get older. If you're not from the states, it's maybe understandable, but throughout my life most of the folks with me on the left that make these statements are completely ignorant of how their own government works and just assume "shit should be taken care of" without actually having to put any work in. It drives me crazy.
The vast majority of our electorate doesn't pay attention to politics, and then votes for feel-good measures (often very expensive), and almost universally avoid actual long-term net positive investments, like urban density and avoiding bond issuances wherever they are impractical.
As you see small towns welcoming -- even courting -- data centers while everyone in the town hates and protests them... yea, it's almost certainly because the town is broke, and the only folks who realize it are the city officials.
>How does a town ... not have the resources to get clear drinking water flowing through their taps?
Many, many, many, towns in America are functionally insolvent! The amount of cost it takes to maintain our road/sewer/water/refuse/emergency/energy systems is very often more than the tax revenue that the town can bring in. This is literally the entire point of the Strong Towns organization: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020-5-14-americas-growt...
Rebuilding a water system is one of the most significant municipal finance events that a city will have to deal with, and more and more cities across the nation are requiring federal bailouts; e.g., the Jackson, Mississippi water crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson,_Mississippi,_water_cr....
It's just so frustrating as someone who cares about municipal finances that American cities' sustainability that most people think that it's just supposed to work itself out when cities are just lighting money on fires... often to the cheers of the electorate who voted for it.
Well I'm not from the states and I stopped reading at that point. If you're "absolutely sick" of this conversation don't participate in it, but if you're going to you should do so politely and in good faith, not starting with a tirade like that.
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We have more than enough resources, but a lot of people don't want to pay taxes to clean it or restrain corporations from polluting our water supply inn the first place. I'm guessing that plenty of people in this woman's own town were cheering Trump's slashing of the EPA's budget and deregulating clean air and water. Just this week the administration announced plans to kill off or delay limits in the amount of PFAS in the drinking water. They argue it's too expensive to limit or filter the poison but then give no-bid contracts out to their unqualified friends for tens of millions of dollars and spend a trillion bombing other countries for no reason so it's pretty clear where the priorities are and it isn't with us.
You are mixing local and federal politics. This is a town issue and would likely have happened regardless of who occupied the Oval Office
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complete and utter incompetence by local elected officials. If one of the richest towns in America (average home price of >$2m) can do it - just imagine how bad it can be in "average" towns...
https://observer.com/2010/07/the-collapse-of-east-hampton-ho...
Cuz all that wealth belongs to about 14 people and everyone else gets police harassment and poison water
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The country is the richest, but the money is not distributed equally. One factor to keep in mind is that the state would rather give the richest man in the world tax breaks rather than make sure everyone has safe drinking water.
Because the US is a third world country cosplaying as a developed nation. Much like their president is a corrupt and morally bankrupt fool cosplaying as a politician.
It doesn't matter in the US. Just pretend.
I see so many shitpost twitter and facebook pages that claim actually harmful misinformation, absolutely disgusting levels of picking one and ignoring the other. Especially when given the evidence now, she was sharing legitimate information.
Apparently people here will also censor speech that doesn't align with their narratives, but will complain loudly when speech that does is censored.
> [The mayor] acknowledged discussions about forming a committee to address the issue.
Sounds like concepts of a plan. So, they ain't doin' shit, except arresting people who speak up.
If you look at the legal system through the lens of "what benefits the wealthy or powerful?" you will more accurately guess what is going to happen and this goes from local issues such as this one all the way to the Supreme Court.
We just had the Broadview 6 case dismissed (with prejudice) this week. The Broadview 6 included former Chicago Congressional primary contender, Kat Abugazaleh. It was a bullshit set of charges for daring to protest an ICE facility. It was always going away but what was more disturbing is the prosecutorial misconduct [1]. The level of misconduct should rise to the level of disbarment. It will get referred to the bar and it'll probably be some slap-on-the-wrist sanctions however.
Prosecutors hold a lot of power and can make your life hell. They need to be held to a very high standard and any whiff of this kind of misconduct should forever bar you from being a prosecutor or a judge.
In this case the prosecutor basically engaged in witness tampering (effectively) with the grand jury proceedings and then tried to cover it up by redacting those parts of the grand jury transcripts. Those redactions basically amount to committing perjury, making false filings to the court under oath.
That's the lengths prosecutors will go to to crush protests. This goes equally for exposing incompetence, negligence or corruption by the town for mismanaging the water supply. This kind of overreach and misconduct is all too common.
[1]:https://capitolnewsillinois.com/news/broadview-6-trial-cance...
Not surprised. Tarrant County told the US Marshals my styrofoam cooler with vomit in it was a “bomb threat” and charged me with use of a DEADLY WEAPON. Honestly. If my public defender hadn’t colluded with the Prosecution it wouldn’t be on my record today.
This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better in the US. I’m a nonviolent cripple. Meanwhile a pardoned Jan 6 rioter just told a City Counsel “they should be strung up” and isn’t even being charged. Totally depends what team you’re on right now.
"Meanwhile a pardoned Jan 6 rioter just told a City Counsel “they should be strung up” and isn’t even being charged."
A great candidate to get some money from the lawfare fund.
Is this from 2024? The news article mentioned a threatening note. Curious what it said.
It said they were covering up abuse by a Deputy and that they should clean house old school out front of their HQ. There was a drawing of a noose on it. At no point did the note say anything about action being planned or threatened against them, only that they should do it themselves. I’ve got a copy of it if you’re interested to see the real thing. that.sam.cliff via the mail service of the company under alphabet.
Even my public defender read it line by line with me and admitted “there’s no threat here” but he’s a fat drunk dependent on them giving him work. He even told me about his “chats” with the Prosecution attorney to “negotiate” the plea deal. Totally rotten. Turned my life around since then but by no means was justice served…I keep my squeaky clean self out of the County as much as possible.
FWIW 70 inmates have died in custody in the past 5 years. Place is understaffed by 100+ officers.
so much for democracy
you forgot to date that properly, 20 January, 2025
100% of all law enforcement is criminal. Nobody makes laws except criminals
I don’t agree with the arrest and definitely not every law either, but this has got to be rage bait. I’m quite happy to live in a society with laws
Where is JD Vance preaching about free speech like he did in the UK. Twat.
I got to admit, whoever at the town hall or whatever sent the cop to this woman's door really has some balls considering the color of the water. I feel like when this is the water your citizens get out of the faucet you should be busy doing something else instead of trying to jail people who complain about it.
Imagine the town of flynt getting arrested for having your government fail you.
Saving this one for the next time an American says, 'In your stupid European country you can get arrested for simply saying something online'
You left out the word legally. You can legally be arrested for simply saying something online. This was not a legal arrest. Small difference
Semantics. The result is the same. The cause: no repercussions for missing the system that is in place is a bigger fallacy imho
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Doesn't 'legal arrest' have a specific legal meaning? How have you ascertained it was an illegal arrest? And what made it illegal?
The craziest part is the police defending this action as a “cut and dry” case. Meanwhile the lawsuit this woman just filed will hurt taxpayers and not the corrupt city officials and police that caused this. We need to ban all forms of immunity - none for cops, politicians, or judges. They need to be personally liable for their actions.
It's absolutely not the slightest bit crazy if you've paid attention to how cops behave at any point in the last history of the country. 100% agree about personal responsibility. You must understand that when the cops says that oversight means they can't do their job, that means they view their job as bullying, harassing and killing citizens, so yea, we should put a stop to that. 1312
> It's absolutely not the slightest bit crazy
Imo, speaking like this normalizes their behavior - it was crazy then and it's crazy now.
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I will not put the blame on the bobbies, that's too convenient. Someone had to order them to do this. That's who needs to be permanently ousted from all levels of government and their voting rights rescinded.
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[redacted] all police but don't pretend it isn't crazy. Not every country is like this.
I hear you, but there has to be some balance between full immunity and no immunity at all. The one thing that comes to mind is rich and powerful people, because they have unlimited resources to sue and ruin the lives of cops, judges and politicians, which would lead to these officials avoiding to hold rich and powerful individuals accountable even when they have committed crimes.
I'm not a lawyer, but what you're describing sounds to me like an example of strategic lawsuits against public participation, just where the targeted "public" isn't a member of the general public but a public servant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...
These lawsuits need to be charged against the police pension funds, not the city coffers
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"would"? There is currently a disparity in how rich and poor people are policed.
I get the point that there should be some limited immunity so they can do their jobs. Debatable, but worth the debate.
The argument about the repercussions of eliminating immunity is logical. It just seems like one of those things where there are multiple factors contributing to undesirable outcomes, and that makes it necessary to talk to experts.
You're so close! Instead of patching the issue maybe let's solve the root problem of spiky power distribution among humans. We don't need to make sure cops have immunity to prosecute powerful people. We need to not have powerful people.
(though realistically speaking yes there's probably some level of procedural immunity that probably makes sense, similarly with business bankruptcies not ruining the people who start the business)
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Exactly which types of politicians, judges etc would be targeted by liability do you think? The unrighteous politicians? The judges in favour of those in power?
I mean that when someone files a lawsuit to defend their civil/constitutional rights and wins, the penalty must be paid by the offenders and not taxpayers. For example the police who made the arrest and their supervisors.
In my experience (I sued my town for violating my first amendment rights), the city will have insurance that will cover any damages or settlement they have to pay. Their premiums will likely go up, but the impact to taxpayers is probably minimal.
Perhaps in the first order, but when premiums go up and go up across all policies due to the acceptability of litigation... Everyone pays eventually.
Its a bit like saying driving dangerously is OK because you have insurance. Until everyone drives dangerously and insurance is sky high for all.
That said, they should be sued.
This entire debacle weirds me out. Surely the police is aware of the water issues. They drink from the same tap as the locals do. What would a sane person call arresting people that publicly call out that your water supply is obviously contaminated?
That would not necessarily be the case in my town. We have police who don't live in the county and fireman who don't live in the state. (Los Angeles)
Even making them pay their own lawsuit insurance premiums would be enough to stop 90% of abuse.
No change will happen until cities stop using police revenue for discretionary spending.
Nazi Germany wasn't chaos, just a lot of people following "cut-and-dry" protocol.
Just more actions from free speech loving Republicans. Exactly like that guy in Tennessee who got $800k.
Is America great yet?
I hope she sues the city and everyone involved personally for tens of millions. This is insane. The water is brown. Do not drink it. Instead boil it. Posts that it’s bad. Get jailed. Wtf?
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I would imagine it’s hard to be reminded of things that didn’t actually occur.
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We should call this obsession "longest Covid". Certain people will be on this until they die.
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When not being arrested is your only singular concern, this is a good approach.
Someone is speedrunning getting a thread to comparison with you know who's Germany in you know what years...
This country got where it did because people refused to follow the bullshit your peddling
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This is a textbook free speech issue, versus not being able to post your conspiracy theory on some web site which has nothing to do with free speech.
Who decideds what is free speech and what is a conspiracy theory?
For a long time saying tabaco creates lung cancers was basically a conspiracy theory and saying it is healthy was free speech.
Since at least the 70s everyone knew that it caused lung cancer. It's just that industry spending prevented anyone from doing something about it, in the exactly the same way that we've been seeing with global warming.
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This type of treatment of citizenry by the State of Texas, and its various (and especially red) localities should be all one needs to see of where conservatives (and Christian Naitonalism) will take our country in the future -- should they get their way. Republicans hope to enable just such a future by scaring Americans with made-up visions of transsexuals 'grooming' their children, yet they cleverly hide what awaits behind the curtain. The is the same curtain that hides why Israel is supposed to be so very, very important to the U.S. but not so much that we make them state #51. This is the magical (read: Biblical) rationale that the U.S. makes excuses for Israel's attack on its own USS Liberty in 1967.
Saying nothing of the future of abortion & contraception, U.S. conservatives base their worldview on sexuality & reproduction and seek to burden it with fixtures that we have already spent hundreds of year to free ourselves from. At the same time, they take their eye off the ball of keeping our country competitive in the world. How embarrassing it is now to have the Chinese president suggest that the U.S. is in decline and that it shouldn't get caught in a Thucydides Trap.
Yet, that is where Trump has put us indeed.
> the U.S. makes excuses for Israel's attack on its own USS Liberty in 1967.
It's strange how this 59-year-old incident keeps getting brought up. Friendly fire happens all the time, and Israel apologized and paid reparations ages ago.
Except they don't happen all the time, because this incident killed 34 Americans & wounded 171. Is that not remarkable enough for a 'blue-ribbon' commission of investigation? If one of our European allies had done this, wouldn't a commission be held to review all the evidence and make a determination as to cause?
One needn't dig too deep to see there isn't too much wiggle room for mere misunderstanding. The nearly defenseless ship suffered 2 hours of withering attack by both waves of jets and torpedo boats; this with an American flag and its hull number in open display as it operated in international waters. The context was that this ship was an intelligence ship bristling with antennas and recording everything it could from the combatants in the ongoing six-day-war in 1967.
If there's any conspiracy, its how for years afterward whenever a congressman sought an investigation as requested by one of the family of those killed, the effort was silently killed despite its impact, over and over.
There are a lot of details involved and many actions to be assessed on both sides, but it should merit more than a Navy Court of Inquiry. When the captain of the ship received his Medal of Honor for saving his ship while injured, it was awarded to him by the Secretary of the Navy quietly at the Washington Navy Yard. The usual procedure is that the MoH be presented by the president in the White House in a ceremony. So, there's that.
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The conspiracy theory is that it wasnt just friendly fire but an attempted false flag. Make if that what you will
Well said.
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Land of the free
This is newsworthy because it's a clear and flagrant violation of her rights.
Source: I was threatened with a lawsuit by my own town for criticizing them online, but the ACLU helped me counter sue and win a settlement for violating my first amendment rights.
Was the comment you are replying to edited?
I assume you mean "Land of the fee"
'Equal Justice Under Law'
World Cup Tourists about to get some “civic lessons” if they buy that too much, mmmhmmm.
In Europe, this sort of thing is routine and doesn't make the news.
Yea compared to Europe where you get arrested for memes
upon inspection of images pertaining to water at the point of usage, i declare said water to be Alaskan well water.
use a 5micron, and 1micron particulate filter in series, and it looks like it came from a bottle.
you would be well advised to test for heavy metals, esp. arsenic
most people here dont use softening or reverse osmosis
These small towns are often just armed HOAs and the law is usually secondary to administration whim. One would imagine that state and federal police are the weapons to bring to bear on them.