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RIGHT WING EXTREMISM

US Senate Poised to Confirm 3 Trump Judicial Nominees Who Refuse to Support Landmark SCOTUS Civil Rights Case

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The Republican-majority Senate this week is poised to confirm three Trump judicial nominees who refuse to say they support a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case on which critical modern-day civil rights are based.

The case: 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education, which essentially codified that “separate but equal” is not equal. Brown strengthened the 14th Amendment, allowing it to become a key tool for civil rights advocates.

Brown v. Board of Education led to the end of legal segregation, or, as the Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund writes in The Washington Post, “legal apartheid in this country.”

(Meanwhile, on Friday, Vox reported: “65 years after Brown v. Board of Education, school segregation is getting worse.)

Another landmark Supreme Court ruling, 2015’s Obergefell v. Hodges, which found that same-sex couples have the same rights and responsibilities to marriage as different-sex couples, is based in part of the 14th Amendment, strengthened by Brown v Board of Education.

So are many other civil rights cases.

And yet, the Trump administration, and its partner in advancing an extremist conservative agenda, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), are pushing through many judicial nominees who, as Ifill’s op-ed suggests, “don’t support the rule of law.”

“Since April 2018, more than two dozen executive and judicial nominees have declined to endorse the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education,” Ifill writes.

“This week — one that marks the 65th anniversary of the landmark ruling that struck down legal apartheid in this country — the Senate is poised to confirm three of those judicial nominees to lifetime seats on the federal bench.” She adds, calling it “simply unacceptable.”

Ifill does not name the three nominees, but one appears to be Wendy Vitter, an anti-abortion and anti-contraception extremist who is currently serving as general counsel of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans. She has never served as a judge, but is nominated to become a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Vitter is also the spouse to former GOP Senator David Vitter.

Here’s a critical portion of her testimony last month in which she refuses to support Brown v. Board of Education:

The other two nominees appear to be Michael Truncale, a nominee to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, and Kenneth Lee, a nominee to the Ninth Circuit.

In the GOP-majority Senate, there is little expectation any Republican will vote against Trump’s judicial nominees.

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RIGHT WING EXTREMISM

House Intel Chair Consults With Sergeant at Arms After Republicans ‘Storm’ Secure Impeachment Deposition Room (UPDATED)

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4 weeks ago

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October 23, 2019

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Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Schiff (D-CA) is consulting with the Sergeant at Arms after dozens of House Republicans who are not assigned to any of the committees involved in the impeachment inquiry of the president stormed a secure room in an unauthorized attempt to gain access to the proceedings.

The unprecedented attempt to obstruct the impeachment inquiry delayed the testimony of several witnesses who were in the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF), as Politico reports. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Laura Cooper was just about to begin her testimony when Republicans struck.

“It was closest thing I’ve seen around here to mass civil unrest as a member of Congress,” a source in the room told CNN. The several dozen Republicans “stormed through the three different doors,” and refused to leave.

Politico adds that “some GOP lawmakers brought their cell phones into the secure area — a significant violation of House rules. Another person said the room had to be fully swept for potential security breaches.”

Schiff is reportedly threatening those GOP lawmakers with ethics violations.

This was not a rogue group of Republicans acting on their own. They were led by one of the top Republicans in the House, Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA), and right wing extremist Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL).

“They basically ran over a member of the staff” to get in the room, said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.). “They just came into the room and started shouting about the president. Literally some of them were just screaming … saying that the process is wrong.”

Politico referred to the attack as a “stunt,” but Democrats are following the House rules.

“In reality,” Politico adds, “more than 45 House Republicans — nearly a quarter of the House GOP conference — already have full access to the depositions via their membership on one of the three committees leading the impeachment inquiry. And during the depositions, Republican counsel is given the same amount of time to question witnesses as Democratic counsel.”

Chief Political Correspondent for Sinclair at WJLA posted video:

NEW:
National Security Expert Appalled by Rep. Gaetz Storming House SCIF: ‘I Cannot Emphasize Enough How Serious This Is’
Trump Knew and ‘Backed’ House Republicans’ Storming SCIF: Report

UPDATE: 2:33 PM ET –

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RIGHT WING EXTREMISM

Bonkers Fox News Segment Blames Mass Shootings on God-Hating Liberals Who Teach Kids About Evolution

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3 months ago

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September 1, 2019

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Fox News calls anti-gay hate group head a “former police officer.”

Tony Perkins, head of the conservative Family Research Council, on Sunday said that liberals were to blame for mass shootings because they have allegedly taken God out of the public square.

Perkins appeared on Fox & Friends where he was identified as a “former police officer.”

According to Perkins, the shooting near Odessa, Texas that left seven dead was “just tragic.”

“At some point, we have to realize that we as a nation have a problem,” he continued. “And the problem is not the absence of laws, it’s an absence of morality.”

According to Perkins, the “absence of morality” had been caused by a “decades-long march through the institutions of America, driving religion and God from the public square.”

Perkins said he was “willing” to talk to liberals about ending the epidemic of mass shootings.

“I agree, praying alone is not enough,” Perkins opined. “It’s time to act. It’s not just about having a conversation about restricting those who should not have guns, criminals. But it’s also a discussion of a absence of a moral core in our culture today.”

Perkins said that teaching children about evolution is one cause of mass shootings.

“We’ve taught our kids they come about through chance through primordial slime and then we’re surprised they treat their fellow Americans like dirt!” he exclaimed. “It’s time we talk about the result of the left’s systematic march through our institutions, driving religious expression from the public square.”

Perkins complained that children are not being taught that they are “created in the image of God.”

“We’ve driving religion from our public life and we’re shocked that we no longer have morality and we no longer value human life,” he remarked.

Watch the video below from Fox News.

 

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RIGHT WING EXTREMISM

Unrepentant, YouTube Reverses Course, Apologizes to Far-Right Channels and Unbans Them

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3 months ago

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August 30, 2019

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YouTube has shown itself to be particularly susceptible to pressure campaigns organized by the far-right

YouTube has undone actions taken against two far-right YouTube accounts and one white nationalist YouTube account after banning those accounts earlier this week.

Right Wing Watch reported on Monday that YouTube had removed at least four YouTube channels that produced white nationalist and racist content from its platform, including channels used by The Right Stuff, American Identity Movement (formerly Identity Evropa), VDARE, and James Allsup. On Tuesday night, VDARE tweeted that its YouTube channel had been reinstated.

Right Wing Watch asked YouTube for comment via email on its reinstatement of VDARE TV on Wednesday, but did not receive a response.

Yesterday, Boing Boing noted that YouTube reinstated two other far-right YouTube channels, “The Iconoclast” and a channel used by far-right activist Martin Sellner, and that YouTube told reporters it made the “wrong call” when it decided to remove those channels but failed to elaborate further. BuzzFeed reports:

YouTube’s reactivation of Sellner’s channel comes two months after the video platform joined with Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter to make a commitment they called the “Christchurch Call to Action”. YouTube and the other tech companies said they were committed to “fight the hatred and extremism that lead to terrorist violence.”

The Iconoclast has more than 200,000 subscribers on YouTube. In an interview with Defend Europa last year, the YouTuber spoke extensively about the white nationalist conspiracy theory of “ethnic replacement.” He describes himself as a “British nationalist” who is “anti-mass migration.”

The decision comes a few days after YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki posted her quarterly letter to YouTube creators, which talked about how the company sometimes would leave up “controversial or even offensive” videos.

After Buzzfeed published its story, YouTube spokesperson Farshad Shadloo released a statement, claiming that although “many may find the viewpoints expressed in these channels deeply offensive,“ that YouTube had “determined the videos on their channels do not violate our Community Guidelines and so the channels were reinstated.”

Yesterday, Motherboard reported that YouTube had briefly reinstated and then re-banned the Infowars show “War Room” from its platform. Infowars was banned across nearly all tech platforms last year after we documented the numerous blatant violations of community guidelines committed regularly by Infowars personalities on social media platforms.

YouTube has shown itself to be particularly susceptible to pressure campaigns organized by the far-right. Last year, the site apologized and retracted strikes against far-right “philosopher” Stefan Molyneux’s YouTube account after he urged his fans to contact YouTube on his behalf.

 

This article was originally published at Right Wing Watch and is republished here by permission.

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