THE ARPAIO MESSAGE TO WHITE RACISTS

feeling rebloggy

...Although the final choice is of course the president’s, usually the Justice Department’s special pardons division prepares an advisory review of the merits of each case. This time Trump apparently just blasted ahead. Usually the recipient of a pardon has either begun serving time or has exhausted his or her appeals. (Not always—.....) In this case, Joe Arpaio had been convicted, but appeals had not even begun.

But the main difference was the nature of Arpaio’s crime. While he is not the first official whose offense involved abuse of public powers—from Nixon on down, others fit that category—his is the first case I’m aware of where someone is pardoned for using state power toward racist ends.

That description of Arpaio’s crime may sound tendentious, but it’s what his conviction amounts to.

For details, I very highly recommend a Twitter chronicle put out last night by Phoenix New Times, which has been covering Arpaio for two decades.

Over at least the past decade, state and federal judges—most of the latter appointed by George W. Bush—have been criticizing Arpaio and his practices, and warning that they violate a range of anti-discrimination laws.

In 2008, one Bush-appointed federal judge, Neil Wake, ruled in favor of the ACLU, which had claimed that Arpaio’s jailing practices were unconstitutional and abusive.

Another Bush appointee, federal judge G. Murray Snow, ordered Arpaio to cease-and-desist racial profiling practices, and referred him for criminal prosecution when he refused to obey. In the Phoenix New Times account you’ll see links to a lot more....

~THE ATLANTIC 

Read More: 

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/why-the-arpaio-pardon-matters/538131/

Why hearing "the alt-Right-ers are coming to town" should make you react just like " the KKK is coming to town" ...or the neo-Nazi's, or the the Aryan Brotherhood, or...or....or...

Read More:
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/8/15/16144070/psychology-alt-right