moose eater
Well-known member
For some, reading headlines is too vague or difficult...
-
As of today ICMag has his own Discord server. In this Discord server you can chat, talk with eachother, listen to music, share stories and pictures...and much more. Join now and let's grow together! Join ICMag Discord here! More details in this thread here: here.
2024 US Presidential Election
greyfader
Well-known member
GenghisKush
Well-known member
Stand back, this might get messy.It's not a problem. It's a patriotic duty as an American. I wear the badge of TDS proudly.
Looks like you'll need to find another way to get under my thick skin.
But it is funny seeing people give others the TDS label when the one that's really deranged is trump. Or do you just refuse to pay attention because it's too painful to watch your hero melting down in public?
There will be no Project 2025. 2025 will be the beginning of the Harris/Walz administration. 2024 is going to be a repeat of 2008 and there is nothing you or any trump supporter can do about it. So start getting used to President Harris because she will be your President. That's Big. TDS is Small. Some people sweat the small things. Some of us look at the Big picture.
“This is, let’s take Trump down once and for all," said a person with close knowledge of the process around Harris.
Quickly flush with cash, flooded with volunteers and greeted by jubilant crowds, Vice President Kamala Harris’ newly minted campaign has now made a major move to help manage it all, bringing on some of the biggest names in Democratic politics.
A flurry of high-profile hires announced Friday — including David Plouffe, who managed President Barack Obama’s first White House run, and veteran Democratic operatives Stephanie Cutter and Jennifer Palmieri
'This is the A-team': Harris campaign brings on big new hires as it sprints to Election Day
With fewer than 100 days to the election, Harris and her aides must tackle a series of consequential moments and decisions that would typically be stretched across months.www.nbcnews.com
Obama: We got this Kamala
Harris: I know
View attachment 19051689
Hillary Clinton
jen perlmen sucks for sure
Just noting that you lack any development... seems quite unlike you.
I'll just settle for the lack of sovereign citizen BS.
Robert F Kennedy Jr has announced he will address his "path forward" amid reports in the US media that he will end his presidential bid and endorse Donald Trump.
Trump and his running-mate JD Vance said they would support the independent ending his campaign to align with their Republican ticket against Democratic nominees Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
www.bbc.com
Trump and his running-mate JD Vance said they would support the independent ending his campaign to align with their Republican ticket against Democratic nominees Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
RFK Jr considers 'path forward' amid reports he will back Trump
Independent says he will address nation about his campaign as Trump says he would welcome his support.
www.bbc.com
GenghisKush
Well-known member
What is an independent journalist? Anybody with a microphone? Someone who makes a really nice card saying 'PRESS'. Someone with a cell phone? Maybe those blabby people with the really cool looking tabletop microphones? (and the relaxed, know it all expressions) Should a journalist be on the list to receive international news feeds? Is journalism opinion or reporting observations and information gathered? Didn't VICE begin as an independent journalist group?
I've got a microphone and can upload to youtube....hmmm
I've got a microphone and can upload to youtube....hmmm
GenghisKush
Well-known member
Yes. It was co-founded by Gavin McInnes, who also founded the Proud Boys.
he looks better and better every election cycle
GenghisKush
Well-known member
He's got more dignity, credibility and gravitis in a single finger than Dr Stein possess in her entire body.
Here's the photo that may help unlock the Trump-Russia scandal
Investigators zero in on Michael Flynn's dinner with Putin
www.motherjones.com
xtsho
Well-known member
Any lunatic can be an independent journalist.
Strickland makes a living as an independent videographer-journalist
Guilty: Man who pulled gun out at 'Don't Shoot PDX' protest
Multnomah County Circuit Judge Thomas Ryan on Friday found Michael Aaron Strickland guilty of felony and misdemeanor crimes for pointing a gun at 10 people during a "Don't Shoot Portland" protest in downtown last summer.
www.oregonlive.com
Brother Nature
Well-known member
Man I’m pretty impressed by Tim Walz. Seems like an actual decent person as well as being a politician, what a rare combo.
moose eater
Well-known member
Keith Ellison recommended exoneration. A rogue sheriff intervened. Now Tim Walz can solve it.
By Theodore HammTwo months ago, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison moved to undo an apparent injustice perpetrated long ago against a Native American man named Brian Pippitt. After a comprehensive investigation of his 2001 conviction identified serious problems with the prosecution’s case, Ellison’s office called for Pippitt’s exoneration.
Yet the rural county prosecutor’s office that sent Pippitt to prison is now fighting to keep him there. The local sheriff in Aitkin County (pop. 16,500), Daniel Guida—who has earned national attention in recent years with his aggressive crackdown on Water Protectors protesting an oil pipeline—has similarly objected, saying he needs to conduct yet another investigation.
As a result, despite the AG’s strong recommendation to exonerate him, Pippitt, now 62, remains indefinitely behind bars.
There is one man, however, who could end the saga quickly: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Attorneys for Pippitt tell Drop Site they are asking Walz to use his authority as governor to remove the case from the county prosecutor and hand it over to the attorney general’s office.
"Gov. Walz and AG Ellison have the ability to correct the gross injustice that is keeping an innocent man in prison," Pippitt’s attorneys, James Cousins and James Mayer, said in a statement provided to Drop Site. "It is unconscionable that baseless obstruction is preventing freedom for Mr. Pippitt—a man the Attorney General’s office has determined is innocent and wrongly imprisoned."
Unlike other states, Minnesota gives its governor the power to move the jurisdiction of a criminal case. As Ellison reminded a national audience from the DNC stage this week, Walz let the AG’s office prosecute Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, although that happened with the consent of the local prosecutor. In at least one recent example, Gov. Walz and AG Ellison initiated the transfer.
In June, Ellison’s office declared that Pippitt should be exonerated. “The Conviction Review Unit conducted a careful, lengthy, objective review of the case,” Ellison stated. “It has now issued its report: I endorse its findings and encourage everyone to read it carefully.” It is the first time the Conviction Review Unit, or CRU, has recommended the full exoneration of an incarcerated person.
“Our goal is to ensure that no innocent person is serving time in a Minnesota prison for a crime they did not commit,” Ellison said. “No person or community is safer, and justice is not served when an innocent person is convicted and imprisoned.”
In early 2001, a jury found Pippitt guilty of the grisly 1998 murder of Evelyn Malin, the 84-year-old owner of the Dollar Lake Store in tiny Shamrock Township, 130 miles north of Minneapolis. Handicapped and deaf, Malin was found in the bedroom behind the store, strangled and smeared with feces.
It took over one year before there were any arrests. The Aitkin County Sheriff’s Department teamed with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), Minnesota’s version of the FBI, to pursue leads.
In June 1999, Aitkin County Attorney Bradley Rhodes brought the case to a grand jury, which indicted five men, including Pippitt, for Malin’s murder. Although all five were related by blood, the established hostilities between members of the group raised questions about whether they would plausibly have been partnered in crime.
According to the CRU report, the “most damning evidence” against Pippitt came from co-defendant Raymond Misquadace, who confessed to the crime as part of his plea deal, then testified for the prosecution. No physical or forensic evidence linked Pippitt to the murder scene, making Misquedace's now-retracted testimony pivotal in the case. Misquadace explained to the CRU in August 2023 that he implicated himself and the others “in order to avoid a lengthy prison sentence.”
Misquadace claimed to be 150 miles away on the night of the murder, but said that BCA case detective David Bjerga fed him information about the other defendants, claiming they had first mentioned Misquadace.
The CRU noted that Bjerga’s coercive techniques included “inducement,” providing extensive quotes from his 1999 interrogation. “If you’re the first hog to the trough,” Bjerga advised Misquadace, “you get the most to eat. You get the best meal.” By best meal, of course, the detective meant “best deal.”
Pippitt and his fellow defendants belong to the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who stands to become the state’s chief executive (and nation’s first indigenous governor) in the case of Walz’s elevation to vice president, is a member of the White Earth Band of the Ojibwe.
Misquadace and two other defendants took plea deals that resulted in two short sentences and one 15-year term. A jury acquitted a fourth member of the group. Pippitt maintained his innocence and fought the charges—and quickly learned why so many in a similar position take a deal and plead guilty. Upon Pippitt’s guilty verdict, a judge sentenced him to life in prison.
One year after the Pippitt trial, Rhodes, the prosecutor, lost his bid for reelection. He was unseated by Tom Murtha, the defense attorney who represented Pippitt. Murtha maintains to this day that his former client is innocent. Meanwhile, after a state disciplinary panel cited his repeated misconduct in private practice, Rhodes was disbarred in 2007.
Attorney General Ellison’s Conviction Review Unit investigators eventually spent over eighteen months interviewing most of the key players in the Pippitt case—not including Rhodes, who declined.
Misquadace’s false testimony was one of four problems that CRU identified with the prosecution’s theory of the case, which was that the assailants robbed Malin’s store and killed her in the process.
Crime scene photos showed that the store’s front door was deadbolt-locked, contradicting Rhodes’ theory that the assailants left through that entrance; photos also did not support Rhodes’ insistence that the perpetrators stole cigarettes and beer before exiting. No money was taken. The CRU also found that a jailhouse witness who testified against Pippitt gave inaccurate essential details regarding the murder.
Moreover, the CRU report identifies two possible "alternative suspects"—suspects who were not among the five defendants and who had "the motive, means and opportunity to commit the crime." Terry Peet, who lived nearby, had visited Malin's store twice on the day of the murder. The CRU notes that Peet "told a witness that he considered robbing Evelyn when she refused to sell him propane on credit."
The second suspect the report identifies is Malin's grandson, who was 27 at the time. That person allegedly "had a severe drug problem" and his grandmother had recently "refused his request for money." The CRU says that same figure has an extensive rap sheet that includes felony theft and forging checks (but not murder). Neither Peet nor the grandson ever faced charges. Peet is deceased.
The CRU report also previewed the obstacles to Pippitt’s release. According to Pippitt’s lawyers, when the CRU decided to investigate Pippitt’s case, the unit signed an agreement with Aitkin County Attorney Jim Ratz, who vowed to accept the CRU’s recommendations. But now that the AG’s team is calling for an exoneration, Ratz—who helped prosecute Pippitt—has backed away from that pledge. Guida and Ratz did not respond to requests for comment.
Ratz and Sheriff Daniel Guida, backed by the BCA, objected to the CRU’s findings before they went public. The CRU discusses the objections of all three in its report. Ratz and Guida are now conducting another investigation.
The CRU document includes a letter from Sheriff Guida informing the AG’s unit that because Minnesota’s top court has twice upheld the murder conviction, he needs absolute certainty that Pippitt did not murder Malin: “It will require the same burden of proof, proof beyond a reasonable doubt, that was required to convict Pippitt... to gain my support for your request.”
"No American jurisdiction requires the wrongfully convicted person to prove his innocence beyond a reasonable doubt," said Cousins and Mayer, Pippitt’s lawyers.
"Minnesota law is clear about the standards that apply in Pippitt's case," the attorneys explained. "When a key witness recants, the standard is whether without the false trial testimony, the jury might have reached a different outcome."
The pivotal recantation and other key components of the CRU’s investigation were not included in the appeals brought to Minnesota’s top court, added Cousins.
Cousins works for Centurion, a national organization that fights for exonerations. Mayer is a staff attorney with the Minneapolis-based Great North Innocence Project.
Pippitt’s lawyers have sent two letters to Gov. Walz, Lt. Gov. Flanagan, and Ellison, asking the governor to give the case to the AG’s office, which could then support Pippitt’s petition to vacate the conviction. A judge would then rule, presumably completing the exoneration.
Pippitt’s team has not received a response. Walz’s office did not to Drop Site’s requests for comment.
Theodore Hamm runs the journalism program at St. Joseph’s University–NY in Brooklyn. He covers criminal justice for The Indypendent.
moose eater
Well-known member
There are already existing court cases, including the Glik Decision from an Eastern Federal Appellate court, ruling that the 1st Amendment is so important that we are ALL citizen journalists.
Glik v. Cunniffe - Wikipedia
Covering Democracy: Protests, Police, and the Press
Protests, Police, and the Press
knightcolumbia.org
I carried a copy of the Glik Decision from the Federal Appellate Court (2 or 3 copies, actually) when I was in Manhattan and Washington DC during OCCUPY, in part to put the NYPD and DCPD on notice that as a person who was affiliated with 2 press outlets, I didn't require the NYPD 'mandated' screening to get an NYPD approval and NYPD press badge, even if NYPD -thought-, in their often grandiose opinions of themselves, that they had more clout than the Federal Appellate Court.
If you look into the recent history of major news outlets capitulating and allowing stories to be pre-approved and vetted, via tainted agreement with a media authority in Israel, including the NYT, be thankful that there are folks who haven't sold their souls to corporate media and who don't rely on the Powers That Be narrative when it's often omitting the truth where important details are concerned.
Remember the Gulf of Tonkin? My Lai? The war crimes of Tiger Force in the Highlands of Vietnam? The Pentagon Papers fiasco? Jermey Scahill outing Barrack Obama's illegal use of CIA drone-fired missiles into Pakistan, often taking out civilian targets set up by neighbors with a beef to settle? Julian Assange and the publishing of hard proof that the US State Dept and DoD were lying about video evidence of the Reuters news guy and camera fellow getting greased by the gunships?
Many if not all of those moments in history involved some independent journalists, or solely independent journalists in some cases (i.e, not part of a watered down pablum-producing corporate mage outlet).
The entire Country, whether comfortable with the evidence and stories or not, owes all of them a 'thank you' and a beer.
Last edited:
