"Nearly every Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives voted to fully reauthorize the Patriot Act through March 2020, extending the right of federal agents to use all sorts of secret surveillance against Americans," reports Reason.
As the EFF says, "The USA PATRIOT Act broadly expands law enforcement's surveillance and investigative powers and represents one of the most significant threats to civil liberties, privacy, and democratic traditions in US history. — Read the rest
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is campaigning with Bernie Sanders in Iowa, generally considered a conservative, red-state kind of place — so much so that Iowa GOP operators made a series of public predictions that she would be laughed out of the state. The state party chairman Jeff Kaufmann called her "Doctor Ocasio-Cortez" and Sanders "Crazy Bernie": "She's got a problem with our cows here!" — Read the rest
When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez grilled Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in Congress this week, she asked him about his "ongoing dinner parties with far-right figures" — that is to say, the meals where he listens to Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro, Hugh Hewitt and other Nazi- and Nazi-adjacent figures whine about "leftist social media bias."
The Intercept's political editor Ryan Grim chaired a 10-minute, backstage conversation between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders at a rally in Queens last weekend, just before AOC endorsed Sanders' bid for the Democratic Party's nomination for the 2020 presidential race. The pair describe their theory of change and how they can get their agenda enacted. — Read the rest
Following on Ilhan Omar's endorsement of Bernie Sanders earlier this week, Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is expected to make her own endorsement for Sanders's candidacy today.
The man President Donald Trump once used as a 'my African American' stage prop now says the GOP is pursuing a "pro-white" agenda, uses black people as "political pawns."
Gregory Cheadle does not have anything good to say about Trump, either.
Louisiana police officer Charlie Rispoli is out of a job for posting to Facebook his belief Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez deserves to be assassinated. Officer Rispoli wrote the post after reading one of the countless fake news stories that are Facebook's stock-in-trade. — Read the rest
Two police officers in Louisiana lost their jobs this week after one said Democratic Party legislator Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should be shot and the other signaled their agreement.
Charles Rispoli wrote that she "needed a round" and Angelo Varisco "liked" the post. — Read the rest
Congresswoman and force of nature Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and student activist and force of nature Greta "Extinction Rebellion" Thunberg conducted a videoconference to meet one another and talk tactics for saving the world from dying in its own waste-gases; the wide-ranging conversation touched on the unique power and problems of being a young activist; the problem of holding up Nordic countries as paragons of climate virtue; winning the fight over climate denialism; the true nature of leadership; keeping motivated in the face of desperation and crushing setbacks, and the tipping point we're living through.
When California's legislature opened hearings on a proposed ban on fur sales, they met with stiff opposition: Andrew Aguero, who described himself as a Native American student said that it was "people from a privileged culture are telling people of my culture that our culture is inhumane" (the bill exempted traditional indigenous uses of fur from the ban); they also heard from Andrew DiGiovanna, another student who said he opposed the bill on environmental grounds; Edwin Lombard said it was "an affront to the African-American community" who used furs to "show we could overcome barriers" like redlining.
Queens is the most populous district in the USA, with a population (2.359m) larger than many states; the District Attorney of Queens wields incredible power, and now that power has shifted dramatically.
Anna Lind-Guzik ("a writer, attorney, and scholar of Soviet history, international law, and human rights, with degrees from Duke University, Harvard Law School, and Princeton") has written an essay defending Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's use of the term "concentration camps" to describe the facilities in which America has imprisoned brown-skinned asylum seekers who have presented themselves at the nation's border.
Fast rising Democratic Presidential candidate and US Senator from the state of Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren wrote Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez entry in Time Magazine's list of 2019's most influential leaders.
The year 2008 was a reckoning. While millions of Americans lost their livelihoods to Wall Street's greed, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lost her dad to lung cancer, and her family fell off a financial cliff.
Federal convict and Trump crony Paul Manafort is to be held in solitary confinement at the notorious Riker's Island prison while he faces trial for fraud in a New York court (solitary confinement is standard procedure for high-profile prisoners); Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (whose district includes Riker's) publicly condemned the use of solitary confinement for any prisoner, including Manafort, adding that, "if people aren't willing to apply principles evenly, no matter the person, then they aren't fighting for criminal justice reform" and "a prison sentence is not a license for gov torture and human rights violations. — Read the rest
