Convenient.
The Trump administration is asking “federal courts to pause several high-profile immigration-related lawsuits due to the shutdown over border wall funding,” CNN reported Wednesday.
“Absent an appropriation, Department of Justice attorneys and employees are prohibited from working, even on a voluntary basis, except in very limited circumstances, including ’emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property,'” the administration said in multiple court filings.
CNN
The DOJ has told the courts they will be notified “when Congress has appropriated the funds for the Justice Department.”
Nanny state strikes again.
The National Transportation Safety Board has long advocated for a .05% limit for all states, saying it helps discourage drunk drivers from getting behind the wheel in the first place. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says about 29 people die everyday in the US in alcohol-related deaths, about 10,000 deaths per year.
(D)en of (C)orruption. Above the law?
Former US Representative Mel Watt (NC-D) who was appointed by former President Obama in 2014 to Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency – a “powerful regulator of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac” – has been under investigation for alleged sexual harassment since July.
The story broke last July when Politico reported that Watt, age 72 and a former Democratic House member from North Carolina, had been recorded by Grimes making sexual comments about his attraction to her beginning in 2015, at a time when she had complained that she was being paid less than a male employee doing the same job.
Closure.
In federal court, US District Judge Beryl Howell ruled in favor of the wrongful death suit brought by Fred and Cindy Warmbier that North Korea was liable for the death of their son Otto Warmbier, ordering that the country pay “more than $500 million.”
In Judge Howell’s order, the Associated Press reported, that “in holding North Korea responsible,” that its “government had seized Warmbier for “use as a pawn in that totalitarian state’s global shenanigans and face-off with the United States.””
“Before Otto traveled with a tour group on a five-day trip to North Korea, he was a healthy, athletic student of economics and business in his junior year at the University of Virginia, with ‘big dreams’ and both the smarts and people skills to make him his high school class salutatorian, homecoming king, and prom king,” the judge wrote. “He was blind, deaf, and brain dead when North Korea turned him over to U.S. government officials for his final trip home.”
Associated Press
Highway robbery and criminal thugs.
Over $50 million in 2017 alone.
The Texas Tribune reported this month the Texas State Legislature “are poised to take up the issue” of civil asset forfeiture in the upcoming session, saying, “law enforcement leaders say civil asset forfeiture is a necessary tool for fighting crime, but several lawmakers see it as a violation of Americans’ civil liberties.”
Under a process known as civil asset forfeiture, law enforcement can take cash and property they believe to be related to criminal activity, even if the person involved is never charged with a crime. Prosecutors then file suit against the property, and if successful, police may keep much of it for their own purposes.
Civil asset forfeiture is a tool supported by law enforcement leaders, who say it is necessary for fighting crime, but panned by both liberals and conservatives who see it as a violation of Americans’ civil liberties and sometimes refer to it as “policing for profit.” It’s a longstanding, nationwide practice that has regained steam under the Trump administration but faces constitutional challenges in court.
Fun Fact for the Day: Thug is derived from a Hindi word meaning thief.