Uvalde Police Chief Facing Prison Over Child Deaths, Ukraine Coup Thwarted?, American Society Changed by a Supreme Court Case about Commercial Fishing? (The Five for 07/02/24)
Plus, Pakistan executes young person over TikTok repost.
[one]
Two years after the horrors of the Uvalde school shooting, two officers are facing felony charges, and presumably decades in prison, for their cowardice and neglect that led to the deaths of additional children.
The former school district police chief in Uvalde, Texas, who oversaw the response to the 2022 elementary school shooting that killed 21 people, including 19 children, was arrested on a child endangerment charge, an official at the Uvalde jail said Thursday.
Pete Arredondo, 52, was taken in by law enforcement officers Thursday, charged with 10 counts of abandoning/endangering a child, according to an indictment filed in the 38th Judicial Court.
The charge was first reported by the San Antonio Express-News.
The Uvalde jail official confirmed Arredondo was being booked into the facility Thursday afternoon. His bail was set a $10,000 surety bond and nine $10,000 personal recognizance bonds. He posted bail and was later released the same day.
Arredondo did not immediately respond to requests for comment. It was unclear whether an attorney is representing him.
A second officer was also charged. Adrian Gonzales was booked and released from jail Friday, according to the Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office.
Gonzales, 51, is charged with 29 felony counts of abandoning or endangering a child, according to an indictment.
The indictment said Gonzales placed 29 children "in imminent danger" of injury or death on May 24, 2022.
Gonzales, who heard gunshots at Robb Elementary School, and was advised of the general location of the shooter, failed to engage, distract, delay or impede the shooter until after the gunman entered rooms 111 and 112 at the school and shot at children, the indictment said.
I’m never, ever the guy who argues for riots of vigilante justice…but perhaps this is the one exception. Historic Texas has a rich history of swinging cattle thieves from the ends of ropes…and how much more valuable are children than cattle?
Due to the number of cases where new DNA evidence has exonerated 21 inmates on Death Row…I have very mixed feelings about the death penalty in general.
But not in this case in particular. We have the extreme cowardice of the officers on video. I am not being funny or flippant when I say that we should strap these guys into the chair and throw the level to full power.
[two]
I would take the next story with a large grain of salt.
Ukraine has foiled an alleged plot to overthrow the government that “would have played into Russia’s hands,” security officials in the war-torn country said Monday.
In a Telegram post, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) claimed the plot organizers planned to trigger a riot in Kyiv on June 30 as a distraction to seize control of the Ukrainian parliament and remove the military and political leadership from power.
It is unclear how viable the planned plot was, or if those accused have any connection with Russia, which has waged a devastating full-scale invasion against its southwestern neighbor for nearly two and a half years.
Four suspects have been identified, with two held in custody, the SBU said. They face up to 10 years in prison if found guilty. The SBU said it seized weapons and ammunition, as well as cellphones, computers and other records “with evidence of criminal action.”
The office of Ukraine’s prosecutor general said the alleged leader of the plot “is a head of a non-governmental entity, who already had the experience of participating in fruitless provocative events.”
The suspect rented a hall with a capacity of 2,000 people and was looking to recruit military personnel and armed guards from private companies to “carry out the seizure” of parliament, the prosecutor’s office said. It is unclear if authorities are seeking any more suspects.
“To implement the criminal plan, the main organizer involved several accomplices—representatives of the community organizations from Kyiv, Dnipro, and other regions,” the SBU said.
The alleged scheme in Kyiv comes as Russia has made slow but steady battlefield gains in recent months, exploiting Ukraine’s diminishing manpower and reliance on the West for weapons – and uncertainty over the future of that military aid.
There’s probably more to the story here, but it’s doubtful the full truth of the Russia/Ukraine war will come out within the next few years. A major question I have is…how can you only give a terrorist who tries to overthrow the government 10 years in prison?
[three]
Two major Supreme Court cases were handed down at the end of June. The first one, a case about commerial sea fishing, has major implications for huge sections of American life.
The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a major blow to federal regulatory power on Friday by overturning a 1984 precedent that had given deference to government agencies in interpreting laws they administer, handing a defeat to President Joe Biden's administration.
The justices ruled 6-3 to set aside lower court decisions against fishing companies that challenged a government-run program partly funded by industry that monitored overfishing of herring off New England's coast. It marked the latest decision in recent years powered by the Supreme Court's conservative majority that hemmed in the authority of federal agencies.
The precedent the court overturned arose from a ruling involving oil company Chevron that had called for judges to defer to reasonable federal agency interpretations of U.S. laws deemed to be ambiguous. This doctrine, long opposed by conservatives and business interests, was called "Chevron deference."
Business, conservative and libertarian groups cheered the decision, saying it eliminates a rule that requires courts to favor the government in all manner of challenges to regulation. The litigation was part of what has been termed the "war on the administrative state," an effort to weaken the federal agency bureaucracy that interprets laws, crafts federal rules and implements executive action.
The decreasing productivity of Congress - thanks to its gaping partisan divide - has led to a growing reliance, especially by Democratic presidents, on rules issued by U.S. agencies to realize regulatory goals.
Despite the 2nd case being more talked about…this is a pretty huge change to the workflow of the federal government. It puts more pressure on Congress to actually pass laws, not just push on the “alphabet agencies” to get things done for them.
As far as how this will actually play out…pushing Congress to act more like Congress doesn’t mean that will actually happen.
And then the case everyone is talking about…
Let’s jump over to the other side of the pond for a less biased source.
The US supreme court has ruled that former presidents are entitled to some degree of immunity from criminal prosecution, a major victory for Donald Trump that guts the 2020 election subversion case against him and any prospect of a trial before November.
To determine whether Trump’s alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election results were official acts, the supreme court remanded the case back to the presiding US district judge Tanya Chutkan, who will have to review the indictment line by line.
The review will be done under a three-part test: whether particular conduct is a core presidential function that carries absolute immunity, an official act within the outer perimeter of the presidency that carries presumptive immunity, or an unofficial act that carries no immunity.
To defeat presumptive immunity, the opinion said, Chutkan would have to decide if charging Trump would “pose any dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch”.
The court left the analysis up to Chutkan. But Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, preemptively determined that Trump’s interactions with justice department officials were official acts because they are part of the executive branch and answer to the president.
Roberts also determined that Trump’s interactions with Pence were presumptively immune, since the president discussing responsibilities with the vice-president was an instance of official conduct. The burden was on prosecutors to prove otherwise, Roberts wrote.
I’m not a Constitutional Law expert…but here are a few quick reactions from an amateur:
A). In foreign policy, Presidents have always enjoyed some form of immunity, because there were no prosecutions for…
…George W. Bush invading Iraq, which led to the deaths of 60,000 civilians, caught in the crossfire (with 7,299 being shot or bombed to death by American forces)
…Obama droning 4 U.S. citizens, and failing to take action when American lives were being lost when the U.S. Ambassador’s headquarters to Libya was overrun in Benghazi.
…Biden for droning 10 civilians in Afghanistan, and botching the end of the war, resulting in at least 400 Afghan American allies being slaughtered by the Taliban.
B). How this case will be interpreted in the future…is anybody’s guess. Which should terrify us all, at least a little.
C). Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote an absolutely unhinged take for the minority opinion (three Justices who voted against the majority six):
"The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune."
Except…you know, assassinating rivals isn’t part of a President’s official duties. If this were truly immune, Biden could just assassinate Trump this afternoon, and call the election good.
D). AOC claims she’s going to impeach the Supreme Court. In the history of the Supreme Court, only Justice Samuel Chase has been impeached in 1804 for “drunkenness and insanity.”
So, unless the Congresswoman from Queens can prove the six Justices who voted for Presidential Immunity are all hitting the sauce at work and are clinically diagnosable as Schizophrenic, that one’s not going anywhere.
[four]
After Thursday nights debate, a large number of Democratic pundits and corporate press outlets called for Biden to throw in the towel on the Presidential race, and step aside for another candidate…which his family has talked him out of doing.
From The AP:
President Joe Biden’s family used a gathering at Camp David to urge him to stay in the race and keep fighting despite his dreadful debate performance, and some members criticized how his staff prepared him for the faceoff, according to four people familiar with the discussions.
Biden spent Sunday sequestered with first lady Jill Biden, his children and his grandchildren. It was a previously scheduled trip to the presidential retreat in Maryland for a photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz for the upcoming Democratic National Convention.
But the gathering was also an exercise in trying to figure out how to quell Democratic anxiety that has exploded following Thursday’s performance.
While his family was aware of how poorly he performed against Donald Trump, they also continue to think he’s the best person to beat the Republican presumptive nominee. They also believe he is capable of doing the job of president for another four years, according to the people who were not authorized to speak publicly about internal discussions and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Another issue is that if Biden were to leave the race, the money raised so far could not be transferred to a new candidate.
But a new USA Today poll, published yesterday, found that 41% of Democrats want Biden to quit the race.
[five]
Finally, Pakistan is executing a citizen over a TikTok post.
Breitbart reports:
Pakistan’s anti-terrorism court has sentenced young Christian Ehsan Shan to death for allegedly reposting a blasphemous image of a desecrated Quran on social media.
Shan was accused of sharing “blasphemous content” on the social media site TikTok, which was considered to be a provocation of the anti-Christian mob violence that took place in Jaranwala in August 2023.
On that occasion, following accusations of desecration of the Quran, a mob of some 10,000 Muslim militants went on a rampage, destroying and burning as many as 500 Christian homes and about 26 churches in the Christian quarter of the city of Punjab.
The arresting officer, Amir Farooq, said Shan had shared “hateful content at a sensitive time when authorities were already struggling to contain the violence.”
According to the police, the young man did not produce and package the blasphemous content himself, but simply reposted it, after which it went viral.
Shan’s death sentence, published on July 1, requires him to first serve a prison sentence of 22 years and to pay a fine of one million rupees, after which he will be executed.
According to members of the local Christian community, Shan is a scapegoat for the mob violence, while those who attacked and burned Christian churches and homes remain unpunished.
It’s easy to start listening to the talking heads jabber about how America has become a dictatorship. Usually, all it takes is a look at world events to remember how good we have it.
Until the next one,
-sth