DL Open Thread: Thursday, Feb. 17, 2022

Lawyer With Too Much Time On Her Hands Files Stoopid Lawsuit.  No, not Ted Kittila this time:

Attorney Janice Lorrah of Hockessin, the mother of a 6-year-old daughter, has filed a lawsuit in Chancery Court against Gov. John Carney, claiming that his unilateral extension of the school masking mandate violates state statutes and due process.

Ms. Lorrah listed the plaintiffs as herself and her minor child.

Her primary focus is on Gov. Carney’s extension of mask mandates in Delaware’s schools.

“From lockdowns to travel bans, the global coronavirus pandemic has led to an unprecedented assault upon civil liberties even among the most developed democracies,” Ms. Lorrah wrote in her lawsuit.

“Such unchecked restrictions have led to the normalization of emergency powers and accustomed citizens to extraordinary extensions of state power over large areas of their public and personal life.”

She files for office as a Rethug in 3-2-1…

Alleged Prison Beatings By Corrections Officers Leads To Major Lawsuit:

A lawsuit filed late Wednesday on behalf of 21 former and current prisoners at Sussex Correctional Institution accuses officers there of a “systemic pattern of abuse and unlawful conduct.”

The complaint, filed in federal court, states that on “numerous occasions” in 2020 and 2021, officers engaged in “extreme, unprovoked and unnecessary acts of violence” against the plaintiffs, who are represented by the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and attorney Daniel Griffith.

“We’re concerned about the treatment of people housed at Sussex Correctional Institution, and we continue to monitor that treatment as this litigation moves ahead,” said Dwayne Bensing, staff attorney at the ACLU of Delaware, in a written statement. “Ultimately, we hope the litigation eradicates the culture of brutality that currently prevails.”

The newly filed lawsuit complaint includes a summary of the allegations by each of the 21 plaintiffs, which contain common themes:

• That officers unnecessarily use pepper spray and blunt force strikes to subdue prisoners in unthreatening situations.
• That officers subject prisoners to verbal abuse and taunts, making some feel as if the officers were seeking to provoke an unthreatening situation into violence.
• That some prisoners were subjected to spray and blunt force strikes after they had been handcuffed.
• That some officers sought to attack inmates inside cells or in areas not covered by surveillance cameras and in at least one case used handcuffs as bludgeons.
• That grievance and disciplinary systems failed to hold officers accountable for wrongdoing.
• That the prisoners were punished for the incident, did not receive proper medical care and were subjected to retaliation afterward.

The January 6 E-Mails.  The Fox News hosts were begging the President to stop the siege.  Lest you doubt that they were part of the government.

Rethug Civil War Officially Starts In Two Weeks.  With the statewide Texas primaries:

These aren’t simple match-ups between Trump and anti-Trump forces, or isolated intraparty feuds. Safely ensconced Republican officeholders are being bombarded by challengers from coast to coast, in many cases spurred on by Trump directly. Redistricting and retirements have further scrambled the established order in many places, opening up seats and drawing fields filled with combative candidates eager to move the party in a different direction. Combine that with high levels of energy — and anger — in the party base, and it’s a recipe to remake the party from the ground up.

Much of the churn is due to forces unleashed by Trump. The defeated president’s iron grip on the party and level of involvement in midterm primaries is unprecedented in modern history, and he continues to advance his lie that the 2020 election was stolen. The Republican electorate overwhelmingly agrees with him, furious at Republican politicians who resisted overturning the election. Not only do Republican primary voters nearly uniformly believe that the country is heading in the wrong direction, a common sentiment for the out-of-power party, but they are seething — about the last election, about Joe Biden’s Washington, about two years of a pandemic.

Lest You Think This Is Cause For Optimism For D’s…they’re running as tax-cutters now.

What If Jeff Bezos And Peter Thiel Could Live Forever?  They’re trying.  No doubt, they’d share this with other far-right trillionaire nut-jobs.

What do you want to talk about?