DL Open Thread: Saturday, April 29, 2023

We Have Proof Of Election Fraud.  All by Rethugs in Rensselaer County, NY.  You’ll note that the article doesn’t use the term ‘Republican’.  But that’s what they are:

Three Rensselaer County officials were arrested and arraigned in court Thursday, accused of conspiring to violate Rensselaer County voting rights during the 2021 elections. According to the indictment, Richard Crist, James Gordon, and Leslie Wallace conspired to obtain absentee ballots through fraud and intimidation to cast false and illegal votes in the primary and general elections.

Crist served as the Rensselaer County Communications Director and political consultant to County Executive Steve Mclaughlin. Gordon was the county’s Director of Central Services and Wallace was a county employee and longtime political consultant.  All Rethugs. Including Mclaughlin.

Flip The Court. Flip The Maps.  NC Rethugs now have a majority on the state Supreme Court. The result?:

In massive victories for Republicans, the newly GOP-controlled North Carolina Supreme Court on Friday threw out a previous ruling against gerrymandered voting maps and upheld a photo voter identification law that colleagues had struck down as racially biased.

The partisan gerrymandering ruling should make it significantly easier for the Republican-dominated legislature to help the GOP gain seats in the narrowly divided U.S. House when state lawmakers redraw congressional boundaries for the 2024 elections. Under the current map, Democrats won seven of the state’s 14 congressional seats last November.

The court, which became a Republican majority this year following the election of two GOP justices, ruled after taking the unusual step of revisiting redistricting and voter ID opinions made in December by the court’s previous iteration, when Democrats held a 4-3 seat advantage. The court held rehearings in March.

Trump MAGAt Vs. The Green M&M.  Part of a RWNJ campaign against ‘woke capitalism’:

America First Legal, the legal activist group founded by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, on Wednesday filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against Mars Inc., the maker of M&M’s. The pro-Trump nonprofit alleges Mars’ efforts to increase diversity and representation of minorities within its workforce constitutes discrimination and a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The move comes just days after Fox News fired its former prime-time host and sexy-M&M devotee Tucker Carlson. Carlson famously feuded with Mars after it swapped out the green M&M’s go-go boots for professional attire it called “current” and “representative of our consumer.” In a televised rant, the former Fox host moaned that the green candy is “no longer wearing sexy boots, now she’s wearing sensible sneakers,” and lamented that “when you’re totally turned off, we’ve achieved equity, they’ve won.”

Rogue Pharmacist Serves As ‘Expert Witness’. The result?  Painful lethal injections:

At issue was the use of midazolam, a sedative typically used to ease anxiety and produce drowsiness before medical procedures. In circumstances like major surgeries, the drug is paired with other medications, such as opiates, to achieve general anesthesia. But states have used midazolam alone — and at much higher doses — in executions since 2013, claiming the drug will render people insensate to pain before the administration of other lethal injection drugs.

In executions, though, a number of prisoners have reacted like Postelle, gasping, moving or convulsing after being injected with midazolam — actions that have prompted medical professionals to raise concerns that prisoners could still feel pain. In Oklahoma, prisoners’ attorneys argued that these kinds of reactions showed that the state’s lethal injection protocol violated the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Attorneys for the state, however, responded with their own medical experts. Two were anesthesiologists who have regularly worked with the drug. The third was Daniel Buffington, a Florida-based pharmacist who had become a familiar, if divisive, face in the small pool of health care professionals who regularly testify for state governments on the merits of their execution methods. Since 2015, he had testified for seven states, which collectively paid him at least $354,541 for his services.

Notably, on multiple occasions Buffington has testified that he has prescribed midazolam, which legal experts said could boost his credibility with judges.

But both Florida and Georgia, the states where Buffington is licensed, do not permit pharmacists to prescribe controlled substances, which include midazolam. In response to the news organizations’ questions, a spokesperson for Buffington said “the word and process of ‘prescribing’ controlled substances” is commonly misunderstood and encompasses advising, recommending and ordering medication in collaboration with physicians — a definition that Buffington has not always used in court.

Real good article, including a history on the use of ‘expert witnesses’ in capital cases.  One of the earliest?  Thomas Edison, who testified that electrocution was not painful.

Rudy Admits To Suppressing Latino Vote While Running For Mayor.  Does so proudly on his own show:

In the conversation, Giuliani – who was central to Trump’s efforts to subvert the result of the 2020 presidential election – lamented that he had been “cheated” during the 1989 mayoral race in which he lost before explaining his 1993 campaign strategy, saying: “I’ll tell you one little dirty trick,” to which Lake replied: “We need dirty tricks!”

Giuliani explained that he spent $2m to set up a so-called Voter Integrity Committee which was headed by Randy Levine, current president of the New York Yankees baseball team, and John Sweeney, a former New York Republican congressman.

“So they went through East Harlem, which is all Hispanic, and they gave out little cards, and the card said: ‘If you come to vote, make sure you have your green card because INS are picking up illegals.’ So they spread it all over the Hispanic …” said Giuliani, referring to the now defunct US Immigration and Naturalization Service before trailing off.

You simply must watch the Youtube vid in the article.  Ylou’ll thank me.

Sallies Has Its Priorities Straight.  $10 mill to expand athletics complex.  It’s a gift.  Just curious–do the priests allow any courses in critical thinking to be taught?

Just a quick binge-watching note.  We’ve started watching ‘Barry’,  and it’s funny as all get-out.  About a professional assassin who gets the acting bug.  Give it a try, I think you’ll like it.

What do you want to talk about?