This video will blow your mind.
On the plus side, the officer in question was fired from the South Carolina Highway Patrol and has now been charged with aggravated assault. But here’s the story (with video). White Highway Patrol officer stops a black man for a seat belt violation outside Columbia, SC. The state trooper Sean Groubert, 31, asks the driver for his license. The driver, Levar Jones, reaches into the car to retrieve his license – at which point Groubert screams “get out of the car” and proceeds to unload four or five rounds from his pistol into Jones at close to point blank range.
Dashcam video after the jump …
Back in what we might call the glory days of the ‘War on Terror’ – by which I mean that handful of years in which various armchair warriors and big-thinkers tried to manufacture an ideology out of America’s post-9/11 trauma – there was this frequent refrain that the ‘problem’ with the Muslim world was that, unlike Europe, Islam had never had a Reformation. And with the recent resurgence of terrorism punditry, I’m hearing the same idea bandied about again.
The latest conservative media freakout over Obama rivals the one over his “bow” to King Abdullah. It’s so good, ya’ll.
Voter fraud hucksters will want to jump all over this GOP candidate who voted in two different states during the same election years.
Which big companies have dropped ALEC, the legislative advocacy group which seeds odious legislation in states around the country? Turns out quite a few. Here’s the list.
The fact pattern in that case striking down Louisiana’s gay marriage ban reads like a law school exam question: lesbian conceives child via artificial insemination, legally marries lesbian partner in California, moves to Louisiana, where same-sex marriage is outlawed and where partner tries to legally adopt the child.
So it’s an adoption case, with same-sex marriage implications. In the same way, the landmark Windsor ruling was a tax case with same sex marriage implications.
Beyond the intricate legal questions, there are obviously very personal and poignant matters at stake. I don’t mean to minimize that. We explored some of those dilemmas last year as it became clear that, for a while at least, the country would have a patchwork of marriage laws, some allowing same sex marriage and some not, with gay partners forced to make very difficult life decisions.
As Dylan Scott points out, the GOP’s big anti-Obamacare talking point — okay, fine, people may be signing up but not enough people are paying their premiums! — has been blown out of the water by subsequent data. But you won’t hear anything about it from those who were trafficking in this meme back in the spring. Silence. Here are the main culprits.
Interesting piece at TPMCafe on the changes Pope Francis has already wrought in the American Catholic Church:
In less than two years, Pope Francis has changed the face of a two-thousand-year old institution. His emphasis on humility, mercy and social justice offer a vivid contrast to a vocal minority of U.S. Christian leaders who only see dark clouds and battles to fight. Think of it as the joy of the Gospel v. culture war Christianity fight. The latter is being kicked to the curb by a pope determined to rescue the church from self-righteous ideologues, princely clerics and conservative activists who think opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion are the only real litmus tests of authentic Catholicism.
Kanas Supreme Court deals another big blow to Kris Kobach’s big gambit to head off Democrats’ big gambit. Yeah, it gets confusing. But make no mistake: This morning’s decision significantly increases the chances that Sen. Pat Roberts (R) will have to face independent Greg Orman without a Democrat on the ballot.