Last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions retracted an Obama-era guidance to state courts that was meant to end debtors’ prisons, where people who are too poor to pay fines are sent. This practice is blatantly unconstitutional, and the guidance had helped jump-start reform around the country. Its withdrawal is the latest sign that the federal government is retreating from protecting civil rights for the most vulnerable among us.
At the U.K. Guardian, Jonathan Freedman writes the following in his article, "The year of Trump has laid bare the US constitution’s serious flaws":
I once thought the US constitution – a document crafted with almost mathematical precision, constructing a near-perfect equilibrium of checks and balances – offered protection against such perils. And there’s no denying that that text, as interpreted by the courts, has indeed acted as a partial roadblock in Trump’s path, delaying and diluting his Muslim-focused “travel ban”, for example. But this year of Trump has also shown the extent to which the US has an unwritten constitution that – just like ours – relies on the self-restraint of the key political players, a self-restraint usually insisted upon by a free press. Yet when confronted with a leader unbound by any sense of shame – and shamelessness might just be Trump’s defining quality – America is left unexpectedly vulnerable.
Lee Camp refuses to let go of important issues of the day, and that is why he, and others who follow the facts where they lead, ended up at RT. But RT's shows are now being smeared with a broad brush, as though all of its shows are the product of Russian propaganda. Lee Camp's response:
I offer these nine short quotes so sum up my emotions this morning. I've recently concluded a rather intense and unsuccessful foray into public interest law. Down but not out. It's time to turn my energies to a new project, not to cloister myself: Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Do the next right thing.” Dale Irwin (A Kansas City consumer attorney, a friend of mine, who I hold in the highest esteem) “If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough.” ― Mario Andretti There is no such thing as a disembodied mind. The mind is implanted in the brain, and the brain is implanted in the body. Antonio Damasio (Neuroscientist) “I will keep constant watch over myself and – most usefully – will put each day up for review… Let us balance life’s books each day…” – Seneca Many People Die at 25 and aren’t buried until they are 75. Benjamin Franklin “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Voltaire. “To understand everything is to forgive everything.” ― Buddha “You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.” ― William Wilberforce
This excellent article by Jesse Prinz surveys than 4,000 years of the female nude in art. The website is Artboullion and the article is "Venus Stripped Bear: A History of the Female Nude."