onfocus

"From the reporting about the Secret Service and the senior DHS officials, it becomes pretty clear that this is not just a DOD problem, not just an Army problem, but multiagency," said Dara Silvestre, a spokeswoman for American Oversight.

Oh great, the whole system is in on it. Will it be firings across the board or zero accountability?

"Twitter making a significant donation to any political committee in 2022 is unusual. Twitter shut down its PAC in 2020 and has subsequently avoided making any political donations. Now the company is supporting a group that is seeking to revoke reproductive rights nationally, even as Twitter has quietly adopted a policy to help employees to access abortion care."

Quite a way to get back into political giving at this particular moment in time. Garbage fire.

’If we allow Supreme Court nominees to lie under oath and secure lifetime appointments to the highest court of the land and then issue, without basis,’ she said, ‘we must see that through. There must be consequences for such a deeply destabilizing action and a hostile takeover of our democratic institutions.’

The only correct take right now. All Democrats should be speaking out against elite impunity night and day. Consequences for corruption must exist in a democratic system.

"But for now, there appears to be scant political will to continue the waivers on Capitol Hill. The Biden administration didn’t include the extensions in its latest $1.5tn spending bill, reportedly at the insistence of the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell."

Weak. So tired of Democrats folding at every turn and calling it political reality.

Where has this been all my mobile life? It’s Greasemonkey + Stylish + AMP remover + more for mobile Safari. Recommended!

"As we previously reported, in 2015, assaults with a firearm were 6.8 times more common in states that had the most guns, compared to the least. More than a dozen studies have revealed that if you had a gun at home, you were twice as likely to be killed as someone who didn’t. Research from the Harvard School of Public Health tells us that states with higher gun ownership levels have higher rates of homicide. Data even tells us that where gun shops or gun dealers open for business, killings go up. These are but a few of the studies that show the exact opposite of what progun politicians are saying. The science must not be ignored."

I really believe most people realize this but our government is in debt to a powerful few who won't.

If you're in Oregon this is something simple you can do to help put gun safety on the November ballot.

"During the 1960s, for example, it seemed impossible to change tobacco use. The tobacco industry had one of the strongest lobbies in history, smoking was part of our every day lives, and people were addicted. But it needed to change. We were getting more and more evidence that tobacco causes lung cancer, and we started unpacking the dangers of second-hand smoking. So we treated it like a public health issue. And we did this not by banning tobacco, but through a consistent and coordinated effort of approaching the public health problem from multiple angles."

Such a great point. We should address gun violence as a public health problem.

"The carnage has renewed a decades-old debate about how to end the horror of U.S. school shootings, with many Texas political leaders once again calling for heightened school security measures. But others, pointing to devastation even on campuses that have invested heavily in security, said that such a singular focus could not stop a committed killer with access to weapons — and that such efforts might actually provide a false sense of safety in the absence of gun control regulations and more robust investments in mental health."

I’m tired of Republican talking points about "hardening" schools and militarizing police forces. We have already done those things and they do not work. Removing military assault weapons from civilians is something new we need to try.

"The rise of services that connect strangers through private messaging has strained the conventional “see something, say something” mantra repeated in the decades since the Columbine High School massacre and other attacks, according to social media researchers. And when strangers do suspect something is wrong, they may feel they have limited ways to respond beyond filing a user report into a corporate abyss."

Centralized social media without strong moderation was a big mistake. The advertising industry needs to force reforms but I’m not optimistic.