Matt Zapotsky reports Stephen Bannon, three others charged with defrauding donors to online fundraising campaign for border wall: Federal prosecutors in New York on Thursday unsealed criminal charges against Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, and three other men they alleged defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors using an online crowdfunding campaign that…
Crime
Crime, Trump, Unfit
Maxwell
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Corruption, Crime, Trump
Law and Order
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Crime, Documentary, Drug War, History, Opioids, Public Health
The Public Health Crisis before the Public Health Crisis
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Frontline’s Opioids, Inc. (full film): Pushing opioids. Bribing doctors. Making millions. FRONTLINE and the Financial Times investigate how Insys Therapeutics profited from a fentanyl-based painkiller up to 100 times stronger than heroin — and how some Wall Street investors looked the other way. Since 2007, communities like Whitewater have faced a Great Recession, an opioid…
Crime, Federal Government, Law
Over 1,100 Department of Justice Alumni Call on A.G. Barr to Resign
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Over one-thousand DOJ alumni have issued a statement on the events surrounding the sentencing of Roger Stone: We, the undersigned, are alumni of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) who have collectively served both Republican and Democratic administrations. Each of us strongly condemns President Trump’s and Attorney General Barr’s interference in the fair administration…
Crime, Democrats, Law, Politics, Race
Why Michael Bloomberg Will Never Be President (and Shouldn’t Be)
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Soledad O’Brien, responding to Michael Bloomberg’s hesitant, equivocating answer to a question about the wrongful convictions of the Central Park Five, explains why Bloomberg will never be president. She’s right that black voters will not accept him, but then no one of any race should support a man who does not – indeed, will not…
Assault Awareness & Prevention, Crime, Language, Newspapers, Writing
Janesville Gazette’s Reprehensible Story About an Alleged Sexual Assault
by JOHN ADAMS • • 4 Comments
At the nearby Janesville Gazette, there’s a story about an alleged sexual assault that’s simply reprehensible reporting: Excessive drinking was prelude to sex assault, court document alleges. (The reporter, Frank Schultz; editor, Sid Schwartz.) Here’s how Schultz’s story begins – a single-sentence first paragraph: An 18-year-old Janesville man is accused of second-degree sexual assault after…
Assault Awareness & Prevention, Crime, Disinformation, Fact Checking, Marketing, Mendacity, Misconduct, Police, Press Release, University
UW-Whitewater’s Administration Covers Crap with Catsup
by JOHN ADAMS • • 10 Comments
For months, UW-Whitewater has publicized on its website a sham study from a burglar-alarm company as confirmation that Whitewater has the safest campus in Wisconsin. The study is a shabby fraud, with a methodology so far below proper academic standards that it taints the serious work of faculty and students at the school, in the UW…
City, Crime, Cruelty, Education, Ethnicity, Immigration, Local Government, Mendacity, Migrants, Police, Race, University, UW System
‘Do Deportations Lower Crime? Not According to the Data’
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Anna Flagg writes Do Deportations Lower Crime? Not According to the Data: In one of Donald J. Trump’s earliest moves as president, days after his inauguration, he revived the deportation program known as Secure Communities. Proponents argue that it helps prevent crime and also increases the police’s ability to solve crime through collaboration with federal…
Assault Awareness & Prevention, City, Crime, Culture, Distraction, Newspapers, University, UW System, Wisconsin
Truth-Telling and Tale-Weaving
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
In conditions of real injury, in which truth-telling is important, tale-weaving about irrelevant matters is worse than wasteful: it’s a misdirection from the significant to the insignificant. Three recent stories illustrate the critical difference between these approaches. As a truth-telling story, Hope Kirwan of Wisconsin Public Radio reports ‘Students Deserve To Be Heard’: UW-La Crosse…
Assault Awareness & Prevention, Crime, Ethics, Law
‘Keeping Harvey Weinstein’s Secrets’
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Harvey Weinstein is responsible – directly and personally – for his actions. Others, however, assisted him in concealing his violent coercion. Astonishingly, as the New York Times reports, some of those who aided Weinstein were – of all people – attorneys who made public careers as victims’ rights advocates. The two podcasts embedded below detail…
Assault Awareness & Prevention, Crime, Law
Unbelievable
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
In December 2015, T. Christian Miller of ProPublica and Ken Armstrong of The Marshall Project published An Unbelievable Story of Rape, about a woman (her middle name is Marie) who was raped, pressured to recant her account, and later found herself charged with a misdemeanor offense. In fact, she was raped, her attacker was later…
Crime, Depravity, Nihilism, Resistance, Violence
Why We (Now) Fight
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
American director Frank Capra, among others, was responsible for the Why We Fight series of films during the Second World war. The films helped American soldiers understand what was at stake in a war with the Axis powers. At bottom, it wasn’t Capra’s talent (although he was talented) that supplied the answer to the question why…
Assault Awareness & Prevention, Crime, Trump
What Trump’s ‘Not My Type’ Defense Means
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Writing at The Atlantic, Megan Garber explains The Real Meaning of Trump’s ‘She’s Not My Type’ Defense (‘The president, in attempting to downplay E. Jean Carroll’s rape allegation against him, isn’t talking about attraction. He’s talking about protection‘): There is, as always, a certain clarity to Trump’s cruelty. The president seems to understand, on some level,…