8 votes

Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of November 28

Automatically posted
Tags: usa, politics, recurring.weekly

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

9 comments

  1. [3]
    AugustusFerdinand
    Link
    GOP-controlled Arizona county refuses to certify election Humorously, if they keep playing this game they'll lose two elections...

    GOP-controlled Arizona county refuses to certify election

    Republican officials in a rural Arizona county refused Monday to certify the 2022 election despite no evidence of anything wrong with the count, a decision that was quickly challenged in court by the state’s top election official.

    The refusal to certify by Cochise County in southeastern Arizona comes amid pressure from prominent Republicans to reject results showing Democrats winning top races.

    Humorously, if they keep playing this game they'll lose two elections...

    State Elections Director Kori Lorick wrote in a letter last week that Hobbs is required by law to approve the statewide canvass by next week and will have to exclude Cochise County’s votes if they aren’t received in time.

    That would threaten to flip the victor in at least two close races — a U.S. House seat and state schools chief — from a Republican to a Democrat.

    14 votes
  2. kfwyre
    Link
    Landmark same-sex marriage bill wins Senate passage (Associated Press)

    Landmark same-sex marriage bill wins Senate passage (Associated Press)

    The Senate passed bipartisan legislation Tuesday to protect same-sex marriages, an extraordinary sign of shifting national politics on the issue and a measure of relief for the hundreds of thousands of same-sex couples who have married since the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision that legalized gay marriage nationwide.

    The bill, which would ensure that same-sex and interracial marriages are enshrined in federal law, was approved 61-36 on Tuesday, including support from 12 Republicans. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the legislation was “a long time coming” and part of America’s “difficult but inexorable march towards greater equality.”

    8 votes
  3. skybrian
    Link
    NC county announces curfew as nearly 40,000 customers remain without power after 2 substations damaged by gunfire (CNN) [...] [...] [...]

    NC county announces curfew as nearly 40,000 customers remain without power after 2 substations damaged by gunfire (CNN)

    Authorities have announced a mandatory curfew in a North Carolina county where around 40,000 customers lost power after two power substations were damaged by gunfire Saturday night.

    The county will implement a mandatory curfew from 9 p.m. until 5 a.m., starting Sunday night, Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields said at a news conference Sunday.

    [...]

    The power outage is being investigated as a “criminal occurrence” after crews found signs of potential vandalism at several locations, CNN previously reported.

    Fields said multiple rounds were fired at the two substations. “It was targeted, it wasn’t random,” he said.

    [...]

    “We don’t have anything,” Fields said, when asked about a possible motive. “No motivation, no group has stepped up to acknowledge or accept they’re the ones who [did] it.”

    [...]

    Cameron said the area is experiencing increased emergency calls due to the lack of power, adding that auto accidents have occurred because traffic lights are out. People who rely on oxygen have placed emergency calls, he said.

    More than 37,000 customers were without power across the county Sunday evening, according to the Duke Energy outage map. According to poweroutage.us, about 38,000 customers had lost power in Moore County and neighboring Hoke County.

    Moore County Manager Wayne Vest said a shelter, running on a generator, opened Sunday afternoon at the Moore County Sports Complex in conjunction with the Red Cross. Vest said additional trailers with bathroom and shower facilities are also being brought to the shelter.

    5 votes
  4. [3]
    PantsEnvy
    Link
    Family Sues Stanford After Student Who Spilled Coffee on Friend’s Alleged Rapist Is Found Dead Here is an article from 2016 on how Stanford handles rape investigations... A Majority Agreed She Was...

    Family Sues Stanford After Student Who Spilled Coffee on Friend’s Alleged Rapist Is Found Dead

    Katie Meyer died by suicide after learning she faced disciplinary charges for retaliating against a football player who allegedly raped her underage teammate.

    Meyer’s death came almost immediately after she received notice that she faced disciplinary action for an incident in which she’d spilled coffee on a football player who allegedly raped her underage teammate. According to an email Meyer received on the evening of her death, this potentially put her diploma on hold and also put her positions as a student and an athlete at the school in jeopardy.

    Here is an article from 2016 on how Stanford handles rape investigations...

    A Majority Agreed She Was Raped by a Stanford Football Player. That Wasn’t Enough

    This year, amid growing dissent over how it handles these kinds of cases, Stanford changed its procedure in a way that victims rights advocates say favors the accused. It now requires a unanimous verdict from a three-member board, making it an outlier among prestigious universities. Only one other school (Duke) in U.S. News & World Report’s list of the country’s top 20 colleges that use such panels has such a stringent requirement.

    “Imagine a senior, who has paid four years of Stanford tuition,” said John W. Etchemendy, the outgoing provost, explaining why Stanford’s system includes significant protections against adverse findings for accused students.

    “Being expelled is really a life-changing punishment,” he said. “I think we as an institution have a duty to take that very seriously.”

    3 votes
    1. PantsEnvy
      Link Parent
      I particularly like this comment from the first article

      I particularly like this comment from the first article

      First, did Stanford ever ask what this football player was doing in public? Why wasn’t he home studying or in class? If he’d been where he was supposed to be, instead of out with his friends, he wouldn’t have gotten coffee spilled on him. Assaults never happen at home or in class, and he should have known that.

      Second, before we can judge anyone, we need to see what he was wearing. Was it shorts? If so, he was asking for it. Was it pants? That fabric doesn’t absorb liquid well. He should have been wearing a hazmat suit because then no coffee would have had bodily contact with him. He would have been fine.

      Third, it’s also possible Meyer was giving him coffee in a friendly way and he completely misinterpreted her gesture. A woman can’t give a guy coffee without being accused of spilling it on him on purpose? She could have been giving it to him as a gift and he could have waved off the cup, which would definitely cause spillage.

      Fourth, where’s the video? Are we supposed to take this guy’s word as truth? How are we supposed to know what truly happened if we don’t have video.

      Fifth, at any point did he tell Meyer that he didn’t want coffee spilled on him? Because if he never said no, that’s not Meyer’s fault at all. She’s not a mind-reader. He needed to communicate what he did and didn’t want.

      Honestly, until a ten part true crime podcast comes out (brought to you by Axe Body Spray), we’ll never know what happened. I don’t see the point in Stanford ruining Meyer’s life over one innocent mistake.

      10 votes
    2. tealblue
      Link Parent
      Based on the article, Stanford received a complaint that Meyer had done something that caused someone physical injury and an investigation was launched, which involved scheduling a hearing for...

      Based on the article, Stanford received a complaint that Meyer had done something that caused someone physical injury and an investigation was launched, which involved scheduling a hearing for Meyer as well as offering her an advisor to work through the process. It's highly unlikely that the person who submitted the complaint said why she did what did, so Stanford would not have known that it was in response to an alleged rape and they likely were going through the standard procedure for a case like this. The contentious part should be in how harshly administration communicated with a student, stating that they might have their diploma on hold and that their position as an athlete could be in jeopardy, on a disciplinary matter they yet had little information about.

      2 votes