Texas Cops Torture Teen on Camera, Rentboy CEO Sentencing Today, Democrats Profit Off Trumpcare Fears: A.M. Links

• 

  screenshot of footage of Texas cops with Graham Dyer

  After passing the U.S. House yesterday, the American Health Care Act "is still far from law," FiveThirtyEight reminds us.

• A FOIA request from Graham Dyer's parents turned up videos of police tasering their son in the testicles multiple times and standing on his head, among other things, not long before he would be taken to the hospital and declared brain dead.
• Jeffrey Hurant, former head of gay escort site Rentboy, will be sentenced in New York this morning.
• Facebook is shutting down its in-house virtual reality studio for Oculus Rift.
• A fool and his money… How "Trumpcare" has been good for Democratic groups and causes.
• More than mere internal politics, Jim DeMint's ouster from the Heritage Foundation speak volumes about "the conservative movement's identity crisis" writes Daniel McCarthy at The Week.
• While "sipping cocktails and eating crab cakes and salmon hors d'oeuvres" yesterday, guests of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty panned Trump's Thursday order on religious freedom.
• It's been a bad local-election week in Britain for UKIP, which doesn't bode well for the party ahead of the general election in June.
• Another Maryland police officer has been arrested for allegedly soliciting prostitution and harassing women he was supposed to be helping.

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Comments

[Bee Tagger]

Facebook is shutting down its in-house virtual reality studio for Oculus Rift.

#FakeReality

[DJF]

Zuckerberg needs the money for his election campaign to be King of the World

[Rufus The Monocled]

Hello.

[Fist of Etiquette]

After passing the U.S. House yesterday, the American Health Care Act "is still far from law," FiveThirtyEight reminds us.

It's unkillable.

[Bee Tagger]

After passing the U.S. House yesterday, the American Health Care Act "is still far from law," FiveThirtyEight reminds us.

Give us the odds on it becoming law, do it.

[Bee Tagger]

A fool and his money... How "Trumpcare" has been good for Democratic groups and causes.

I'm starting to think there's money to be made in never accomplishing your stated political goals.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Another Maryland police officer has been arrested for allegedly soliciting prostitution and harassing women he was supposed to be helping.

I thought engaging in commerce with small business owners was helping them. GET YOUR STORIES STRAIGHT, ENB. Although the harassment probably... isn't... all that... helpful. I guess.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Jeffrey Hurant, former head of gay escort site Rentboy, will be sentenced in New York this morning.

Lest you forget which party is the 100 percent on the side of the LGBT community.

[Zeb]

It's almost as if the "LGBT community" isn't a real thing and is actually a collection of diverse individuals.

[$park? leftist poser]

Yeah, right. Individuals. Pssh.

[Not a True MJG]

Of course it's a collection of individuals.

Individuals who all believe the same thing.

[Conchfritters]

Well, Hillary and Obama have supported gay marriage since 2012 or so. That was like a million years ago.

[Mickey Rat]

If you are for the gay community does that necessarily mean you have to be for gay prostitution enterprises?

I am not sure that follows.

[Bee Tagger]

While "sipping cocktails and eating crab cakes and salmon hors d'oeuvres" yesterday,

ENB playing to the crowd. Between this and the 9:00 post time and the number of links, ENB is establishing herself as the clear best at links right now.

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

As I've said in the past, she gives you the respect you don't deserve.

[Chipper Mourning Somali Roadz]

I remain a big ENB fan.

[Scarecrow Repair & Chippering]

Remain? Remain?!? You should be on your knees begging to be allowed to read her links and thanking her profusely, profusely, for the mere opportunity.

[Entropy Drehmaschine Void]

"Ahem."

Any Alt-Text?

Far from perfection.

[Zeb]

That's a separate honor, distinct from "best links". I think Ed still wins that one.

[Entropy Drehmaschine Void]

Roger that.

[Fist of Etiquette]

A FOIA request from Graham Dyer's parents turned up videos of police tasering their son in the testicles multiple times and standing on his head, among other things, not long before he would be taken to the hospital and declared brain dead.

Something must be done about FOIA requests.

[Trigger Warning]

FOIA requests endanger the lives of good officers by showing them being bad officers.

[Jerryskids]

I thought the nut punches were bad enough, now we've got nut tasering and, Jesus Christ, if you can't get a lynch party going over shit like "Motherfucker, I'm going to kill you" or the "See these hands? They're going to fuck you up" shit from the dude that got beat to death out in Cali, there's really no hope for this society. What the hell does it take to start a real war on this shit?

[$park? leftist poser]

What the hell does it take to start a real war on this shit?

People willing to die for their principles.

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

Trump has a dangerous disability

It is urgent for Americans to think and speak clearly about President Trump's inability to do either. This seems to be not a mere disinclination but a disability. It is not merely the result of intellectual sloth but of an untrained mind bereft of information and married to stratospheric self-confidence.

What is most alarming (and mortifying to the University of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated) is not that Trump has entered his eighth decade unscathed by even elementary knowledge about the nation's history. As this column has said before, the problem isn't that he does not know this or that, or that he does not know that he does not know this or that. Rather, the dangerous thing is that he does not know what it is to know something.

Oh snap! That piece makes me want to burn all of my denim.

[DJF]

Trump probably does not even know that there are 57 states!!!!!

[Rhywun]

Which reminds me that "chronic narcissism" seems like a dangerous disability, too.

[Zeb]

To be honest, I'm not sure what it is to know something. Or how you can even know whether or not you know something. I certainly think I know things, but who can say for sure?

I had no idea Trump was a philosophy major.

[$park? leftist poser]

You know what's a really good book, Personal Knowledge by Michael Polanyi.

[Chipper Mourning Somali Roadz]

I don't know that book.

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

How do you know that you don't know?

[$park? leftist poser]

How do you know if you don't know if you know?

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

I know!

[gaoxiaen]

Good book.

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

I had no idea Trump was a philosophy major.

But do you actually know that he was?

[Zeb]

No.

[Chipper Mourning Somali Roadz]

If you know that one of your friends owns a Corvette, and he sells it to another one of your friends without your knowledge, do you still know that "one of your friends owns a Corvette"?

[Zeb]

That's a good example of what I am getting at. If you were to define what it is to know something, an obvious criteria would be that what you know must actually be true.

[$park? leftist poser]

If I know what pumpkin pie tastes like and you know what pumpkin pie tastes like but we don't agree on what pumpkin pie tastes like, is one of us wrong?

[Zeb]

It tastes like nutmeg. The subjective experience of another mind probably is unknowable.

I'll just assume based on your taste in beer that you are the one who is wrong.

[$park? leftist poser]

I'll just assume based on your taste in beer that you are the one who is wrong.

Oh SNAP!

The subjective experience of another mind probably is unknowable.

And as such, it becomes mighty difficult to pin down what is actually true. Seriously, if you're at all interested in it, check out that book. It really does well in tackling the subjectivity of truth.

[Zeb]

Yeah, sounds interesting, I'll take a look.

[Half-Virtue, Half-Vice]

Epistemology rocked my world. I firmly believe that "knowledge" as we 'know' it (there's no escape from common vernacular) is simply an illusion. There are only beliefs and intuitions with varying degrees of conviction. True knowledge is unattainable to a fallible mind. Paradoxically Truth is real, as it truly exists outside and regardless of the perceiver.

[Zeb]

it truly exists outside and regardless of the perceiver

And how did you attain that knowledge?

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

The greatest theme song in pornographic movie history was about my president.

He has it all, yes he does. He knows how to please in every detail...

[Chipper Mourning Somali Roadz]

Better than Trace Adkins' Brown Chicken Brown Cow?

[$park? leftist poser]

"A Taser was deployed in an effort to control decedent, prevent escape and prevent him from injuring himself," the city stated in court documents, adding the officer had been aiming for Graham's leg and it was dark.

A good shoot tase was done.

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

A FOIA request from Graham Dyer's parents turned up videos of police tasering their son in the testicles multiple times and standing on his head, among other things, not long before he would be taken to the hospital and declared brain dead.

And then, pushing him on his back and shocking him again ? this time directly, and apparently deliberately, in his testicles. And Graham screaming silently as the electric shock to his genitals appeared to be repeated.

Testicle tasering was not specifically forbidden during training.

[Chipper Mourning Somali Roadz]

Don't wanna get tasered to the testicles like a thug, shouldn't have THROWN IT TO THE GROUND like a thug.

[Chipper Mourning Somali Roadz]

Oh wait, they tasered his butthole in the video, not his testicles. Goddamnit.

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

No stupid, they got him in the most underrated erogenous zone, the maple bar.

[Glide]

The moral of the story is, you can't trust the system, man.

[Entropy Drehmaschine Void]

"Sigh"

Mistakes were made.

[wef]

this is why capital punishment should be an option

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

EXCLUSIVE: FBI report finds officers 'de-policing' as anti-cop hostility becomes 'new norm'

"Departments ? and individual officers ? have increasingly made the decision to stop engaging in proactive policing," said the report by the FBI Office of Partner Engagement obtained by The Washington Times.

"Nearly every police official interviewed agreed that for the first time, law enforcement not only felt that their national political leaders [publicly] stood against them, but also that the politicians' words and actions signified that disrespect to law enforcement was acceptable in the aftermath of the Brown shooting," the study said.

As a result, "Law enforcement officials believe that defiance and hostility displayed by assailants toward law enforcement appears to be the new norm

Poor guys.

[Zeb]

defiance and hostility displayed by assailants toward law enforcement appears to be the new norm

And people used to love being stopped on the street for no reason, being arrested for petty bullshit and being considered lesser creatures than the porcines in blue.

[DJF]

But they are still getting a pay check, right?

[Libertarian]

"Blue Qaida" always get their checks.

[jack sprat]

^ very good, first time I saw that.

[Chipper Mourning Somali Roadz]

Stealing that.

[Griffin3]

And in areas where "de-policing" is in effect, I wonder if overall crime goes down. And revenues fall.

[Conchfritters]

So people are mad at police, and now police have a sad? I suppose tazing people in their fucking balls until they die has nothing to do with it.

[Juice]

I watched "LA 92" on Hulu last night. Really good cinema verite documentary about the LA riots.

The LAPD chief said basically the same thing. If you don't support our brutality, we won't "protect" you. Not in those words, but pretty close to where there was no ambiguity.

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

'She's a victim of her own poor choices': Family of doctor mom-of-three does NOT deserve compensation after she died of a cocaine overdose on a night out partying in NYC, says her drug dealer's lawyer

Dermatologist Dr Kiersten Cerveny, 38, died after a night of partying with dealer James 'Pepsi' Holder and HBO executive Marc Henry Johnson.

The two dragged Cerveny's body away from Holder's apartment and dumped her near the entrance before anonymously calling 911 and fleeing.

'People can't use cocaine just anywhere,' the prosecutor said. 'It was James Holder who provided that place' and that Cerveny 'could have lived to see another day' if he hadn't.

She was forced to do it.

[Zeb]

'People can't use cocaine just anywhere,'

This is true. But most places do have bathrooms.

[DJF]

No, but her body was forced out of the building and disposed of in what I would think is a illegal manner. Dumping bodies is probably illegal even in NYC..

[$park? leftist poser]

Dermatologist

So, not a real doctor.

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

Pimple-popper MD!

[Zeb]

I mean, skin cancer isn't cancer cancer.

[$park? leftist poser]

At least she wasn't a podiatrist.

[Bubba Jones]

Derms have a reputation for being the smartest ones.

[Jerryskids]

You treat incurable but non-life-threatening diseases - you have patients for life. Sweet gig.

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

Lena Dunham Thanks Fans After Emergency Hospitalization, Vocally Advocates for Healthcare Access

"When the healthcare of so many American women, especially our trans sisters, is at-risk- or already nonexistent- I am lucky to be in the position to seek help when I'm in pain," she wrote. "To those in that privileged spot- never forget that we are blessed and can pay it forward by supporting Planned Parenthood and LGBTQ clinics like Callen-Lorde with our

[Chipper Mourning Somali Roadz]

Trans sisters? Problematic!

[chemjeff]

Okay Crusty, I'll just go out and say it - You have an unhealthy fascination with Lena Dunham.

[Avocado]

A FOIA request from Graham Dyer's parents turned up videos of police tasering their son in the testicles multiple times and standing on his head, among other things, not long before he would be taken to the hospital and declared brain dead.

Remember Waco, Timothy McVeigh did. This pig culture will fuck with the wrong people one day and maybe they already have. These immunity laws are like putting a lid on boiling water so that not a drop escapes. It would be wiser if they released some of the pressure every now and then, better for public safety, better for us all.

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

Another Maryland police officer has been arrested for allegedly soliciting prostitution and harassing women he was supposed to be helping.

Police say an investigation into 44-year-old Detective Brian Houseman began in April when a woman came forward stating she had been sexually assaulted and harassed by him. According to a press release, the woman claims that during an investigation of an unrelated case in November Houseman made "advances" toward her that were unwanted and even texted her a photo of his private parts. Furthermore, the woman went on to say that she was pressured into having sex with him after he promised to "put in a good word" for a friend of hers who was facing criminal charges.

During the course of the investigation into Houseman, police say evidence was discovered that he also allegedly made inappropriate sexual comments via text message to another woman in a stalking case he was assigned to in February. Officials say the text messages were sent while he was on duty.

Wait for it...

In the press release, the Anne Arundel County Police Department says Houseman's actions are a "betrayal" of their values:

LOLLOLOLOLOLOLOL

[Griffin3]

They spelled "portrayal" wrong.

[$park? leftist poser]

Blame autocorrect.

[Not a True MJG]

Hiyo!

[Conchfritters]

Let me guess, he didn't put in a good word for her friend?

[gaoxiaen]

Those Texas cops deserve this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-d5yU-aQ34

[Dick Puller, Attorney at Law]

Best blog post of the day.

[$park? leftist poser]

'Best'? Hmmm...

[Stormy Dragon]

So it's like Sharia Objectivism?

[Jerryskids]

You might chalk this up to internal politics. After all, DeMint lost a power struggle inside the heavyweight conservative think tank. But he's also a casualty ? not the first, and certainly not the last ? of the conservative movement's drifting sense of purpose and identity.

David Brat's ouster of Eric Cantor was a wake-up call to the GOP. It meant the TEA Party was serious and they were going after RINO's. Unfortunately, the wake-up call didn't stir the GOP to take action on all their promises to make government smaller, it stirred them to take action against the TEA Party. There's no "drifting sense of purpose and identity" in the GOP, they're fat hogs wallowing around in a big ol' slop trough and they have no intention of giving up the sweet life, they've accomplished everything they've had any actual intent to accomplish. Even if they have to stomp the dogshit out of any sonofabitch trying to actually accomplish any of the bullshit the GOP's been spewing for years about what they want to accomplish.

[chemjeff]

Besides, the Tea Party never really wanted "small government" in the way libertarians think about it. They want government bennies for THEM and not for THE OTHERS.

[Random Axe Of Kindness]

First attempt at tagging a link. Apologies if this goes wrong, with no STUPID DELETE BUTTON.

Canadian teen with leukemia dies with willing donors.

Love hearing about how wonderful the Canadian health care system is and how Americans should aspire to that.

[Azathoth!!]

It's been a bad local-election week in Britain for UKIP, which doesn't bode well for the party ahead of the general election in June.

What did anyone expect? They did it. It's over. UK independence. They won.

Didn't these people get the hint when Farage quit right after Brexit?

And what's the result of the 'bad local election week'? A Tory party that's back on track.

[Half-Virtue, Half-Vice]

Jesus Fucking Christ, those pigs should fry like bacon.