{"id":35467,"date":"2019-01-26T12:04:03","date_gmt":"2019-01-26T20:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=35467"},"modified":"2019-01-26T12:04:03","modified_gmt":"2019-01-26T20:04:03","slug":"open-thread-1-26-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2019\/01\/26\/open-thread-1-26-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread &#8211; 1\/26\/2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">It&#8217;s a busy day here in the CatBox.&#160; It always is, because everything I do in this space takes me longer than normal.&#160; Tomorrow I may have no more than an Open Thread.&#160; If so I will send no links messages on Care2.&#160; It&#8217;s a WWWendy day, and we have lots of chores, after she de-stinks the putrid TomCat.&#160; It&#8217;s also a Holy Day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb, the Day of Stars.&#160; My meditation will favor the AFC.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today&#8217;s took me 3:22 (average 5:28).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2019-01-26-CE2504A965A9\" target=\"_blank\">click here<\/a>.&#160; How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Short Takes<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=xei-jQPQkfM\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/msnbcleanforward\/videos\" target=\"_blank\">MSNBC Channel<\/a>): <\/font>President Trump Caves On Shutdown As Robert Mueller Indicts Roger Stone<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/xei-jQPQkfM\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I disagree with one point. Nancy Pelosi did not defeat Trump and the Republican Reich. All the Democrats who stayed unified, all the workers that shared their hardship, all the marchers, all the people who signed petitions and called their legislators, you and I, AND Nancy Pelosi defeated Trump and the Republican Reich. Putin&#8217;s Piddle Puppet gets only the walls of his cave (See below). <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/blog\/free-speech\/its-perfectly-constitutional-talk-about-jury-nullification\" target=\"_blank\">ACLU<\/a>: <\/font>Eric Patrick Brandt and Mark Iannicelli were handing out pamphlets outside a Denver courthouse in July 2015. They wanted to inform the public about jury nullification \u2014 that is, the power of jurors to vote against convicting criminal defendants under laws that the jurors believe are unjust.<\/p>\n<p>Brandt and Iannicelli were trying to participate in a centuries-old and still-thriving discussion. The pamphlets they were handing out included statements such as:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cJuror nullification is your right to refuse to enforce bad laws and bad prosecutions.\u201d <\/li>\n<li>\u201cOnce you know your rights and powers, you can veto bad laws and hang the jury.\u201d <\/li>\n<li>\u201cSo, when it\u2019s your turn to serve, be aware: 1. You may, and should, vote your conscience; 2. You cannot be forced to obey a \u2018juror\u2019s oath\u2019; 3. You have the right to \u2018hang\u2019 the jury with your vote if you cannot agree with other jurors.\u201d <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But the two activists\u2019 attempts to educate the public led to their arrest. Brandt and Iannicelli were each charged with seven counts of criminal jury tampering under a Colorado <a href=\"https:\/\/law.justia.com\/codes\/colorado\/2016\/title-18\/article-8\/part-6\/section-18-8-609\/\" target=\"_blank\">law<\/a> that bars any person from communicating with a juror with the intent to influence the juror\u2019s vote in a case.<\/p>\n<p>On Tuesday, we filed a friend-of-the-court <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/legal-document\/colorado-v-brandt-aclu-amicus-brief\" target=\"_blank\">brief<\/a> in the Colorado Supreme Court arguing that the application of the jury tampering law to Brandt and Iannicelli\u2019s pamphleting is an unconstitutional restraint of speech.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Click through and read the rest. The charges are absurd. The activists were not demonstrating about any specific case, so they could not be trying to influence any jurors&#8217; votes. Their speech was entirely educational. Such cases are the reasons I&#8217;m an ACLU member. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/humor\/borowitz-report\/trump-furious-that-fbi-not-stopped-by-shutdown\" target=\"_blank\">The New Yorker<\/a>: <\/font>A furious Donald Trump told reporters on Friday morning that it was \u201ca total disgrace\u201d that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had apparently not been affected by the government shutdown.<\/p>\n<p>Trump, who appeared agitated and was gripping his television remote as he spoke on the White House lawn, said that he had been under the impression that F.B.I. agents had been furloughed and were not going to work.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou have people across the country, in national parks and places like that, who are not at work, and somehow the F.B.I. is working around the clock?\u201d Trump said. \u201cI think it\u2019s a total disgrace. It\u2019s a sick situation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Dang Andy!&#160; I think you&#8217;re right. After all, as soon as his main trickster was arrested, he figured his shutdown could not prevent the bust and caved. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0126Cartoon\" style=\"border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px\" border=\"0\" alt=\"0126Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/0126Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"700\" height=\"500\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s a busy day here in the CatBox.&#160; It always is, because everything I do in this space takes me longer than normal.&#160; Tomorrow I may have no more than an Open Thread.&#160; If so I will send no links messages on Care2.&#160; It&#8217;s a WWWendy day, and we have lots of chores, after she <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2019\/01\/26\/open-thread-1-26-2019\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","category-35-id","category-3-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35467\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}