After traveling four hours to see her husband at a correctional facility in Tehachapi, California, on Sept. 6, 2019, Christina Cardenas was subject to a strip search by prison officials, drug and pregnancy tests, X-ray and CT scans at a hospital, and another strip search by a male doctor who sexually violated her, a lawsuit said.
What the hell kind of facility is this? Are they holding Magneto in the basement?
Your experience is very different to mine. I went to high school in the 90s. Even back then, both JV and varsity were cut teams for most sports. Some sports were popular enough that they had no-cut teams for underclass kids. But that cost money for extra coaches, equipment, gym time, travel, etc… I was able to play basketball on the freshman and sophomore teams, but I was never good enough to make JV, let alone varsity. Now my kids are in high school and it is even more competitive, because the schools in our area have more students and less money per student for sports. My son tried out for freshman basketball. There were 60 kids trying out for 10 spots. He didn’t make the cut. Only kids who had already been playing on district select teams for years did.
I want to be clear: I don’t think it’s fair to ban trans kids from playing sports on any team. But I also don’t think we can expect people to just get over it. In their minds, at least, there’s too much at stake.
In theory, I agree, but the reality is not that simple. There aren’t enough resources for everyone to play on every team, so there is selection, and tons of kids in high school pin their future hopes on doing well in sports. It’s ridiculous, and I hate the fact that school sports are so competitive as a result, but that’s the world we live in. Nobody is allowed to just play for fun. So as long as someone thinks their kid might be excluded or overshadowed because some other kid is “cheating”, there will continue to be conflict. It’s another aspect of the zero sum mentality.
Nah, you only need that level of approval for a constitutional amendment. Something like this just needs to get through congress.
To be fair, I should amend my earlier statement to say that there kinda-sorta is a federal standard. It just isn’t very good. In 2005, congress passed the Real ID act, which was intended to allow state-issued IDs to include a special rider that indicates it is approved at the federal level. The implementation of this law has been pushed back several times, but it goes into effect sometime next year, at which point it will not be possible to board an airplane in the US without a passport or some other Real ID-compliant form of ID.
It sounds great on the surface, but the downside is that the cost of implementing these IDs is being passed on to the individuals, and it requires a bunch of extra documentation. So getting a Real ID is nearly as expensive and difficult as getting a US passport. But it’s less useful because it’s only recognized inside the US. So if they require one to vote, that’s yet another way to disenfranchise the poor.
What we should be doing is issuing passports to anyone that qualifies for free. But doing that would require a huge expansion of the state department because they can barely keep up with the current demand as it is.
it’s bonkers to me that having ID is not mandatory in the US. do all these rednecks think that SSN is number of the beast or something
The real problem isn’t convincing people they should get an ID. The problem is that there is no existing federal ID standard outside a passport, and getting a passport takes a significant amount of time and money. In most states, you do have to have an ID to at least register to vote, and in many you have to show ID when voting, it’s just that the requirements for ID vary from state to state and, again, there’s no federal standard. The Republicans screaming for voter ID laws know all this, but they refuse to do anything to fix it first. Make of that what you will.
On top of all that, there is zero evidence that we have a problem with non-citizens trying to vote. It just doesn’t happen. Why would they? What would they possibly have to gain by taking the risk of being caught?
Shit, tons of districts aren’t even fully staffed with school nurses anymore. They often only have a few nurses that rotate between schools, so any given school only has a nurse on site one or two days a week. It’s actually a huge problem because there’s nobody available to dispense prescription meds for kids that need them, so either the teachers (who aren’t trained or equipped for this) have to help out or the kids have to self-medicate.
I thought that’s what the Republicans were trying to make with all those weird gerrymandered districts.
I wasn’t presenting Mythbusters as rigorous science, simply pointing out that a false positive is possible when using the tests as directed. If you want hard science, just go to Mayo Clinic’s practical guide for clinicians:
https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(11)61120-8/fulltext
Opiate screening cutoff levels for DHHS were changed from 300 ng/mL to 2000 ng/mL of morphine in December 1998 to avoid false-positive results from poppy-seed ingestion. However, the sensitivity for detecting true opiate use can be a concern,112 and most clinical laboratories continue to use the lower cutoff.53 Positive results for heroin abuse are caused by use of prescribed opiates, such as codeine and hydrocodone; however, ingestion of modest amounts of poppy seeds has been known to cause a positive result from urinalysis. Ingestion of poppy-seed cookies (containing about 1 teaspoon of poppy-seed filling available commercially in the United States for baking) produced positive results for opiates within 2 hours of ingestion among 5 patients.62 Codeine was also found in a concentration of 20 ng/mL in 2 samples 2 hours after ingestion. Urine samples analyzed after 24 hours were negative for opiates. Similar results were seen in another analysis in which consumption of poppy-seed bagels produced positive results for codeine and morphine up to 25 hours after ingestion.60 A single bagel was estimated to contain 1.5 mg of morphine and 0.1 mg of codeine. Similar results were observed in other analyses with slight variations ranging from 1 hour for earliest detection of morphine to 60 hours for the latest detection.20
They have citations with links. I’m not going to copy them all here.
“It’s all about letting the states decide!”
“No, not like THAT!!!”
Back when I had a job that required regular drug testing we WERE told to not eat poppy seeds. But my understanding is that, unless you have other digestive issues (not sure if a baby would count?), it is incredibly unlikely to test positive unless you are mainlining poppy seeds for weeks on end.
Your understanding is incorrect. It varies depending on the sensitivity of the test and the seeds being ingested, but it is actually quite possible for poppy seeds to trigger a false positive on a urine test for opiates, and it does happen. MythBusters tested this in their 3rd episode many years ago. They bought test kits that were publicly available for workplace testing and followed their instructions. They, like you, went in thinking it was just a myth. The plan was that they would continue ingesting foods with poppy seeds until they either got a positive test or they ate such ridiculous quantities that it wasn’t worth continuing. But they started getting positive results very quickly, (after just a few servings of either poppy seed bagels or poppy seed cake) and they stayed positive for a couple days. They called the companies that manufactured the tests and were assured repeatedly that it was not possible (because of course they would never admit that their tests can get false positive results). US Federal employers that test actually mandate that their tests have a much higher threshold because of this effect. But not everyone uses tests that adhere to that standard, and many are just way too sensitive.
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3306336/service-members-should-avoid-foods-with-poppy-seeds/
https://drugfoundation.org.nz/articles/mythbusters-poppy-seeds
https://www.usada.org/spirit-of-sport/education/can-poppyseeds-cause-a-positive-drug-test/
I’ve seen ones that also have a photosensor so you can set it to only make noise if the lights are out.
Thing is… his approach to campaigning has been consistent since 2016, and he won that election. Just saying “he refuses to explain his platform, he can’t possibly win” is a mistake. The reality is that the people who vote for him don’t care. I don’t really understand what it is they see in him, but it’s clear that it has nothing to do with how intelligent or articulate he is.
A) It’s not a verdict, it’s an indictment, which means there will be a trial. They had to rule out some of the evidence they presented to the first grand jury based on the Supreme Court ruling.
B) I assume you’re referring to Trump’s own response. The quotation marks are important:
Trump blasted the fresh indictment as “shocking” and “a direct attack on democracy” in a string of social media posts. “The case has to do with ‘Conspiracy to Obstruct the 2020 Presidential Election,’ when they are the ones that did the obstructing of the Election, not me,” he wrote.
Look, guys… he already admitted that he’s not a choir boy. So just drop it, already. Sheesh. /s
Oh, I understand their objective. But they had to ask a judge to okay the search warrant, and I’m mystified how a request for DNA evidence didn’t raise any eyebrows. They run the risk of having the entire warrant invalidated if another judge decides that this one was too broad.
Why not both? His (racist, xenophobic, homophobic, misogynistic, liberal-hating) base is definitely energized by his rhetoric. But he may also be alienating the less radicalized people he needs to actually win.
The warrant ordered the seizure of all electronic devices at her home, allowed for the opening of documents that were business-, organization- or election-related, and authorized swabbing for DNA.
I’m trying to comprehend how they could possibly justify DNA swabbing someone’s house as part of a witch hunt for election fraud. Are they going to try to establish that illegal immigrants were in the home and possibly voted?
I think I got my car at the right time… it has Android Auto and a few automated features that I really appreciate, like auto headlights, pushbutton start, and adaptive cruise control. I can control some functions via an app on my phone, like remote unlock and remote start, which has come in very handy on several occasions. But it still has physical controls for all the commonly used and critical functions. It doesn’t have a huge glass panel taking up most of the dashboard.
The one and only feature that really truly annoys me sometimes is the reverse automatic braking. It uses sensors on the back of the car, and if I have my hitch-mount bike rack in place it freaks out. I can disable it, but only until the next time I start the car, and every time I have to hold down a software button on the touch screen for 3 seconds. While I’m trying to back up. There should really be a physical toggle button for that.
Great. Give Harris the time slot for a big town hall speech and Q&A. Every 15 minutes, read a reminder to everyone watching that Trump declined to debate.
Lucy is setting up the football again, I see.