Support Your Local Police

It appears that an officer at ICE protests used the injury of a journalist to steal her bag full of photographic equipment.

At least time, he was charged.

A law enforcement officer in New Jersey was charged on Thursday with stealing the camera equipment of a photojournalist who was covering a protest outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark.

The photojournalist, Angelina Katsanis, 25, dropped her camera bag after she was injured at the protest on Saturday, she said in an interview. The bag contained roughly $10,000 worth of equipment, according to a statement from the state attorney general, Jennifer Davenport.

The bag was later tracked using an Apple AirTag to the home of Darryl Brown, 43, a sergeant with the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, the statement said. Sergeant Brown, of Sparta Township, N.J., had been deployed to Delaney Hall during the protest, prosecutors said.

………

A law enforcement officer in New Jersey was charged on Thursday with stealing the camera equipment of a photojournalist who was covering a protest outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark.

The photojournalist, Angelina Katsanis, 25, dropped her camera bag after she was injured at the protest on Saturday, she said in an interview. The bag contained roughly $10,000 worth of equipment, according to a statement from the state attorney general, Jennifer Davenport.

The bag was later tracked using an Apple AirTag to the home of Darryl Brown, 43, a sergeant with the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, the statement said. Sergeant Brown, of Sparta Township, N.J., had been deployed to Delaney Hall during the protest, prosecutors said.

………

Later that night, Ms. Katsanis and another photographer, who was on assignment for The Times, made their way to a nearby hospital using a wheelchair given to her by a medic at the scene.

From a hospital bed, she watched on her phone as the AirTag in her camera bag traveled across northern New Jersey — on the highway, then to a private residence, and then to a bar close to that home, she said.

Ms. Katsanis said her boyfriend and the other photographer went out to track the AirTag and found that it had been removed from her bag and was on the side of the road. She said that her name and contact information were still clearly written on the AirTag.

“That was a pretty clear sign to me that this was a theft and not just a law enforcement officer holding onto this bag for safekeeping,” said Ms. Katsanis, who reported the missing bag to the attorney general’s office.

This is likely far more common than is reported in the  press. 

Good Move

The NAACP has called for college athletes to boycott schools in states that have engaged in racist mid-decade redistricting.

If this works, it's a good thing. 

The NAACP on Tuesday launched a campaign urging Black athletes, their families, alumni and fans to boycott athletic programs of public universities in states that “have moved to limit, weaken or erase Black voting representation”.

In the announcement of the “Out of Bounds” campaign, the civil rights giant name-checked eight states – Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Georgia – whose flagship public athletic programs generate more than $100m in annual revenue. Each of those states has moved to draw new maps to limit Black voting representation, following the supreme court’s Louisiana v Callais decision severely weakening the Voting Rights Act.

“What these states have done is not a policy disagreement. It is a sprint to erase Black political power,” Derrick Johnson, president & CEO of the NAACP, said in a statement. “The NAACP will not watch the same institutions that depend on Black athletic prowess to fill their stadiums and their bank accounts remain silent while their states strip Black communities of their voice.”

The campaign calls on football and basketball players who are currently being actively recruited by targeted programs to withhold their commitments until the states “restore fair congressional maps and meaningful Black representation”, to ask coaches and athletic directors at targeted programs where their universities stand on voting rights and to visit and seriously consider committing to athletic programs at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).

It might work.  College sports is something sacrosanct in these states. 

………

The assault comes from the country’s highest judicial office, where the supreme court gutted the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 under the argument that protecting the voting opportunities of Black people is a discriminatory practice and not a restorative one, despite the hundreds of graves throughout the south, marked and unmarked, of Black Americans killed for trying to vote.

………

This week, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) turned to sports to join part of its dissent, calling for Black athletes to boycott public universities in the Southeastern Conference (SEC), arguably the most powerful football conference in the country and certainly its greatest incubator of Black athletic talent. The NAACP is responding to a political attack with a social and economic one, for no institution is as culturally relevant in the south as college football, and few economic engines gain as much public attention as sports.

 Here's hoping that this causes enough pain to create a political backlash against the racist dirt-bags.

The Charges Were Bullsh%$

2 Weeks ago, U.S. District Judge April Perry dismissed felony conspiracy charges against the "Broadview Six".

It appears that the prosecutors were f%$#ing around, and found out:

A federal judge on Thursday dismissed the felony conspiracy count against the remaining defendants in the “Broadview Six” case, further winnowing a politically charged prosecution that is now down to misdemeanor counts of impeding an immigration agent.

“Congratulations, you all are no longer charged with felonies,” U.S. District Judge April Perry told the four defendants in granting a motion from prosecutors to dismiss the lone conspiracy charge in the indictment.

The decision comes days after defense attorneys accused the U.S. attorney’s office of reneging on a promise to dismiss the charge, deciding instead to wait until after trial — which prosecutors said was the “usual” protocol for the office.

Attorney Christopher Parente, who represents Oak Park Trustee Brian Straw, took it a step further, suggesting the delay in dismissing the charge was part of a “shell game” to avoid having to turn over unredacted grand jury transcripts to the judge.

Surprise, it was a part of a shell game by the prosecutors.  They were trying to cover up their own misconduct before the grand jury.

What misconduct?  Funny you should ask.

The unraveling of the politically charged “Broadview Six” case against Operation Midway Blitz protesters began earlier this week when a federal judge agreed to look at unredacted grand jury transcripts to “see if there is anything suspicious” about portions that had been mysteriously removed by the U.S. attorney’s office.

………

Before two separate grand juries last year, a federal prosecutor repeatedly stepped over the line, including “vouching” about the strength of the evidence, telling panel members who disagreed with the prosecution’s theory of the case that they could just leave, and having “ex parte” communications with a grand juror outside the proceedings, according to a series of bombshell revelations in court Thursday.

The first grand jury refused to return an indictment, leading to a second panel being convened, the transcript showed. That time, several grand jurors “made comments” and walked out of the proceedings. The testimony of the agent ended abruptly, and they had to start anew the next day to get the indictment.

“Although I am not going to prejudge the issue without a hearing, I will say that I was incredibly shocked by the redactions that were made,” Perry told the assembled parties, according to the transcript. “I have read hundreds, if not thousands, of grand jury transcripts involving prosecutors who are the most junior of prosecutors to several U.S. Attorneys who appeared before the grand jury. I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts.”

Perry also said there was a “potential” for “sanctions for prosecutorial misconduct and for potential ethical violations, including lack of candor to the court,” the transcript showed.

The stunning developments led U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros to announce in court that he was dismissing all remaining counts in the case, which had been scheduled to go to trial on Tuesday.

These were the misdemeanor charges that were not dismissed 2 weeks ago. 

I'm thinking that a formal bar complaint is in order here. 

Pay Enough to Live

It appears that someone at a Kimberly Clark warehouse is feeling very underappreciated by his employer.

They burnt down a 1,2 million square foot (111,000 m2) warehouse and shared the whole thing on social media.

I'm not sure that I'm particularly upset by his behavior.

Many workers’ pay is effectively frozen in an unforgiving labor market that hasn’t seen any meaningful increases in wages in decades. Meanwhile, the cost of living — not to mention the price of gas — continues to rise, making it difficult for low-income households to squeeze by.

One strategy we wouldn’t recommend is to set a 1.2-million-square-foot warehouse filled to the brim with toilet paper and other highly flammable paper products on fire — which is exactly what a disgruntled employee at a paper products facility in Ontario, California did earlier this week, as the LA Times reports.

The resulting fire, which started just after midnight local time on Tuesday, was enormous, requiring 175 firefighters and 15 fire trucks to put it out.

And if you really, really can’t keep yourself from watching the world burn, we do not, under any circumstances, advise you to film yourself while doing it — which is also what 29-year-old Highland resident Chamel Abdulkarim has now been accused of doing.

The NFI Industries employee was promptly arrested in connection with the blaze after a video showing a man lighting tall stacks of toilet paper on fire went viral online.

“All you had to do was pay us enough to live,” the man could be heard saying in the video. 

We now have a corollary to that old adage, "People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones."

People who own warehouses full of highly flammable paper products should pay their employees enough to live.

Well, You Don’t Have to Spell It Out

I guess actually, you do, when you are writing in the snow with your urine.  To snaps up to Gus Kenworthy, Olympic athelete for the UK team and, exemplar of penmanship for his comment on ICE.

Team GB skier Gus Kenworthy has launched a blistering attack on US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers by urinating the words “Fuck Ice” on the snow just before the start of the Winter Olympics.

In a post on Instagram the 34-year-old, who will compete for Team GB in the free-ski half-pipe in Milano Cortina, also urged Americans to write to their senators to “rein in” ICE and border patrol.

………

“Innocent people have been murdered, and enough is enough,” said Kenworthy. “We can’t wait around while ICE continues to operate with unchecked power in our communities. 

In what will probably my last Olympic related post for a while, I will also note note that VP, and couch f%$#er, JD Vance, was booed by most of the stadium when his picture appeared on the Jumbotron.

Maybe there is something about the spirit of the games after all. 

Today in Good Governance

The Minneapolis City Council has decided to postpone the issuance of liquor licenses to the Canopy by Hilton in the Mill District and Depot Renaissance Hotel for a month in order to get public comment.

In case you are wondering, these are hotels loaded to the gills with ICE and CBP agents, so I rather expect that they will be getting a LOT of public comment on this.

A Minneapolis City Council committee delayed action Tuesday on renewing liquor licenses for two Minneapolis hotels that have housed federal immigration officers.

The committee, made up of all the council members, voted 8-5 to delay a decision on the licenses for Canopy by Hilton in the Mill District and Depot Renaissance Hotel until the next meeting on Feb. 17. The council also voted to schedule a public hearing so residents can weigh in on the matter.

The hotels have been the targets of protests because federal agents were believed to be staying in them during the immigration enforcement surge that has brought 3,000 of them to the state. Two days after an ICE agent killed Renee Good in south Minneapolis, about a thousand people converged outside the two hotels, blowing whistles and banging drums to disrupt agents’ rest.

The move to delay action on the liquor licenses was controversial, with some council members saying denying the licenses would set the city up to be sued and lose. Representatives of the hotels were not immediately available to respond to a request for comment.

Committee Chair Aurin Chowdhury said she felt it was important for the council to have more discussion of the licenses and give the public the chance to share their stories, noting her sister lives on the University of Minnesota campus near two hotels that have housed federal agents, disrupting the lives of neighbors.

………

Council President Elliott Payne said it’s fairly routine for the council to evaluate whether there should be conditions added to licenses. He said the council is holding the renewal so it can have a “fact-based conversation.”

Here's a potential condition, no booze for anyone who carries a gun as a part of their job, like ICE and CBP agents.  They need a clear head. 

A Plan So Cunning You Could Put a Tail on It and Call It Weasel

Get in. We're messing up Melania's Amazon search results
byu/mulcahey inesist

The Pitch

The Cover Art

The blurb.

Over on Reddit, someone has made a wonderful suggestion, that we all go to Amazon, and that we all, "Amplify the paranormal erotic thriller novel Melania: Devourer of Men so it ranks higher than her movie," on Amazon.

The eBook is free on kindle, so you can download it, and boost the algorithm, so that when someone searches for, Melania the documentary, they get this book instead.

This act is generally called, "Google Bombing," though in this case, it would be Amazon bombing.

Classic examples of Google bombing, are sucessful efforts to make the search for "Miserable failure," giving the result of George W. Bush, and the word, "Santorum," giving the result, "The frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex." 

Surely we can do the same to Melania. 

I Like Bruce Springsteen, and I Like Bob Dylan

But I am profoundly unimpressed by Springsteen's latest, a protest song about ICE, where he seems to trying to sound as much like Bob Dylan as possible. 

I appreciate the sentiment, but Bruce Springsteen can do a protest song in his own voice and absolutely kill it.

Hell, Bruce Springsteen could do a song from his shopping list in his own voice and absolutely kill it.

Another Right Wing Terrorist Attack

Some mook sprayed Representative Ilhan Omar with an unknown substance at her town hall last night. 

It is now believed to be apple cider vinegar.  I am surprised.  I would thought that he would have used Brawndo. (It's got what plants crave)

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar was sprayed with an unidentified substance by a man with a syringe on Tuesday as she gave her first in-person town hall of the year in Minneapolis, during which she called for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to be abolished “for good” and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary, Kristi Noem, to resign.

Omar had only been speaking for a few minutes when a man in the audience got up and began to shout while spraying her with the liquid. People at the meeting said the liquid had an acidic smell.

Omar walked toward the man after the alleged assault, but he was then swiftly tackled to the ground by a security guard. People inside the north Minneapolis community center gasped as the scene unfolded.

Some, such as the Minneapolis council member LaTrisha Vetaw, pleaded with Omar to end the town hall early to get examined, due to concerns for her safety because of the unidentified liquid. Omar refused to stop. “Ten minutes, I beg you … please don’t let them have the show,” she told the security team.

After the alleged attacker was subdued, there was applause from the room as he was escorted out. “Here is the reality that people like this ugly man don’t understand, is that we are Minnesota strong,” the congresswoman said.

“I learned at a young age that you don’t give in to threats.”

Pretty epic response from Omar. 

BTW, the guy's social media postings show him to be a major MAGAt. 

Have You Heard the One About the Heckler Autoworker?

Donald Trump was touring a Ford plant, and one of the workers called him a, Pedophile protector."

Trump responded with, "Fuck you," and flipping him the bird. 

He was suspended from his job, and the UAW local set up a GoFundMe for him, and it has raised around $½ million, well in excess of the goal of $150 thousand.

He will be donating the remainder to charity.  (I'd suggest various anti-ICE organizations)

A GoFundMe campaign for a Detroit autoworker who called Donald Trump a “pedophile protector” was suspended from the Ford plant where he worked on Tuesday. But it looks like he’s going to be alright financially. A GoFundMe campaign set up for the Michigan man has already raised over $450,000 and counting.

TJ Sabula, a 40-year-old line worker, told the Washington Post he was suspended from his job for shouting “pedophile protector” at Trump during the president’s visit to the Ford F-150 plant. Trump responded, either by audibly saying or just mouthing the words, “fuck you” twice. The president then extended his middle finger as he kept walking.

Two different videos posted to social media captured the exchange, including the first published by TMZ. White House Communications Director Steven Cheung defended Trump’s actions, telling the Washington Post: “A lunatic was wildly screaming expletives in a complete fit of rage, and the President gave an appropriate and unambiguous response.”

There’s no evidence that Sabula was shouting expletives, though he did call Trump a “pedophile protector,” according to the video. Trump, who was reportedly best friends with notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, has received criticism in recent months because his Department of Justice has failed to release millions of documents related to Epstein’s crimes. Refusal to release the files violates the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which passed last year.

Sweet.

Portlander of the Year Arrested

 I am, of course referring to Seth :Toad" Todd, better known as the Portland Frog, recipient of Wilammette Week's Portlander of the year.

Todd was at another protest following the shootings of 2 people in Portland and arrested.

Police arrested six people during protests outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in South Portland on Thursday night, officials said.

………

Protesters gathered after news spread of a Border Patrol shooting Thursday afternoon that wounded two people in Southeast Portland. Hundreds of people went to the site of the shooting, blocking streets. Another crowd came together outside the ICE building, yelling “Shame” and hurling insults at the building’s occupants.

Ezekiel Mclain, 28, of Portland, and Benjamin J. Davis, 24, also of Portland, were booked on charges of riot, disorderly conduct in the second degree and interfering with a peace officer, police said. Ashley Daugherty, 48, and Seth Todd, 24, of Clackamas, face charges of second-degree disorderly conduct and interfering with a peace officer. Jordan Brokaw, 28, of Portland, was charged with second-degree disorderly conduct.

………

But the night’s relatively high-profile arrest was Todd. Last year, Todd began showing up outside the ICE building in an inflatable frog costume and quickly became known as the “Portland Freedom Frog.” When he was pepper-sprayed by federal agents on Oct. 2, he told The Oregonian/OregonLive it was no big deal.

It was a big deal 

A New Way to Monkey Wrench Waymo

Have you even shut a seat belt in the door or not closed the door firmly enough and gotten a door warning?

It turns out that Waymo semi-autonomous taxis has no way to shut its own doors, so the cab company is paying people $20 to rescue cars with doors that are ajar.

This is another way to protest the beta test of a 4,000 pound death machine on public streets.

Don Adkins was walking along the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles late one night this month when he heard a plea for help.

“Please close the right-side rear door, thanks,” Adkins recalled a synthetic voice calling out. It came from a Jaguar SUV stopped in the street with its lights flashing. One of the hundreds of Waymo robotaxis in Los Angeles operated by Alphabet was in trouble.

………

Adkins had witnessed an Achilles’ heel of the Waymo robotaxis that ferry thousands of riders in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other cities each week. The vehicles can navigate city streets and compete with taxi drivers without anyone behind the wheel — but become stranded if a human doesn’t close the door behind them at the end of a ride. 

Because riders and passersby can be unreliable, Waymo pays workers in Los Angeles $20 or more for rescuing a robotaxi by closing a door, summoning help through an app called Honk that is like an Uber for towing companies. 

 

Your Moment of Schadenfreude

I am Amused So, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was introduced at a restaurant in Washington, DC, and he was booed out of the place.

What a delicate snowflake.

Justice on a Roll

So Washington, DC's own HERO, Sean Charles Dunn, aka, "Sandwich Guy," has been found not guilty of assaulting a CBP officer (assault with a DELI weapon?) by throwing his salami hoagie at him.

It's good that the jury was not SUBservient to the prosecutors.

Understand this Donald Trump and your evil minions, don't BREAD on me.

A jury on Thursday acquitted a D.C. man who was charged with assault after throwing a sandwich at a federal agent during President Donald Trump’s crime crackdown in the nation’s capital.

The one-sided food fight, which was captured on video and spread through social media, became a slapstick symbol of resistance to Trump’s summertime takeover of local law enforcement. The defendant, Sean C. Dunn, said he was speaking out against what he characterized as fascism and anti-migrant policies from the Trump administration.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office said the 37-year-old Air Force veteran was not on trial for protesting but for “throwing a sandwich at a federal officer at point-blank range.” Prosecutors sought to indict Dunn on a felony assault count, but a grand jury rejected that charge, and prosecutors downgraded it to a misdemeanor.

The trial jury in U.S. District Court rejected that charge as well, deliberating for seven hours over two days before returning the not-guilty verdict.

It was the highest-profile repudiation to date of Pirro’s efforts to ratchet up penalties for local offenses. Grand juries have declined to indict several people accused of assaulting federal officers this year. A trial jury last month acquitted a D.C. woman, Sydney L. Reid, who had rowdily protested an immigration arrest at the doors of the city jail and was charged with the same misdemeanor as Dunn.

 

A Real Hero

I am referring, of course, to Sean Dunn, aka ",Sandwich Guy," who is now on trial for misdemeanor assault for throwing his salami sub at an ICE Border Patrol agent.

They tried to indict him for a felony repeatedly, but the grand jury found the prosecutor's insistence that he was a natural-break terrorist to be complete baloney.

What is remarkable is that the victim of the, "Fighting hoagie from the sky," has already been caught out in a lie.

He said that the sandwich exploded, covering him condiments of mass destruction, but the pictures clearly show the  sandwich intact.  (Well done whoever wrapped it)

Said agent complained about the smell, and the fact that his cow-orkers teased him over the incident.

Oh the huge manatee. 

The trial of Sean Dunn, the D.C. man charged with throwing a Subway sandwich at a federal agent this summer, is officially underway—and off to a hilarious start.

After federal prosecutors failed to charge Dunn with a felony, they’re now attempting to get him on misdemeanor assault. And the testimony the “assaulted” officer is sharing of his traumatic sandwich encounter is harrowing indeed.

According to court records and video footage of the foot-long fight, Dunn yelled at Border Patrol agent Gregory Lairmore and other federal agents, calling them “fucking fascists” and saying, “I don’t want you in my city!” before hurling the hoagie at Lairmore, who was wearing a bulletproof vest.

Lairmore testified in court Monday that he was not injured by the sandwich, according to HuffPost reporter Dave Jamieson. However, he said it “kind of exploded” on his chest.

“I could smell the onions and mustard,” Lairmore said. 

However, the defense pressed Lairmore on whether the sandwich really exploded by referring to a photo of the sandwich, still wrapped, on the ground.

“The sandwich hasn’t exploded at all, has it?” the defense asked.

“It looks like a little bit is coming out towards the bottom,” Lairmore replied.

Lairmore also testified that he received gag gifts from fellow officers after the ordeal: a sandwich plushie toy and a patch that said “Felony Footlong.”

And whiny snowflake Larimore is a lying sack of sh%$. 

 

Speaking of Unity

New York State Attorney General Leticia James has established a web site to allow Nwew Yorkers to upload evidence of ICE misconduct.

Now we know who is watching the watchmen, in New York state, at least. 

The New York state attorney general, Letitia James, rolled out a “Federal Action Reporting Portal” form urging New York residents to share photos and videos of federal immigration enforcement action across the state, just a day after a high-profile ICE raid rattled Manhattan’s Chinatown and prompted hundreds to come out in protest.

A US congressman revealed in a Wednesday press conference that four US citizens were arrested and held for “nearly 24 hours” after Tuesday’s raid. Protests broke out in New York on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.

“Every New Yorker has the right to live without fear or intimidation,” James wrote in a statement announcing the portal.

“If you witnessed and documented ICE activity yesterday, I urge you to share that footage with my office. We are committed to reviewing these reports and assessing any violations of law.”

Even if they are federal agents, ICE is still subject to the jurisdiction of the states and municipalities in which they operate. 

Maybe the city should keep Rikers Island open just for them.

In Union There is Strength

The University of Indiana is upset that their newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student, is reporting on news, so the university admins  decided to stop printing the paper except for 5 advertising fluff editions a year for events attracting alumni. (It would remain online)

When the journals at the paper said that they would front page stories about problems at the university in their homecoming edition, administrators shut down printing completely.

In response, management at the Purdue Exponent, who own their own printing press, printed the homecoming issue of the Daily Student and got the copies back to campus so that they could kiosks in time for homecoming.

To hed quotes Aesop.  (Probably, we don't know if Aesop ever really existed)

Last week, Indiana University administrators fired the school newspaper’s (Indiana Daily Student) advisor and ordered students to stop printing the paper.

The student journalists say that University administrators didn’t like the student paper’s decision to increasingly criticize University President Pamela Whitten’s decision to coddle the authoritarian Trump administration, or, at best, remain silent as the Trump administration and state leaders take direct aim at free expression, the First Amendment, and any curriculum teaching about race or gender discrimination.

Enter students at the Purdue student paper, The Exponent, who stepped up and traveled two hours from West Lafayette to Bloomington to help Indiana University students deliver a physical paper to local students anyway:

………

Like many broader mainstream media outlets, what academic administrators want is a sort of pseudo-news that’s devoid of anything that might upset anyone (think of a Ken Doll with all the important bits sanded off to a smooth hump). A sort of feckless simulacrum of journalism that focuses on “safe” issues that, most importantly, don’t upset right wing Americans:

 “According to an Oct. 7 email the IndyStar obtained, Rodenbush passed on guidance from the Media School administration that the IDS’s print publication should solely focus on a special theme, such as homecoming or fall sports, and contain “no other news at all, and particularly no traditional front page news coverage.”

It's gone viral now, so I think that now that this whole sordid affair has gone viral, President Whitten is not oong for her position.

Maybe instead, she should have just made Bari Weiss editor in chief. 

Quote of the Day

Protests Are Violent When The Police Get Violent

—Duncan "Atrios" Black, noting that violent protests are relatively rare except when the police riot against protestors, and that the "No Kings" protests were non violent because the cops decided not to be violent themselves

Whenever you see violence in a protest, starting from the assumption assuming that the police are the primary agents of violence is simply common sense.

Quote of the Day

This Is Perhaps One of the Weakest Requests for Detention I Have Seen and Something That, Prior to Two Weeks Ago, Would Have Been Unthinkable in This Courthouse

—Federal Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui in response to federal prosecutors request that Paul Anthony Bryant, be denied bail and kept in custody until his trial for saying mean things to National Guard troops patrolling the streets of Washington, DC.

This ain't, "Sandwich Guy," but it is almost as absurd and arguably even more Kafkaesque. 

Subway Is Not a Sandwich Shop

I know that this sounds absurd, but I have proof.

The burden of proof is low, probable cause rather than beyond a reasonable doubt, and only the prosecutor presents evidence, and the grand jury does not have to be unanimous in their decision.

This is why he have the adage that,  "A prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich."

Well, a grand jury refused to indict Sean Dunn, better known as, "Sandwich Guy," just refused to indict him despite being caught on a now viral video chucking a salami subway food item at a federal agent.

Thus, Subway does not make sandwiches.

QED.

Federal prosecutors on Tuesday were unable to persuade a grand jury to approve a felony indictment against a man who threw a sandwich at a federal agent on the streets of Washington this month, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The grand jury’s rejection of the felony charge was a remarkable failure by the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington and the second time in recent days that a majority of grand jurors refused to vote to indict a person accused of felony assault on a federal agent. It also amounted to a sharp rebuke by a panel of ordinary citizens against the prosecutors assigned to bring charges against people arrested after President Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops and federal agents to fight crime and patrol the city’s streets.

The rejection by grand jurors was particularly noteworthy given the attention paid to the case of the man who threw the sandwich, Sean C. Dunn. Video of the episode went viral on social media, senior officials talked about the case, and the administration posted footage of a large group of heavily armed law enforcement officers going to Mr. Dunn’s apartment.

………

It is extremely unusual for prosecutors to come out of a grand jury without obtaining an indictment because they are in control of the information that grand jurors hear about a case and defendants are not allowed to have their lawyers in the room as evidence is presented.

Yes, I know, my logic is faulty, but having experienced the Subway dining experience, I have to state on the best days, they are barely food adjacent.

What can I say, but "DAD HUMOR".