Yes, you read that right. The astroturf Koch-funded “Moms for Liberty” is offering a $500 reward to anyone who catches a teacher teaching “divisive concepts,” which is against state law. What is a divisive concept? Maybe teaching about the First Amendment is one. Teaching about the horrors of war is another. Teaching about the effects of climate change, for sure. Teaching that vaccines save lives is another so don’t talk about polio or other diseases, certainly not coronavirus.
Randi Weingarten spoke out:
For Immediate Release
Nov. 18, 2021
Contact:
Janet Bass
jbass@aft.org
301-502-5222
Statement by AFT President Randi Weingarten on
Bounties on Heads of NH Teachers
WASHINGTON—Statement by American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten on a $500 bounty offered by Moms for Liberty to someone who alleges a New Hampshire teacher is teaching so-called divisive concepts and breaking the New Hampshire law called Right to Freedom from Discrimination in Public Workplaces and Education:
“Putting bounties on the heads of New Hampshire teachers, much like the controversial vigilante bounties envisioned by Texas law to thwart the legal right to reproductive choice, is offensive and chilling in any context. The New Hampshire bounty effort is a result of a state law that bans something that doesn’t happen in New Hampshire or anywhere else—teaching that any group is inherently superior or inferior to another. We teach honest history and respect for all. Culture warriors offering bounties for a teacher supposedly violating the law are doing this at a time when we all need to work together. The stakes are high—unjustified accusations against teachers could cost them their teaching licenses. The clear intent is to undermine public education and scare teachers.
“State Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut even set up a webpage to facilitate complaints against teachers. Perhaps Edelblut’s judgment should lead him to a different line of work. We need school leadership that believes in safe and welcoming environments, not one of fear and division. This is distracting from teachers’ focus on helping our kids thrive and excel. Teachers shouldn’t have to worry that history, literature, science or art lessons can be misconstrued and lead to a public flogging or worse. The overwhelming majority of parents support and trust their children’s teachers, value their neighborhood public school as the center of the community and are astounded by this brazen attempt to stifle learning.
“Parents and teachers are partners in supporting children. Teachers work very hard to help our children through tough times like the pandemic and now to get them back on track. We should do everything we can to support them, not put a price on their head.”
# # #
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It is clear as day with no clouds in the sky that the Koch network wants to replace current public law enforcement and the legal system with vigilant justice and bounty hunters not bound by the same laws that hold publicly paid law enforcement accountable.
I think the Koch network is also behind the “Right to Work” laws that take away rights from workers and destroy labor unions, and the “Stand your Ground” laws that change nothing but turn citizens into killers that can claim they feared for their lives so they shot someone dead that might not even have a weapon on them and didn’t really do anything to cause a confrontation.
We already know the Koch network and other billionaires such as the Waltons and Gates are out to destroy the public schools and replace them with publicly funded private schools that don’t answer to anyone.
And, the Koch network has been working to achieve this since as early as the 1960s soon after the Civil Rights Act and the people started to become more aware of what was polluting the environment and killing us in the process.
I wonder if the members of the Koch network are extraterrestrial agents in disguise with a goal to get rid of our species so they can take over the planet without a fight, after they clean up the mess they helped make.
Would love to see this challenged by progressive parents claiming the $500 bounty for so-called “divisive” comments made by conservative teachers.
I would bet that it is possible to peruse any history textbook and find a sentence that is problematic. It is possible to secretly record any Trump-supporting teacher for a week and find some comment that – especially out of context – can be amplified and criticized for the racist assumptions that are being made. Any comment made by that teacher is fair game, by the rules that the far right wants to use.
Maybe the left can only stop this if they use the ugly, divisive and hateful tactics to demonize and publicly humiliate Trump-supporting teachers that I see people on the right using to sow violence and hatred against perfectly normal moderate teachers trying to expand the curriculum to be more inclusive.
I do think this won’t stop until people see this for what it is.
Many states have laws against unauthorized recording in classrooms.
I know. I am just saying that there is a double standard and the fact that there is a double standard here needs to be brought out in the open.
It’s like the double standard that Saul Wilentz uses when he demonizes and discredits Nikole Hannah-Jones for the same transgressions that he minimizes when a white professor that he admires – Jill Lepore – makes those same supposed errors.
The NH law isn’t about “divisive” content, it is about content that far right Republicans don’t approve of but they know they can’t get away with saying that (until their attempt to destroy democracy are successful).
So it would be interesting if progressives called their bluff and started doing the same thing the anti-CRT folks do and showing the “divisive” content that Trump-supporting Republican teachers use. And claiming their $500 bounty.
If “stop and frisk” was used against white private high school students, and they were ceremoniously tossed to the ground and searched regularly whenever they were walking down the street, that law would have been ended immediately.
If this NH law is used against Trump-supporting Republican teachers, it will probably be immediately repealed.
And many have laws against recording without consent of those being recorded.
Can the same sort of tactics be used against home schools or charter schools? Home schoolers often pool their children to be taught by someone who has expertise in a particular subject. I have a feeling, though, that since these are private enterprises, they cannot be subject to the same sort of harassment. People really do have to rally around their pubic school teachers. This is getting way out of hand. Pretty speeches from union leaders are not going to deter these people.
By all means, let’s make teaching even more onerous and fraught with issues.
And New Hampshire, like many other states, is facing shortages of teachers and of substitutes.
I am thinking that rightwingers and reformers intend to destroy the teaching profession to aid their goal of ending public education.
I still think that young people should go into the profession because of the nobility of this service, but I would warn them, now: You will go through hell and back.
Getting back … ay, there’s the rub …
Hi Bob,
In theory it’s a noble profession. In reality not so much. 🙂
Mamie, as you know, teachers still have the opportunity to change lives for the better, one kid at a time.
The proper response is: I got your divisive concepts right here! (Boston, NY, or NJ accent emphasizes the point best, adding conclusion of mutha…… also valid.)
entirely agreed
The next 30 years or so are going to be just awful.
May you live in interesting times, the old curse goes
On the plus side, the following 30 years will likely be worse.
I agree, Flerp.
The Republicans win the House and Senate in 2022.
DeSantis is elected President in 2024.
The Republicans control the House, Senate, Presidency, and Supreme Court.
The Republicans vote to expand the Supreme Court because, from their perspective, the court is too LIBERAL.This can be done with a simple majority by passing a revision to Title 28 United States Code Section 1
Republicans pass legislation to severely constrict voting rights.
They pass legislation, on the model of HB1 in Florida, but more extreme, to authorize use of the military against protesters/political dissent. Posse comitatus is dead.
They pass national voucher legislation, allowing the per pupil state education allotment to follow the student to a private school, religious or nonreligious.
They create a national 1776-style curriculum and designate schools that adopt it as “Freedom Schools” that get additional money from the federal government.
They create huge financial incentives for entrepreneurs running “Freedom Schools,” including exemptions for financial reporting and transparency.
They make major cuts in Social Security and Medicare and kill the Affordable Care Act.
They hold a summit and work out a spheres of influence arrangement with Russia and China on the model of the Mafia Commission of 1931.
The pass their version of the Enabling Act.
The create detention camps.
They create an East German Stasi-style citizen reporting system for “subversive” activity.
Bob Shepherd,
But isn’t all of that a small price to pay knowing we will all be permanently safe from the extreme danger of too much “wokeness”?
Once the extreme danger of CRT and wokeness are permanently eradicated, there really will be no need for democracy anymore.
(Sarcasm warning)
This bounty business is obscene and Edselbutt is a disgrace.
“Moms for Liberty” are incentivizing Gestapo tactics with the potential for lots of abuse. This another attempt to put public schools and teachers on the defensive.
There goes Long Division …
lol
Hahahahahahahaha! Wonderful.
On the plus side, the idiots who tweeted this out have a 500-follower account, so they’re basically nobody.
They may have only 500 followers but they are a national story
It’s a national story because groups opposed to the NH law and the recent focus on “critical race theory” amplified it because they believed it would be a great way to damage the standing of CRT opponents (which it is).
No, it’s a national story because Trump, Miller, and Christopher Rufo manufactured a crisis built on racial fears, and a dozen or more red states have assed laws banning the teaching of anything that is “divisive” or makes anyone “uncomfortable”
That’s not what the laws ban, but ok.
The kids won’t be silenced. This from Pence’s home state of Indiana.
Muncie Central High “sentenced” them to at-home Virtual Learning.
An Indiana high school is on its third day of virtual learning after students staged peaceful protests against the school’s decision to remove a class project that expressed views about police brutality and racism from a school hallway. Student resource officers—cops that patrol school halls—were apparently offended by the teens’ projects, which were based on the 40-year-old comic book V for Vendetta.
The students were sent home after they protested in person at the school on Monday 11/15, in response to a conflict with school resource officers, or SROs, who disagreed with opinions the teenagers expressed in a class project based on V for Vendetta, a graphic novel about a revolution against fascism. Students were allowed to interpret the themes of the work freely, within the theme of modern-day issues in America; some chose to write about race, police brutality, and Black Lives Matter, while others wrote about gender identity and sexual orientation.
Their projects were moved from the school hallway to inside a classroom after this confrontation with offended SROs.
“So originally we made the posters as a project for the book we were reading (V for Vendetta) a lot of my peers decided to go along the lines of police brutality, and BLM,” Gabrielle Butler, a 16 year old junior at Muncie Central High School who completed the project, told me in a text message. “The police officers felt offense to it. And what started as a peaceful conversation ended up as a disagreement with a lot of untrue statements. We the students noticed how the police officers were acting and heard about our posters being removed from the hallway. A few students got together and had a discussion about what was going on, and created a protest that so many students came to support for the fact they didn’t agree either.”
https://www.wthr.com/article/news/education/muncie-central-high-school-holding-e-learning-day-following-student-protest-schools/531-b357fedf-efe0-412a-827a-0b37f25085c3
Some divisive concepts:
Biden was elected President.
You shouldn’t inject disinfectant.
Stealth airplanes aren’t really invisible.
The Continental Army did not, during the Revolutionary War, capture the British airports.
Covid-19 will not just magically disappear.
Asylum seekers aren’t rapists and murderers.
Vigilante justice is dangerous.
Those monuments to Christopher Columbus are to a guy who practiced genocide and introduced enslavement of African Americans to the New World.
There is systemic racism in the United States.
Denmark has no interest in selling Greenland to us.
Yep.
The people who believe saying “Biden was elected President” is divisive are the ones who want to be the sole judge of what is divisive.
ofc
Words fail me.
I don’t know if the “moms” are women or right wing men posing on-line as women. It seems to be a right wing thing- men who catfish on political blogs with women’s names or photos so that readers think they are a demographic that they aren’t.
If the “Moms” really are women, they are playing with fire. The Jefferson County N.Y. judge who released an admitted rapist with no jail time yesterday is a Republican. He said he prayed to God for an answer as to the man’s sentence. The public has a right to know which God Judge James P. McCluskey listens to because that God has it in for women.
Founder of Moms of Liberty, Tina Descovich, can be heard on a podcast at Treasures of Faith, Bill Gent, Host, 5/28/21 to 8/20/21, WDMC, Divine Mercy Catholic Radio, (Melbourne, Fla.)
This country has gone insane.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/trump-and-his-regime-committed-or-at-least-condoned-mass-murder-america-just-doesn-t-care/ar-AAQR0LR?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531
So glad you caught this!
Speaking of “divisive”, I give you today’s Republican party.
Alexandria Ocascio-Cortez made another spot on speech in Congress this week.
“What I believe is unprecedented is for a member of House leadership of either party to be unable to condemn incitement of violence against a member of this body. It is a sad day in which a member who leads a political party in the United States of America cannot bring themselves to say that issuing a depiction of murdering a member of congress is wrong….what is so hard about saying that this is wrong?”
Kevin McCarthy said yesterday that when Republicans take control of the House again, Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Green will be restored to important committees. The Republican Party is turning into a Conferacy of Violent Dunces.
It’s disappointing that none of the GOP religious voted for the climate and kids bill ( Build Back Better)
117th Congress, Senators who are Jewish- 9 are Democratic, 1 is Independent. In the House, 26 are Democratic, 2 are Republican.
All of the Dems in the House voted for the Build Back Better bill, unlike the Repubs, none of whom voted for the Bill.
I wonder how the Republican members will explain to their constituents that they voted against Pre-K for all, reduced drug costs for seniors, and a host of programs that will benefit everyone.
They won’t explain. They will run ads with White people praying and
pictures portraying Black people rioting.
Or, they will show images connecting themselves to Christianity and, tell the audience that their opponents aren’t.
There they go again. The far right is making enforcement of another regulation dependent on vigilante justice. No wonder my far right friends see Kyle Rittenhouse as a hero: They have been taught that everything, including law enforcement, should be privatized. This will last until vigilantes start to appear who do not look like them. What will they say when laws against things are enforced by local vigilantes made of black and brown people? I bet that would change their tune.
Roy, exactly right. Vigilante justice cuts different ways. I listened to part of the trial and was impressed by the prosecutor’s closing argument, where he pointed out that the only people killed in that night of chaos were those shot by Rittenhouse. And he clearly showed that these were murders of choice, not self-defense. Rittenhouse claimed to be a medic, but he was not. He didn’t call 911 for the people he shot, nor did he attempt to render aid. Little weasel.
Vigilante murderer Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted on all counts in his trial. He killed two people in Kenosha with his AR-15, which he was not old enough to buy.
Yes.
There should be massive outrage that a 17 year old was illegally given an assault weapon and allowed to roam the streets purported to offer “protection” and ends up killing 2 unarmed man and shooting another man with a handgun who had acted properly and chose not to shoot and kill Kyle but instead to simply reach for his gun. If Kyle’s victim had not used restraint and instead had chosen to shoot Kyle point blank in the head, would he be able to cry “self-defense”? It would certainly be a lot more believable than Kyle’s self-defense claim.
Just trying to imagine that jury exonerating a black teenager armed with an assault weapon after he killed someone who threw a plastic bag at him, and then fired his assault weapon at two other innocent men (killing one) trying to disarm him as he was running down the street afterward.
The media coverage bought right into the right wing framing of the entire defense. No one ever asks if a black man “felt threatened” as an excuse for gunning down unarmed people. Whether or not someone FEELS threatened is not self-defense. It is whether or not someone IS threatened. And if you “feel threatened” by people trying to disarm you because you just shot and killed an unarmed man who tossed an empty plastic bag at you and you are running down the street with your assault weapon, then getting off on self-defense is yet more evidence of white privilege that had corrupted our legal system.
There are way too many examples of white people with guns who instigate a violent confrontation and then get away with killing unarmed people because those unarmed people reacted to the violent situation caused by that white person with a gun.
Rittenhouse is similar to Donald Trump who said he could kill a person on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.
Omigosh! Teachers could get in hot water teaching about the right to bear arms. Now that’s divisive.
What if a teacher mentions belief in God?
This is an idiot law when the country is not solidly divided about everything.
I think you meant to say “when the country is divided about almost everything.”
Another reader, perhaps Lloyd or Greg or Bob, said that the most divisive thing that anyone could say in a classroom is: Joe Biden was elected president in 2020.
Divisive stuff. Grass is green. Biden is president.
Some people think grass is brown.
LOL. Sometimes it is.
I think that the current division is between those who think that grass is green and those who, bizarrely, think or at least claim that it is Socialist red.
But I have to run to the store now. If some random vigilante shoots me on the way there for walking around while Socialist, remember me, all!
“Uncontroversial Statements”
Texas is red
New York’s blue
Trump is nuts
DeSantis too
If no college or professional sports team ever plays in Wisconsin again, it will be too soon …
My level of surprise at this verdict: Zero.
Much celebration, I suppose, right now among the Trump Sturmabteilung.
When a jury acquits a vigilante murderer, we are all in trouble. There goes the rule of law. We know what would have happened had the vigilante been black.
YUP. I expect that after this verdict, over the next few weeks, the FBI is going to be kept very busy by idiots on both sides of the political chasm making extremist threats on social media.
I guess I’ll again be the outlier here (no surprise to the midwits who refer to me as a “klansman” here) and say the verdict did not surprise me because from what I saw, there was ample evidence that would have allowed a reasonable jury to conclude that Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense.
No, we absolutely do not know that the outcome would have been different if Rittenhouse were black, as Diane says.
No, the verdict is not a sign that the judicial system is white supremacist or deeply corrupt. The trial appeared to be a fair trial. Fair trials are good things, not bad things. And fair-minded, reasonable people can disagree about whether the outcomes of particular fair trials were correct without attacking the credibility of the judicial process. This was not 1950s Mississippi.
Yes, guns and gun laws are a big and worsening problem.
And of course, a hundred times of course, no, Kyle Rittenhouse should not be lionized. But that awful people are lionizing him doesn’t mean you must believe, as a show of opposition or resistance, that Rittenhouse should have been convicted.
I feel bad that Kyle killed two ripple, maimed a third, and walks away with no consequences. FLERP, does that look like “justice” to you? Not to me.
From one the parents of one of those “aggressors” that flerp believes Kyle Rittenhouse was justified in gunning down in fear of his life.
Anthony Huber’s family:
“Today’s verdict means there is no accountability for the person who murdered our son. It sends the unacceptable message that armed civilians can show up in any town, incite violence, and then use the danger they have created to justify shooting people in the street. We hope that decent people will join us in forcefully rejecting that message and demanding more of our laws, our officials, and our justice system.
Make no mistake: our fight to hold those responsible for Anthony’s death accountable continues in full force. Neither Mr. Rittenhouse nor the Kenosha police who authorized his bloody rampage will escape justice. Anthony will have his day in court.
No reasonable person viewing all of the evidence could conclude that Mr. Rittenhouse acted in self-defense. In response to racist and violent calls to action from militia members, Mr. Rittenhouse travelled to Kenosha illegally armed with an assault rifle. He menaced fellow citizens in the street. Though he was in open violation of a curfew order, Kenosha police encouraged him to act violently. Kenosha police told militia members that they would push peaceful protestors toward the militia so that the militia could “deal with them.” Soon after, Mr. Rittenhouse killed Joseph Rosenbaum. The police did nothing. Concerned citizens, confronted with a person shooting indiscriminately on the street, stepped in to stop the violence. Anthony was shot in the chest trying to disarm Mr. Rittenhouse and stop his shooting spree. Still, the police did nothing. Mr. Rittenhouse continued to shoot, maiming Gaige Grosskreutz. The police let Mr. Rittenhouse leave the scene freely. Mr. Rittenhouse came to Kenosha armed to kill. Kenosha police encouraged him to act violently, and our son is dead as a result.
We are so proud of Anthony, and we love him so much. He is a hero who sacrificed his own life to protect other innocent civilians. We ask that you remember Anthony and keep him in your prayers.”
flerp says “The trial appeared to be a fair trial” but the judge making decisions to exclude pinching and expanding a video and deciding right before jury instructions that the particular assault weapon that Kyle Rittenhouse carried was perfectly legal for all children under 18 to carry under Wisconsin law is an example of a judge bending over backward to accept the defense arguments in a way that is not seen in “fair trials”.
Good to know that not only will heroes who try to stop gunmen now be risking their lives, but the mere fact that they are trying to stop a gunman means that if the gunman shoots him, their families will hear from folks like flerp that it was reasonable for a gunman to kill him and that gunman should go free.
That we are even considering this narrative as “reasonable” is part of the implicit racism in our court system.
Someone else wrote this, but it certainly rings true:
“Many have said that if Rittenhouse had been a person of color, he would have been found guilty as hell.
While true-ish, this is still not true.
Had he been a POC, he would have been lying stone cold dead on the Kenosha ground from about 25 bullets fired from the weapons of law enforcement.”
What a message to the nation’s high-school students: Hey, kids! Win a congressional internship! Simply arm yourself with a military-style weapon and appoint yourself defender of the nation against protestors! This is breathtakingly dangerous and utterly farcical. In any sane country, every Congressperson making such an offer would be expelled. Trump spent his entire presidency encouraging violence from his SA, and Putin got from that exactly what he paid for: American government as farce.
But please understand, NYC PSP, selling individual cigarettes on the street while black is a capital crime requiring the immediate administration of the death penalty, no trial required, whereas vigilante murder while white is A-OK.
My longer post is in moderation, but perhaps this one will post sooner.
With regards to flerp’s post that he believes it is reasonable to assume that the outcome would have been no different if the vigilante was black and the jury would have just as likely acquitted a black gunman based on his self-defense claims.
Someone else posted this on facebook, but rings true:
“Many have said that if Rittenhouse had been a person of color, he would have been found guilty as hell.
While true-ish, this is still not true.
Had he been a POC, he would have been lying stone cold dead on the Kenosha ground from about 25 bullets fired from the weapons of law enforcement.”
Diane, justice is a fair jury trial. That’s what we had here, in my opinion.
FLERP, I don’t think the judge was fair and impartial. His ruling that the men who were killed and maimed by Rittenhouse could not be referred to as “victims” was bizarre. When a murderer walks away with no accountability or consequences, it stinks.
Diane, it is not at all bizarre to preclude the prosecution from referring to a person killed by a defendant as a “victim.” It’s common (I’ve seen this rule applied in several cases myself) and it makes sense.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kyle-rittenhouse-pose-proud-boys-photos/
https://lawandcrime.com/live-trials/live-trials-current/kyle-rittenhouse/kyle-rittenhouse-lawyer-blames-fired-attorney-for-proud-boys-photo-accuses-ex-counsel-of-promoting-himself/
“justice is a fair jury trial”
I think someone is confusing “jury trial” and “fair jury trial”.
Just because it is a trial by jury does not make it “fair”. From the trials of those who killed Emmett Till to those who attacked Rodney King, just having a jury does not make it “fair”. I know it’s literature, but To Kill A Mockingbird’s trial outcome was typical of what happened with racist juries. Imagine TKAM with Atticus Finch lecturing to his kids that the trial he lost was fair, justice was served, and they should all be satisfied the system worked.
Not to mention jury nullification.
Defending a judge going overboard to reinforce a pretty questionable defense framing — a defense framing that any parent should be outraged could be used to justify the murder of their son who was only trying to stop an assault weapon-wielding teen before that teen mowed down more people.
Kyle Rittenhouse instigated these encounters just like George Zimmerman did. The only reason the right wing made them heroes is their victims.
Had their victims been white Republican young men, they would both be in prison.
Had Kyle Rittenhouse gunned down one white conservative “stop the steal” protester who threw an empty plastic bag at him and then gunned down 3 others trying to disarm him as he ran with his assault weapon, the far right would demand his head. And prominent Democrats would call him a murderer, not a hero.
The Rittenhouse defense lawyers did clarify one aspect of the common “I need a gun for self defense” mantra.
Most people undoubtedly previously believed it just meant “I need a gun to defend myself”
But now (as a result of the powerful logic of the defense lawyers in this case) we have been made privy to an additional meaning — a sort of added bonus — of allowing you to claim “self defense” after you shoot someone with it.
Because if you don’t have a gun( or presumably knife, sword, hammer , pick axe or other weapon) that an unarmed person could potentially take away from you and kill you with, it’s harder to claim self defense.
So the lesson is clear: if you want to be able to get off after killing someone by claiming self defense, best to have a weapon. (And the weapon also makes the killing easier, of course)
Just don’t glue the weapon to your hand because the jury might not then buy the argument that it can potentially be taken away and used against you.
A little circular this, huh?
Diane, re “victims” term denied: here’s insider.com: “Kenosha County Judge Bruce Schroeder discussed the rule — which is standard practice in courtrooms across the country — during a tangent as the jury continued its second day of deliberations. Judges often ban the word “victim” during trials because it implies that a crime was definitively committed and could therefore prejudice a jury against a defendant.”
Bob, re: KR posing with Proud Boys. Judge excluded that from evidence– which he balanced by excluding two pieces of potential evidence that could have prejudiced jury against the dead men [past criminal acts, & evidence of recent unbalanced mental status re: Rosenbaum].
nycpsp– Actually, Flerp didn’t say Rittenhouse was justified to kill two men. He said there was nothing fishy about the way the trial was conducted. See my general comment way down below.
Bob
The only thing left to be explored IMHO, is what happens if someone (a taker) takes a gun away from a gun owner and then uses it on the owner while the owner is fighting to get the gun back?
Presumably, the same “self defense” logic also then applies to the person who first took the gun (the taker) if they shoot the original owner because the taker now has a legitimate concern that if the original owner gets the gun back, they will use it on the taker.
Someone else who was not surprised by the verdict is retired federal judge Nancy Gertner.
But unlike this blog’s self proclaimed legal expert (who we can’t even be certain is actually a lawyer), Gertner believes the Rittenhouse judge put his finger on the scale, not simply by disallowing the use of of the term victim but by simultaneously allowing the use of other terms like “rioters”, “arsonists” and “protestors”.
Whatever else maybe true, it would appear that it’s not as clear cut a case as our legal “expert” would like people to believe.
Law is not mathematics, at any rate, so there is room for disagreement even among those who know something about it.
Agreed. Whether the judge put his finger on the scale is a different issue from whether the jury followed the INSANE Wisconsin laws.
It should have been illegal for this child to be walking around with this weapon in the first place. I don’t give a FF one way or the other about this verdict. I do care a lot about that absurdity–a systemic problem.
I recall that early on in the trial, there was a charge against Rittenhouse because he was not old enough to carry an AR-15. I think the state law forbids it. But them the judge dropped the charge. Was it because Kyle turned 18? I didn’t get that.
OK, like a lot of legal stuff, this is a little complicated, but here it is:
Wisconsin Statute 948.60(2)(a) states that “Any person under 18 years of age who possesses or goes armed with a dangerous weapon is guilty of a Class A misdemeanor.” However, (3)(c) excludes people under 18 except those who are in violation of WS941.28 or 29.304 and 29.539. (41.28(2) says “No person may sell or offer to sell, transport, purchase, possess or go armed with a short-barreled shotgun or short-barreled rifle.” The rifle carried by Rittenhouse doesn’t fall under that. 29.304(b) also exempts Rittenhouse, for it says “Restrictions on possession or control of a firearm. No person 14 years of age or older but under 16 years of age may have in his or her possession or control any firearm unless he or she. . . .” Section 29.593 requires a certificate of accomplishment to obtain hunting approval. So, even though it is TOTALLY ABSURD, Rittenhouse’s running around playing vigilante with an AR15-style weapon in his hands was legal under Wisconsin law. Insane.
A few minor corrections:
OK, like a lot of legal stuff, this is a little complicated, but here it is:
Wisconsin Statute 948.60(2)(a) states that “Any person under 18 years of age who possesses or goes armed with a dangerous weapon is guilty of a Class A misdemeanor.” However, (3)(c) excludes from that people under 18 except those who are in violation of WS941.28 or 29.304 and 29.539. 941.28(2) says, “No person may sell or offer to sell, transport, purchase, possess or go armed with a short-barreled shotgun or short-barreled rifle.” The rifle carried by Rittenhouse doesn’t fall under that. 29.304(b) also exempts Rittenhouse, for it says “Restrictions on possession or control of a firearm. No person 14 years of age or older but under 16 years of age may have in his or her possession or control any firearm unless he or she. . . .” Rittenhouse was over 16, so he is excued from that, too. Section 29.593 requires a certificate of accomplishment to obtain hunting approval. Rittenhouse wasn’t engaged in hunting, as that is defined. So, even though it is TOTALLY ABSURD, Rittenhouse’s running around playing vigilante with an AR15-style weapon in his hands was legal under Wisconsin law. Insane.
Bob Shepherd
November 22, 2021 at 4:34 pm
OK. I do care about the verdict. Like lots of people, I was outraged. But because of the stupidity of the law.
Bob Shepherd
November 22, 2021 at 4:36 pm
And because of this guy interrupting a BLM protest, which I care a LOT about and entirely support, being myself sick to death of the long and ugly history of systemic racism in this country. And because of the vigilante nature of this.
Aie yie yie. My copy and paste accidentally captured some other material. Sorry!
How do laws this convoluted and full of holes big enough to drive major offenses through get written? There’s a question to be looked at, huh?
OK. I do care about the verdict. Like lots of people, I was outraged. But because of the stupidity of the law.
And because of this guy interrupting a BLM protest, which I care a LOT about and entirely support, being myself sick to death of the long and ugly history of systemic racism in this country. And because of the vigilante nature of this.
“Shortly before the trial began, the trial judge entered a conditional ruling that should concern everyone. It flouts common sense, is legally tenuous, and worse, conveys a troubling message: the defense may be allowed to refer to the three men who were shot as “rioters,” “arsonists” or “looters,” but the prosecution may not refer to the men as “victims” because that is a “loaded word.”
True, juries decide who is, or is not, a victim in a legal sense. But American judges routinely allow prosecutors to describe people injured or killed as “victims” in jury arguments. Imagine a domestic violence trial in which the judge would allow the husband’s defense to refer to the wife as a “brawler” but not allow the prosecutor to describe her as a “victim.” We can’t.
A fair defense is essential, but this is not that: It risks excusing vigilantism. And skewing the contest by favoring one side’s argumentative rhetoric over the other carries further risk.”
From America Should not tolerate Vigilante Behavior
By Nancy Gertner (former federal judge in Boston and now a professor at Harvard Law School) and Dean Strang (Loyola University-Chicago law professor and a criminal defense lawyer in Madison, Wisconsin.)
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/11/8/22770572/kyle-rittenhouse-ahmaud-arbery-vigilante-justice-self-defense-nancy-gertner-dean-strang-other-views
But I suppose these two are, by their criticism, just “undermining our faith in the legal system”
And Lard knows, we can’t do that.
I know, it sounds like a strange reaction, but I thought long and hard about it, and I realized aside from all the grand sentiments I might espouse, what I suggest is about the only form of national shame a certain class of person might comprehend.
“Teacher Job Listing”
Wanted, teachers,
Dead or alive
For making speeches
That divide
For those who need this right now:
On Loser Trump’s Refusal to Pardon the QAnon Shaman
Trump called on his dumb SA:
“Proud Boys, please, come out and play.”
But would he come to their defense?
Of course not–look how he treated Pence.
The Mozart of fawning, Mikey became
Debasing himself without any shame,
But when Trump’s mob was screaming, “Let’s hang ‘im,”
Trump refused to deter or harangue ’em.
For Donnie T. has no loyalty
Except to Donnie, obviously.
He cares for nought but Don the Con
Imagine being his hapless spawn.
Without the slightest remorse or fuss,
He’d throw them, too, beneath the bus.
And so the Shaman, the poor dumb schmuck
Was up the creek and out of luck.
A note to Trumpy militias: As we enter the Vigilante Era of the American Carnival, remember what your hero Adolf did to the leaders of his brownshirts when they no longer served his purposes. Maybe you could get someone who can read to read this to you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives
Sorry about this terrible piece of verse. This is how I write after staying up all night binge-watching Succession.
Succession’s main character is a thinly disguised Rupert Murdoch. In development, a new series featuring characters drawn on the current Republican Party leaders, to be called Secession.
I loved the first episode but by the end of the 2nd one was disgusted with all those unlikeable characters. Should I persevere 😉 ?
It’s a guilty pleasure for me, Ginny. Darkly funny.
I suspect that your reaction to the rest of it will be the same. The characters are appalling. And true to life.
This is one of those frog-in-warm-water discussions. The absurdity we’ve all too gradually lost the ability to sense is the idea that some punk can carry an assault rifle to a protest and somehow not have lost the presumption of innocence from the moment he picked it up.
How Did It Come To This?
A Supreme Court Full of Brain Dead Megaphones, That’s How …
Exactly, Jon
If there were any persons of conscience on the Court at all, they would cease business as usual and refuse to participate in a quorum until Congress gave them a law worth interpreting. Until then we’ll have nothing but one Tragedy of Absurdity after another.
yup
Off the posted topic, but there’s a big subthread here on the Rittenhouse trial: I’m chiming in.
My sense beforehand was that KR would probably get off on any charge including intent to kill. But the first 3 charges seemed amply provable and would have resulted in minimum 10yrs in jail. Was the prosecution so inept it couldn’t prove one of those charges, or was it that the jury was determined to free him regardless of evidence?
I disagree that the judge’s instructions were improper. The absurd WI gun laws indeed allow someone under 18 to carry around a short-barrel rifle, and prosecution had to acknowledge that the weapon technically met that description. Schroeder’s dismissal of the zoom version of a drone video seems wrong-headed, and a weak point, and defense benefited from the ruling– but not because the zoom version would have unquestionably indicted the defendant. Because defense would have presented its case differently had the close-up been admitted. Standard trial OP.
The decision hung on whether KR feared for his life and acted in self-defense, or was recklessly endangering life. This seems absurd given someone armed with a deadly weapon vs onlookers ‘armed’ with a plastic bag and a skateboard apparently attempting to disarm him and save lives. But the emotion of the armed person in the moment is all that counts. KR testified he feared someone who disarmed him would turn the weapon on him. That is probably exactly what runs through your head in the moment of a struggle over a weapon.
The gun laws in that state (and many others) set up tinderbox conditions, and it sure looks like jury trials are unequipped to protect the public from their consequences. We wonder why police didn’t go after KR instead of leaving onlookers to try to disarm him. But look at the utter chaos created by these gun laws [from Officer Moretti’s testimony]: “throughout the days of protest and rioting, many people in the crowds carried guns and other weapons… There was probably more people armed with weapons than not throughout the entire course of the civil unrest.” Case in point, Grosskreutz, the medic ostensibly following KR so as to be ready to treat any victims—but had his handgun drawn and pointed at KR in the process, just before KR fired! That adds to the defense case that KR feared for his life– and adds to my case that Wild West gun laws result in Wild West shoot-outs.
Every trial has multiple rulings that each side takes issue with.
Every highly public trial has millions of armchair critics who claim that they know what truly happened, what the correct verdict should have been, and what rulings of the court were outrageously wrong. Conveniently, those opinions usually fit perfectly with preconceptions held before the trial.
This was a fair trial in my view, basically in the range of every trial I’ve ever seen or been involved with. And I wish the there weren’t so many knee-jerk reactions on the left that assume the legal process was corrupt. To me, it’s part and parcel of the general trend toward undermining of the institutions that have been developed over a long time to operate fairly and give due process, and ability to function hangs on public trust.
I’ve seen too many unhinged takes from public commentators and politicians on the left to count in the last two days. Roxane Gay lamented that the judge should face “consequences.” The head of the NAACP said that the trial was “worse than the Emmitt Till”” trial.”
The MAGA does not have a monopoly on delusional, narrative-based thinking. This tribal thinking needs to stop, but as we all know it will only accelerate and deepen.
“the undermining”
“, and whose ability”
As we have seen many times, jury trials do not always reach a fair verdict. Witness George Zimmerman and many other trials of whites who murdered blacks.
It’s just not the verdict you wanted, Diane. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a fair trial.
I find it very revealing when people with obvious biases try to shut down people expressing their outrage after a clearly biased verdict. People talk about wrong verdicts all the time. But somehow when it’s a right wing white guy who kills someone that right wingers don’t like, it’s not allowed anymore? Because it was a “fair trial”?
Is flerp now arguing that the Emmitt Till was a “fair trial”?
Was the trial in the book To Kill a Mockingbird a “fair trial”?
Was the trial that imprisoned two supposed assassins of Malcolm X a “fair trial”?
Was the trial that imprisoned the Central Park 5 a “fair trial”?
Why is someone arguing legalisms? flerp’s point seems to be that privileged folks can play the system, and that’s “fair” and unprivileged folks can get played by the system, and that’s “fair”. It may be legal, but it isn’t right. We can and should be discussing how that can change.
So why do right wing toting gun nuts who kill people get special treatment?
Here is a good analysis from yesmagazine.org
“Rittenhouse, then a minor acting as an armed civilian rather than a police officer, nonetheless appeared to enjoy the type of “qualified immunity” that law enforcement officers routinely benefit from in fatal shooting cases. Indeed, in a recent interview, criminal justice expert Jody Armour highlights that the defense attorney explicitly argued that, since the officer who shot Blake and left him paralyzed was not charged with any crimes, surely his client similarly acted in self-defense, and therefore ought to be found innocent. The defense argued that Rittenhouse “stood in the place of a police officer,” says Armour.
Armour, who is the Roy P. Crocker Professor of Law at the University of Southern California, also explains that for White defendants in such cases, “the numbers are in your favor.” Citing statistics from the Urban Institute, Armour notes, “If you are somebody White who shoots somebody Black and claims self-defense in a case like this, you are 10 times as likely to be acquitted … by a jury as if you are Black and you shoot somebody White and claim justification.”
Although Rittenhouse’s victims are all White, Armour notes that because these men were participating in a Black Lives Matter protest against the police shooting of Blake, they were seen as sufficiently “Black-adjacent.” As a result, the men Rittenhouse killed and injured were subjected to the same kind of posthumous judicial character assassination that unarmed Black men killed by police or vigilantes frequently encounter.”
END QUOTE
If it had been white men in business suits rushing to try to disarm Rittenhouse to save lives, would the jury had believed the self-defense argument?
If it had been brave young women gunned down by Rittenhouse while trying to disarm him, would the jury have bought the self-defense argument?
If the judge had not bent over backward to help the defendant, would the jury have bought the self-defense argument?
Most people claiming self-defense would love to be in the position that Rittenhouse was in. Their instigation of violent encounters in the past isn’t allowed. Their victims cannot be called victims but can be called looters and arsonists without needing any proof that they are because what matters is what Rittenhouse says he believed.
Can flerp, who knows so much about the law, offer up some times that armed black defendants instigated encounters and shot and killed people that defendant claimed was “dangerous” and were found not guilty? And especially cases in which that black defendant killed someone trying to disarm him after he used his weapon, and was exonerated because the jury believed that he was right in feeling in danger from them, so his killing them was justified? And especially cases where those killed could not be called “victims” but could be called derogatory terms that implied that they were violent, without having to provide any evidence that those terms were accurately depicting the victim?
Agree, Ginny, that the issue is with the absurdity of the applicable laws. 17-year-olds wandering the streets with military-style weapons legal? As Jon asks above, how did we come to this? Madness.
17-year-olds wandering the streets with military-style weapons, playing self-appointed, vigilante “protector”
We might call this the “Brownshirt Protection body of law.”
Part of the problem is the free availability of guns. But there’s also the problem of the vacuum that public disorder creates. Here’s another example of self-appointed vigilante protectors that passed without a lot of notice.
Part of the problem is the free availability of guns. But there’s also the problem of the vacuum that public disorder creates. Here’s another example of self-appointed vigilante protectors that passed without a lot of notice.
Part of the problem is that apparently no other people carrying assault weapons killed anyone that night.
flerp posted a video — was anyone killed? Was anyone shot?
Kyle Rittenhouse didn’t just shoot one person, he shot 3. And no one else among those hundreds or thousands of armed folks shot any.
Why was Rittenhouse different than all the other people there that night? The other people weren’t there to shoot first.
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxtcnRzZW5nbGlzaGNsYXNzcm9vbXxneDo2YWZjZjE4YTEzNmJjMjZk
Having recently taught high-school students, I can attest that “emotionally stable high-school student” is an oxymoron on the level of “Trump’s Justice Department,” “congressional ethics,” “free market.”