I hear you’re still not Ready for Hillary.

I get it. I didn’t start off as her biggest fan either. During the 2008 campaign, I wrote plenty of less-than-complimentary words about Hillary Clinton in my role as Barack Obama’s speechwriter. Then, a few weeks after the election, I had a well-documented run-in with a piece of cardboard that bore a striking resemblance to the incoming Secretary of State.

It was one of the stupider, more disrespectful mistakes I’ve made, and one that could have cost me a job if Hillary hadn’t accepted my apology, which she did with grace and humor. As a result, I had the chance to serve in the Obama Administration with someone who was far different than the caricature I had helped perpetuate.

The most famous woman in the world would walk through the White House with no entourage, casually chatting up junior staffers along the way. She was by far the most prepared, impressive person at every Cabinet meeting. She worked harder and logged more miles than anyone in the administration, including the president. And she’d spend large amounts of time and energy on things that offered no discernible benefit to her political future—saving elephants from ivory poachers, listening to the plight of female coffee farmers in Timor-Leste, defending LGBT rights in places like Uganda.

*snip*

Most of all—and you hear this all the time from people who’ve worked for her—Hillary Clinton is uncommonly warm and thoughtful. She surprises with birthday cakes. She calls when a grandparent passes away. She once rearranged her entire campaign schedule so a staffer could attend her daughter’s preschool graduation. Her husband charms by talking to you; Hillary does it by listening to you—not in a head-nodding, politician way; in a real person way.

This same story has repeated itself throughout Clinton’s career: those who initially view her as distrustful and divisive from afar find her genuine and cooperative in person. It was the case with voters in New York, Republicans in the Senate, Obama people in the White House, and heads of state all over the world. There’s a reason being America’s chief diplomat was the specific job Obama asked Hillary to do—she has the perfect personality for it.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/26/why-electing-hillary-in-16-is-more-important-than-electing-obama-in-08.html

On Wednesday, former Los Angeles police officers James Christopher Nichols and Luis Gustavo Valenzuela were charged with multiple counts of "forcible rape, rape under color of authority, oral copulation under color of authority and oral copulation by force," NBC Los Angeles reported.

Between December 2008 and March 2011, the men, who were partners, allegedly assaulted four women between the ages of 19 and 34 after arresting them for narcotics-related offenses, frequently while on duty, according to the same report.

Nichols, 44, and Valenzuela, 43, are the same former narcotics officers who were previously investigated for "luring [women] into an unmarked car and forcing them to perform sex acts" over a five-year period, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2013. The investigation against these officers only gained traction when multiple women came forward — one alleged survivors told the Los Angeles Times she didn't immediately report the incident because "she felt humiliated, thought no one would believe her and feared for her safety."

This revelation comes in the wake of the conviction and sentencing of former Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw, who will serve 263 years in prison for 18 counts of sexual battery, forcible oral sodomy and rape, Mic's Zak Cheney-Rice reported in January. The women involved in Holtzclaw's case were also presumably selected based on assumptions that they wouldn't be believed. As the Daily Beast's Goldie Taylor wrote, Holtzclaw's "black and poor" survivors "were picked because the perpetrator thought nobody would give a damn."

*snip*

http://mic.com/articles/135539/two-lapd-officers-have-been-charged-with-committing-multiple-sexual-assaults-while-on-duty?utm_source=policymicFB&utm_medium=main&utm_campaign=social#.s0z15ufFI

President Obama will meet with civil rights activists both young and old Thursday, including leaders in the Black Lives Matter movement.
“On Thursday afternoon, President Obama will meet with a group of civil rights leaders prior to the annual White House Black History Month reception to discuss a range of issues including the Administration’s efforts on criminal justice reform, building trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve and the president’s priorities during his final year in office,” a senior administration official said.

Obama will also preside over a discussion between the activists and members of his administration.

Those participating in the event include Campaign Zero co-founders DeRay Mckesson and Brittany Packnett, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), NAACP President Cornell William Brooks, the Rev. Al Sharpton and National Bar Association President Benjamin Crump.

On the campaign trail, Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are seeking to court favor with black voters in the weeks leading up to the first primaries in Southern states.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/269766-report-obama-to-meet-with-black-lives-matter-activists

It’s now been revealed that the luxury hunting ranch vacation Antonin Scalia was on when he died was a gift from someone who Scalia indirectly helped with a recent Supreme Court decision.

In late 2015, the Supreme Court declined to hear an age discrimination suit (Hinga, James V. Mic Group, LLC) against a subsidiary of the manufacturing company J.B. Poindexter, which is owned by John B. Poindexter. Poindexter also owns the 30,000-acre Cibolo Creek Ranch in Shafter, Texas, where Scalia was vacationing when he died last weekend. According to the Washington Post, Scalia didn’t pay for his flight to the ranch, or for his room at the luxury ranch. His food and beverages were also free. Poindexter maintains that Scalia wasn’t given any preferential treatment, as the 36 people staying at the ranch that weekend were all staying for free.

However, the Post also reports that lingering questions remain about who else was staying at the ranch, and whether or not Poindexter or any of the ranch’s guests were trying to curry favor with the late Justice:

The nature of Poindexter’s relationship with Scalia remained unclear Tuesday, one of several lingering questions about his visit. It was not known whether Scalia had paid for his own ticket to fly to the ranch or if someone else picked up the tab, just as it was not immediately clear if Scalia had visited before.

It is also still not known who else was at the Texas ranch for the weekend, and unless that is revealed, there could be concerns about who could have tried to raise an issue around Scalia, said Stephen Gillers, who teaches legal and judicial ethics at the New York University School of Law. He compared it to unease that arises when judges and officials from major companies are invited to seminars or educational events that bring them together for periods of time.

During Justice Scalia’s tenure on the nation’s highest court, an astonishing number of decisions favored corporate plaintiffs and defendants, prompting the New York Times to call it the most corporate-friendly court since the World War II era. An op-ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution called the current Supreme Court — which, including Scalia, had the conservative majority of Roberts-Alito-Thomas-Scalia-Kennedy deciding cases in favor of big business — an “enforcer of corporate power.” The op-ed cited a professional statistical review that examined the results of over 2,000 cases:

http://usuncut.com/news/scalia-hunting-trip-was-a-gift/