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For those who supported President Trump in his reelection bid, they may wish to remember the example of a former Republican President, Richard Nixon.

In 1960 as the Republican nominee and the sitting vice president, he appeared to have narrowly lost a presidential election to John F. Kennedy. The margin was less than 1% in the popular vote and the two were separated by 120,000 votes. Unlike now, there was significant evidence in Illinois and Texas that Mr. Nixon had carried those two states, but counted out, with a very small margin for Mr. Kennedy and with that result he was the loser of the 1960 election.

Richard Nixon chose not to contest the election legally as he feared it would make the country bitterly divided in a time of peril. He graciously congratulated President-elect Kennedy at 2:30 a.m. after Election Day and met with him, personally, in Florida within 10 days to congratulate him again.

The year 1960 is also the only election where there was a recount which changed the electoral vote in a single state: Hawaii. Richard Nixon was certified as the winner of Hawaiis three electoral votes by a margin of about 141 votes. After the certificate was issued, the Democrats obtained a recount of the Hawaii votes and in the recount Senator Kennedy prevailed by under 200 votes. A new certificate of election for Hawaiis votes was issued to President-elect Kennedy.

When the electoral votes arrived in Washington, D.C., Hawaii had one certificate for Nixon and another for Kennedy. As the outgoing vice president, Richard Nixon was responsible for the joint session of Congress opening and counting the electoral votes. When Hawaiis certificates were presented, Vice President Nixon ruled that his opponent John F. Kennedy, not he, had carried Hawaii. His decision was accepted by the Congress.

Other than this single example, where the two men were separated by less than 200 votes, were the electoral votes changed. In 1964 as Mr. Nixons personal research assistant in New York, I have direct knowledge of these events.

It may be also remembered from White House recordings while president, Mr. Nixon learned the identity of the so-called Deep Throat informant for Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward. The president was told by H.R. Haldeman that Deep Throat was Mark Felt, associate director of the FBI. Mr. Nixon ordered no retaliation directly or indirectly against Mr. Felt.

Years later when Mr. Felt was indicted by a grand jury and stood trial on alleged Fourth Amendment criminal violation against the Socialist Workers Party, Richard Nixon appeared as a defense witness for W. Mark Felt. When he had finished testifying, he shook Mr. Felts hand as he left the courtroom. After Mr. Felts conviction, he was pardoned by President Ronald Reagan, Mr. Nixon sent him a bottle of his favorite, and expensive, champagne.

Richard Nixon had many flaws, all of us do. But he opened the door to China, ended the war in Vietnam for Americans, achieved detente with the Soviet Union and saved Israel during the Yom Kippur War, and he knew when it was time to go.

Jones, an Enid-based attorney, served as the lead defense attorney for Timothy McVeigh. Jones previously worked as Richard Nixons personal research assistant and assisted him with speeches and drafting articles and public statements prior to the Republican National Convention in 1964.

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GUEST COLUMN: Nixon knew when it was time to go - Enid News & Eagle

Jamilia Land

By Dylan Ferguson

CALIFORNIA Jamilia Landa member of the Abolish Slavery National Network (ASNN) in California and the founder of A.S.A.P, an organization centered on the mental health and well-being of children impacted by police and community murder, gun violence, and incarcerationhosted a webinar about abolishing slavery, mass incarceration, and involuntary servitude Monday.

Abolish Slavery National Network is a national coalition that is fighting to abolish constitutional slavery and involuntary servitude in all forms for all people, and believes that all people are protected by their state and federal constitutions.

The panel featured Max Parthas, a host on Abolition Today and a member of ASNN, Dennis Febo, the CEO of Guazabara Insights and an ASNN member in New Jersey, and Samuel Brown, the founder of the 10p program and a member of ASNN in California.

The conversation mainly emphasized the need to get rid of language in the constitutions that allows for slavery and involuntary servitude.

In 2020, the ASNN coalition members were able to successfully get rid of this language and abolish slavery language without any caveats in Utah and Nebraska. Max Parthas stated, Utah had as much as 80 percent of the people voting to end slavery and Nebraska had around 60 percent.

The ASNN also worked in Alabama to get the fourth amendment passed, which will allow government officials to take out any racist language. With the largest constitution in the world, Alabama has a lot of race-based or slavery-based language that needs to be taken out, ASNN said.

Parthas mentioned that the ASNN has plans to meet with Alabama government officials in two weeks in order to work on removing the exception clause of slavery from their constitution.

The ASNN does not just work on language in state constitutions, they also work to remove slavery language in general. Specifically, with changing the name of the state of Rhode Island from Rhode Island and Providence Plantations to just Rhode Island in June 2020.

Dennis Febo passionately discussed how our criminal justice system is driven by the incentive of profiting off of human bodies. He asked the audience to consider how much it costs from the moment a person is placed in handcuffs, to the moment justice is being served, to when that person is released.

Febo said that per human body, you can calculate how much it costs if you know on average how many people go through this in your state every year. He continued by saying that those incarcerated each represent a monetary amount per day, per year.

Febo then raised the question, asking what is the difference between now and pre-1865? He argued that there are still ledgers. Ledgers that were once used for cattle, property, and naming slaves. The criminal justice system does the same thing, prisoners not only represent a monetary value, but they are now insured with things, such as bonds.

The same exact structures that were in place then are in place today, Febo said.

So how do we move forward when our foundations are rooted in stripping humanity away from people? Febo suggested that we have to begin to hold people accountable. We have to acknowledge that justice cannot be justice, if everything is based on money, he said.

Samuel Brown spoke to this statement. As a man who has been incarcerated for the last two decades and attended this conversation via phone call from a facility, he has become intimate with involuntary servitude.

Brown is currently being paid 55 cents per hour to clean COVID-19 cells in the facility where he is imprisoned. Brown risks his health and safety and recalls that he was scared for his life the first time he cleaned a cell.

Over the last 24 years, Brown has become familiar with the prison system. He notes that it could be very beneficial to provide opportunities for people that have been incarcerated for an extended period of time. Things such as support services, vocational training programs, and getting compensated for the work prisoners do could equip them to survive in societynot set them up to return.

Brown knows that the pandemic has been difficult for everyone, but he suggested that the audience imagine what it would be like for prisoners to be released without things like support services, vocational training, or compensation, especially due to how COVID-19 has negatively impacted Americans throughout 2020.

An unfair disadvantage has always been placed on those incarcerated, but it has been emphasized by COVID-19. Brown believes that if prisoners were trained and paid, it could make them more employable.

Dylan Ferguson is a second-year at Westmont College, majoring in kinesiology with a minor in Spanish. She is from Las Vegas, Nevada.

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Webinar Focuses on Eliminating Slavery Language in Constitutions - The Peoples Vanguard of Davis

A new piece over at OneZero examines the rising trend of local neighborhood associations installing private license plate readers to keep tabs on who comes and goes from their precious white suburbs;

ALPR technology, invented in 1976 by the U.K.'s Police Scientific Development Branch, has become a popular law enforcement tool over the past decade and is nowcommonly usedto track down alleged lawbreakers, to gather information about vehicles of interest, and to track down individuals who owe fines.

But now, ALPR companies are targeting the private realm as well. "Live in an HOA or neighborhood? Work in law enforcement?" reads the intro text on Flock's website. In either case, the call to action is the same: "Use license plate readers to capture evidence and stop crime." The company, which was founded in 2017, claims 700,000 neighbors in 400 cities and 35 states live in communities that rely on its technology.

At least seven homeowner associations (HOAs)in San Diego County, 100 neighborhoodsin Georgia, 10in the Denver area, and dozens throughout North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee,Texas, and elsewhere have installed A.I.-infused ALPRs manufactured by Flock and a handful of other companies such as Vigilant Solutions and Obsidian Integration. Flock providesa calculatorthat recommends the number of cameras that neighborhoods should install: For 50 homes with two entrances, it recommends between two to four cameras; for 100 homes with five entrances, it recommends between five and 10. Each camera costs $2,000 per year. ALPR's expansion beyond law enforcement may be one reason investors have betmore than $35 millionin venture capital funding on Flock. The company closed its most recent and largest round of funding $15 million in March.

The article explores the dystopian impact of this utterly excessive surveillance profiteering on some of the neighborhoods that have willingly embraced it. Even if somehow a neighborhood association was able to install this license plate readers in a way that wasn't creepy and authoritarian say there was the rare instance of outsider crime that they genuinely hoped to catch the amount of data they would end up collecting would render the whole project moot. Suffice to say: no one in these communities is actually safer, or happier.

Since Fourth Amendment privacy rules do not apply to private citizens, HOA boards are not subject to any oversight. "Whatever motivates an individual gatekeeper racial biases, frustration with another neighbor, even disagreements among family members could all be used in conjunction with ALPR records to implicate someone in a crime or in any variety of other legal but uncomfortable situations," according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that defends civil liberties in the digital world.

Neighborhood Watch Has a New Tool: License-Plate Readers [Ella Fassler / One Zero / Medium]

How Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) technology works

Image: Public Domain

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Neighborhood associations are installing license plate readers to privately police who drives on their streets - Boing Boing

One of the most consequential appointments that a new president must make is director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Unfortunately, this appointment is usually made late in the transition process, getting insufficient attention and typically ending up with a mediocre selection. Presidents have named liberals (Ted Sorenson and Tony Lake) who couldnt survive the confirmation process; former CIA analysts and operatives (Richard Helms, William Colby, Robert Gates, John Brennan, andthe current directorGina Haspel) who failed for various reasons; veterans from Capitol Hill (Rep. Porter Goss and George Tenet) who politicized intelligence; and an eclectic group (John Deutch, General David Petraeus, General Michael Hayden, Leon Panetta, and Jim Woolsey) who failed to provide leadership in the post-Cold War era.

President Bill Clintons selection of Woolsey, the poster child for failure, was typical. It was late in the transition period; Clinton had no likely candidate; and Woolsey was virtually unknown to the key advisors around the president-elect. But he did have one singular attribute. He was a hard-liner and nominally a Democrat, and Clintons advisers favored the idea of picking someone from the right-wing in order to appease the military-intelligence communities.

The meeting between Clinton and Woolsey in Little Rock, Arkansas, was classic. Woolsey wasnt quite sure why he was being called to the meeting, and college football was the main subject of discussion. There was virtually no substantive discussion. Clinton and Woolsey never established a working relationship; Woolsey, an introvert, worked behind closed doors and alienated the agencys leadership, and he thoroughly antagonized both Democrats and Republicans on the congressional intelligence committees.

The directors who were agency professionals were a particularly motley group. Haspel is best known for her leading role in the CIAs sadistic torture and abuse program; she never should have been considered. Brennan held an executive position during the planning and imposition of the program and never demurred. CIA director William Casey (former OSS) found Bob Gates to be the perfect sycophant, and the two of them enforced a program of politicized intelligence for President Ronald Reagan. James Schlesinger, Porter Goss, and George Tenet also excelled at the politicization of intelligence.

Meanwhile, there is the sterling example of Helms, who testified to Congress that it had to trust that honorable men were working inside Americas intelligence services. Several years later, he was fined $2,000 and given a two-year suspended sentence for perjuring himself before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. General Hayden stands out for his leadership role at the National Security Agency, where he broke the Fourth Amendment against illegal searches and seizures, and at the CIA, where he actively lobbied on the Hill to permit CIA interrogators to torture and abuse suspected terrorists in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

The CIA has floundered at key moments because of the lack of a stable and senior leader at the top, and a culture of secrecy that has blurred the judgment of many CIA leaders who have allowed the tailoring of intelligence at key junctures. There probably is no perfect resume to suggest suitability for the role of CIA director, but the professional military, Capitol Hill, and perhaps the Agency itself may not be the best place to train a tough-minded leader who recognizes the central role of intelligence analysis and is suited to tell truth to power.

But I would suggest that President-elect Joe Biden look at the one department of government that has never produced a CIA directorthe Department of State. In the early 1950s, President Harry Truman wanted the director of the Department of States Policy Planning Division, George Kennan, to consider taking over the leadership of the CIA. Unfortunately, Kennan refused, denying the agency a leader who recognized the importance of intelligence gathering and analysis and would have been a rigorous enforcer of trenchant estimates and assessments. President Clinton was very close to naming Ambassador Thomas Pickering as CIA director, but Clinton decided that Pickering was a perfect choice as ambassador to Russia in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ive been beating the drums for Pickering over the years, but at the age of 89 he is no longer an obvious choice even in an age of aged leaders.

Fortunately, there is a Department of State veteran, William Burns, who would be a perfect choice, although he is reportedly being considered as a possible secretary of state to fill the tiny shoes of Mike Pompeo. Burns is currently the President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; he had a brilliant 33-year career as a Foreign Service Officer and retired as Deputy Secretary of State. Burns would understand the limits of the culture of secrecy and the pitfalls of covert action. More importantly, he would have the strategic sense few CIA directors have had for ensuring the central role of intelligence in identifying challenges and opportunities for decision makers.

My major concern is that the Biden team is looking at a tired list of possible choices as CIA director, which includes former acting director Michael Morell. Morell, like many CIA luminaries, such as John Brennan and John McLaughlin, has never accepted the CIAs role in brutalizing terror suspects and has criticized the Senate intelligence committees authoritative study of torture and abuse as deeply flawed. All of them have whitewashed the CIAs role. There will always be great tension between secrecy and democracy, and Biden will do great harm if he appoints a director who is more interested in keeping secrets from Americans than in keeping secrets to protect Americans.

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Biden and the CIA - CounterPunch.org - CounterPunch

If a person is driving on a public road and is in compliance with posted traffic laws and has a valid registration the police have no reasonable suspicion to stop that vehicle.

It is not against the law to drive on public roads at any hour of the night or day.

Chief, you better talk to a decent attorney unless you want to get sued.

Mathew Hopkins

* * *

Is Lookout Mountain is trying to set a precedent for law enforcement? I guess if not having that silly sticker on your vehicle is grounds for a field interview on the big hill then it would be no different than the CPD pulling a vehicle over under the same terms for scanning your plate and not having a city sticker.

Better yet, if youre driving in Hamilton County and your vehicle is not registered in Hamilton County it must be time for a field interview. Maybe even the THP and GSP could pull the same field interviews for out of state vehicles.

See where this is going? I agree with Mr. Hopkins, Chief Wells had better have some really good attorneys on standby.

Chris Morgan

See the article here:
Has Chief Wells Read The Fourth Amendment? - And Response - The Chattanoogan