Home / Civil forfeiture - cops are legally permitted to take stuff away from anyone with near-total impunity. No crime required. Your chances to get it back are slim to none. Last Week Tonight's funny man John Oliver nails it  
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Image of Civil forfeiture - cops are legally permitted to take stuff away from anyone with near-total impunity. No crime required. Your chances to get it back are slim to none. Last Week Tonight's funny man John Oliver nails it

Did you know police can just take your stuff if they suspect it's involved in a crime? They can! It’s a shady process called “civil asset forfeiture,” and it would make for a weird episode of Law and Order. See?


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And then there's this:

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Damn "good" (read: incredibly scary and infuriating) video. And, typically, I don't even like rap music. I'll see and raise you: in Chicago, it's impossible to get dirty cops investigated, even with video.

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My my. Chicago doesn't disappoint in its efforts to retain standing as a leader in political corruption. Fold - great article. What an unbelievably heartbreaking story, yet totally believable, especially the parts about the FBI ignoring the case and what the federal judge did. (Meanwhile, the FBI is looking into the hack of Sony Pictures' computers by the group Guardians of Peace because... Hollywood!)

Speaking of corrupt and tyrannical Chicago-style politics while adding fuel to the fire, Glenn Greenwald has another terrific post in The Intercept today titled "In US-Supported Egypt, 188 Protesters Are Sentenced to Die Days after Mubarak is Effectively Freed." In the article, we read this:

In one sense, it would be nice for the U.S. Government to condemn all of this, and even better if they cut off support for the regime as punishment. But in another, more meaningful sense, such denunciation would be ludicrous, given what enthusiastic practitioners U.S. officials are of similar methods.

Fully protecting high-level lawbreakers – even including torturers and war criminals – is an Obama specialty, a vital aspect of his legacy. A two-tiered justice system – where the most powerful financial and political criminals are fully shielded while ordinary crimes are punished with repugnant harshness – is the very definition of the American judicial process, which imprisons more of its ordinary citizens than any other country in the world, even as it fully immunizes its most powerful actors for far more egregious crimes.

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In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. - Carl Sagan

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