Bernie Sanders Plan Would Allow 183K Murderers, 164K Rapists to Vote from Prison
By John Binder
Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) recent endorsement of giving voting rights to all American citizens who are currently in prison for local, state, and federal crimes would allow some 183,000 convicted murderers and 164,000 convicted rapists to vote from their jail cells.
In a CNN town hall this week, Sanders endorsed allowing all convicted U.S. citizens — regardless of their crime — to vote from prison.
“So, I believe people who commit crimes, they pay the price and they get out of jail, they certainly should have the right to vote,” Sanders said. “But, I believe even if they are in jail, they’re paying the price to society, but that should not take away their inherent American right to participate in our democracy.”
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), also running for the Democrat nomination for president, hinted that she would be open to such a plan, saying “I think we should have that conversation” when asked about allowing convicted criminals to vote from their cells.
The latest data compiled by the Prison Policy Initiative concludes that there are more than 1.6 million convicted criminals in local, state, and federal prisons across the country. This includes about 183,000 convicted murderers and 164,000 convicted rapists.
Not all 1.6 million convicted criminals in local, state, and federal custody are American citizens, though. State and local prisons have yet to collect data deciphering between the citizen versus noncitizen populations of their prison populations.
Federal data concludes that noncitizens make up about 25 percent of the federal prison population.
Should this be true of local and state prisons, as well, this would mean that about 1.2 million convicted criminals in prison today could be eligible to vote from their cells under Sanders’ plan — including anywhere between 137,000 and 183,000 convicted murderers and potentially between 123,000 to 164,000 convicted rapists.
Similarly, the Sanders plan would potentially allow anywhere between 14,250 and 19,000 citizens convicted of manslaughter to vote from their cells, as well as up to 154,000 convicted assailants.
Ahead of the 2020 presidential election, as Breitbart News has reported, organizations funded by billionaire George Soros are working to restore the voting rights of about 1.4 million felons in Florida after the state approved the measure last year.
Senior Sri Lankan officials ‘withheld intel on terrorist attacks’
The head of Sri Lanka’s parliament has made damning accusations against senior officials in the government, alleging that they withheld intelligence about impending attacks on churches, hotels and politicians.
A series of Easter Sunday bombings at Sri Lankan churches andhotels killed at least 359 people. Authorities have made dozens of arrests in the aftermath.
“Some top intelligence officials hid the intelligence information purposefully. Information was there, but the top brass security officials did not take appropriate actions,” Lakshman Kiriella, leader of the parliament, said Wednesday
Kiriella claims that Sri Lankan authorities received a warning from Indian intelligence about possible attacks on April 4, and that this information was shared at a Security Council meeting, chaired by President Maithripala Sirisena, on April 7 but was not shared further.
“Somebody is controlling these top intelligence officials,” Kiriella added. “The Security Council is doing politics. We need to investigate into this.”
Meanwhile, former army chief and Minister of Regional Development Sarath Fonseka told parliament that he believed the attacks had been planned for some seven or eight years.
ALSO ON RT.COMTerrorists needed ‘at least 7-8 years’ to plan Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka
A confidential April 11 security memo contained names, addresses, phone numbers and movement patterns of the attackers from the National Thowheeth Jama’ath group suspected of carrying out the spate of attacks. Sri Lankan authorities also knew as far back as January that the group was stockpiling weapons and detonators.
Government minister Rauff Hakeem described it as a “colossal failure on the part of the intelligence services,” as in-fighting between Sri Lanka’s president and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe appears to have prevented effective action being taken to avert the danger.
“If the names of the persons involved were already known, why were they not arrested?” he added.
Media Threatens to Dox Microsoft Employee Who Said Execs Are ‘Awarded’ For Discriminating Against White & Asian Men
By Chris Menahan
The media is threatening to dox a female Microsoft employee after she revealed in an internal message board that “senior leadership is awarded more money if they discriminate against Asians and white men.”
The leftist rag Quartz said the comments amounted to an attack on “diversity” and threatened to dox her in response.
From Quartz, author Dave Gershgorn, “Microsoft staff are openly questioning the value of diversity“:
Some Microsoft employees are openly questioning whether diversity is important, in a lengthy discussion on an internal online messaging board meant for communicating with CEO Satya Nadella.
Two posts on the board criticizing Microsoft diversity initiatives as “discriminatory hiring” and suggesting that women are less suited for engineering roles have elicited more than 800 comments, both affirming and criticizing the viewpoints, multiple Microsoft employees have told Quartz. The posts were written by a female Microsoft program manager. Quartz reached out to her directly for comment, and isn’t making her name public at this point, pending her response.
“Does Microsoft have any plans to end the current policy that financially incentivizes discriminatory hiring practices? To be clear, I am referring to the fact that senior leadership is awarded more money if they discriminate against Asians and white men,” read the original post by the Microsoft program manager on Yammer, a corporate messaging platform owned by Microsoft. The employee commented consistently throughout the thread, making similar arguments. Quartz reviewed lengthy sections of the internal discussion provided by Microsoft employees.
“I have an ever-increasing file of white male Microsoft employees who have faced outright and overt discrimination because they had the misfortune of being born both white and male. This is unacceptable,” the program manager wrote in a comment later. The Microsoft employees who spoke to Quartz said they weren’t aware of any action by the company in response, despite the comments being reported to Microsoft’s human resources department.
When contacted by Quartz, Microsoft pointed to comments by three company officials in the message-board threads. A member of Microsoft’s employee investigations team responded to the initial post in January, writing that the company does not tolerate discrimination of any kind. Another Microsoft staff member, who leads the team that helps the board of directors determine executive pay, explained the diversity-based compensation initiative. “Our board and executive leadership team believe diverse and inclusive teams are good for business and consistent with our mission and inspire-to culture,” she wrote. “Linking compensation to these aspirations is an important demonstration of executive commitment to something we believe strongly in.”
Here’s her actual post:
“Because women used to be actively prohibited from full-time employment many decades ago, there is now the misguided belief that women SHOULD work, and if women AREN’T working, there’s something wrong…. Many women simply aren’t cut out for the corporate rat race, so to speak, and that’s not because of ‘the patriarchy,’ it’s because men and women aren’t identical, and women are much more inclined to gain fulfillment elsewhere.”
“We still lack any empirical evidence that the demographic distribution in tech is rationally and logically detrimental to the success of the business in this industry….We have a plethora of data available that demonstrate women are less likely to be interested in engineering AT ALL than men, and it’s not because of any *ism or *phobia or ‘unconscious bias’- it’s because men and women think very differently from each other, and the specific types of thought process and problem solving required for engineering of all kinds (software or otherwise) are simply less prevalent among women. This is an established fact. However, this established fact makes people very uncomfortable, because it suggests that the gender distribution in engineering might not actually be a problem (and thus women can no longer bleat about being victims of sexism in the workplace), these facts are ignored in favor of meaningless platitudes our SLT [senior leadership team] continues to shove down our throats — e.g. ‘We’re not doing enough’ and ‘we clearly have a long way to go.'”
“We MUST immediately cease the practice of attaching financial incentives and performance metrics to ‘diversity hiring’ — as long as we give more money and higher annual reviews explicitly for NOT hiring/promoting white men and Asians, this will continue to be a serious problem at the company.”
Pointing out discrimination against white men amounts to heresy in the New America™.
“Pending her response,” Gershgorn and Quartz are going to dox her so the lynch mob can burn her at the stake for “questioning the value of diversity.”
Protecting “diversity” requires total uniformity.
ACTIVISTS DRESSED AS CLOWNS PROTEST ‘DRAG QUEEN STORY HOUR’
Honk honk
APRIL 23, 2019
Activists dressed as clowns interrupted a local ‘drag queen story hour’ event in New Orleans to draw attention to the absurdity of the situation.
Drag queen story hour, which first surfaced in 2015, sees men dressed as women tour public libraries and schools across the United States and Canada reading books to children.
According to the group’s website, the aim of the project is to capture “the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and give kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models.”
Conservatives are strongly opposed to the concept, arguing that it exposes children as young as 2-years-old to sexuality.
The backlash grew last month after it was revealed that a man who was charged with sexually assaulting a child was allowed to read to kids at a library in Houston.
Activists with the American identity movement decided to protest a drag queen story hour in New Orleans by dressing up as clowns and crashing the event.
They carried a banner which read ‘Drag Queen Story Hour – Adult Entertainment For Kids! Welcome to Clown World – Honk Honk’.
Judging from the clip the group posted to Twitter, they were asked to leave in a hurry but managed to make their point.
The ‘clown world’ meme is based on the premise that identity politics has left western society so muddled and confused that the only way to respond to it is with nihilism in clown form.
WaPo headline linking anger at Sri Lanka terrorist attacks to ‘far right’ draws Twitter’s ire
The Washington Post is under fire for printing a story with a contentious headline, implying that anger over the recent spate of bombings in Sri Lanka is unique to the “far right.”
Titled “Christianity under attack? Sri Lanka church bombings stoke far-right anger in the West,” the piece drew outrage online far and wide for its recklessly phrased headline.
In its story, the Post cites right-wing leaders and activists across the US and Europe – such as Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Rally party – who view the bombings in Sri Lanka as part of a greater attack on Christianity.
While the Post does acknowledge that “Christian minorities are targeted around the world,” some took the piece itself to be a religious slight.
“If you [need] any further proof that the Washington Post is anti-Christian, check out this asinine headline,” one user said on Twitter.
BBC News On Sri Lanka Attack: ‘Muslims Left Nervous And Afraid’
By Chris Menahan
Won’t somebody think of the Muslims?
From BBC News:
Muslims left nervous and afraid
The BBC’s Anbarasan Ethirajan writes from the capital, Colombo:
Sri Lankans are yet to come to terms with this wave of unprecedented bomb attacks.
It is believed some Muslim youths were radicalised after clashes between the majority Sinhala Buddhists and Muslims last year in the central district of Kandy.
There have been videos on social media showing hardline Islamists and Sinhala hardliners promoting hatred after that violence.
But very few expected such massive attacks a year later. And why were Christians targeted? They are also a minority in Sri Lanka.
It’s an eternal mystery, folks.
The country experienced suicide attacks by Tamil Tiger rebels during the civil war that ended in 2009.
But the ruthlessness with which the latest attacks were carried out show that the country’s task this time will be challenging.
It is a different kind of battle. In the meantime, Sri Lankan Muslims are left nervous and afraid.
Watch: AZ Teachers Union Head Pressures Members to Intimidate Colleagues to Join #RedforEd Walk Outs
By Michael Patrick Leahy
Arizona Education Association (AEA) president Joe Thomas was caught on video telling teachers who act as union liaisons in their schools to intimidate any colleagues who refuse to participate in walkouts apparently planned in anticipation of future #RedforEd rallies at the State Capitol in Phoenix.
Michelle Dillard, an organizer of a group designed to push back against the AEA and #RedforEd in Arizona called Purple for Parents, tweeted the video of Thomas’ rant on Sunday:
“So if you have people that say by God I don’t want to walk out again, I’ll never do that again, you better make sure they’re in a red shirt every Wednesday,” Thomas said at the beginning of the 24 second video, in which he spoke to several teachers wearing trademark #RedforEd red shirts.
“Because the legislature needs to see that we’re serious. That we’re paying attention that we’ve not closed our eyes and they’ve not done enough. Because they’re watching us as well,” Thomas continued.
“And if you have people that don’t want to walk out, that don’t want to go back down to the Capitol, don’t want to leave their classrooms, they better be out on that walk out, that stand out, excuse me,” (emphasis added) Thomas said at the end of the brief video.
“I hope the districts and administrations take these threats seriously and step up immediately to protect our teachers. It should be made clear that any harassment or intimidation will not be tolerated. The hostile work environment that #RedForEd has created is the learning environment for our children. Modeling bullying behavior in front of our kids is shameful,” Purple for Parents’ Dillard said after first seeing the video.
One person, apparently a teacher in Arizona public schools, tweeted “I know for a fact that if a teacher does not visibly support these union thugs, they make their lives miserable creating a hostile work environment. #RedforEd is nothing more than a leftist partisan gang. They could care less about the students. Only votes & money.”
Breitbart News asked Mr. Thomas and the AEA for comment, but has not received a response.
The Arizona Daily Independent published the 24-second video of Thomas’ rant on YouTube on Sunday, April 21, apparently the first time it was made available to the public. On Tuesday, the editor of the Arizona Daily Independent said in an email to Breitbart News that “we were told it was taken on 4/17” [April 17] at the Pyle Adult Recreation Center in Tempe, Arizona.
Teachers unions and the #RedforEd movement in other states have already announced May Day rallies. In North Carolina, for instance, several public school districts have announced that they will be closing on May 1 due to a planned #RedforEd rally at the State Capitol in Raleigh.
In Arizona, a formal rally has not yet been announced for May Day by either the Arizona Education Association or Arizona Educators United, the state’s #RedforEd organization put together in March 2018 by then 23-year old Noah Karvelis and several other far left community organizing activists embedded in the teachers union.
Behind the scenes, however, the AEA’s Thomas has been attempting to orchestrate a May Day rally this year at the State Capitol in Phoenix, sources tell Breitbart News.
Marisal Garcia, a Vice President of the AEA, made it very clear in the April 16 edition of Cronkite News, a 30 minute news report broadcast daily on Arizona public television stations from Arizona State University’s union-friendly Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications, that teachers “may have to take it into our own hands” if the Arizona state legislature does not concede to the additional demands of the #RedforEd movement:
As budgets head up, and nothing is going to be talked about that has anything to do with what we did last year, my assumption is people are going to get extremely agitated and want to do something larger.
What I think may come down to it, honestly, the governor and the legislature cannot fix, we’re going to have to fix this ourselves.
Educators have been waiting. This election they were promised. It still hasn’t happened. We may have to take it into our own hands.
You can watch the complete broadcast here:
Phoenix conservative talk radio host Mike Broomhead, who broke the story with an audio version of the Thomas rant on his KFYI program Monday, also says his sources say a strike may be in the planning stages:
The #RedforEd movement was launched in March 2018 by then 23-year-old Noah Karvelis, who was reportedly appointed head of the Littleton Education Association, which represents about 150 teachers in the Little Elementary School District, located in metropolitan Phoenix, by Thomas, despite the fact that he was only a provisionally certified teacher in his just his second year on the job.
In April of last year an estimated 50,000 teachers rallied at the State Capitol in a successful effort to pressure Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, and the Arizona State Legislature to give the state’s teachers a significant pay raise. During that period of teacher activism, so many teachers walked out of the classroom that schools across the state were forced to shut down for six consecutive days.
As Breitbart News reported in February, “This teachers union effort, called #RedforEd, has its roots in the very same socialism that President Trump vowed in his 2019 State of the Union address to stop, and it began in its current form in early 2018 in a far-flung corner of the country before spreading nationally. Its stated goals–higher teacher pay and better education conditions–are overshadowed by a more malevolent political agenda: a leftist Democrat uprising designed to flip purple or red states to blue, using the might of a significant part of the education system as its lever.”
Karvelis, now 24, announced in March that he is leaving his job as a public school teacher in Arizona to attend a Ph.D. program in Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Tom's Blog 