It’s Too Easy for Police to Take Your Stuff.
It’s Too Easy for Police to Take Your Stuff.
Plus: A Clear-Eyed Look at the Ukraine War as It Enters Its Third Year
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MATTHEW PRENSKY AND ARIF PANJU: It’s Too Easy for Police to Take Your Stuff.
IN EARLY DECEMBER, the San Antonio Police Department auctioned off thirteen vehicles. The auction marked the completion of a process known as civil forfeiture, which allows law enforcement to seize people’s property and work with prosecutors to sell it and pocket the proceeds.
Police claim civil forfeiture allows them to keep communities safe by taking criminals’ property, stymieing their ability to commit crimes. The only problem is that two of the thirteen vehicles auctioned off last December were taken from innocent people with no clear connection to the alleged crimes involving their vehicles. Court filings make no mention of the registered owner’s name in either case, yet police still moved forward to forfeit—that is, permanently expropriate—their property.
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The Next Level Live! From Principles First [Ad-Free🔐]
Bulwark Podcast with Tim Miller: Bill Kristol: A Shot of Hopium [Ad-Free🔐]
BONUS🎪: South Carolina Circus Special [Ad-Free🔐]
The Focus Group: Nikki Haley's (New) Time for Choosing (with Tim Alberta) [Ad-Free🔐]
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CATHY YOUNG: A Clear-Eyed Look at the Ukraine War as It Enters Its Third Year.
IN THE TWO YEARS SINCE THAT PRE-DAWN FEBRUARY MORNING when Russian troops smashed across the border and missiles began to fly, the war in Ukraine has changed our world. It has given new names and faces to heroism, from Volodymyr Zelensky’s defiant dignity to the desperate Mariupol defenders taking their last stand in the catacombs of a gigantic Soviet steel factory to the captured Ukrainian soldier saying Slava Ukraini before being shot dead. It has given new addresses to evil—above all, Bucha, the once-quiet and prosperous Kyiv suburb that became a killing field under Russian occupation. It has resurrected grim, World War I-style images of the sort of fighting long thought to have disappeared from Europe: stalemated or nearly stalemated combat in which every square foot of ground is contested in brutal combat.
Where does it go from here?
🚨OVERTIME🚨
Happy Monday! What. A. Weekend. Hundreds of you guys showed up at our Principles First happy hour and, of course, the conference, which was excellent. What a long way… from Heath proposing Never Trumpers meet up at a bar to this whole thing, live on C-SPAN. If you missed it, you can catch up here or here.
Probably my favorite laugh was JVL as Trump speechwriter. If you only watch one clip, watch that one.
Democracy on Trial… If you missed us at PF, there are a lot of faces you’ll recognize in this excellent PBS documentary that is a must watch.
How Donald Trump Became Unbeatable… At The Atlantic, Sarah Longwell asks: How did we get here again?
VICE.com… Closes up shop (Semafor).
New Study on Sex Discrimination… Reveals Very Good News (Connors)
The future of global democracy… runs right through Ukraine, argues B+ member Lynn Schmidt in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The “enshittification” of everything… William Leitch on why things are getting worse, and that’s by design, sadly.
“I Was a Heretic at The New York Times… I did what I was hired to do, and I paid for it”, writes my former colleague Adam Rubenstein at The Atlantic.
⌚️Living With The Penguins…. Operation Deep Freeze And The Nivada Grenchen Antarctic.
On moving out… Giri Nathan at Defector reflects on leaving places.
The United States of Barbecue… Mapped by Phil Edwards.
American Autocracy Threat Tracker… Make sure to bookmark and share this resource from Just Security.
It's not Pizza… It's Chizza.
Surge pricing… For fast food hamburgers (Gizmodo).
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