Welcome to RantCrush Top 5, where we take you through today’s top five controversial stories in the world of law and policy. Who’s ranting and raving right now? Check it out below:

Comey Contradictions Are Everywhere

During a hearing yesterday, the acting director of the FBI, Andrew G. McCabe, contradicted what the White House has said about the firing of James Comey and the importance of the ongoing Russia inquiry. The administration has tried to downplay the latter, but McCabe said the inquiry is very significant. “Simply put, you cannot stop the men and women of the F.B.I. from doing the right thing,” he said. He also emphasized that Comey had the support of most people within the FBI, saying, “Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the F.B.I. and still does.” But White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders continued trying to undermine that report by saying that she had talked to “countless members of the F.B.I. that are grateful and thankful for the president’s decision.”

Love the thought of a bunch of FBI agents randomly reaching out to Sarah Huckabee Sanders to express their appreciation for Comey firing

— Amanda Terkel (@aterkel) May 12, 2017

But when pressed for details by reporters, Huckabee Sanders admitted that she didn’t “know that many people in the F.B.I.” At the same time, President Donald Trump claimed he fired Comey because he thought “this Russia thing with Trump” was a story Democrats made up to explain why they lost the election. And it has also been revealed the two had dinner in the White House, but accounts on what happened differ.

Trump tweets “Comey better hope” there are no “tapes” of convos as Comey associates question if he told Trump he wasn’t under investigation pic.twitter.com/EU7Ya1Yvtv

— ABC News (@ABC) May 12, 2017

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post RantCrush Top 5: May 12, 2017 appeared first on Law Street.

According to a statement released by the Department of Defense on August 27, 2014, United States Army General Officer Michael T. Harrison was forced to retire recently with a reduced rank after being found to have mishandled reports of sexual assault. As I read the article published by The New York Times, I was expecting to find that some form of criminal action had also been taken and that there would be some recognition of sympathy for those victims whose cases had been mishandled. Instead, the consequences of this general’s actions were to retire as a one star general, as opposed to a two star. No criminal action was taken, and no justice to the victims was given.

If you have seen the eye-opening documentary ‘The Invisible War,’ then you know that it raised awareness for the appalling number of victims who are involved in sexual assaults in military settings, but also that it spurred legislation ensuring investigations of abuse were handled efficiently, and justice was given to the victims. As can be seen with Harrison’s case, these incidents are still occurring and as a woman myself, I still do not feel like enough is being done.

Susan Brownmiller, an American journalist, describes sexual assault in military settings as an unfortunate but inevitable by-product of the necessary game called war. Quite frankly, the punishment Harrison received is nothing short of a joke. After the amendment of federal policies regarding sexual assault in the military two years ago, I question Congress as to why this is still happening? This game we call ‘sexual assault in war’ is unacceptable. According to “The Invisible War,”

‘Since 2006, more than 95,000 service members have been sexually assaulted in the U.S. military. More than 86 percent of service members do not report their assault, and less than five percent of all sexual assaults are put forward for prosecution, with less than a third of those cases resulting in imprisonment.’

These figures should be enough to not only change punishment for the mishandling of reports of sexual assault, but to help victims come forward and receive justice for their traumatic experiences. As of 2014, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, federal law now defines Military Sexual Trauma (MST) as one of the most frequent diagnoses given to veterans of warfare. If we know that so many individuals suffer from such traumatic experiences, why isn’t policy being changed? Even more importantly, why aren’t those who are meant to protect us doing their jobs properly?

Each military force dominates the way reports and investigations of assault are handled. This ‘in house’ shambles of a system is essentially allowing officials to get away with their own wrongdoings. We are allowing individuals to commit acts without fear of punishment or consequence. In order to lower the rates of sexual assault in the military, the focus needs to be on controlling the environment, and providing an alternative system for report of misconduct. I am no expert in changing legislation, and I am no intellectual genius on the makings of policy, but I am certainly no fool to being aware that victims are suffering, and legislators need to wake up and realize that this type of consequence is normalizing military sexual assaults.

Our common coping mechanism for crime is imposing laws to regulate punishment to those who inflict pain and suffering. By imposing taking someone’s gold sparkly badge away and giving him or her a silver sparkly one instead because they essentially ignored someone’s suffering, is unacceptable. Sexual assault and abuse is not normal, regardless of the situation, regardless of the setting, and regardless of the perpetrator. In order to enable victims to report their abusers, and in order to protect future men and women from the pain and suffering so many veterans go through, something needs to change!

Now more than ever, I cannot wrap my head around the fact that our same country who is fighting to protect us from terrorism, our country who is fighting for the rights of the thousands of innocent individuals losing their lives in the Middle East, can also be the same country that contains individuals being sexually violated and then silenced by the same exact people who are meant to protect us.

Hannah Kaye

Hannah Kaye is originally from London, now living in New York. Recently graduated with an MA in criminal justice from John Jay College. Strong contenders for things she is most passionate about are bagels and cupcakes. Contact Hannah at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Military Sexual Assault Remains a Major National Embarrassment appeared first on Law Street.

In the aftermath of the shooting in Ferguson, Missouri and the controversy over the way in which the police department has dealt with the backlash, accusations of officials on a ‘power trip’ are incredibly poignant. According to Ferguson residents interviewed by CNN, “there’s been friction for years with the overwhelmingly white police department.” This statement is made by both African-American and white members of the community.

Courtesy of Light Brigading via Flickr

In the predominantly African-American town, these individuals are highly over-represented in crime statistics. ‘They accounted for 93 percent of arrests after traffic stops, 92 percent of searches and 86 percent of traffic stops.’ Although it is frankly impossible to hide from the racially discriminatory acts that are taking place, I ask why it has taken such a tragic event to acknowledge such wrongdoing? This idea that power can influence the way people act is not uncommon. Social experiments like the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, the soldiers involved in the leaking of the Abu Ghraib photos, and the recent controversies surrounding the invisible war of sexual assault in the military, are just some examples of how power has an effect on producing and allowing crime to occur.

It is time we stop allowing justifications and rationalizations as reasons why individuals feel they can abuse their power. We blame the police officers for abusing their power with excessive force, but what about those in the riots who took advantage of a tragic situation by looting businesses? What about the thousands of individuals who took to Twitter to verbally abuse and criticize individuals because of their race, or because of their involvement in the incident? To say the issue is the hypocrisy of a country built upon equality and democracy is treating the problem, but ignoring those actions that make us revert back to the Civil Rights era, and back to an age when segregation was mandatory, which is the cause.

In the 21st century we have produced a generation so involved in the use of social media to express their opinions, and so involved in the right to voice our opinions, that we are in a sense our own worst enemies. Instead of working alongside law enforcement to protect our country, we are rebelling; instead of fighting the war against racial discrimination, we are fueling it; instead of maintaining the right to have privacy, we are highlighting more reasons to invade it. One of the first pictures of the fatally shot Michael Brown was posted to Twitter by a bystander before any official evidence was given to the police.

In the aftermath of Ferguson, it was announced that “police departments and their equipment suppliers are outfitting their officers with on-body cameras that promise to eliminate the photographic void we saw in Ferguson.” These cameras will be worn by officers during their shifts and will record all of their encounters with any member of the public they interact with. These videos at the end of each shift are then placed in a vault online, where they will only be examined during legal proceedings.

I don’t know about you, but I interact with police officers daily during my lunch break. I am 90 percent sure it is to do with my British accent and their boredom, but I still don’t know how comfortable I would feel knowing they may have a camera turned on recording me buying my lunch. What about those days that I decide it’s a good idea to buy bars of chocolate and bags of chips, if anything they are uncovering my unhealthy habits!

Courtesy of Mark Kirchner via Flickr

As expected with any new regulation, there are no national regulations on how the cameras will be used, or when they will be turned on and off. This is precisely one of the main problems with treating the problem and ignoring the cause. How to you trust an officer is going to keep the camera on for the duration of his shift? How do you rely on technology to take away the ‘power trip’ mentality? The answer: you cannot.

What makes this whole argument over the abuse of power even more valid is the corruption of relationships within the police force. There needs to be some kind of a change to monitor the performance of corrupt officials to ensure that the public can trust in those who are meant to protect them. The backlash from the community in Ferguson has come about from years of distrust in their law enforcement as protectors, and adding video cameras to police officers’ chests is not going to change that.

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Hannah Kaye (@HannahSKaye) is originally from London, now living in New York. Recently graduated with an MA in criminal justice from John Jay College. Strong contenders for things she is most passionate about are bagels and cupcakes.

Featured image courtesy of [Matt Katzenberger via Flickr]

Hannah Kaye

Hannah Kaye is originally from London, now living in New York. Recently graduated with an MA in criminal justice from John Jay College. Strong contenders for things she is most passionate about are bagels and cupcakes. Contact Hannah at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Crime of Power: Treating the Problem in Ferguson and Ignoring the Cause appeared first on Law Street.

Last week, the government reopened and raised the debt ceiling. YAY! We don’t all have to worry about getting flushed down the proverbial economic toilet.

At least not for another three months, when Congress has decided to do this all again.

It’s like a quarterly, let’s-freak-everyone-the-fuck-out party.

Awesome. (Not really.)

Anyway! Now that the government has reopened for a little while, some of the nation’s most influential businessmen are speaking out about it. And you know what they’re saying?

Who the hell cares?!

No, but that’s really what they’re saying.

In a recent interview with Jason Calacanis, former Facebook employee and venture-capitalist millionaire Chamath Palihapitiya claimed that the government was pretty much useless—so who gives a crap if it shuts down? According to him, corporations hold the real power in the U.S. these days.

“Companies are transcending power now,” said Palihapitiya. “We are becoming the eminent vehicles for change and influence, and capital structures that matter. If companies shut down, the stock market would collapse. If the government shuts down, nothing happens and we all move on, because it just doesn’t matter.”

This is interesting, folks.

Palihapitiya’s words are both frighteningly true and laughably false, all at the same time.

On the one hand, it’s true that for many of us, life continued as usual, despite the government shutdown. For example, as I interviewed folks last week for a book I’m writing about conservatism in present-day America, many of them had almost zero knowledge about the government shutdown.

Why not?

Because they were busy, and hadn’t been paying much attention to the news. Oh, and because it must not really matter anyway, if the only way they could know about the shutdown was by devoting a portion of their day to catching up with CNN (or Fox News, unfortunately). Their daily lives weren’t affected at all.

But, if Facebook—or some other multi-billion dollar corporation—had suddenly gone belly-up, these folks would know about it. Absolutely. Remember the financial crash of 2008? When the economy flounders, so does everyone else in the United States.

Corporations, whether or not they’re functioning properly, make people pay attention. But a white, domed building filled with a bunch of bickering Congress people? Not so much.

But that doesn’t mean that the government doesn’t matter, as Palihapitiya claims. This government shutdown was relatively short-term, and had it remained closed for a longer period of time, many more people would have felt the burn.

Nonetheless, tons of people were seriously affected. Boatloads of government employees were furloughed without pay, and millions of people who receive some form of government assistance were left out in the cold.

So, when Jason Calacanis tweets about how little the government shutdown matters—echoing the same sentiments as his interview subject, Palihapitiya—we can just grit our teeth and laugh at the skewed viewpoint of the über-rich.

Is the shutdown proving to many that the government really doesn’t do that much for them? Have you been impacted personally yet? Just asking. (@Jason)

Because honestly, Jason, lots of people were personally impacted by the government shutdown. But they were probably women, or poor, or of color, or all of the above. And you’re none of those things. Your crass assumption that, just because you haven’t been affected then clearly no one has, is hilariously out of touch.

Except it’s not that hilarious, because, let’s face it—you have a ton of power.

While Jason and Palihapitiya might be wrong about the government being inconsequential, they’re right about one thing. Big money corporations matter A LOT. They have the power to make or break our economy, and by extension, to make or break all of our lives. If the economy tanks, we’re all going down with it. At least, those of us who aren’t rich enough to charter a private jet out the mess.

And the lower down we are on the socio-economic ladder, the further we’ll fall if the economy goes to shit. Poor people, women, people of color, queer people, disabled people—the list can go on—will be hit the hardest by a major economic stumble.

So, it’s not really that funny when venture capitalist millionaires prove themselves to be incredibly out of touch. Because they have the power to make or break our economy and our livelihoods. They need to be at least mildly aware of what it’s like down here, in order to keep what’s going on up there from destroying us all.

So, Mark Zuckerberg and friends? Please check your privilege. While you earn your billions, we still need to pay our rent.

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Featured image courtesy of [Victoria Pickering via Flickr]

Hannah R. Winsten

Hannah R. Winsten is a freelance copywriter, marketing consultant, and blogger living in New York’s sixth borough. She hates tweeting but does it anyway. She aspires to be the next Rachel Maddow. Contact Hannah at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post How Facebook Pays Your Rent appeared first on Law Street.