Supreme Court conservatives flex muscle in sweeping rulings.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court’s sweeping rulings on guns and abortion sent an unmistakable message. Conservative justices hold the power and they are not afraid to use it to make transformative changes in the law, none more so than taking away a woman’s right to abortion that had stood for nearly 50 years.

No more half measures, they declared Friday in overturning Roe v. Wade and allowing states to outlaw abortion. And the day before, in ruling for the first time that Americans the right to carry handguns in public for self-defense, they said the Constitution is clear.

“A restless and newly constituted Court,” is how Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of three liberals on the nine-member court, described her colleagues earlier in June.

The abortion case in particular was a repudiation of the more incremental approach favored by Chief Justice John Roberts.

The decisions in the blockbuster cases on consecutive days were the latest and perhaps clearest manifestation of how the court has evolved over the past six years — a product of historical accident and Republican political brute force — from an institution that leaned right, but produced some notable liberal victories  to one with an aggressive, 6-3 conservative majority.

Originally published by: By MARK SHERMAN and JESSICA GRESKO on June 25/2022

Two White Men Arrested After Viral Vids Capture Terrifying Attack on Black Teen.

Two white men were arrested in Florida this week and accused of racial profiling after allegedly hurling a massive stone at a Black teen who was driving in the same town where Trayvon Martin was killed in 2012.

“I was racially profiled while driving through my friends neighborhood,” the victim, who identified himself as JJ, wrote on his Instagram Wednesday. “They didn’t like the way I was driving, so they felt the need to hit my car with a cone, and throw a rock through my window. All I wanted to do was de-escalate until police came, because I wasn’t about to get charges pressed on me for no reason.”

According to Seminole County records, Donald Eugene Corsi, 52, and Howard Oral Hughes, 61, were arrested Wednesday. They were first identified by social media sleuth @ThatDaneshGuy. Corsi faces felony charges for damage to property and launching a weapon into a vehicle. Hughes has been charged with felony property damage and a misdemeanor for battery. Both men have since been released from the Seminole jail on bond.

In a video initially posted on Facebook Tuesday, a man who identified himself as JJ’s father, CJ Jones, said, “This is the video my son took while calling 911. …And as you can see they [admit] to having guns.”

In the video, one man in a blue shirt stands with his hands on his hips, watching the person holding the camera, presumed to be JJ. Another man in sunglasses walks around a white Mercedes sedan with his phone pointed toward the license plate

“Right here! Tell me what you’ve done!” the man in sunglasses shouts.

The camera pans to the car, which has a broken window in the seat behind the driver.

“Burning out and racing through my fucking neighborhood!” the man in sunglasses yells in JJ’s face. The man in the blue shirt joins him in front of the camera.

“I’m not in your face,” the man in the blue shirt says after JJ tells him to move. “Get out of my neighborhood, you fuckwad!”

JJ asks the men if they have a gun, and one of them says he has a permit to carry.

After the two men trail JJ on the residential street, other people in the neighborhood come out to inspect what’s going on.

A woman in the street with a striped towel wrapped around her waist and a cross hanging from her neck accuses JJ of possessing a gun.

“Get out of this neighborhood!” she shouts. “You don’t belong here!”

JJ walks back to his car and films glass shards all over the backseat and a dent on the car door.

In a follow-up Facebook Live video Jones posted Tuesday, he mentioned that the incident happened in the Forest Lake neighborhood of Sanford.

“Not too far where Trayvon Martin got killed,” he wrote.

The video shows police arriving on the scene as residents stood outside their homes. Jones said that he wanted to go live “just so we have evidence, in case something happens to me out here today.”

He then turned the camera toward the house where his son was supposed to visit a friend.

“Even when I was coming into this neighborhood, I had a couple yell at me,” Jones says. “Black people cannot stay around here.”

The Daily Beast was unable to reach Corsi and Hughes on Thursday.

Originally reported by Brooke Leigh Howard

Thu, June 16, 2022, 12:59 PM