The Klan is thriving in Texas. https://t.co/xxLGHL2FMB pic.twitter.com/PYUW7ChYwX
— Liberal Hegemony Enjoyer (@Danofran) May 16, 2024
Per the Associated Press, “Texas governor pardons ex-Army sergeant convicted of killing Black Lives Matter protester”:
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a full pardon Thursday for a former U.S. Army sergeant convicted of murder for fatally shooting an armed demonstrator in 2020 during nationwide protests against police violence and racial injustice.
Abbott announced the pardon shortly after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles announced a unanimous recommendation that Daniel Perry be pardoned and have his firearms rights restored.
Perry had been in state prison on a 25-year sentence since his 2023 conviction in the killing of Garrett Foster, and was released shortly after the pardon, a prison spokeswoman said.
Perry, who is white, was working as a ride-share driver when his car approached a demonstration in Austin. Prosecutors said he could have driven away from the confrontation with Foster, a white Air Force veteran who witnesses said never raised his gun…
A Republican in his third term, Abbott has typically issued pardons only for minor offenses, and he notably avoided a posthumous pardon recommendation for George Floyd for a 2004 drug arrest in Houston. It was Floyd’s killing by a white police officer in Minneapolis in 2020 that set off national demonstrations…
Abbott’s demand for a review of Perry’s case followed pressure from former Fox News star Tucker Carlson, who on national television had urged the governor to intervene after the sergeant was convicted at trial in April 2023. Perry was sentenced after prosecutors used his social media history and text messages to portray him as a racist who may commit violence again…
Seems bad Greg Abbott pardoned this guy https://t.co/wYtyIPAPW5
— James Medlock (@jdcmedlock) May 16, 2024
The jury that convicted Daniel Perry didn't "nullify" Perry's right to self-defense. It decided that a guy who lusts over killing protesters and then drives into a group of protesters and shoots one who didn't pose him a threat isn't defending himself.https://t.co/K2FRDgCeMg
— Andrew Egger (@EggerDC) May 17, 2024
The thing not to forget about all this is that Daniel Perry was tried by a jury of his peers, in which all of these issues – self-defense, open carry, etc. – were fully litigated, and the jury found him guilty of murder. Abbott is overriding that decision for political reasons.
— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) May 17, 2024
The point of the pardon is to demonstrate that open-carry (and the 2nd amendment in general) applies only to white people. https://t.co/M87p2QqAGh
— Tom Hilton (@TVHilton) May 17, 2024
War for Ukraine Day 816: Singular Points of Failure Will Fail at Inopportune Times
HumboldtBlue
Happy Monday morning, everyone.
Betty Cracker
Every headline I’ve seen on this hideous pardon notes that the convicted murderer is a veteran but not that the victim was too. You might read about the victim’s military service too, maybe in the fourth or fifth paragraph if you bother to click through. WTF?
Abbott, the members of his handpicked pardon board and complicit statehouse Republicans — all members of the alleged “party of law and order” — overturned the rule of law and set a murderer and creepy pederast free. They also restored his guns, making Texans less safe.
And guess what? Those scumbag GOP politicians are unlikely to pay a political price for it. Even if Perry ends up killing again. We are not a healthy society.
TS
Someone has invited Tucker Carlson & his viewpoint to Australia – ads all over the TV – the majority do not want him here – unbelievable that people will pay to listen to his hateful rhetoric
NotMax
SSDD.
scav
Next thing, they might be setting up civilian hunts (à la their captive quail hunts) just to prove how old-school free they are — for the right sort, it goes without saying. Might even make a mint out of permits for different categories of target, although the usual subjects (uppity college students and the melanin endowed, maybe even wives) will likely be open-season. All Hail Self Defence!
NotMax
@scav
“Don’t Defense Me In.”
//
Martin
Law working as intended.
Mart
@NotMax:
Let me be by myself in the evenin’ breeze
And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees
Send me off forever but I ask you please
Don’t fence me in
Ten Bears
Once again am reminded of Jesus (purportedly) admonishing his followers to keep it to themselves, in the closet, don’t make public fools of themselves ~ not unlike open-carry, the whole point is to be seen and as Jesus (purportedly) pointed out ‘they have their reward’
What I like about conceal carry is … well, uhhmmm: it isn’t seen
The Thin Black Duke
@Ten Bears: As Melvin Van Peebles stated, in White America black people “ain’t supposed to die a natural death”.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
It took me many years to realize that beyond people whose opinions and perspectives differ wildly, there are some people who are just flat-out evil. Once I came to terms with that and took it into account in my world-view, the world made a lot more sense.
Citizen Alan
I’ve set it before and I’ll say it again. I genuinely don’t consider republicans to be fully human. They don’t have souls.
John Revolta
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: @Citizen Alan: This study of Right-Wing Authoritarianism is interesting. There’s a link to two other studies that seem to show that RWA personality is due to genetics……..!
https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/28405
sab
@The Thin Black Duke: Garrett Foster, the murdered man, was white.
Martin
@sab: Doesn’t matter. He was standing up for black people. He made his allegiances known.
The Thin Black Duke
@sab: I apologize. Thanks for correcting me.
Rusty
Sickening. Republicans, almost every policy they support leads to more death. More guns, more death. Less healthcare, more death. Less safety regulations, more death. Dirty environment, more death. More poverty, more death. And so on, and so on, and so on. The party of death.
Baud
Stuff like this is why I have zero tolerance for people who aren’t joining with us to fight back. What else do they have to do?
sab
@Martin: That is my point. He was a white military veteran on the “wrong” side of their race war, exercising his 2nd amendment open carry rights.
ETA In most jurisdictions a car or a truck can be is considered as much a deadly weapon as a gun. Driving a vehicle into a crowd was the threatening action, not the assault weapon slung over the other guy’s shoulder.
Marmot
No. No. No. The point is to demonstrate that gun rights are for allowing reactionaries to intimidate and even kill political opponents.
Edited.
NotMax
@Mart
Was inspired by your comment to dash off another verse. But what resulted is so ugly and raw (yet not untrue) I’m loathe to give it space here.
satby
Heather Cox Richardson’s substack for today fits particularly well with this post. Biden’s commencement speech at Moorehouse.
Marmot
@Marmot: Adding that right-wing reactionaries throughout history use armed intimidation when their precious social hierarchy gets challenged. Italian Blackshirts, German Brownshirts, Russian Black Hundreds, they’re Daniel Perry’s kind.
Liminal Owl
@Martin: And his widow is black.
@sab:
The whole story is so horrifying.
sab
@Liminal Owl: This is how Jim Crow worked, intimidate everyone.
Tony Jay
Sickening, but also a sign of growing weakness.
The ‘conservative’ deal is always as described in Wilhoit’s Law, which in the American context translates to WE are Citizens, with the rights and protections of Citizens, THEY are Residents, with the duties and obligations of Residents. And Citizenship can be revoked if you challenge the status-quo.
But in this case a Texan Court said no. They found this murderous sack of shit guilty and said he should rot in jail for his crimes. Abbott wouldnt have wanted to get his hands dirty here. The Rittenhouse Precedent should have kicked in and the murderer should have walked free and clear. The fact that he didn’t, and Abbott has had to step in to keep a MAGA sex-case out of jail, that’s a defeat for the Right and their concept of in-group supremacy.
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep on banging on the point because of its importance in maintaining mental health in a factionalised world. We can’t stop bastards from being bastards. We can’t stop them from doing bad things if they decide to do bad things. We don’t ‘lose’ every time they smear shit on the walls. All we can do is call them out for being bastards, make them own their bad acts, and keep on reminding the people who would normally vote for them without a second thought that it’s their walls the bastards are smearing shit on.
In a democracy, the right to be a wanker is pretty much baked in. No way of avoiding it, and definitely not something we should be feeling responsible for.
Liminal Owl
@sab: Yes. Everyone who isn’t a white Christian male supporting the racial caste system.
Geo Wilcox
@scav: Giedi Prime here we come. Baron Harkonnen’s planet conducted civilian hunts for its elite.
Betty
@Betty Cracker: It ticks me off every time. The guy shot a white veteran, not some “Black radical who was asking for it” which the average white person will conclude from misleading headlines like this.
BellyCat
So, ultimately, the white victim’s “offense” was having a black spouse?
Was confused how white vet kills white vet and gets pardoned until the spouse’s race became apparent. Abbot clearly needed to pardon the white
attackerhero. (JFC….)sab
For federal pardons the person pardoned has to acknowledge guilt and express remorse. It is not meant to nullify the jury verdict. Apparently not the case in Texas?
Uncle Cosmo
@John Revolta: I found ONE statement supported by ONE study (Kandler, Bell, Riemann, 2016) that I had to dig out of the footnotes, when there’s a raft of evidence to the contrary.
Is there a “genetic component” to authoritarianism? Perhaps. Is it the dominant component in most individuals?? Highly unlikely on both counts. I would argue that authoritarian tendencies exist in everyone’s psyche to some extent – human beans are after all neither angel nor devils, but both – but that nurture and environment are far more determinant in whether any individual goosesteps down the authoritarian path.
Marmot
@BellyCat: Are you kidding? He killed a dirty lib—ya don’t have to go digging to find a racial justification. They hate us all!
Marmot
@Uncle Cosmo: Agreed that the evidence is only rudimentary. There’s a twin study. That’s Stone Age technology compared to what’s available.
Misterpuff
@Betty Cracker: All I can think about is Texas is crazytown…but doesn’t the victim have civil rights?
What is the federal response?
Can the perp be tried in federal court?
When is this happening.
Fuck Abbot.