Anti-Game-Violence Legislator Arrested, Faces Gun Trafficking Charges 234
Several readers sent word that California State Senator Leland Yee was arrested today. He's accused of conspiring to traffic guns and commit wire fraud, to defraud citizens of honest services, and bribery. The complant (PDF) also names 25 other defendants. Yee is known for pushing legislation that would ban the sale of violent video games to minors.
"Federal prosecutors also allege Yee agreed to perform official acts in exchange for the money, including one instance in which he introduced a businessman to state legislators who had significant influence over pending medical marijuana legislation. In exchange, the businessman -- who was actually an undercover FBI agent -- agreed to donate thousands to Yee's campaign fund, according to the indictment. The indictment also describes an August 2013 exchange in which [former school board president Keith Jackson] told an undercover officer that Yee had an arms trafficking contact. Jackson allegedly said Yee could facilitate a meeting for a donation."
Well actually he's pretty solidly anti-gun too. (Score:5, Informative)
There for a while he was pushing for a ban on a bit of a work around that 'gun-nuts' in California came up with to get around it's ban on so called 'Assault Weapons' A weird little device called a bullet button that makes it so that the magazine in a firearm can't be easier removed. Pretty clever work around for a completely asinine law.
Re:Any actual police work? (Score:2, Informative)
Read the articles, the undercover officer met with Yee multiple times and gave him cash for a small initial shipment.
Re:What party was that again... (Score:4, Informative)
How many other newspapers did you have to look at to find one where the affiliation is mentioned near the top?
It was the very first one. NY Times is my go-to news source. But I can do some more.
Next up is the Washington Post. I can't find this subject there, but here's their top article on corruption. [washingtonpost.com] Again it's a Democrat, and again that fact is in the second sentence.
Now let's check the first corruption-related article in the Seattle Times. Another story on the mayor from the WaPo article. [seattletimes.com] This time you have to read all the way to the fourth sentence to find his party affiliation.
Get the point yet?
This is a regular lie that Republicans trot out. They just love to play the victim. See also: "white Christian men are the most oppressed group in America".
Re:Well actually he's pretty solidly anti-gun too. (Score:5, Informative)
Could we please stop with the endless pro-drug commentary? Not all of us are drug addicts, and it's tiresome when people like yourself have to bring up drug issues in nearly every thread. I know it's important to you, but normal people don't care about such matters.
You don't have to give a damn about drugs, pro or con, to admit that they are a useful example to bring up in the context of the effect of prohibition on the available margins in a given market.
If you prefer a classier example, from a (not actually more civilized; but definitely better dressed) age; we can talk about booze. Same effects were seen under the Volstead act.
Re:What party was that again... (Score:5, Informative)
If it was an (R), his party affiliation would be mentioned in the headline, not the body of the story.
And honestly, there is a lot of hatred towards white Christian men. You really don't see it? It's like the entire left wing decided that the problem wasn't bigotry, it was that bigotry was being directed at the wrong group. I know you don't believe me, so here's some science:
A lack of political diversity in psychology is said to lead to a number of pernicious outcomes, including biased research and active discrimination against conservatives. The authors of this study surveyed a large number (combined N = 800) of social and personality psychologists and discovered several interesting facts. First, although only 6% described themselves as conservative âoeoverall,â there was more diversity of political opinion on economic issues and foreign policy. Second, respondents significantly underestimated the proportion of conservatives among their colleagues. Third, conservatives fear negative consequences of revealing their political beliefs to their colleagues. Finally, they are right to do so: In decisions ranging from paper reviews to hiring, many social and personality psychologists said that they would discriminate against openly conservative colleagues. The more liberal respondents were, the more they said they would discriminate.
Composite scores of perceived hostile climate for conservatives (! = .85) were significantly correlated with political orientation, r(263) = .28, p
At the end of our surveys, we gave room for comments. Many respondents wrote that they could not believe that anyone in the field would ever deliberately discriminate against conservatives. Yet at the same time we found clear examples of discrimination. One participant described how a colleague was denied tenure because of his political beliefs. Another wrote that if the department "could figure out who was a conservative they would be sure not to
hire them."
-- Yoel Inbar and Joris Lammers, "Political Diversity in Social and Personality Psychology" http://yoelinbar.net/papers/political_diversity.pdf [yoelinbar.net]
Re:What party was that again... (Score:5, Informative)
I looked at the top seven articles from a google search on "senator yee"
Let's go into detail on that then. Ignoring the Wikipedia page, we have:
#1: Fox News - Waits all the way till sentence 18 to identify him as a Democrat. Are you prepared to argue that Fox is biased in favor of Democrats?
#2: CBS - No mention. That's one.
#3: ABC - Mentioned in the first sentence.
#4: NBC - Mentioned, but several paragraphs down.
#5: Mercury News: Mentioned in the first sentence.
#6: Mentioned in the second sentence.
#7: Mentioned in the 13th sentence.
So it's only omitted once, and only really buried one other time. In every other case, you need to read 20 or fewer sentences. And the third "worst" is Fox News, who you can't possibly claim to be biased against Republicans. Do you really believe there's malice there? And not just reporters figuring that his affiliation doesn't have anything to do with his crime?
I can't pull up a Republican, because I don't know of any who have recently been arrested. And if I Google "Republican arrested", I'm obviously going to get articles mentioning party affiliation. That's the brilliant thing about this lie that right-wing media outlets have been pushing. It won't be on your mind next time a Republican gets arrested, so you won't look for it. But whenever a Democrat gets arrested, you'll have some more fuel for your hatred.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Makes Sense. (Score:3, Informative)
California State Senator Leland Yee (D)