The Hollywood Liberal

Law Lets IRS Seize Accounts on Suspicion
For almost 40 years, Carole Hinders has dished out Mexican specialties at her modest cash-only restaurant. For just as long, she deposited the earnings at a small bank branch a block away — until last year, when two tax agents knocked on her door and informed her that they had seized her funds, almost $33,000. The Internal Revenue Service agents did not accuse Hinders of money laundering or cheating on her taxes — in fact, she has not been charged with any crime. Instead, the money was seized solely because she had deposited less than $10,000 at a time, which they viewed as an attempt to avoid triggering a required government report. “How can this happen?” Hinders said in a recent interview. “Who takes your money before they prove that you’ve done anything wrong with it?” The federal government does.

Quarantined Nurse Blasts New Quarantine Policy
A nurse under mandatory quarantine in New Jersey after caring for Ebola patients in Sierra Leone has blasted more stringent state policies for dealing with health care workers returning from West Africa, saying the change could lead to medical professionals being treated like “criminals and prisoners.” In a first-person account in the Dallas Morning News, Kaci Hickox wrote that she was ordered placed in quarantine at a hospital, where she has now tested negative in two tests for Ebola. Still, hospital officials told her she must remain under quarantine for 21 days. “This is not a situation I would wish on anyone, and I am scared for those who will follow me,” she wrote.

South Africa goalkeeper Senzo Meyiwa killed
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The captain of South Africa’s national soccer team was fatally shot when armed men broke into the house where he was staying, police said.

Hockey returns to Ottawa with emotional ceremony
OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) — Players on opposing teams stood shoulder-to-shoulder in a circle at center ice as hockey made a stirring return to Ottawa on Saturday night.

Rep. Don Young apologizes for suicide remarks that offended students
Longtime Alaskan congressman says he’s sorry for implying that friends and family of suicide victims bear some blame

Battleground Tracker: Republicans lead; Iowa, Colorado in doubt
Georgia could be decisive; Democrats look to hold North Carolina and boost turnout in final days

CNN’s Stelter Highlights Megyn Kelly’s Reckless Ebola Coverage: “One Of Those Excellent Examples About Why We Should All Avoid Rushing To Judgment”

From the October 26 edition of CNN’s Reliable Sources:

Previously: 

Obama’s Raw Deal
Jack Kelly, RealClearPolitics
If Republicans win control of both the House and Senate, “the interests of billionaires will come before the needs of the middle class,” President Barack Obama said at a $32,500-a-plate fundraiser at the $16 million Greenwich, Connecticut, estate of a billionaire named (I’m not making this up) Rich Richman. You can’t top that remark for hypocrisy or the setting for irony. It isn’t the middle class who write $32,500 checks. Those who do expect something in return. They’ve been getting it. The Obama administration “protected Wall Street. Not families…

The Optimistic Republican Story Everyone Is Missing
Larry Kudlow, RealClearPolitics
The vast majority of political journalists — and I include some of my conservative colleagues — are missing a very big story. The Republicans are going to recapture the Senate, picking up more seats than most any forecaster expects. And the House GOP is going to add to its majority. But then comes the big story: The beginning of a new conservative revolution. The idea that nothing much will change if the GOP captures the whole Congress is just plain wrong. The politics and policies in Washington are about to change in a major way. Obama may still be president. But he is going to be…

Bob Beauprez’s Horror Show
Mike Littwin, RealClearPolitics
Editor’s note: The Beauprez campaign took down the original version of the ad, which ran with an earlier version of this column, and posted a new version that took out reference to Evan Ebel. That new version of the ad is now included above. The truly frightening thing about the Bob Beauprez horror-movie campaign ad is that Beauprez and his team must have thought it would actually work. I don’t know if the ad is an act of desperation or an act of political ineptitude or perhaps some combination of the two, but it not only sets new Colorado standards for fear-mongering, it also reveals…

Mike Pence to Decide Next Spring on White House Run
Scott Conroy, RealClearPolitics
NASHUA, N.H. — Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, a potential dark horse for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, told RealClearPolitics on Friday that he will decide his political future after his state’s legislative session adjourns in April of next year. “In Indiana, we have a long session of our legislature — which is the budget session — every two years, and that’s going to occupy all of my thinking and all of my focus for the first four months of next year,” Pence said. “So after we get through that, we’ll sit down as a family and think and pray…

‘Don’t ditch arrest warrant’ plea
Opting out of the European Arrest Warrant would be “dangerous” for Britain, former immigration minister Damian Green warns.

‘Nothing to hide’ over Welsh NHS
The Welsh NHS has “nothing to hide” about its performance, the health minister says, as the political row over Welsh Labour’s record continues.

School absence guidelines issued
New guidelines for head teachers in England on the situations in which pupils can be given time off during term time have been drawn up.

The GOP’s rising female stars
House Republicans won’t dramatically increase the number of women in their chamber next year, but a handful of likely freshmen could help the GOP as they struggle to reach out to female and minority voters.Among…

She Doesn’t Belong to You
I was pulling reliefs in those early days, assigned to East San Diego. The call came out as a “415 Family.” Like most cops I wasn’t overly fond of family beefs but I was a rookie, happy for anything that came my way.

The husband opened the door. It was the first time I’d heard it put so bluntly: “She belongs to me, dammit! Don’t you understand?” As if the 13th Amendment had never been passed.

He was shorter but had a good fifty pounds on me and had been drinking, a lot. Beet-red, sputtering, fists clenched and ready to do battle in order to defend his right to beat his wife. The woman, sporting a swollen eye and cowering in the corner of their dining room, kept repeating in broken English and heavy accent, “I didn’t call them, honey. Honest, I didn’t–”

“Shut the f**k up!” he screamed at her. “Can’t you see I’m conducting business here?” He turned back to me. “I mean, I own her, you understand? I bought her, she’s mine.”

I didn’t remember hearing in the academy that a mail order bride from Eastern Europe was any different, in the eyes of the law, from a homegrown version. So I hooked him up, put him in the backseat of my cage car, and drove him downtown. Whereupon, after presenting my case to the patrol captain, I was gently lectured and told to return my prisoner to his home. “You’re new, Stamper, you’ll learn. Pinching these assholes is not the answer. You should have told him to go outside, take a walk, cool off.”

It was too obvious, this case, bringing into sharp relief the too-common attitude that a man’s home is his “castle,” his wife his property.

Since those days we’ve come along way in the struggle to end family and intimate-partner violence: the Violence Against Women Act; a national domestic violence hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233); new laws, including provision for mandatory arrest of “primary aggressors”–which does not require a victim or survivor to press charges or testify against her (or his) batterer; improved training for cops, prosecutors, judges, and advocates; strengthened protection orders; legal sanctions for stalkers and abusers of the elderly, among other developments.

But we’ll never get there until we capture the attention, coercively if necessary, of men who believe the women in their lives belong to them.

The woman that professional footballer Ray Rice knocked unconscious did not belong to him. Yet, like many men, he made the mistake of believing he had proprietary control over his partner.

But no woman is a man’s personal possession. She is a sovereign human being with basic human rights. And no, Mr. Rice: marrying her doesn’t change a thing.

What is it that leads some men to conclude that women are chattel, obligated to obey them? It’s an important question. If we can answer it, with some reasonable degree of science, we just might find a path toward the eventual elimination of this insidious yet pervasive form of violence.

International Education: Using Social Media to Shake Up College Fund-Raising
A successful campaign in Latvia helped triple alumni engagement in just six weeks. Now, universities in the Baltics and beyond are looking to replicate its success.

Pro-Democracy Movement’s Vote in Hong Kong Abruptly Called Off
The cancellation of the balloting, which had been intended as a display of unity, exposed tensions over how to sustain the protests.

Sinosphere Blog: ‘The Storm of Reality’: Chinese Poetic Voices From the Lower Tier of Society
Reacting to a far more complicated, and in some ways tougher, reality than when a last wave of poetry caught public attention in the 1980s, new voices are emerging from China’s working class.

The Final Toasts at a Gritty, Beloved Miami Tavern
Before dawn on Sunday, after decades as one of Miami’s oldest and most rollicking taverns, Tobacco Road called it quits.