News of the World

[kyonides]

Public Has Right to View Anonymous Voted Ballots Without Delay: Texas AG

The decision allows the public and members of the Texas Legislature to view and copy ballots cast anonymously without delay. Anonymous ballots are those with no identifiable information about the voter, or ballots with voter-identifying data redacted.

Paxton said in a statement that the opinion, issued on Aug. 17, offers a crucial new tool to fight election fraud, which he has made a cornerstone of his office.
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Paxton’s opinion said anonymous ballots are election records under the Election Code, and the Legislature has established procedures aimed at both preserving those records and granting public access to them.

The opinion replaces Texas Attorney General Opinion 505, established 34 years ago, making cast ballots confidential during a 22-month preservation period after an election.

Hans von Spakousky, an election law expert at the Heritage Foundation, applauded Paxton’s action, saying that the prior opinion didn’t make sense. The requirements of preserving election records for 22 months shouldn’t negate public inspections of the ballots.

District Attorney: 70 Percent of Suspects Released on $0 Bail Committed New Crimes

A Northern California district attorney revealed more than 70 percent of suspects who were released on $0 bail between 2020 and 2021 in his county went on to commit new crimes.
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In April 2020, the California Judicial Council implemented the Emergency Bail Schedule which mandated $0 bail for most people accused of crimes amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The Yolo DA’s office tracked individuals who were released on $0 and who were rearrested.

The Judicial Council rescinded the order in June 2020, but several California countries kept the bail schedule in effect, including Yolo County. It wasn’t until June 1, 2021, that the county enacted a new bail schedule and ended the $0 bail protocol, according to Reisig’s office, which also released a report (pdf).
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“Recent criminal histories of the 595 individuals released on $0 bail in Yolo County were reviewed for any new arrests in the state of California,” said the office on Monday. “Of the 595 individuals released, 420 were rearrested (70.6 percent) and 123 (20 percent of the overall number or 29 percent of those rearrested) were arrested for a crime of violence.”

That includes crimes of murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, domestic violence, robbery, and carjacking.

Resig’s office noted that one person who was released on $0 bail in Yolo County was charged with murder in Sacramento County in connection to a July 2021 shooting.
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An analysis released by the New York Post earlier this month revealed that 10 criminals netted nearly 500 arrests since the start of New York state’s controversial bail reform laws went into effect in 2020.

Why would it ever be fair not to ask some crooks   to pay their bails?
Isn't it better to keep them behind bars? Citizens do appreciate it when cops  arrest them and keep them away from the general population.

Judge Permanently Blocks Biden Oil and Gas Leasing Pause in 13 States

A federal judge issued a permanent injunction on Aug. 18 against the Biden administration’s pause of new oil and gas leasing in federal lands.

The injunction applies to the 13 states that sued the Biden administration over the moratorium in March 2021, including Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.

Terry Doughty, U.S. district judge for the Western District of Louisiana, ruled that the White House overreached with the ban.

President Joe Biden signed Executive Order 14008 on Jan. 27, 2021, banning all new oil and natural gas leases on federal lands and offshore waters. The order didn’t cancel existing leases on federal lands and offshore waters. Leases on private lands also weren’t affected.
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Thirteen states, led by Louisiana, sued the Biden administration, saying the lease ban violated the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA), which governs offshore oil and gas leases, and the Mineral Leasing Act (MLA), which governs onshore land leases on federal lands.
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Days before the permanent injunction, a lease known as Lease Sale 257, which is also under dispute in the multiple-state lawsuit, was revived by Biden through the so-called Inflation Reduction Act.

Judge: Government Hasn’t Proven Trump Search Warrant Affidavit Should Remain Sealed

U.S. government officials haven’t presented sufficient evidence to keep a key document related to the search warrant executed at former President Donald Trump’s home shielded from the public, a federal judge ruled on Aug. 22.

Officials have claimed that an affidavit that convinced U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart to approve the warrant needs extensive redactions to protect FBI agents and witnesses, as well as the ongoing investigation into Trump.

The redactions would leave “very little—nothing of substance,” Jay Bratt, chief of the Department of Justice’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, told Reinhart during a recent hearing.

The government has met its burden of showing that its interests outweigh public access to unsealing the entire affidavit, Reinhart said in the new ruling. But the government hasn’t yet sufficiently shown that portions of the document shouldn’t be made public.

Reinhart ordered the government to file additional evidence supporting keeping the entire document under seal along with proposed redactions to the affidavit, which is a document authored by an FBI agent that outlines why the government believes it needs a warrant. The warrant was served on Aug. 8 at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida.

Now it's clear, according to the judge, that the DOJ hasn't proved that they truly need to hide every single detail concerning the search warrant affidavit. Will they let the public learn what has motivated them to treat former president Trump in a different way than, let's say, Hillary Clinton?