Johnny Coli

He also hasn't been a Senator for two years. Gotta crank up the smear machine, though. Looks like the Associated Press is still on board.

You're a student. Say you're in the library working on something past the time they start asking for IDs, and some guy comes over and tells you can't stay if you don't have an ID. You tell him to go to hell. He get's the campus cops. You start to leave. You mouth off. They grab you and use a taser on you. Sounds pretty reasonable to me. You know, repeatedly tasering a college student after he's down and handcuffed, and all his peers are pleading with you to stop. Sounds like normal protocol. Nothing to see here. But if you get in our way, we'll do you too.

From Inside Higher Ed. You have to go out of your way to think this was acceptable. It shouldn't, and had no one videotaped this incident no one would believe it.

I have no idea why they would use excessive force on a student who was leaving the building, who wasn't posing a threat to anyone else, nor was offering up resistance. I am sure a lot of people will be asking them that question.

It's not enough justification to repeatedly use a stun gun on a person who isn't a danger, no.

"Going limp" isn't a threatening move. You can try and justify this any way you want, but you're wrong. There was no reason to repeatedly taser a person who is already on the ground. You also don't get to taser someone because they don't have a student ID. You don't get to taser someone who won't get up off the ground.

According to the transcript you posted he was leaving. You escort him out of the building. You don't escalate the situation by using force when none is necessary.

Did not immediately leave, but was leaving when the cops showed up, according to multiple witnesses. Zero justification for using the taser multiple times, let alone once. Also, we don't taser people in this country (maybe we do now) for not obeying orders if they pose no danger to themselves or anyone else.

The local affiliate has better footage here, along with an interview of one of the students.

There's two videos. The Youtube one is longer, but not as clear as the one the local affiliate has. The other one clearly shows the handcuffed kid being walked out the door. You see him get tased and his whole body goes into convulsions. Secondly, he was already in the library using a computer. The students who were interviewed stated that he was leaving, the cop grabbed him, he said "Let go of me" and the rest is on the video. The whole thing happens in the library entrance, so don't give me any crap about him not leaving. He's even yelling "I was leaving" from the ground as they're hitting him again and again with the taser. Thirdly, no one was "getting in the cops face." I think those students showed remarkable restraint when faced with one of their peers is being brutallized. When did asking a cop for his name become a reason for the cop to threaten someone?

Actually, the video shows quite a bit. It shows the security guards tasing him when he's handcuffed, multiple times. It shows them tasing him repeatedly when he's already down. It shows the security guards verbally threatening to taser the students who were trying to intervene. It shows a situation rapidly escalating out of control enough to get a reaction from 40 to 60 horrified onlookers. No excuse. None.

Isn't that what I just said? People are tripping over themselves to call them a failure and they haven't even come to power yet. If it's 2008 and they haven't tried to push through a bill increasing the federal minimum wage you can be pretty sure the outcry will be coming from the left, and not the right.

I saw this yesterday and was wondering when someone was going to make a post about it. The responses should be pretty predictable. Personally, I found it to be a very brutal and disturbing piece of video to sit through, and will never watch it again. I was both angered and horrified that something like this could happen in the USA to an American college student. There is no way to justify what those security officers did. None. Although some will undoubtedly choose to.

We can only go up from here! Houston doesn't cross the 50 yard line all day, and the Bills win in a laugher. Our squad - 28 Them - zilch

I don't understand your question. I'm saying that they probably have enough votes to get a minimum wage increase through, but I do not think one tied to the cost of living index would. There hasn't been a federal increase since 1997 (I believe), and the hue and cry from "small business" is that a minimum wage increase would destroy them. So, if an increase on it's own has been a tough sell, how would tying one to an automatic increase as the cost of living index increases get through? Would I love to see that bill? Hell yes. Do I think we'll see that bill? No way. These bills don't get proposed in a vaccuum. They have a pretty good idea how the votes will go. So, why waste time with a bill you know won't get through? You could do it for political reasons, like the GOP does for their hard-on for flag burning amendments in election years. But I don't believe the Dems will do that in this instance. Getting the wage increase is far better than just proposing one and getting it shot down. Say the Dems propose that bill. And it never gets through. The same people yelling that the Dems don't have the stones to propose a minimum wage increase tied to the cost of living index will be the same ones saying that they only put it out there for political reasons. They haven't proposed anything yet, and you're already slamming them. What's the most important thing here? Getting these people more money or satisfying the chatteratti?

You called them lazy. Once again, someone from the angry right thinks that people who make the minimum must be stupid and/or lazy. Single women who left abusive relationships. Women who raised a family, but lost a spouse. Older people who lost their jobs to downsizing. People who dropped out of school to help support their family. The list goes on-and-on. Many of these people are victims of circumstance, and did not choose to be "lazy minimum wage earners." There are plenty of people who worked hard and "learned a trade" only to lose a job after twenty years with no industry left to hire them. EDIT: What X.Benedict said.

Bitching and moaning about the (distant) past has no relevence to the political landscape now. If the Dems came out with a minimum wage increase bill tied to the cost of living index there is no freaking way in hell it would get through, and even if by some miracle it did, they wouldn't have the votes to override Dubya's almost-certain veto.

I would love to see that happen, but there is no way tying it to a cost of living index would get past the GOP hard-liners. So, if the choice is to compromise and get the minimum wage bill through as a stand-alone increase, or not get anything through, I'd be happy with the former.

"Your children will end up in hell."

I was wondering why the "creationist alert" alarm was going off on my drive home. Evolution is science. Science is taught in school. Creationism is religion. Religion is taught somewhere other than school, unless that school is private. Seems pretty damn simple to me.

I'm pretty sure some of the undergrad papers I used to grade were written by someone with a pretty flimsy handle on the english language.

We pay the rampaging illegal hordes to do it for us.

Right. Wouldn't want to toss around any misleading lables, huh.

The title of the thread is "Down goes another GOP talking point: Illegal aliens and Healthcare." In the first post in the thread I link to a talking point suggesting illegal aliens are a drain on the healthcare system, and then link to a report stating that, in fact, they are not a drain on the healthcare system. It's not only not as bad as Iraq, or whatever the hell you're talking about...it's also not as bad as what it costs for healthcare for the same segment of the population that is native-born. So, no, THE TALKING POINT IS NOT FREAKING VALID. Where the hell is the disconnect, here? Are you not reading any of the posts in the thread? Are you not reading any of the reports that I, and YOU, have linked to? You've not only dismissed the Rand Corp study. You're also cherry-picking from the study you linked to, and have completely ignored GG's analysis of the economic impact. The problem is that you, and others like you, do not like to be confronted with actual facts. The report (actually both reports in this thread) state that undocumented workers are not the huge drain on the healthcare sytem or social services that you continue to claim that they are. But that doesn't fit into your "analysis" that 45 million families are footing the bill for the raping and pillaging illegal hordes coming over the border and destroying the US of A. Which one of us is being dishonest, here? Hint: It's not me.

Re-read the freaking title of the thread and the original post you moron. The thread, and the study, is about debunking that undocumented workers use a disproportionate amount of the health service cost. Both the study I linked to, and the freaking study you linked to SAY THE SAME FUGGING THING. In fact, the one you posted even shows that they are less of a burden in other areas as well. As far as policy goes, undocumented workers are no more of a burden on social services than native-born americans. Once again..from the study YOU FREAKING LINKED TO: Don't lecture me about common sense, then make crap up and link to an article that supports the opposite of what you're trying to say. The bottom line here is that I'm not the one looking stupid.