It Might Kill The Smell Of All The Human Shit On The Sidewalk
by bob Walsh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld6qYJe4pRs&feature=youtu.be
The above link goes to an interesting YouTube video chronicling the vast expanse of shit encrusted sidewalks. It is eye
opening. Probably nostril opening too if you get too close.
Consider this a public service announcement.
Wednesday, August 1, 2018
100% RIGHTOUS SHOOTING OF BLACK SUSPECT, LOCAL BLACK COMMUNITY STILL GOES BAT-SHIT CRAZY
by bob Walsh
Thurman Blevins, 31, was a black man in Minneapolis who is now a dead black man. The shooting was 100% justified but the local black community is still going crazy, to the extent that they shouted the D. A. off of his own news conference into the decision to NOT charge the cops.
There is, fortunately first quality body cam video of the whole thing. The cops were responding to a call of a man shooting into the air, they did NOT just stop to hassle someone. They stopped and Blevins ran. The video plainly shows him in actual possession of a gun and a gun was recovered at the scene where he died. The pursuing cops gave MULTIPLE loud and clear commands for him to stop and raise his hands. He kept running, all the time saying things like "I didn't do nothing" and "Leave me alone." The foot pursuit lasted about one minute. Blevins stopped and pulled the gun from his waistband and both cops fired on him. They fired 14 shots, four hit him.
Clearly the "mob" believes the cops should have let him turn and open fire on them first before they shot. Clearly the mob is a bunch of dumb fucks.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Only 4 hits out of 14 shots? Not so good!
Thurman Blevins, 31, was a black man in Minneapolis who is now a dead black man. The shooting was 100% justified but the local black community is still going crazy, to the extent that they shouted the D. A. off of his own news conference into the decision to NOT charge the cops.
There is, fortunately first quality body cam video of the whole thing. The cops were responding to a call of a man shooting into the air, they did NOT just stop to hassle someone. They stopped and Blevins ran. The video plainly shows him in actual possession of a gun and a gun was recovered at the scene where he died. The pursuing cops gave MULTIPLE loud and clear commands for him to stop and raise his hands. He kept running, all the time saying things like "I didn't do nothing" and "Leave me alone." The foot pursuit lasted about one minute. Blevins stopped and pulled the gun from his waistband and both cops fired on him. They fired 14 shots, four hit him.
Clearly the "mob" believes the cops should have let him turn and open fire on them first before they shot. Clearly the mob is a bunch of dumb fucks.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Only 4 hits out of 14 shots? Not so good!
MAMA MIA, A FLAT AT 80MPH
Mia Khalifa Says Her Breast Implant Was Deflated By Rogue Hockey Puck at Stanley Cup Game
By Lindsay Kimble
People
July 30, 2018
Former porn star Mia Khalifa has a unique and painful souvenir from this year’s NHL playoffs.
In a new interview with the U.K.’s Daily Star, Khalifa — now the cohost of podcast Sportsball — revealed that she’ll undergo reconstructive surgery after allegedly being hit by a flying hockey puck earlier this year.
“I was sitting behind the glass during a game, and it came shooting over the glass and it caught me so off guard and I had no idea it was coming,” said Khalifa, 25. She added to the Star, “I grabbed my chest and I didn’t want to let go, because I felt like if I did let go blood was going to be everywhere.”
Khalifa noted to the outlet that pucks are “really heavy,” and speculated that it was traveling at about 80 mph. when it allegedly struck her.
“My left breast is slightly deflated now and I will be getting it fixed next year,” she said.
EDITOR’S NOTE: As a longtime hockey fan, I am a little skeptical of Mia’s story. Those 80mph puks almost always fly at the end of a rink and the fans sitting at the rink ends are protected by a net. Fans sitting in the first few rows along the sides are protected by a glass wall. Occasionally pucks fly over the glass along the sides, but not at anywhere near 80mph.
Having said that though, getting hit by a puck even at say 10mph can do major damage to a hockey game spectator. And if right on target, it can give a gal a flat tire … I mean flat innertube … err, that’s flat boob.
Whatever the speed, Mia is lucky she didn’t get hit in the mouth because that hard rubber biscuit would have defanged her.
By Lindsay Kimble
People
July 30, 2018
Former porn star Mia Khalifa has a unique and painful souvenir from this year’s NHL playoffs.
In a new interview with the U.K.’s Daily Star, Khalifa — now the cohost of podcast Sportsball — revealed that she’ll undergo reconstructive surgery after allegedly being hit by a flying hockey puck earlier this year.
“I was sitting behind the glass during a game, and it came shooting over the glass and it caught me so off guard and I had no idea it was coming,” said Khalifa, 25. She added to the Star, “I grabbed my chest and I didn’t want to let go, because I felt like if I did let go blood was going to be everywhere.”
Khalifa noted to the outlet that pucks are “really heavy,” and speculated that it was traveling at about 80 mph. when it allegedly struck her.
“My left breast is slightly deflated now and I will be getting it fixed next year,” she said.
EDITOR’S NOTE: As a longtime hockey fan, I am a little skeptical of Mia’s story. Those 80mph puks almost always fly at the end of a rink and the fans sitting at the rink ends are protected by a net. Fans sitting in the first few rows along the sides are protected by a glass wall. Occasionally pucks fly over the glass along the sides, but not at anywhere near 80mph.
Having said that though, getting hit by a puck even at say 10mph can do major damage to a hockey game spectator. And if right on target, it can give a gal a flat tire … I mean flat innertube … err, that’s flat boob.
Whatever the speed, Mia is lucky she didn’t get hit in the mouth because that hard rubber biscuit would have defanged her.
FREE SPEECH OR SEX TRAFFICKING ON THE INTERNET?
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Tuesday, July 31, 2018
PATRIOTIC JERRY JONES DEFIES UNPATRIOTIC ROGER GOODELL
If they want to be a Dallas Cowboy, players will have to stand for the National Anthem
by Howie Katz
Big Jolly Times
July 31, 2018
Refusing to stand for the playing of The Star Spangled Banner disrespects our flag and country. And that’s what many NFL players did all last season as a protest against police brutality. And to their shame, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and most of the team owners supported the protest on the field.
Bob McNair, owner of the Houston Texans, did not support the protests. In October he said, “We can't have the inmates running the prison.” He received so much flack from players throughout the league, so that he apologized for having made that remark. But then in April he said he wished he had not made that apology.
The NFL is really the UFL … Unpatriotic Football League. And one of the teams also needs a name change. No, not the Washington Redskins. It’s the New England Patriots that have sure been misnamed. Owner Bob Kraft, coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady have all supported the right of players to disrespect our flag and country by refusing to stand during the anthem. Patriots my ass!
Finally in May, after a continuing barrage of criticism and declining TV viewership of NFL games, Roger Goodell got off his ass and instituted a new National Anthem policy. All players on the field would have to stand during the anthem. Players who did not want to respect our flag and country would have to remain in the locker room until after the anthem.
The NFL Players Association (NFLPA) had a fit. Earlier this month the NFLPA filed a grievance against the NFL, claiming that “this new policy, imposed by the NFL’s governing body without consultation with the NFLPA, is inconsistent with the collective bargaining agreement and infringes on player rights.”
A spineless Goodell quickly caved in. On July 19 The NFL and NFLPA issued a joint statement which said “no new rules relating to the anthem will be issued or enforced for the next several weeks”
How disgusting! Respect for flag and country should never ever be subject to collective bargaining.
And that is how Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, must feel. On Wednesday a patriotic Jerry Jones defied an unpatriotic Roger Goodell and an unpatriotic NFLPA. He told reporters that his players would be forbidden from protesting or remaining in the locker room during The Star-Spangled Banner. “Our policy is you stand during the anthem, toe on the line.”
Stephen Jones, Jerry’s son and executive vice president of the Cowboys, said that players will have to stand “if they want to be a Dallas Cowboy.” He went on to say:
“We certainly are supportive of them when they have their personal issues or their personal things that they want to pursue. And we'll help them pursue them on Tuesdays. But when you're wearing the Dallas Cowboy uniform and a Dallas Cowboy helmet and you're working for the Dallas Cowboys, you check the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ at the door, and you're a part of a team.”
President Trump tweeted Friday morning, “Way to go Jerry. This is what the league should do!”
The NFL players have every right to publicly express their personal views on any subject. They can condemn police brutality against blacks on any street corner, on any TV news show and in interviews with the print media. And they can even express those views on the playing field in some manner, provided they have the league’s permission to do so. But they do not have the right to disrespect our flag and country in front of thousands of spectators and millions of TV viewers.
The players are employees subject to the reasonable work rules of their bosses. While salaries and playing conditions are subject to collective bargaining, respect for flag and country is not and cannot ever be subject to any kinds of negotiation.
Goodell apparently believes that inmates should run the prison. Jerry and Stephen Jones and Bob McNair believe the guards should be in charge. They are patriotic. Goodell, the protesting players and the owners and coaches who support the players make up the Unpatriotic Football League..
God bless Jerry and Stephen Jones, and God bless America!
by Howie Katz
Big Jolly Times
July 31, 2018
Refusing to stand for the playing of The Star Spangled Banner disrespects our flag and country. And that’s what many NFL players did all last season as a protest against police brutality. And to their shame, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and most of the team owners supported the protest on the field.
Bob McNair, owner of the Houston Texans, did not support the protests. In October he said, “We can't have the inmates running the prison.” He received so much flack from players throughout the league, so that he apologized for having made that remark. But then in April he said he wished he had not made that apology.
The NFL is really the UFL … Unpatriotic Football League. And one of the teams also needs a name change. No, not the Washington Redskins. It’s the New England Patriots that have sure been misnamed. Owner Bob Kraft, coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady have all supported the right of players to disrespect our flag and country by refusing to stand during the anthem. Patriots my ass!
Finally in May, after a continuing barrage of criticism and declining TV viewership of NFL games, Roger Goodell got off his ass and instituted a new National Anthem policy. All players on the field would have to stand during the anthem. Players who did not want to respect our flag and country would have to remain in the locker room until after the anthem.
The NFL Players Association (NFLPA) had a fit. Earlier this month the NFLPA filed a grievance against the NFL, claiming that “this new policy, imposed by the NFL’s governing body without consultation with the NFLPA, is inconsistent with the collective bargaining agreement and infringes on player rights.”
A spineless Goodell quickly caved in. On July 19 The NFL and NFLPA issued a joint statement which said “no new rules relating to the anthem will be issued or enforced for the next several weeks”
How disgusting! Respect for flag and country should never ever be subject to collective bargaining.
And that is how Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, must feel. On Wednesday a patriotic Jerry Jones defied an unpatriotic Roger Goodell and an unpatriotic NFLPA. He told reporters that his players would be forbidden from protesting or remaining in the locker room during The Star-Spangled Banner. “Our policy is you stand during the anthem, toe on the line.”
Stephen Jones, Jerry’s son and executive vice president of the Cowboys, said that players will have to stand “if they want to be a Dallas Cowboy.” He went on to say:
“We certainly are supportive of them when they have their personal issues or their personal things that they want to pursue. And we'll help them pursue them on Tuesdays. But when you're wearing the Dallas Cowboy uniform and a Dallas Cowboy helmet and you're working for the Dallas Cowboys, you check the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ at the door, and you're a part of a team.”
President Trump tweeted Friday morning, “Way to go Jerry. This is what the league should do!”
The NFL players have every right to publicly express their personal views on any subject. They can condemn police brutality against blacks on any street corner, on any TV news show and in interviews with the print media. And they can even express those views on the playing field in some manner, provided they have the league’s permission to do so. But they do not have the right to disrespect our flag and country in front of thousands of spectators and millions of TV viewers.
The players are employees subject to the reasonable work rules of their bosses. While salaries and playing conditions are subject to collective bargaining, respect for flag and country is not and cannot ever be subject to any kinds of negotiation.
Goodell apparently believes that inmates should run the prison. Jerry and Stephen Jones and Bob McNair believe the guards should be in charge. They are patriotic. Goodell, the protesting players and the owners and coaches who support the players make up the Unpatriotic Football League..
God bless Jerry and Stephen Jones, and God bless America!
POTENTIALLY FAR-REACHING TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY CASE
by Bob Walsh
Back in 1999 Patrick Murphy, who is a Creek Indian, was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of George Jacobs, also a Creek Indian. The murder occurred on land assigned to the tribe when Oklahoma was still a territory and congress never formally disestablished the tribal borders though the land has not been a reservation for a very long time.
A federal appeals court has just ruled that the case should have been tried in federal court, not state court, due to the jurisdictional issue. SCOTUS has agreed to hear the case this fall. Inmates and defendants all over Oklahoma are now filing for dismissal of charges on the same basis.
There are 38 tribes based in Oklahoma. The Creek Nation alone covered about 3 million acres, including all of modern Tulsa. If this ruling is upheld in total it would give the feds original jurisdiction over most crimes committed by or against native people over most of eight counties with a population of close to 1 million people.
__________
The Grisly Murder Case That Could Turn Half of Oklahoma Back Into Tribal Lands
Did Congress fail to legally abolish the Muscogee Creek Nation's reservation? The Supreme Court may have to answer that question.
by Matt Ford
The New Republic
March 15, 2018
In a legal quirk for the ages, a 1990s capital murder case involving two Native Americans could restore tribal sovereignty to almost half of Oklahoma for the first time in a century—unless the Supreme Court intervenes, that is.
The federal government asked the justices last Friday to review and reverse the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision in Royal v. Murphy, an unusual case in which Patrick Murphy, a death-row inmate and member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, claimed Oklahoma lacked the jurisdiction to try him for the murder of another tribal member on what was part of the Creek Nation’s reservation.
Until now, state and federal officials assumed those boundaries no longer existed. To prepare Oklahoma for statehood in the late nineteenth century, Congress stripped the Creek Nation and other tribes in the territory of their courts, governments, and laws. The federal government also compelled the Creek to convert their tribal lands into allotments for private ownership by the tribe’s members, with the surplus land to be sold to white settlers. When Oklahoma joined the Union in 1907, state and federal power held total sway.
A three-judge panel in the Tenth Circuit ruled last summer, however, that Congress never explicitly abolished the Creek Nation’s reservation along the way. Under the Supreme Court’s precedents, the judges concluded, the oversight left the reservation legally intact until the present day. As a result, the panel ruled that the defendant’s murder case could only be tried in federal courts, like other major crimes between Native Americans on tribal land under current federal law.
That was good news for Murphy, who could be retried in federal court if the ruling stands. But the Tenth Circuit’s decision has ramifications beyond a single capital case. It effectively restores the Creek Nation’s sovereign territory after a century in abeyance, handing the tribe a significant and perhaps unintentional legal victory. (Tribal officials did not return a request for comment.) The ruling also raises the possibility of sovereignty claims by other Oklahoma tribes, including the other four of what are known as the Five Civilized Tribes.
“This is something that almost all other tribes in this country have outside of Oklahoma, and this would put Oklahoma tribes on an equal footing with Indian tribes elsewhere,” Judith Royster, a University of Tulsa law professor who specializes in Indian law, told me.
A reservation delineated by the Creek Nation’s 1866 boundaries alone would fill 4,600 square miles of eastern Oklahoma and include more than 750,000 inhabitants, the state of Oklahoma told the Supreme Court in its petition for review. “The 1866 boundaries also include most of Tulsa, the State’s second largest city and home to more than 403,000 Oklahomans,” the state told the court. “A reconstituted Creek territory would be by far the largest Indian reservation by population in the United States.” If the ruling is applied to the rest of the Five Tribes, the state added, just over 40 percent of Oklahoma would become Indian country.
If the Tenth Circuit’s ruling stands, the state’s criminal jurisdiction in that territory would be reduced to minor offenses like traffic violations and crimes against non-Indians. Federal and tribal courts would take over all other cases, with serious crimes left to the federal government to investigate and prosecute. State officials cast the loss of jurisdiction in dire terms, especially if the Murphy ruling is applied to other tribes. “Stripping Oklahoma of criminal jurisdiction over all Indians in this densely populated area, or even worse, in the entire eastern half of the state, would render Oklahoma a fractured, second-class state,” Oklahoma officials told the Supreme Court.
Solicitor General Noel Francisco, who represents the federal government at the Supreme Court, joined the fight on Oklahoma’s side in a brief filed last week. The justices routinely invites solicitors general to weigh in on major potential cases that could affect federal law or foreign policy. This time, however, Francisco took the rare step of filing one before the court asked him for it, a move that underscores the government’s urgent interest in the case.
“The Tenth Circuit’s reasoning could well extend to the original territories of each of the Five Tribes, expanding federal jurisdiction over nearly all of eastern Oklahoma,” the solicitor general’s office warned the court. “And it could have significant implications for application of state tax and other civil laws to Indians in the former Indian Territory. The decision ... thus threatens to disrupt the distribution of governmental authority in nearly half of Oklahoma.”
Groups representing oil and gas companies and the state’s business community also urged the Supreme Court to intervene, framing the situation as economically disruptive. “By effectively declaring half the state to be Indian country, the Tenth Circuit’s decision will upend practically every aspect of Oklahoma’s legal and regulatory regime,” the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association complained in its brief.
Royster disputed that interpretation, telling me that the immediate impact on civil matters for Oklahomans would be minimal. “Nothing’s going to happen to my property, nothing’s going to happen to my day-to-day life,” she said. “Nobody except criminals and the federal courts are going to see any immediate changes because of this.”
Those effects are already apparent: State officials told the court last month that at least 46 defendants had already invoked the ruling in lawsuits challenging their own convictions.
The case’s disturbing origins didn’t hint at its unusual outcome. In 1999, an Oklahoma jury found Murphy guilty of mutilating and murdering his girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend, George Jacobs. Both men were members of the Creek Nation and the crime occurred within the 1866 borders. Jurors handed Murphy a death sentence, kicking off a nearly two-decade-long appeals process in state and federal courts.
Lengthy and byzantine appeals are a hallmark of American capital punishment. But Murphy presented an unusual claim along the way: that the federal government, and not the state of Oklahoma, had jurisdiction over his case. He cited the Indian Major Crimes Act, which gives the Justice Department the exclusive power to prosecute serious offenses like murder and kidnapping if they’re committed between Native Americans in “Indian country,” a federal legal term that includes reservations and other lands owned by a tribe.
For Murphy, the case’s stakes are life and death. Federal law also forbids the death penalty for crimes committed on tribal land unless the tribal government authorizes the punishment, which virtually none do. If the Tenth Circuit’s decision stands, Murphy could be retried by federal prosecutors for Jacobs’s murder—but not sentenced to death for it if he’s found guilty a second time.
The case also delves into the darkest chapters of American history. During the nineteenth century, the federal government brutally forced the Five Civilized Tribes—the Creek, the Cherokee, the Chickasaw, the Choctaw, and the Seminole—out of their lands in the southeastern United States. From there, they migrated towards the Great Plains into what was called the Indian Territory. At the time, the federal government promised those lands to the resettled tribes in perpetuity. But influxes of white settlers—and constant accommodations of them by Congress—quickly undermined that pledge after the Civil War.
State courts acknowledged that Murphy and Jacobs were both members of Creek Nation. The Oklahoma Criminal Court of Appeals also held that Murphy’s historical evidence was insufficient to prove that the land on which the crime occurred was still part of Indian country. Murphy then turned to the federal courts, where he argued that the state courts had wrongly interpreted existing precedents on tribal reservations.
Last year, the Tenth Circuit panel sided with Murphy and ordered his conviction to be vacated. In a voluminous 133-page decision, the judges admonished the state courts for ignoring precedents like Solem v. Bartlett, a 1984 Supreme Court case that laid out a three-part test for disputes about Indian reservation boundaries. In Solem, the high court had unanimously ruled that each reservation continues to exist in its original form unless Congress explicitly changes its borders or abolishes it altogether.
“Only Congress can do this,” Royster explained. “And so the question is, looking at all the treaties and statutes for a particular tribe, whether Congress has done this, and in this case the Tenth Circuit said it never did. And if it never did, that post–Civil War reservation is still intact.”
The panel went through each of the three steps in turn. Did Congress explicitly disestablish the Creek reservation at any point? No, the judges concluded, because none of the statutes cited by Oklahoma include specific language to do so. Only days after legislators passed Oklahoma’s statehood act in 1906, for example, they passed laws referencing the Creek Nation’s boundaries as a point of reference in a surveying law.
Is there contemporaneous historical evidence that indicates Congress intended to disestablish the Creek reservation, even if it didn’t do so explicitly? The state cited committee reports and a failed Senate resolution from before statehood, which the panel found unpersuasive of “unequivocal” evidence of intent.
Finally, did subsequent approaches by federal, state, and tribal governments confirm disestablishment? Other federal court rulings made “scattered” references to the reservation’s dissolution, the panel acknowledged, but they hadn’t directly wrestled with the issue.
Accordingly, the panel found that the reservation survived to the present day, and that Oklahoma had wrongly convicted Murphy for a crime committed within its bounds. “The decision whether to prosecute Mr. Murphy in federal court rests with the United States,” Judge Scott Matheson concluded for the unanimous panel. “Decisions about the borders of the Creek Reservation remain with Congress.”
In November, the Tenth Circuit panel declined Oklahoma’s request to reconsider its ruling. Nonetheless, Chief Judge Timothy Tymkovich attached a concurring opinion in which he wrote that the “challenging and interesting case makes a good candidate for Supreme Court review.” The panel’s three judges faithfully applied the high court’s existing precedents to the facts at hand, he explained. At the same time, Tymkovich noted that the justices may find that “the square peg of Solem is ill suited for the round hole of Oklahoma statehood.”
If the Supreme Court takes up the dispute in the coming months, it’d likely rank among the most significant cases of the fall 2018 term. How the justices will decide the case is unclear. Perhaps the most interesting voice in the matter would be the newest justice, Neil Gorsuch, who sat as a member of the Tenth Circuit before his nomination to the high court by President Donald Trump. Gorsuch’s tenure on a Western federal appellate court gave him more experience on tribal issues than most of his colleagues. His record also won the praise and support of native legal groups during his confirmation process.
“Our history with Native Americans is not the prettiest history,” Gorsuch told Arizona Senator Jeff Flake during his confirmation hearing, when asked about his experience with tribal cases. “As a judge, you try very hard to administer the law without respect to persons, equally.”
Back in 1999 Patrick Murphy, who is a Creek Indian, was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of George Jacobs, also a Creek Indian. The murder occurred on land assigned to the tribe when Oklahoma was still a territory and congress never formally disestablished the tribal borders though the land has not been a reservation for a very long time.
A federal appeals court has just ruled that the case should have been tried in federal court, not state court, due to the jurisdictional issue. SCOTUS has agreed to hear the case this fall. Inmates and defendants all over Oklahoma are now filing for dismissal of charges on the same basis.
There are 38 tribes based in Oklahoma. The Creek Nation alone covered about 3 million acres, including all of modern Tulsa. If this ruling is upheld in total it would give the feds original jurisdiction over most crimes committed by or against native people over most of eight counties with a population of close to 1 million people.
__________
The Grisly Murder Case That Could Turn Half of Oklahoma Back Into Tribal Lands
Did Congress fail to legally abolish the Muscogee Creek Nation's reservation? The Supreme Court may have to answer that question.
by Matt Ford
The New Republic
March 15, 2018
In a legal quirk for the ages, a 1990s capital murder case involving two Native Americans could restore tribal sovereignty to almost half of Oklahoma for the first time in a century—unless the Supreme Court intervenes, that is.
The federal government asked the justices last Friday to review and reverse the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision in Royal v. Murphy, an unusual case in which Patrick Murphy, a death-row inmate and member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, claimed Oklahoma lacked the jurisdiction to try him for the murder of another tribal member on what was part of the Creek Nation’s reservation.
Until now, state and federal officials assumed those boundaries no longer existed. To prepare Oklahoma for statehood in the late nineteenth century, Congress stripped the Creek Nation and other tribes in the territory of their courts, governments, and laws. The federal government also compelled the Creek to convert their tribal lands into allotments for private ownership by the tribe’s members, with the surplus land to be sold to white settlers. When Oklahoma joined the Union in 1907, state and federal power held total sway.
A three-judge panel in the Tenth Circuit ruled last summer, however, that Congress never explicitly abolished the Creek Nation’s reservation along the way. Under the Supreme Court’s precedents, the judges concluded, the oversight left the reservation legally intact until the present day. As a result, the panel ruled that the defendant’s murder case could only be tried in federal courts, like other major crimes between Native Americans on tribal land under current federal law.
That was good news for Murphy, who could be retried in federal court if the ruling stands. But the Tenth Circuit’s decision has ramifications beyond a single capital case. It effectively restores the Creek Nation’s sovereign territory after a century in abeyance, handing the tribe a significant and perhaps unintentional legal victory. (Tribal officials did not return a request for comment.) The ruling also raises the possibility of sovereignty claims by other Oklahoma tribes, including the other four of what are known as the Five Civilized Tribes.
“This is something that almost all other tribes in this country have outside of Oklahoma, and this would put Oklahoma tribes on an equal footing with Indian tribes elsewhere,” Judith Royster, a University of Tulsa law professor who specializes in Indian law, told me.
A reservation delineated by the Creek Nation’s 1866 boundaries alone would fill 4,600 square miles of eastern Oklahoma and include more than 750,000 inhabitants, the state of Oklahoma told the Supreme Court in its petition for review. “The 1866 boundaries also include most of Tulsa, the State’s second largest city and home to more than 403,000 Oklahomans,” the state told the court. “A reconstituted Creek territory would be by far the largest Indian reservation by population in the United States.” If the ruling is applied to the rest of the Five Tribes, the state added, just over 40 percent of Oklahoma would become Indian country.
If the Tenth Circuit’s ruling stands, the state’s criminal jurisdiction in that territory would be reduced to minor offenses like traffic violations and crimes against non-Indians. Federal and tribal courts would take over all other cases, with serious crimes left to the federal government to investigate and prosecute. State officials cast the loss of jurisdiction in dire terms, especially if the Murphy ruling is applied to other tribes. “Stripping Oklahoma of criminal jurisdiction over all Indians in this densely populated area, or even worse, in the entire eastern half of the state, would render Oklahoma a fractured, second-class state,” Oklahoma officials told the Supreme Court.
Solicitor General Noel Francisco, who represents the federal government at the Supreme Court, joined the fight on Oklahoma’s side in a brief filed last week. The justices routinely invites solicitors general to weigh in on major potential cases that could affect federal law or foreign policy. This time, however, Francisco took the rare step of filing one before the court asked him for it, a move that underscores the government’s urgent interest in the case.
“The Tenth Circuit’s reasoning could well extend to the original territories of each of the Five Tribes, expanding federal jurisdiction over nearly all of eastern Oklahoma,” the solicitor general’s office warned the court. “And it could have significant implications for application of state tax and other civil laws to Indians in the former Indian Territory. The decision ... thus threatens to disrupt the distribution of governmental authority in nearly half of Oklahoma.”
Groups representing oil and gas companies and the state’s business community also urged the Supreme Court to intervene, framing the situation as economically disruptive. “By effectively declaring half the state to be Indian country, the Tenth Circuit’s decision will upend practically every aspect of Oklahoma’s legal and regulatory regime,” the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association complained in its brief.
Royster disputed that interpretation, telling me that the immediate impact on civil matters for Oklahomans would be minimal. “Nothing’s going to happen to my property, nothing’s going to happen to my day-to-day life,” she said. “Nobody except criminals and the federal courts are going to see any immediate changes because of this.”
Those effects are already apparent: State officials told the court last month that at least 46 defendants had already invoked the ruling in lawsuits challenging their own convictions.
The case’s disturbing origins didn’t hint at its unusual outcome. In 1999, an Oklahoma jury found Murphy guilty of mutilating and murdering his girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend, George Jacobs. Both men were members of the Creek Nation and the crime occurred within the 1866 borders. Jurors handed Murphy a death sentence, kicking off a nearly two-decade-long appeals process in state and federal courts.
Lengthy and byzantine appeals are a hallmark of American capital punishment. But Murphy presented an unusual claim along the way: that the federal government, and not the state of Oklahoma, had jurisdiction over his case. He cited the Indian Major Crimes Act, which gives the Justice Department the exclusive power to prosecute serious offenses like murder and kidnapping if they’re committed between Native Americans in “Indian country,” a federal legal term that includes reservations and other lands owned by a tribe.
For Murphy, the case’s stakes are life and death. Federal law also forbids the death penalty for crimes committed on tribal land unless the tribal government authorizes the punishment, which virtually none do. If the Tenth Circuit’s decision stands, Murphy could be retried by federal prosecutors for Jacobs’s murder—but not sentenced to death for it if he’s found guilty a second time.
The case also delves into the darkest chapters of American history. During the nineteenth century, the federal government brutally forced the Five Civilized Tribes—the Creek, the Cherokee, the Chickasaw, the Choctaw, and the Seminole—out of their lands in the southeastern United States. From there, they migrated towards the Great Plains into what was called the Indian Territory. At the time, the federal government promised those lands to the resettled tribes in perpetuity. But influxes of white settlers—and constant accommodations of them by Congress—quickly undermined that pledge after the Civil War.
State courts acknowledged that Murphy and Jacobs were both members of Creek Nation. The Oklahoma Criminal Court of Appeals also held that Murphy’s historical evidence was insufficient to prove that the land on which the crime occurred was still part of Indian country. Murphy then turned to the federal courts, where he argued that the state courts had wrongly interpreted existing precedents on tribal reservations.
Last year, the Tenth Circuit panel sided with Murphy and ordered his conviction to be vacated. In a voluminous 133-page decision, the judges admonished the state courts for ignoring precedents like Solem v. Bartlett, a 1984 Supreme Court case that laid out a three-part test for disputes about Indian reservation boundaries. In Solem, the high court had unanimously ruled that each reservation continues to exist in its original form unless Congress explicitly changes its borders or abolishes it altogether.
“Only Congress can do this,” Royster explained. “And so the question is, looking at all the treaties and statutes for a particular tribe, whether Congress has done this, and in this case the Tenth Circuit said it never did. And if it never did, that post–Civil War reservation is still intact.”
The panel went through each of the three steps in turn. Did Congress explicitly disestablish the Creek reservation at any point? No, the judges concluded, because none of the statutes cited by Oklahoma include specific language to do so. Only days after legislators passed Oklahoma’s statehood act in 1906, for example, they passed laws referencing the Creek Nation’s boundaries as a point of reference in a surveying law.
Is there contemporaneous historical evidence that indicates Congress intended to disestablish the Creek reservation, even if it didn’t do so explicitly? The state cited committee reports and a failed Senate resolution from before statehood, which the panel found unpersuasive of “unequivocal” evidence of intent.
Finally, did subsequent approaches by federal, state, and tribal governments confirm disestablishment? Other federal court rulings made “scattered” references to the reservation’s dissolution, the panel acknowledged, but they hadn’t directly wrestled with the issue.
Accordingly, the panel found that the reservation survived to the present day, and that Oklahoma had wrongly convicted Murphy for a crime committed within its bounds. “The decision whether to prosecute Mr. Murphy in federal court rests with the United States,” Judge Scott Matheson concluded for the unanimous panel. “Decisions about the borders of the Creek Reservation remain with Congress.”
In November, the Tenth Circuit panel declined Oklahoma’s request to reconsider its ruling. Nonetheless, Chief Judge Timothy Tymkovich attached a concurring opinion in which he wrote that the “challenging and interesting case makes a good candidate for Supreme Court review.” The panel’s three judges faithfully applied the high court’s existing precedents to the facts at hand, he explained. At the same time, Tymkovich noted that the justices may find that “the square peg of Solem is ill suited for the round hole of Oklahoma statehood.”
If the Supreme Court takes up the dispute in the coming months, it’d likely rank among the most significant cases of the fall 2018 term. How the justices will decide the case is unclear. Perhaps the most interesting voice in the matter would be the newest justice, Neil Gorsuch, who sat as a member of the Tenth Circuit before his nomination to the high court by President Donald Trump. Gorsuch’s tenure on a Western federal appellate court gave him more experience on tribal issues than most of his colleagues. His record also won the praise and support of native legal groups during his confirmation process.
“Our history with Native Americans is not the prettiest history,” Gorsuch told Arizona Senator Jeff Flake during his confirmation hearing, when asked about his experience with tribal cases. “As a judge, you try very hard to administer the law without respect to persons, equally.”
MOST URBAN BLACK NEIGHBORHOODS ARE SHITHOLES … BUT RICK SHAFTAN IS A DISGUSTING RACIST
Spokesman for controversial senate candidate Corey Stewart calls Baltimore, New Orleans and Memphis 'shitholes' and says business would be 'fools' to open in black neighborhoods
By Nic White
Daily Mail
July 30, 2018
A spokesman for controversial senate candidate Corey Stewart called three majority-black U.S. cities 'shitholes'.
Rick Shaftan derided Baltimore, New Orleans, and Memphis in a series of tweets this year while working to get the Virginia candidate elected.
He reserved particular ire for Louisiana's biggest city: 'You can run your gang-infested shithole without our tourist dollars and soon, our tax dollars.'
Mr Shaftan was using the word President Donald Trump used to describe countries like Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries in an anti-immigration tweet.
The racist posts were yet another gaffe in Mr Stewart's scandal-plagued campaign that has seen him pilloried as a white supremacist by Democrats.
Mr Shaftan is no stranger to openly denigrating black people and the neighborhoods they live in on his social media accounts.
Following the riots in Ferguson in response to police shooting an unarmed black man, he repeatedly warned businesses not to open in black neighborhoods.
'After Ferguson, only a fool would start, finance or insure a business in a black neighborhood,' one of them read.
In response to news of a 2011 robbery he wrote: 'Another reason why white people (and Asians and Latinos) don't want to live with black people. #TheTruthHurts #Reality'
He also branded the NCAAP as the 'black KKK, only more violent' in a 2010 tweet.
Shaftan has a history of support controversial candidates, including far-right congress hopeful Paul Nehlen and accused pedophile Roy Moore.
He worked on a political action committee that supported Mr Nehlen, who has long expressed anti-Muslim views.
From late 2017 Mr Nehlen also started sharing anti-Semitic posts including an image of Jews' heads on pikes in the Oval Office.
'I was with [America Speaks PAC] back in 2016 where we boosted Nehlen. There was no sign he was anything other than a Trump guy, pretty much,' Mr Shaftan told the Daily Beast.
'I made an ad for him, I think in November, before he went wacko.'
Numerous other staffers for Mr Stewart's campaign have been exposed as having racist, anti-Semitic, or white supremacist views.
They include one who was a member of a chat group planning a sequel to the deadly Charlottesville rally, and another who praised the president of the American Nazi Party.
Mr Stewart's campaign also awarded Volunteer of the Month to a man with links to neo-Nazi groups.
By Nic White
Daily Mail
July 30, 2018
A spokesman for controversial senate candidate Corey Stewart called three majority-black U.S. cities 'shitholes'.
Rick Shaftan derided Baltimore, New Orleans, and Memphis in a series of tweets this year while working to get the Virginia candidate elected.
He reserved particular ire for Louisiana's biggest city: 'You can run your gang-infested shithole without our tourist dollars and soon, our tax dollars.'
Mr Shaftan was using the word President Donald Trump used to describe countries like Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries in an anti-immigration tweet.
The racist posts were yet another gaffe in Mr Stewart's scandal-plagued campaign that has seen him pilloried as a white supremacist by Democrats.
Mr Shaftan is no stranger to openly denigrating black people and the neighborhoods they live in on his social media accounts.
Following the riots in Ferguson in response to police shooting an unarmed black man, he repeatedly warned businesses not to open in black neighborhoods.
'After Ferguson, only a fool would start, finance or insure a business in a black neighborhood,' one of them read.
In response to news of a 2011 robbery he wrote: 'Another reason why white people (and Asians and Latinos) don't want to live with black people. #TheTruthHurts #Reality'
He also branded the NCAAP as the 'black KKK, only more violent' in a 2010 tweet.
Shaftan has a history of support controversial candidates, including far-right congress hopeful Paul Nehlen and accused pedophile Roy Moore.
He worked on a political action committee that supported Mr Nehlen, who has long expressed anti-Muslim views.
From late 2017 Mr Nehlen also started sharing anti-Semitic posts including an image of Jews' heads on pikes in the Oval Office.
'I was with [America Speaks PAC] back in 2016 where we boosted Nehlen. There was no sign he was anything other than a Trump guy, pretty much,' Mr Shaftan told the Daily Beast.
'I made an ad for him, I think in November, before he went wacko.'
Numerous other staffers for Mr Stewart's campaign have been exposed as having racist, anti-Semitic, or white supremacist views.
They include one who was a member of a chat group planning a sequel to the deadly Charlottesville rally, and another who praised the president of the American Nazi Party.
Mr Stewart's campaign also awarded Volunteer of the Month to a man with links to neo-Nazi groups.
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