Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA-4) returned to The BradCast today to take a bit of a victory lap after President Obama’s Executive Order this week restricting the flow of heavy armaments from the Dept. of Defense to state and local police via the Pentagon’s 1033 program.
Johnson spoke with us most recently last summer, after Ferguson blew up, and as he was preparing to file his “Stop Militarization Law Enforcement Act of 2015” [PDF]. Long before that, he had been working to roll back the obscene militarization of our local police. So he was justifiably happy about this week’s development, even while explaining that its still important to pass his legislation because Executive Orders are easily undone by Congress and Republicans are, somewhat schizophrenically, in the process of actually trying to expand the 1033 program.
Then we cover a spate of new voting laws working their way through statehouses around the country from TX to OH to NH to FL to VT to MD. While most off the new laws in Republican states are predictably restrictive and in Democratic states more expansive, there is one pleasantly surprising exception to that rule this week.
Also, millions of spiders falling from the skies in Australia! And Desi Doyen joins for the latest Green News Report, which actually includes a some encouraging good for a change!…
Download MP3 or listen online below…
[audio:http://bradblog.com/audio/BradCast_BradFriedman_HankJohnsonMilitarization_NewVotingLaws_051915.mp3]
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I know this isn’t an NSA post, but…
By the way:
The link in the post I linked to above isn’t just for Utah. Let’s get rid of “The Patriot Act”. This is a totally bipartisan issue.