Have You Ever Heard Of An Innocent Person Getting A Pre-emptive Pardon?

December, 2020. Joy Reid: Have you ever heard of somebody getting a preemptive pardon who is an innocent person?

Adam Schiff: No.

Today Adam Schiff got a preemptive pardon. pic.twitter.com/s83ghqk0rs

— MAZE (@mazemoore) January 20, 2025

 

The Big Guy Grants Amnesty To The Biden Crime Family

NYTimes  |   President Biden pardoned five members of his family in his last minutes in office, saying in a statement that he did so not because they did anything wrong but because he feared political attacks from incoming President Donald J. Trump.

“My family has been subjected to unrelenting attacks and threats, motivated solely by a desire to hurt me — the worst kind of partisan politics,” he said in his last statement as president. “Unfortunately, I have no reason to believe these attacks will end.”

Mr. Biden’s action pardoned James B. Biden, his brother; Sara Jones Biden, James’s wife; Valerie Biden Owens, Mr. Biden’s sister; John T. Owens, Ms. Owens’s husband; and Francis W. Biden, Mr. Biden’s brother.

The White House announced the pardons with less than 20 minutes left in Mr. Biden’s presidency, after he had already walked into the Capitol Rotunda to witness the swearing-in of Mr. Trump before leaving the Capitol for the last time as president.

The pardons were a remarkable coda to Mr. Biden’s 50-year political career, underscoring the mistrust and anger that the president feels about Mr. Trump, the man who preceded and will succeed him in office.

Mr. Biden had repeatedly warned that Mr. Trump was a threat to democracy in America. But he also said that he believed in the rule of law, and was confident in the stability of the institutions of law enforcement. The pardons — like one that he did earlier for his son, Hunter Biden, threatened to challenge that assertion.

In his statement, Mr. Biden explained his action.

“I believe in the rule of law, and I am optimistic that the strength of our legal institutions will ultimately prevail over politics,” Mr. Biden wrote. “But baseless and politically motivated investigations wreak havoc on the lives, safety and financial security of targeted individuals and their families. Even when individuals have done nothing wrong and will ultimately be exonerated, the mere fact of being investigated or prosecuted can irreparably damage their reputations and finances.”

I Can't Wait Until The "Deliberative" Body Tangles With Col. Gabbard...,

OMG. 😂😂😂😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/EOZitH70hO

— Juanita Broaddrick (@atensnut) January 15, 2025

 

Of Course Quinones Knew That The Pacific Palisades Reservoir Was Empty

cbsnews  |  Why was the Santa Ynez Reservoir empty when the fires broke out?

The reservoir was taken out of service to "meet safe drinking water regulations," the DWP said in a statement. A tear in the reservoir's cover made the water supply subject to contamination, the Los Angeles Times reported, leading the agency to drain it in February.

"The water system serving the Pacific Palisades area and all of Los Angeles meets all federal and state fire codes for urban development and housing," the release said. 

DWP representatives did not respond to further questions about the reservoir from CBS News. The agency's statement suggested that the fact the reservoir was empty for nearly a year was in part due to the process of contracting a company to carry out the repairs.  

"To commission the support and resources to implement repairs to Santa Ynez, LADWP is subject to the city charter's competitive bidding process which requires time," the statement read.

The reservoir is intended to provide water storage "for domestic use and fire fighting purposes in the Pacific Palisades area" according to city documents. 

DWP says that the agency is conducting its own investigation on its "water resiliency." But experts and officials agree that the extent of the wildfires would have put a strain on the city's water supply regardless of whether the Santa Ynez Reservoir had been full. 

In his letter to DWP, Newsom wrote, "While water supplies from local fire hydrants are not designed to extinguish wildfires over large areas, losing supplies from fire hydrants likely impaired the effort to protect some homes and evacuation corridors." 

David Freyberg, PhD, a hydrologist and water resources specialist at Stanford University, told CBS News in an email that while a full Santa Ynez would have had benefits, it's not clear how much impact it would have had. 

"The reservoirs above Pacific Palisades were not designed to support fire-fighting at the scale of [this] fire," he wrote. "Water supply reservoirs are typically designed to cope with house fires, not wildfires."

He added that the situation has made it clear that larger-scale solutions are necessary. 

 

When English Is Not Your First Language Or You Just Forget How To Speak English...,

axios  |  As devastating wildfires raged across Los Angeles County this week, firefighters battling the blazes encountered fire hydrants that had no water.

Why it matters: The dry fire hydrants sparked political outrage and illustrated just how unprepared municipal water systems are to combat the sorts of large-scale urban wildfires that have become more frequent with climate change.

• Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Friday ordered an independent investigation into the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP), the nation's largest municipal utility, over hydrants and water supply issues. DWP provides water for more than four million L.A. residents and serves Pacific Palisades, a wealthy area of Los Angeles where much of the destruction took place.
• "While water supplies from local fire hydrants are not designed to extinguish wildfires over large areas, losing supplies from fire hydrants likely impaired the effort to protect some homes and evacuation corridors," Newsom said. "We need answers to how that happened."
• President-elect Trump has suggested Newsom was to blame for the dry hydrants — claiming without evidence that he blocked water supply to the south of the state with the state's fish conservation efforts. The governor and other experts have sharply rejected the claims.
• "We are looking at a situation that is just completely not part of any domestic water system design," Marty Adams, a former DWP general manager and engineer, told The New York Times.

The big picture: Fire hydrants running out of water isn't unheard of during severe wildfires, said Faith Kearns, a water and wildfire expert with the Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University. Similar instances were reported during wildfires in Maui, Colorado and Oregon,

• "It's something that we have definitely started to see as, essentially, these wildland fires move into urban areas and become urban conflagrations," Kearns said.
• "Our urban water supply is meant to deal more with things like a single house being on fire," she added.

Why did the fire hydrants run dry?

Firefighters battling the Palisades Fire earlier this week encountered swaths of fire hydrants with no water after the three water tanks supplying the Pacific Palisades ran dry by 3 a.m. Wednesday, Janisse Quiñones, chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said at a press briefing later that day.

• The area's water system had been pushed "to the extreme," she said. "Four times the normal demand was seen for 15 hours straight, which lowered our water pressure."
• The problem persisted for hours while wildfires ravaged the area, the New York Times reported.

bonjour bonne année...,

2025 is a mathematical wonder.!! pic.twitter.com/WsUfhKF4C9

— 𝗟 𝗼 𝗹 𝗹 𝘂 𝗯 𝗲 𝗲 (@Lollubee) December 30, 2024