A North Dakota Republican lawmaker has been sentenced to serve nearly a year of unsupervised probation to pay $1,000 in fines and fees after pleading guilty to a drunken driving charge earlier this month.

Rios has said he is “seriously mulling all aspects” of his future, and plans to seek help for alcoholism, but he has made no plans to resign.

This story is a month old. I set reminders to check the outcome of interesting cases and didn’t see the result of this one until today.

Anyway, of course, a GOP POS won’t resign for behavior that would have destroyed a political career in the past. Way to go, GOP.

  • Flying Squid
    18•7 months ago

    But they didn’t even charge him. People have absolutely been charged for verbally abusing a cop. It’s legal to verbally abuse a cop under the first amendment. That doesn’t stop cops from arresting the person anyway. But oddly, rarely a white person. Unless they’re also dirt poor, of course.

    The charges often get overturned, but that’s after someone’s life is already ruined.

    Another example of such a case was the subject of a June 2015 decision by the Washington state Supreme Court. The teenage brother of a girl being arrested screamed at the officer for being abusive to his sister and continued to yell at the officer (including calling him a “mother----r”) even after he asked him to stop. The teen never physically got in the way of the officer conducting the arrest but was nevertheless charged and convicted for his words to the officer.

    https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/can-i-get-arrested-just-for-being-rude-to-the-police-42270

    This doesn’t apply in North Dakota, but due to a “Blue Lives Matter” law in Louisiana, you can be charged with a hate crime for insulting a cop.

    • @[email protected]
      12•7 months ago

      I’ve been arrested for resisting/interfering with arrest (because they had nothing else to get me on) because I used my words to advise someone else being arrested that their rights are being violated.

      I know my dude, I’m with you and 100% it could go terribly other places.

      Your arguments about what could happen to other folks are perfectly cromulent HOWEVER as much as your arguments fit with my worldview it doesn’t mean this guy was let off especially easy.

      I do wish he’d gotten a taste of what the rest of us and especially those of color have to face however.

      I agree with you wholeheartedly deeply in my core, emotionally I’m on the same page as you.

      • Flying Squid
        1•7 months ago

        But he wasn’t charged for insulting the cop. Do you think if a black person survived the encounter, he wouldn’t have faced a charge for that?