masterofd1saster

[masterofd1saster]

CJ current events 23jan25

The Agency that Dare not Speak its Name but has a website at www.cia.gov

You may recall that in Oct 2024, some America with a TS/SCI clearance leaked Israel's plan for striking Iran. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz6w6p8x7p8o Turns out the leaker was a member of the The Agency that Dare not Speak its Name but has a website at www.cia.gov.

A former CIA analyst pleaded guilty [17jan25] to retaining and transmitting Top Secret National Defense Information to people who were not entitled to receive it, information which was publicly posted on a social media platform in October 2024. According to court documents, Asif William Rahman, 34, of Vienna, was an employee of the CIA since 2016 and had a Top-Secret security clearance with access to Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI).*** According to court documents, on Oct. 17, 2024, Rahman accessed and printed two Top Secret documents containing National Defense Information regarding a U.S. foreign ally and its planned actions against a foreign adversary. Rahman removed the documents, photographed them, and transmitted them to individuals he knew were not entitled to receive them. By Oct. 18, 2024, the documents appeared publicly on multiple social media platforms, complete with the classification markings. After Oct. 17, 2024, Rahman deleted and edited journal entries and written work product on his personal electronic devices to conceal his personal opinions on U.S. policy and drafted entries to construct a false narrative regarding his activity. Rahman also destroyed multiple electronic devices, including a personal mobile device and an internet router he used to transmit classified information and photographs of classified documents, and discarded the destroyed devices in public trash receptacles in an effort to thwart potential investigations into him and his unlawful conduct. Beginning in the spring of 2024 and continuing through November 2024, Rahman repeatedly accessed and printed classified National Defense Information, including documents classified up to the Top Secret level, to take them to his residence. There, Rahman reproduced the documents and, while doing so, altered them in an effort to conceal their source and his activity. Rahman then communicated Top Secret information that he learned in the course of his employment to multiple individuals he knew were not entitled to receive it. Rahman was indicted by a grand jury on Nov. 7, 2024, and was arrested by the FBI as he arrived to work on Nov. 12, 2024. He has remained in custody since his arrest.***

***

Left wing WaPo cartoonist in jail

Darrin Bell, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, was arrested in California on Wednesday on charges that he possessed more than 100 videos of child pornography, some of which was computer-generated, according to the authorities. Investigators connected Mr. Bell, 49, to an online account that had shared 134 files of child sex abuse, the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release. The authorities served a search warrant at Mr. Bell’s home on Wednesday morning and found more child pornography videos, including some generated using artificial intelligence, the sheriff’s office said. Mr. Bell, who was taken into custody after the search, is being held at the Sacramento County Main Jail in lieu of $1 million bail. He was charged with two felonies related to possession of child sex abuse material, according to jail records. It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer, and no one responded to a call to his phone on Thursday afternoon.***

Bell told ABC News Live on Wednesday that his selection as a 2019 recipient of one of the highest honors in journalism is an important endorsement. "I want [readers] to take away that we need to be more respectful of human dignity," he said of his work. "That's the common thread I try to weave through every cartoon that I draw -- whether it's about police brutality or immigrants being separated from their children****

***

How can we make Chiraq more violent, more dangerous?

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson *** is the personification of “antiracist” criminal justice “reform,” and that comes with deadly consequences for Chicago residents. On Tuesday night, Chicago police found 43-year-old Eduardo Gamez dead in his car. Gamez’s car had multiple bullet holes, and he had been shot in the abdomen. Gamez’s car was running when police discovered him, and surveillance showed that he had been parked for at least 2 1/2 hours. Gamez bled out and died because no one called 911 to report gunshots. Police only arrived because someone called to complain that his car was running and double-parked. The neighborhood Gamez was shot and killed in used to be covered by the city’s ShotSpotter network, which Johnson removed last year. The ShotSpotter system was a series of acoustic sensors placed on light poles in the most dangerous parts of the city, which could trigger 911 calls and allow police to identify the origins of gunshots better. That means that, had ShotSpotter not been removed, police would have been called to the shooting scene sooner, and Gamez may have ended up receiving the life-saving care he needed. CWB Chicago has compiled a list of similar cases “of people being found shot in areas previously served by ShotSpotter where the technology, had it not been dismantled, could have played a critical, helpful role.” Since just Sept. 23, 2024, that list already has 27 shootings, 12 of which were fatal. Johnson claimed he removed ShotSpotter because Chicago needs “investments in evidence-based, holistic solutions that don’t just respond to violence but prevent it.” If you are wondering why Chicago can’t just try to prevent violence while also keeping systems that help respond to it, it’s because of racism: As a member of the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America said, police responding to ShotSpotter alerts mean that “police come to black and brown communities on high alert.”***

***

Of course

Moments before his presidency ended Monday, Joe Biden issued preemptive pardons for his family members. Those pardoned include his brother and sister-in-law, James B. Biden and Sara Jones Biden; his sister and her husband, Valerie Biden Owens and John T. Owens, and his other brother, Francis W. Biden.*** Last month, he pardoned his son, Hunter for tax and gun crimes. Biden also commuted the life sentence of indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, who was convicted in the 1975 killings of two FBI agents.*** After being injured in a shootout, agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams were shot in the head at close range, FBI has said. ***

https://www.newsmax.com/politics/leonard-peltier-biden-pardons/2025/01/20/id/1195765

+++

President Joe Biden has pardoned Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley and members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, using the powers of his office in his final hours to guard against potential “revenge” by the incoming Trump administration.***

https://www.newsmax.com/politics/biden-trump-fauci/2025/01/20/id/1195711

+++

Free Press

... issued sweeping preemptive pardons for his siblings and their spouses. The outgoing president did the same for some of his successor’s high-profile opponents, including Anthony Fauci and Liz Cheney. The level of clemency is without precedent, writes Eli, and inconsistent with Biden’s 2020 promise to uphold the rule of law. Indeed, four years ago Biden expressed his concern that Trump would pardon his own political cronies.

***

BB-

***

Free Press:

Later in the day, Trump signed these orders. He also pardoned members of the mob who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization. Trump’s January 6 pardons went further than his closest allies appear to have anticipated. Earlier this month, J.D. Vance said that those who committed violence during the riot “obviously” should not be pardoned. But Trump has commuted the sentences of members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and granted “a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”

***

Look how ethical we are!

praises the ethics and professionalism of the Pennsylvania DAs who prosecuted Bill Cosby for sex crimes against Andrea Constand.

The only problem is that Pennsylvania's Supreme Court reversed the conviction due to "an unconstitutional 'coercive bait-and-switch.'” by the DA. Commonwealth v. Cosby, 666 Pa. 416, 505, 252 A.3d 1092, 1146 (2021).

Maybe don't commit an unconstitutional, coercive bait-and-switch, and we'll think someday you'll be ethical.

***

[masterofd1saster]

ERA nonsense

Biden declares the ERA the law of the land — but it likely will not matter The White House acknowledges the action won’t have the force of law.*** https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/17/biden-era-amendment-004495

Article V of the Constitution says:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress***

2/3 of the House and Senate proposed the ERA in 1972 and set a seven year deadline for ratification. The amendment was not ratified by 1978; indeed four states rescinded ratification, and South Dakota said it was rescinding if it weren't ratified fast. A simple majority - less than 2/3 - of congress voted to extend the initial deadline to June 30, 1982. The ERA was not ratified by then.

Several states sued to ensure that the ERA was shown to have failed ratification. Idaho v. Freeman, 529 F. Supp. 1107 (D. Idaho 1981) noted that the ERA had failed ratification. The Supreme Court reversed that judgment because the case had become moot on June 30, 1982 when the ERA failed ratification again. Nat'l Org. for Women, Inc. v. Idaho, 459 U.S. 809 (1982).

Some people won't stopped beating a dead horse. The worst won't stop even when it's a petrified fossil. Accordingly, someone asked DoJ if ERA could be considered ratified if the five states that rescinded were not counted as rescinding and if all the states that ratified at any time - even after the deadline had lapsed. DoJ said

we conclude that the ERA Resolution has expired and is no longer pending before the States. Even if one or more state legislatures were to ratify the 1972 proposal, that action would not complete the ratification of the amendment, and the ERA’s adoption could not be certified under 1 U.S.C. § 106b. In addition, we conclude that when Congress uses a proposing clause to impose a deadline on the States’ ratification of a proposed constitutional amendment, that deadline is binding and Congress may not revive the proposal after the deadline’s expiration. Accordingly, should Congress now “deem [the ERA] necessary,” U.S. Const. art. V, the only constitutional path for amendment would be for two-thirds of both Houses (or a convention sought by twothirds of the state legislatures) to propose the amendment once more and restart the ratification process among the States, consistent with Article V of the Constitution. https://www.justice.gov/olc/file/1232501/dl

Those who insisted on grinding petrified horse fossil fragments pursue the issue in court. As at least one court says

To summarize, the Archivist has no duty to publish and certify the ERA. Section 106b permits him to consider whether a state's ratification complies with a congressionally imposed ratification deadline. And a ratification deadline in a proposing resolution's introduction is just as effective as one in the text of a proposed amendment. Plaintiffs’ ratifications came after both the original and extended deadlines that Congress attached to the ERA, so the Archivist is not bound to record them as valid. Accordingly, Plaintiffs’ request for mandamus is denied. Equally significant as the Court's holding is what it does not hold. In light of its decision on the deadline issue, the Court does not reach the question of whether states can validly rescind prior ratifications. Nor does the Court make any statement on whether Congress's extension of the ERA deadline was constitutional. It does not need to. If the extension was unconstitutional, then the original deadline bars ratification; if the extension was constitutional, then the extended deadline has passed too. Congress has not tried to revive the ERA despite both deadlines’ expirations, so the Court is not confronted with that difficult issue either. *** Lastly, the Court does not express an opinion on the merits of the ERA as a matter of policy. It merely enforces a procedural time limit that Congress set when proposing the amendment. Virginia v. Ferriero, 525 F. Supp. 3d 36, 61 (D.D.C. 2021), aff'd, 60 F.4th 704 (D.C. Cir. 2023)

If you want an ERA, let's vote on it. Get 2/3 of the House, 2/3 of the Senate, and 3/4 of the states.

[masterofd1saster]

Psalm 8 as prophecy

I had always thought of Psalm 8 as the Psalmist praising and worshipping God:

O LORD, our Lord, 2how awesome is your name through all the earth! I will sing of your majesty above the heavens 3with the mouths of babes and infants.* You have established a bulwark* against your foes, to silence enemy and avenger.* 4When I see your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars that you set in place— 5*What is man that you are mindful of him, and a son of man that you care for him? 6Yet you have made him little less than a god,* crowned him with glory and honor. 7You have given him rule over the works of your hands, put all things at his feet***

Then on Tues I heard and reflected on Hebrews, 2:

5 For it was not to angels that he subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. 6 Instead, someone has testified somewhere: “What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you care for him? 7 You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you crowned him with glory and honor, 8 subjecting all things under his feet.” In “subjecting” all things [to him], he left nothing not “subject to him.” Yet at present we do not see “all things subject to him,” 9 but we do see Jesus “crowned with glory and honor” because he suffered death, he who “for a little while” was made “lower than the angels,” that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

We say that the Old Testament is the New Testament concealed and the New Testament is the Old revealed.

[masterofd1saster]

CJ court watch - the internet porn case

Texas requires internet pr0n distributors to verify that consumers are adults. The pr0n distributors sued and lost in the 5th Cir.

The audio of today's argument in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, 23-1122 is at https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/audio/2024/23-1122.

The transcript is at https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2024/23-1122_4f15.pdf.

Good question by J. Alito

JUSTICE ALITO: Mr. Shaffer, do you know a lot of parents who are more tech-savvy than their 15-year-old children?

The question presented is

Whether the court of appeals erred as a matter of law in applying rational-basis review to a law burdening adults' access to protected speech, instead of strict scrutiny as this Court and other circuits have consistently done.

I'm not sure Court will agree that pr0n is protected speech. J. Kagan took up J. Barrett's question about how the Texas law was not much different from the requirement imposed on brick and mortar stores that sell pr0n.

The only justices who seem favorable to the pr0n were J.J. Soto-Mayor and Brown-Jackson.

The docket is here.

[masterofd1saster]

CJ current events 16jan25

America's crime problem has never been everyone committing one crime

New York City saw a “staggering” 146.5% jump in felony assault busts for repeat offenders over the past six years, the Big Apple’s top cop said — as the crime reached a two-decade high in 2024. Suspects with at least three arrests on their rap sheet were charged with assault 442 times last year, up from 274 in 2018 — part of a pattern that shows wrongdoers are being cut loose too often, with the NYPD blaming soft-on-crime Albany lawmakers.  “That is what we’re up against,” Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch told reporters at a briefing Monday. “And we know why. The key driving factor is the revolving door of our criminal justice system, created in large part by legislative changes that took effect in 2020.”*** Tisch singled out 57-year-old parolee Gary Worthy, accused of shooting and injuring both an NYPD cop and a 26-year-old woman – an innocent bystander – during an attempt to rob a Queens bodega. The injured officer, 7-year veteran Rich Wong, returned fire, fatally striking Worthy. “The shooter had 17 prior arrests — 17 of which happened when he was out on lifetime parole, including arrests for robbery, burglary and menacing within the past year,” Tisch said. “Let me repeat that: he was arrested and then released over and over again while on lifetime parole. This is evidence of a broken system, one that doesn’t put the rights and needs of victims first.”***

***

Pres-Elect Trump sentencing

On Fri, 10jan, Judge Juan M. Merchan apparently sentenced Pres-Elect Trump to no punishment. This was the business records case. It's sort of a double edged sword: Merchan and co get to call Trump a convicted felon, and Trump can now appeal the conviction. Many reasonable lawyers doubt that Trump rec'd a fair trial.

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/donald-trump-new-york-sentencing/2025/01/10/id/1194595

***

Britain: Pay no attention to the rapes behind the curtain!

An attempt by the Conservatives to have the government set up a national inquiry into grooming gangs has been voted down by 364 votes to 111 votes, a margin of 253. The amendment was attached to the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which would have been killed had the vote passed. Earlier in the day, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch argued the government risks fuelling accusations of "a cover up" by refusing an inquiry.*** A local Rotherham inquiry uncovered the sexual abuse of 1,400 children over 16 years, mainly by British Pakistani men. In Telford, up to 1,000 girls faced abuse over 40 years, with some cases overlooked due to "nervousness about race" as most suspects were men of south Asian heritage.***

"South Asian" is the term polite Britain uses for "Pakistani."

***

Hey, you two, rent The Villages. Or something

WAUKESHA, Wis. - A man and woman – already charged with having sex in the Waukesha County Jail lobby last year – are now accused of having sex at a Waukesha laundromat. Desmound Cleveland and Karen Hill are each charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct. Hill is additionally charged with two counts of misdemeanor bail jumping.***

Because what the world needs to see is more geriatric sex.

***

Your job is following leads

KALAMAZOO, Mich. — Detectives who arrested a Battle Creek man for two murders he didn't commit could soon be forced to pay up. A settlement conference is set for Feb. 5, nearly two years after Jeff Titus was released from prison. Titus was arrested in 2001, about 11 years after he was accused of murdering hunters Doug Estes and Jim Bennett near his Kalamazoo County property in 1990.*** By time Titus was released, he was 71 years old. This happened after authorities revealed Titus' lawyer was never given a police file with details about another suspect, Thomas Dillon, in 2002. Dillion was an Ohio serial killer whose five victims were killed between 1989 and 1992 while they were either hunting, fishing, or jogging.***

He was imprisoned >20 years.

The thing I hate about these stories is that they never talk about why the exonerated person was a suspect in the first place. For all we know, Titus may have threatened to kill Estes and Bennett and his dna was found on the murder weapon. I don't think so, but the story doesn't tell you.

***

How could I pass up a headline like

Gang Member "La Barbie" Allowed to Remove Ankle Monitor Before Being Caught Running Hotel Sex Prison

Estefania "La Barbie" Primera, a member of the Tren de Aragua gang, was permitted to remove her ankle monitor a year before authorities caught her orchestrating a lawless and brutal sex trafficking operation at a border hotel, according to sources. Allegedly, federal immigration officials allowed Primera, a suspected Venezuelan sex trafficker, to discard her tracking device after she complained that her belongings, including the monitor's charger, had been stolen. This leniency granted to "La Barbie" raises serious questions about the oversight of individuals involved in criminal activities. Subsequently, Primera was apprehended by law enforcement in El Paso, Texas, where she was accused of managing a sex trafficking ring within the confines of the Gateway Hotel. Shockingly, the hotel had been overtaken by members of the Tren de Aragua gang, adding a layer of complexity to the criminal activities unfolding within its walls.*** Disturbing court documents reveal harrowing testimonies from victims, with one individual alleging that Primera drugged her with a fentanyl-laced pill and facilitated a series of rapes while she was unconscious. The victim suffered severe injuries as a result of the traumatic ordeal. Furthermore, when the victim attempted to escape, "La Barbie" purportedly resorted to physical violence, forcibly returning the victim to the hotel by employing physical aggression in the form of punches and kicks, as detailed in the legal filings. Primera's arrest unfolded in late September outside the Sacred Heart Church in El Paso, a sanctuary for migrant arrivals. She was accompanied by her five young children, whom she allegedly exploited by involving them in drug trafficking activities.***

***

who knew porn was addicting

A Florida deputy has resigned after body camera footage showed he was looking at pornography when he crashed into a car last year, according to a report. Lake County Deputy Tristan Macomber resigned his position after an internal investigation into the Nov. 6 crash, NBC6 affiliate WESH reported. The body camera footage showed Macomber driving when he suddenly slammed into a vehicle that was stopped in front of him. His airbag deploys before he gets out to check on the other driver, who was stopped for a school bus.***

***

Excellent article about norms and feminism

***For these women, risking everything for the sake of extramarital orgasms with a person who doesn’t love you is not a destructive and selfish impulse to be resisted, but the path to a higher realm of self-actualization. They owe nothing to the world, or to their occupations, or to the people who love and rely on them; certainly they cannot be expected to honor the promises they’ve made if it means denying themselves something they desire. Films like Babygirl are brave in that they acknowledge that women, empowered to have sex like men, will do exactly that—up to and including taking inappropriate liberties in the workplace with their much younger underlings. Where they fail is in pretending that this makes them heroic figures, as opposed to total sleazebags. What equality truly demands of us is not just the license to behave just as badly as men, but to be held to the same standards of human goodness. This is the nature of middle age—when you aren’t too old to start over, but you’re definitely old enough to know better. Eventually, the path ahead of you becomes narrowed by the choices behind you; eventually, you become accountable not just to yourself but to others, too. And if some shimmering possibility presents itself, be it another lover or another life, the truly heroic thing to do is to understand the difference between a possibility and a promise, between a fantasy of what might have been and the deep-rooted truth of the life you’ve chosen—and to gently close the door.

***

Not helping the immigrant community

A man seen in a viral video being confronted and apprehended by Los Angeles residents, and who was eventually arrested by police with an alleged blowtorch, is an illegal immigrant from Mexico, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sources tell Fox News. Los Angeles police took the man into custody after a group of local residents grabbed him near the Kenneth Fire, allegedly carrying a blowtorch, according to video from Fox 11 Los Angeles.*** ICE sources tell Fox that he is a Mexican illegal immigrant named Juan Manuel Sierra-Leyva. He is in custody due to a probation violation and has not been charged with arson. ***

***

Free Press notes

In America today, there are nearly 1,500 biological men incarcerated in federal women’s prisons. Nearly half of them are sex offenders, according to the Bureau of Prison’s own data—almost four times the rate of the general prison population. Across the country, female inmates have been harassed, raped, and even impregnated by male prisoners they’ve been forced to house with. Today, Free Press reporter Madeleine Kearns speaks to one of the women fighting back: 58-year-old Rhonda Fleming, who is serving a 27-year sentence for Medicare fraud. Fleming says she’s had to share facilities, including showers and restrooms, with at least 10 male felons simply because they identify as transgender. Today, a judge in Tallahassee will hear arguments that the conditions of her confinement violate her constitutional right to bodily privacy. “When you’re most vulnerable, you’re naked in a shower,” Fleming told The Free Press. “There’s no officer monitoring the showers unless some kind of emergency happens, and so at any time, anything can happen to you.” Fleming’s experience is not a one-off. All 29 federal female prisons in the U.S. allow male criminals who identify as women to be incarcerated—a practice that began in the early 2010s under the Obama administration. Trump mostly walked it back; Biden reinstated it. What would a victory for Rhonda Fleming mean for incarcerated women across the country? Read Madeleine’s investigation: “Biden’s Transgender Prison Policy Goes to Trial.”

***

Babylon Bee

***

1st impressions.....

NDIANAPOLIS, IN (KGAN) — A Texas man appeared in an Indiana courtroom Tuesday morning for allegedly stalking and sending sexually violent text messages to WNBA superstar and Iowa grad Caitlin Clark. Michael Thomas Lewis, 55, had his initial appearance where a judge read his level 5 felony charges. "Morning, Mr. Lewis," the judge said after the suspect entered the courtroom. "Guilty as charged," Lewis said.***

***

BB -

***

Policing good news

Excellent column by Olivia Reingold

If you’re a New Yorker, you probably know how Mayor Eric Adams spent part of last Friday afternoon: getting his eyebrows threaded at a salon in Corona, Queens. The now-viral moment was meant to symbolize how civilized the whole area had become in the past 90 days. A few months earlier, locals had complained that this wasn’t the kind of block you’d want to set foot on, let alone visit for a spa treatment. The only massage parlors and salons open for business seemed to be fronts for the neighborhood’s booming sex trade, with police estimating as many as 50 brothels operating in the area. The neighborhood had even developed a nickname: the “Market of Sweethearts.” “It was anarchy outside,” said Ramses Frías, a second-generation Queens native. “People were scared to leave their homes.”

After Frías and other locals held a series of rallies and protests, Adams deployed hundreds of NYPD officers, plus 50 state troopers, in a 90-day crackdown dubbed “Operation Restore Roosevelt,” referring to Roosevelt Avenue, the neighborhood’s main thoroughfare.*** Things began to change in 2021, when the NYCLU and other progressive groups successfully lobbied the state to repeal an anti-loitering law, which they claimed “enabled law enforcement to target Black and Brown transgender women, non-binary people, immigrants, and low-income communities for innocuous behavior.” They referred to the law as the “Walking While Trans Ban.” Frías says the rollback hamstrung police from taking action just as thousands of migrants were streaming into New York, exacerbating the problems mounting on Roosevelt Avenue.***

Prostitutes on Roosevelt Avenue began operating in broad daylight about two years ago. On their way to school, Frías said, kids had to start walking past scantily clad women counting cash. In September, parents at a local elementary school passed a resolution demanding “increased school safety measures.” Among the issues they said their children encountered on the way to and from school: “Open prostitution and illegal massage parlors employing sex workers,” “rampant drug use,” and “organized crime syndicates.”*** From the moment the city announced its campaign to crack down on crime in the area, progressives began to protest. Groups like Red Canary Song, which advocates for “BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, Trans GNC, and Disabled Sex Workers,” claimed to speak on behalf of the people of Queens—despite being co-founded by a Columbia-educated dominatrix (other “core organizers” include a Barnard graduate turned “BDSM practitioner,” a Brown University professor, and a Yale graduate student with they/he/she pronouns). “We demand the removal of state and local troops from Queens,” an October Red Canary Song press release demanded. “These dehumanizing narratives are fabricated and weaponized to justify increased surveillance, perpetuating our community’s precarity through police violence.”***

***

[masterofd1saster]

[masterofd1saster]

Jesus, Son of David

Prof Alan M. Dershowitz makes some good points about Jesus Christ:

*** the Vatican recently featured a nativity scene which laid the baby Jesus on a keffiyeh, thus accepting the false Palestinian narrative that Jesus was a Palestinian and not a Jew. The bible of the Catholic Church expressly states that Jesus was born a Jew in the Judean city with the Hebrew name of Beth Lechem ("House of Bread," Bethlehem in English). He was born there on what has now become Christmas, around the time of the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah. He was circumcised as a Jew on New Years Day. He preached as a Jewish rabbi in the Jewish area called the Galil (Galilee in English). He was crucified as a Jewish enemy of the Romans in Jerusalem. During his lifetime, he never heard the word Christian. He lived as a Jew and died as a Jew. He did not wear a keffiyeh. The Muslim faith only began 600 years after his death. It would have been more appropriate for the Vatican to lay the baby on a Jewish tallit (prayer shawl) and wearing a Magen David (star of David). The Vatican willfully violated their own teachings by falsely trying to present him as a Palestinian.***

He's right about Jesus never hearing or saying "Christian" during his life on earth. Act 11:26:

And when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it came to pass, that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church, and taught much people. And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.

His people called Jesus "Son of David." Matt 1:1, 9:27, etc; Mark 10:47; Luke 18:38. John 7:42 specifically says

That Christ cometh of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was

The Romans said Jesus was a Jew. John 19:

19And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. And the writing was, JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS.

Jesus would be infinitely more likely to wear this hat

than a keffiyeh.

Not hating on Palestinians. Jesus loves them too. Papa Franca should drop the woke nonsense and politics and get back to genuine Catholicism.

[masterofd1saster]

CJ court watch - 1st Amendment freedom of association

2d Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of in CompassCare v. Hochul, No. 22-951-cv on 2jan25. CompasCare is overtly Christian,

“a pregnancy care center” that “provides clinical pregnancy testing to confirm the existence of pregnancy; ultrasound exams; gestational age determinations; complete pregnancy, abortion, and adoption options consultations; STD testing and treatment; abortion pill reversal services; and medical, insurance, and community support referrals.”

New York passed a statute taking direct aim a religious organizations, N.Y. Lab. Law §203-e. The law forbids employers from considering an employee's "reproductive health decision making." The Christian organizations sued alleging violation of their 1st Amendment freedom of association. The District Court granted judgment against the Christians, but the appellate court held

The Supreme Court has made clear that the right to engage in activities protected by the First Amendment includes an implicit “right to associate with others in pursuit of a wide variety of political, social, economic, educational, religious, and cultural ends.” Roberts v. U.S. Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609, 622 (1984). This implied freedom of association “plainly presupposes a freedom not to associate.” Id. at 623. The Supreme Court has held that this “freedom not to associate” permits a voluntary association, in some circumstances, to exclude or expel a member it does not desire, even when doing so runs afoul of a law prohibiting discrimination based on a protected characteristic. See Boy Scouts of Am. v. Dale, 530 U.S. 640, 648, 653 (2000).***

For an employer to make the showing required ***, it must show that the Act threatens its very mission not only in a vague and generalized sense, but in the context of a specific employment decision. See Dale, 530 U.S. at 653. This would presumably require assessment of (1) the responsibilities of the position at issue, including whether it is client-facing and whether it involves expressly or implicitly speaking for the organization, and (2) the particular conduct or attribute of the employee that renders the employment of that person, in that position, a threat to the employer’s mission.8 In short, an employer must plausibly allege that the Act’s impact on the specific employment decision “will impede the organization’s ability to engage in . . . protected activities or to disseminate its preferred views.” Jaycees, 468 U.S. at 627.***

[masterofd1saster]

CJ current events 9jan25

One way to clear a case by exception

The former chief of Jeffco Public Schools, who was fired less than a month ago, has died amid an unresolved child sexual abuse material investigation, sheriff’s officials said. David Weiss was fired by county officials in December in connection with that investigation. Jefferson County sheriff’s officials said he was with family in Maryland for the holidays when he died.***

***

Nellie Bowles nails it

→ Two terrorist attacks and a subway derangement: A man drove a truck—with a huge ISIS flag billowing from behind it—into the packed crowd of revelers on Bourbon Street in New Orleans early New Year’s Day. After killing as many as he could with the vehicle, he got out of the car wearing body armor and started shooting (the death toll now is 14). But the important thing the FBI wanted you to know was that this was not terrorism. Not even close. “This is not a terrorist event,” said FBI assistant special agent in charge Alethea Duncan (see a clip from the press conference here). “What it is right now is there are improvised explosive devices that was found, and we are working on confirming if it’s a viable device or not.”***

Very quickly, the terrorist’s name spread online: Shamsud-Din Jabbar, an army vet. The FBI admitted, begrudgingly, that it was terrorism (not as bad as January 6, though, and not as bad as the Covid-era parents who are our #1 domestic terrorists). The mosque that Jabbar belonged to warned members not to speak to law enforcement and instead direct any questions to CAIR and the Islamic Society of Greater Houston. The front page of The Washington Post put it thusly: “Truck Rams New Orleans Crowd.” Not an ISIS-inspired terrorist, even though that information was known and put lower down. A truck. Like, ew, an F-150? Looks like we lost some more good men to toxic masculinity.

Weirdly, the FBI apparently didn’t rush to Jabbar’s home. They were so slow that the New York Post says they got to the terrorist’s house before the FBI did. Reporters spent the day poking around inside Jabbar’s apartment. What, like it’s so urgent for cops to get there too? He killed 14, which is a New Orleans 3, let’s all calm down. More urgent is for you to check your terrorphobia and anti–ISIS-flag-machine-gun sentiment.*** In New York, for good measure, a man with a very long rap sheet randomly shoved a mid-afternoon commuter into an oncoming train. The victim “fell perfectly in the trench,” per law enforcement, and suffered just a broken skull. A little too perfectly, if you ask me. To quote my favorite local congressman Ritchie Torres: “Before 2020, there were 43 killings over the course of 20 years. Since March of 2020, there have been 43 killings in the span of four years.” The subway serves an important purpose: a place for lazy career criminals—small-time assaulters, petty thieves—to show off the world’s laziest murder. Typical millennial crime surge. Like, if you’re elbowing a petite Asian woman into a train, are you really trying at this?***

***

MSgt Livelsberger manifesto

***

Criminals repeat until they're stopped

A Honduran gang member "giggled" and "smirked" as he confessed to kidnapping a young Texas woman at gunpoint and threatening to pimp her out and harvest her organs on Christmas Eve, according to police.  Illegal immigrant Eduardo Javier Ordonez Godoy, 35, allegedly forced the 22-year-old Haltom City woman into the back seat of her car at gunpoint as she was leaving for work around 4:45 a.m. on Christmas Eve. After making her withdraw cash from an ATM, he drove her 22 miles away to the town of Grapevine, according to charging documents obtained by Fox 4 News. There, Godoy allegedly tied his victim to a tree with her shoelaces and threatened to "prostitute her" or "sell her organs," Haltom City Police Sergeant Rick Alexander told Fox 4. *** Before the Christmas Eve kidnapping, Godoy had committed similar crimes and been deported back to his home country, where he was affiliated with a violent gang, the New York Post reported. ***

***

Fix your broken windows before you tax me!

Many people who commute to NYC are irate at Gov Kathy Hochul's new taxes on working class commuters. NJ is particularly incensed.

"I don't care what anybody says: Charging folks a commuter tax on top of high tolls and gasoline prices is absolutely idiotic," Lawler says in the campaign video. "I've been fighting to kill congestion pricing for years, because it's nothing more than a scam. It's a cash grab. "The MTA has been severely mismanaged for decades. It's outrageous that the MTA wants to charge suburban commuters just to come into New York City on top of the tolls to pay for their bloated operations; yet, they refuse to collect $700 million a year from those who jump the turnstile and refuse to pay to ride the subway."***

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/congestion-tax-nyc/2025/01/05/id/1193911

***

British crime cover up

Dominic Green writes

LONDON — The grooming and serial rape of thousands of English girls by men of mostly Pakistani Muslim background over several decades is the biggest peacetime crime in the history of modern Europe. It went on for many years. It is still going on. And there has been no justice for the vast majority of the victims. British governments, both Conservative and Labour, hoped that they had buried the story after a few symbolic prosecutions in the 2010s. And it looked like they had succeeded—until Elon Musk read some of the court papers and tweeted his disgust and bafflement on X over the new year. Britain now stands shamed before the world. The public’s suppressed wrath is bubbling to the surface in petitions, calls for a public inquiry, and demands for accountability. The scandal is already reshaping British politics. It’s not just about the heinous nature of the crimes. It’s that every level of the British system is implicated in the cover-up. Social workers were intimidated into silence. Local police ignored, excused, and even abetted pedophile rapists across dozens of cities. Senior police and Home Office officials deliberately avoided action in the name of maintaining what they called “community relations.” Local councilors and Members of Parliament rejected pleas for help from the parents of raped children. Charities, NGOs, and Labour MPs accused those who discussed the scandal of racism and Islamophobia. The media mostly ignored or downplayed the biggest story of their lifetimes. Zealous in their incuriosity, much of Britain’s media elite remained barnacled to the bubble of Westminster politics and its self-serving priorities. They did this to defend a failed model of multiculturalism, and to avoid asking hard questions about failures of immigration policy and assimilation. They did this because they were afraid of being called racist or Islamophobic. They did this because Britain’s traditional class snobbery had fused with the new snobbery of political correctness.***

The majority of the victims were white, plus some Sikhs. The majority of their abusers were of Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim extraction. The majority of their crimes were committed in cities with a Labour Party–controlled council and a Labour Party MP who needed Muslim votes. This led to institutional racism of the inverted kind, and that enabled the perpetrators to do as they liked. The system itself became corrupted. Welfare workers admit that they failed to report crimes because the police told them they would be accused as racist. The leader of one rape gang in Oldham, Shabir Ahmed, worked for the local council as a “welfare rights officer” and ran his gang from the council welfare office. Another member was on the Oldham Youth Council. In multiple cases, local Labour politicians of Pakistani background interfered with police inquiries. In Telford in 2016, 10 members of the Labour council wrote to the Home Secretary, the Conservatives’ Amber Rudd, claiming that allegations of abuse were “sensationalized” and that there was no need for action. Two years later, an investigation by the Sunday Mirror newspaper counted some 1,000 victims. The superintendent of the West Mercia regional police “significantly disputed” the figures and said the Mirror had “sensationalized” the issue.***

***

Rediscovering the 2d Amendment

A new report says “queer people” are buying guns to prepare for Trump’s America, joining campily named groups like “Pink Pistols” and “Rainbow Reload.” Paranoia in the gay/trans/Barista American community is completely out of hand, as I wrote last year. But there’s something a bit beautiful about seeing left-wing they/thems stockpiling weapons in a manic political frenzy. It means that despite everything, they’re still Americans at their core, which is kind of endearing!

tumblr stripped out the links the paragraph I pasted

***

That's what Allstate is worried about?

Just after Shamsud-Din Jabbar murdered 15 people in New Orleans in the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria,

Tom Wilson, the CEO of the insurance giant Allstate, who bizarrely felt the need to address the public since the terrorist attack forced postponement of the Sugar Bowl that Allstate sponsors: “We need to. . . overcom[e] an addiction to divisiveness and negativity.” He further urged those tuning in to the football game delayed by the ISIS-inspired mass murder to “accept people’s imperfections and differences.”

Tom, maybe you should wait until the victims' bodies cool off before you open your sewer. Maybe if you thought for one minute you'd realize that the West isn't the sid addicted to divisiveness and negativity.

***

AG Merrick Garland lying!

On 6jan 25 our Attorney General said

I am thinking of the officers who still bear the scars of that day as well as the loved ones of the five officers who lost their lives in the line of duty as a result of what happened to them on January 6, 2021.

None of those officers died at or near the Capitol. All died elsewhere of natural causes. Not one was killed.

Highly irritating that he failed to mention Lt Michael Byrd shooting to death an unarmed woman, an Air Force veteran, Ashli Babbitt. Worse that Byrd has been promoted to captain.

I would not have gone to the Capitol. I didn't support the protesters, but stop lying.

***

El Salvador's approach

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/3278953/el-salvador-nayib-bukele-improves-country notes

*** New figures from the Salvadoran government of President Nayib Bukele show only 114 murders in 2024. In the context of El Salvador’s recent history, 114 is astonishingly low. The trend line is clear. In 2023, the country suffered 154 homicides. In 2022, there were 495. In 2021 and 2020, there were more than 1,000. In 2019, more than 2,000 Salvadorans were murdered. Applied per 100,000 people, El Salvador’s homicide rate is now one-tenth that of Mexico and 30 times lower than that of Jamaica. This reduction in murders is a stunning moral victory for the people of El Salvador and an unprecedented boon for their future prospects. Bukele deserves much credit. Since 2021, he has presided over a massive and ruthless crackdown on the MS-13 and 18th Street crime gangs that turned El Salvador into a dystopia. Relying on a parliamentary state of emergency order, Bukele sent the military and heavily armed police into gang-controlled neighborhoods. Gang members were detained en masse, and any show of resistance was crushed with great force. The age of criminal culpability was lowered to prevent young teenagers from carrying forward the work of their superiors. Gang members have been imprisoned simply for membership in a proscribed organization.***

WE sort of poo-poos the incarceration of the occasional innocent swept up in the incarceration.

Recent data suggest that a remarkable 3.3% of all Salvadoran men are now incarcerated. The vast majority of these people are being detained without trial. The dividends for El Salvador and its people are clear. The country was on the verge of collapse. Now, it has a chance to thrive.***

That's a lot of people in prison.

In 2018 & 2019, America's homicide rate was <6 per 100k. In 2020, it lept to >7.4 per 100k, and was still higher for the last year of statistics. CDC data.

El Salvador's population is about 6M. So in 2020 & 2021, El Salvador's homicide rate was around 17 per 100k - way worse than the US, and now it's fallen to about 2 per 100k - far better than the US.

***

[masterofd1saster]

CJ court watch 31dec24

CJ Roberts published the 2024 Year End Report on the Federal Judiciary on New Year's Eve. https://www.supremecourt.gov/publicinfo/year-end/2024year-endreport.pdf is 15 pages long. The last six are statistics on court workloads.

The first nine pages of the report lament and protest

four areas of illegitimate activity that, in my view, do threaten the independence of judges on which the rule of law depends: (1) violence, (2) intimidation, (3) disinformation, and (4) threats to defy lawfully entered judgments

Astonishingly, in a report that recalls George III's actions in 1761 and runs through this century, he doesn't mention the attempted assassination of J. Brett Kavanaugh on June 8, 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett_Kavanaugh_assassination_plot Now granted, the assassin is pending trial, but there wasn't even an oblique reference to him.

The report doesn't mention Pres Biden's proposal to pack the Supreme Court with his lackeys. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/04/09/president-biden-to-sign-executive-order-creating-the-presidential-commission-on-the-supreme-court-of-the-united-states/

The report doesn't mention Pres Biden's proposal to limit terms of SCt justices. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/07/29/fact-sheet-president-biden-announces-bold-plan-to-reform-the-supreme-court-and-ensure-no-president-is-above-the-law/

Perhaps CJ Roberts is just being cautious about the assassination attempt case and courteous to lame duck president in cognitive decline.

[masterofd1saster]

CJ current events 2jan25

You already got your Christmas present, turd

A South Carolina man convicted in the brutal double murder of two bank employees in 2017 is asking for a "compassionate release" days after President Biden spared his life and commuted his death sentence.  Brandon Council, 28, was convicted in September 2019 in the 2017 double murder of Conway bank employees Katie Skeen, 36, and Donna Major, 59. Council was then sentenced to death by a federal court one month later. Council was one of 37 federal inmates on death row who had their sentences commuted to life in prison by Biden. On Friday, Council filed a motion in the U.S. District Court in Florence arguing that he deserved a "compassionate release" because he had been subjected to "severe, unnecessary, and unjustifiable psychological harm" that "can only be accurately construed and assimilated as an act of torture," since he was permanently housed in solitary confinement since Nov. 4, 2019, according to records obtained by WBTW. *** Council spent a week at a motel across from the CresCom Bank in Conway, South Carolina, where he watched the movie "Get Rich or Die Tryin'" before he went in with a gun and killed both Skeen and Major.  Council already had a prior felony conviction at the time and told an FBI agent that he went into the bank knowing he would kill someone during the robbery. He had been on parole for a month at the time of the murders, which came during his second bank robbery since leaving prison.***

+++

accurate toon -

https://www.gocomics.com/michaelramirez/2024/12/31

+++

who did those 37 murderers kill?

***

Mike Ramirez serving up some truth this week

https://www.gocomics.com/michaelramirez/2024/12/30

***

Explain to me again how drug crimes are victimless?

Baby abandoned on median on Christmas morning exposed to cocaine, police say A one-month-old baby allegedly abandoned by its parents in a car seat on a Pecos Street median on Christmas morning was exposed to cocaine, according to Adams County Sheriff’s Office.

***

ISIS dirtbag in New Orleans

42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar murdered 15 people and injured about 30 others around 0315 in New Orleans. He drove a rented truck and carried an ISIS flag and an IED. Nobody thinks he acted alone.

How long before FBI says "yeah, he was on our radar?"

https://www.newsmax.com/us/new-orleans-truck-suspect/2025/01/01/id/1193536

+++

Tesla explodes and burns outside Trump Las Vegas

A cybertruck exploded and burned on New Year's morning outside the Trump building in Vegas.

Investigators did, however, determine that the Tesla truck was rented through the Turo app, the same one used to rent the pickup truck used in the New Orleans attack, law enforcement sources told The Post. It is unclear what caused the blast at Trump Las Vegas hotel but the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department is mounting a criminal investigation into whether it was intentionally detonated and are treating it as a possible act of terror.  Investigators are also working to uncover a possible motive.***

+++

The two suspects of the ISIS-inspired New Orleans attack that killed at least 15 and the Tesla Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas reportedly served at the same military base. An ongoing investigation into both attacks is looking into terrorist ties of both events. And sources told ABC affiliate Denver7 (KMGH-TV) that Matthew Livelsberger, 37, of Colorado Springs – the suspect who drove the Cybertruck to Las Vegas – and Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, of Texas – who drove the pickup truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans – served at the same military base, which the report did not identify.***

https://www.newsmax.com/us/terrorist-army-veteran/2025/01/02/id/1193585

Jabbar and Livelsberger very likely may not have known each other. Some forts are medium sized cities. Ft LIberty has >43k active Soldiers and >10,000 other people.

***

***

River Page notes

On Tuesday, around 1.30 p.m., a 45-year-old man was violently shoved in front of an oncoming train as he stood on a Manhattan subway platform. (Remarkably, he survived, and is in a critical but stable condition.) Hours after the crime, Kamel Hawkins, 23, was arrested and charged with attempted murder. Hawkins has an extensive rap sheet featuring charges of assault, harassment, and weapons possession. The incident comes just one week after a sleeping woman was burned to death in an arson attack on the New York subway. The arson suspect, Sebastian Zapeta-Calil, is a 33-year-old illegal immigrant now in custody. New Yorkers, meanwhile, are left wondering why these criminals are free to roam the streets—and the subway system—in the first place.

***

[masterofd1saster]

CJ current events 26dec24

We should have more federal trial judges

There is a real issue with needing more federal judges. Not necessarily at the Supreme Court (whatever you think of court-packing), but in district courts across the country. Federal dockets are long and judges are often overwhelmed. However, who gets to appoint new federal judges is a significant concern for both political parties. Nonetheless, a bipartisan bill could potentially add to the federal judiciary for the first time in 30 years. In a major legislative move that’s sure to make waves, Congress has just passed the JUDGES Act. Legislators love a good acronym, and this law was no exception: the Judicial Understaffing Delays Getting Emergencies Solved Act of 2024. The bipartisan bill was aimed at addressing the increasing burden on federal district courts by creating new judgeships. But it’s giving President Trump a lot of power to appoint many more judges in his next term, and the incumbent President has vowed to veto it. Let’s take a quick look at the law at the center of it all. Bipartisan Bill Passes The JUDGES Act is a big deal; it marks the first major expansion of the federal judiciary in over 30 years. Its goal was to alleviate the overwhelming caseloads faced by judges across 25 federal court districts, and it would add 66 new federal judgeships over the next decade. The bill's supporters had argued that it was a necessary step to ensure timely access to justice for all Americans. The Judicial Conference of the United States, the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts, and over 300 sitting federal judges have endorsed the bill, underscoring the critical need for new judgeships. Judge Robert J. Conrad Jr., director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, noted that the measure would improve judicial administration and access to justice by "adding critically needed new judgeships."***

***

latest hate crime

An Egyptian national, who is a George Mason University freshman with reported ties to ISIS, was arrested on Tuesday in Falls Church, Virginia, and charged with planning a terror attack on the Israeli Consulate General in New York. Between Nov. 22 and Dec. 4, Abdullah Ezzeldin Taha Mohamed Hassan, 18, allegedly distributed "information related to explosives, destructive devices and weapons of mass destruction in furtherance of commission of a federal crime of violence" of "first-degree murder of internationally protected persons," per a criminal complaint filed with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is currently going through the process of deporting Hassan, according to a 14-page affidavit that the FBI agent, who arrested the student, filed on Dec. 16 seeking an arrest warrant.***

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/israeli-consulate-new-york/2024/12/20/id/1192395

***

abortion protester/vandalizers

Gabriella Oropesa, of Cooper City, Florida, was convicted [19dec24] for her role in a conspiracy to injure, oppress, threaten or intimidate employees of pro-life pregnancy help centers in the free exercise of the right to provide and seek to provide reproductive health services. The defendant and her co-conspirators selected reproductive health facilities that provided and counseled alternatives to abortion and vandalized those facilities with threatening messages. Caleb Freestone, Amber Stewart-Smith and Annarella Rivera previously pleaded guilty for their participation in the conspiracy. According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, between May 2022 and July 2022, Oropesa, Freestone, Smith-Stewart and Rivera engaged in a series of targeted attacks on pro-life pregnancy help centers in Florida. The defendants, in the dark of night and while wearing masks and dark clothing to obscure their identities, spray painted the facilities with threatening messages, including “If abortions aren’t safe than niether [sic] are you,” “YOUR TIME IS UP!!,” “WE’RE COMING for U” and “We are everywhere.”*** A sentencing hearing is scheduled for March 19, 2025. Oropesa faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison for the conspiracy charge. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.***

***

[This Jon Favreau is a left wing political speech writer; the other is an actor/director who works with Disney on the Star Wars franchise.]

***

excellent toon

***

Registering dead people to vote

Jennifer Hill, 38, who had worked with the New Pennsylvania Project as a canvasser, tried to register 310 people to vote between April 2024 and September 2024. Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer said 181 of the voters were successfully registered, NBC Philadelphia reported. Among those alleged 310 people were Hill’s deceased father and another person who had died in her home. “She knows that because she was the person who called the police to come when he died in her house,” Stollsteimer said. “She did register a fraudulent person and my understanding is this is sort of a gap in the system where by putting in no date of birth and no social security number, it goes through and became a verified voter registration. She did not take any further step. That fictitious person did not vote in the 2024 election. But that shows you how we still have gaps in our system that we need to have the legislature address.” “We don’t know from the other 129 that were non-verifiable, how many of those were made up names,” Stollsteimer added.***

***

Skeevy turd with a great idea-

Matt Gaetz Threatens to Rejoin Congress, Publish Taxpayer-Funded Sexual Harassment Settlements, then Resign

Trump’s former Attorney General nominee, former Rep. Matt Gaetz, has threatened to rejoin Congress and expose lawmakers who paid #MeToo sexual harassment lawsuits using taxpayers’ money, then resign.    Gaetz’s decision was prompted by the House Ethics Panel reversing its previous decision not to release his “damaging” ethics report after he withdrew his name for consideration for the AG position.*** During Trump’s first term, Gaetz had also threatened to expose members of Congress who used taxpayers’ money to settle #MeToo lawsuits but never followed through.  Meanwhile, rumor has it that sexual harassment is rampant in Congress, with female lawmakers maintaining a “creep list” of notorious offenders. According to Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA), taxpayers have lost over $15 million in secret sexual harassment lawsuit settlements. The Congressional Office of Compliance also maintains a list of settlements by year going back as far back as the 1990s. However, nothing has ever been done to publish the report.***

***

Kind of rare to see a woman get a man's sentence for this

A former Tennessee teacher who raped a 12-year-old boy inside her home and became pregnant was sentenced to 25 years in prison for her heinous sex crimes on Friday as one of her victim’s families told the once-trusted educator to “burn in hell.” Alissa McCommon, a fourth-grade teacher in Tipton County, pleaded guilty to a slew of sex charges related to five of her possible 21 potential victims. McCommon, previously accused of assaulting a former student of hers in 2021, pleaded guilty to one count of rape of a child, statutory rape, sexual exploitation of minors and solicitation of minors. McCommon was sentenced to 25 years in prison after Circuit Court Judge Blake Neill ordered all sentences to run concurrently with each other without the possibility of parole.***

She actually gave birth to one student's baby.

***

NYC Subways: kill her with fire!

A migrant from Guatemala has been arrested on allegations he lit a sleeping woman on fire inside a Coney Island F train on Sunday morning.*** The suspect entered the country and was detained by border patrol agents in Arizona in June 2018 — and so far authorities have not found a past criminal record for him in New York City, law enforcement sources said. Authorities were still working to confirm whether he is in the country legally, the sources said. He is suspected of lighting the woman on fire at about 7:30 a.m. on Sunday, then watching her burn to death in a shocking killing just three days before Christmas.***

***

Commuted federal death sentences except 3 hate criminals

President Biden is granting clemency to 37 of the 40 federal inmates facing death sentences, commuting their sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The three inmates who didn't receive clemency are the convicted murderer in the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting, the gunman at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, and the surviving Boston Marathon bomber. The announcement is sure to spark partisan debate, even though presidential commutation and pardon power are broad, constitutionally enshrined and irreversible.***

Bear in mind, the feds have charged the health insurance murderer with a death penalty eligible federal crime.

***

Excellent article by Gurwinder Bhogal about the murderer of Brian Thompson

***

Matt Gaetz sex and drugs report

The House Ethics Committee has published its report in the matter of Matt Gaetz at https://ethics.house.gov/press-releases/statement-of-the-committee-on-ethics-regarding-representative-matt-gaetz-2/. Lots of sex and drugs.

Gaetz has threatened to name names of other members of congress who get freaky and druggy. Let's see what he can prove.

***

Still think forensic science is incorruptible?

CBI identifies problems with more than 1,000 cases handled by its former star DNA scientist A criminal investigation into Missy Woods’ actions by the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office remains ongoing.

***

Great idea

Denver-area bars, restaurants partner with The Blue Bench to train bartenders in sexual-assault prevention Studies show that between 50% and 77% of sexual assaults involve alcohol consumption by the victim, perpetrator or both.

https://thebluebench.org says

The Blue Bench is a nonprofit organization committed to eliminating sexual assault and its impact through comprehensive issue advocacy, prevention, and care. Since its inception in 1983, The Blue Bench has served almost 500,000 survivors, loved ones, and community members. ***

***

Interesting omissions from Pres Biden's commutations

Paul Woolverton notes that Pres Biden did not commute the death sentences of four military criminals, Ronald Gray, Hasan Akbar, Timothy Hennis, Nidal Hasan. They remain on death row.

Akbar and Hasan are hate crime terrorists, so that is consistent with Pres Biden's refusal to commute the sentence of e.g., Dylan Roof.

Ronald Gray and Timothy Hennis, on the other hand, are just generic rapist murderers. Both committed multiple heinous murders.

None of them should have his sentence commuted. Just interesting that they escaped Pres Biden's notice.

***

[masterofd1saster]

CJ current events 19dec24

Every kid is one caring adult from a success story - YMCA

Jordan Neely [had] 42 prior arrests to his credit while still walking around as a free man**** After all, if fracturing an old woman’s nose and eye socket, exposing your genitalia to women, repeated heavy drug use, and an assortment of other repeated crimes don’t keep you in jail, what will?  So, when that criminal stepped onto the New York subway on May 3 of last year and began, per witnesses, “ranting insanely,” claiming that someone was going to die that day and that he did not mind going back to prison, the passengers were understandably terrified. Some prayed. Some tried to hide. Others tried to avoid eye contact.*** Greg Salsbury

Andre Zachary, Neely's father, is suing to obtain money from Neely's death. But where was he when Neely needed a caring adult?

***

Babylon Bee -

***

Abundant Life Christian School shooting

A 15-year-old girl shot eight people at her school on Monday around 1100 in Madison, Wisconsin. Two died, and she apparently killed herself. A 2d grader called 911 to report the murders.

John 10 quotes Jesus saying

 9 I am the door; a man will find salvation if he makes his way in through me; he will come and go at will, and find pasture.  10 The thief only comes to steal, to slaughter, to destroy; I have come so that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.

+++

A California man has been detained and had his guns seized after allegedly texting Wisconsin school shooter Natalie Rupnow about his plans to blow up a government building. Alexander Paffendorf, 20, was issued a gun-violence restraining order and detained by FBI agents after he was accused of messaging the 15-year-old shooter around the time of her attack on the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison on Monday. The Carlsbad resident allegedly told Rupnow that he “would arm himself with explosives and a gun and that he would target a government building,” according to a two-page restraining order obtained by CBS 8. How Paffendorf and Rupnow knew each other is not immediately clear. The FBI declined to comment.***

***

River Page notes

Ketanji Brown Jackson became the first Supreme Court justice to star in a Broadway musical this week, when she had a cameo in & Juliet, a “queer” retelling of Shakespeare’s classic in which Juliet decides not to kill herself and instead runs off to Paris with a nonbinary character. Supreme Court justices serve for life, which probably makes KBJ the most job-secure theater kid to have ever lived. Next time, we want to hear her sing.

More on the judicial front: Polling from Gallup, released yesterday, shows that Americans’ confidence in their country’s judicial system dropped to a record low of 35 percent this year. In the past four years, it’s dropped 24 percentage points. It’s almost as if political prosecutions are a terrible way to repair trust in the judicial system.

Three people have been confirmed dead following a shooting at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, including a teacher, a student, and the shooter, Natalie “Samantha” Rupnow, a 15-year-old girl who attended the school and died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Six others were injured. Madison mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway bristled at the idea that reporters would want information on the victims, saying in a press conference it was “none of y’all’s business” who was killed in the shooting. A purported manifesto has been circulating online, though police say that they cannot confirm its authenticity and are working to determine a motive.

In 2020, the average American city experienced a homicide rate spike of around 30 percent. Some have claimed that the rise was caused by a “police pullback” following the death of George Floyd in May of that year. But new research from the Brookings Institute suggests that murder rates were already rising and that Covid policies, which left young, poor men unemployed and out of school, might have had more to do with it.

More than $140,000 has been crowdfunded for the legal defense of Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan earlier this month. The funds are unsolicited, and Mangione’s lawyer has said he would “probably” not accept money from donors. But it’s the latest sign of the disturbing affection so many clearly have for the alleged killer. Meanwhile, a new Emerson College poll found that 41 percent of respondents under 30 find the shooting of Thompson “acceptable.”***

***

Total dirtbag -

A grand jury in Salt Lake City returned an indictment today charging Special Agent David Cole of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), 50, of South Jordan, Utah, with conspiring with another HSI special agent to sell alpha-PHP, a drug commonly referred to as “bath salts,” in Utah. According to court documents, Cole and another HSI special agent used their status as federal law enforcement officers to acquire bath salts by representing to others in HSI and in other law enforcement agencies that they were going to use the bath salts to conduct legitimate HSI investigations. Cole and his co-conspirator then sold bath salts to HSI confidential human sources for thousands of dollars and allowed those sources to resell the bath salts on the streets of Utah for a profit. Cole and his co-conspirator profited hundreds of thousands of dollars through their illegal drug sales.***

***

Good news: effective law enforcement in NYC

Bad news: it's China

Chen Jinping, 60, of New York, New York, pleaded guilty today to conspiring to act as an illegal agent of the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), in connection with opening and operating an undeclared overseas police station, located in lower Manhattan, for the PRC’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS).*** As alleged, Chen Jinping and co-defendant “Harry” Lu Jianwang conspired to act as illegal agents of the PRC government and also obstructed justice by destroying evidence of their communications with an MPS official. While acting under the direction and control of the MPS official, the defendants worked together to establish the first known overseas police station in the United States on behalf of the Fuzhou branch of the MPS. The police station — which closed in the fall of 2022 — occupied an entire floor in an office building in Manhattan’s Chinatown. Lu and Chen helped open and operate the clandestine police station. None of the participants in the scheme informed the U.S. government that they were helping the PRC government surreptitiously open and operate an undeclared MPS police station on U.S. soil. In October 2022, the FBI conducted a judicially authorized search of the illegal police station. In connection with the search, FBI agents interviewed both defendants and seized their phones. In reviewing the contents of these phones, FBI agents observed that communications between the defendants and an MPS official appeared to have been deleted. In subsequent consensual interviews, the defendants admitted to the FBI that they had deleted their communications with the MPS official after learning about the ongoing FBI investigation, thus preventing the FBI from learning the full extent of the MPS’s directions for the overseas police station. Chen faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison. Per Chen’s plea agreement, the government has agreed to dismiss the obstruction of justice charge against him. Lu has pleaded not guilty to both of the charges against him and is awaiting trial.***

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Should have to breathe diesel exhaust

Louisiana-based company Power Performance Enterprises Inc. (PPEI) and its president and owner, Kory B. Willis, were sentenced yesterday in federal court in Sacramento, California, for violating and conspiring to violate the Clean Air Act by tampering with the monitoring devices of emissions control systems of diesel trucks. U.S. District Court Judge John A. Mendez for the Eastern District of California sentenced Willis to serve 10 months of home confinement as part of a three-year term of probation and ordered Willis and PPEI to jointly pay $1.55 million in criminal fines. PPEI was ordered to complete a five-year term of probation. Willis and PPEI pleaded guilty in March 2022. In total, Willis and PPEI have been ordered to pay $3.1 million in criminal fines and civil penalties related to Clean Air Act enforcement.*** Willis and PPEI reached the top of the illegal delete tuning market, tuning over 175,000 vehicles according to Willis. Willis also stated that PPEI was the biggest custom tuning company in the world, servicing over 100,000 customers and tuning more than 500 vehicles a week. According to internal PPEI records, PPEI typically sold well over $1 million dollars of product per month. According to calculations by the EPA, the estimated emissions impact of PPEI’s sales of delete tunes between 2013 and 2018 alone are expected to cause over 100 million excess pounds of nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions over the life of the diesel trucks equipped with those products.   Deleting a diesel truck causes its emissions to increase dramatically. For example, for a fully deleted truck, which has had all emissions equipment removed or disabled, EPA testing quantified the increased emissions as follows: NOx increased 310 times, non-methane hydrocarbons increased 1,400 times, carbon monoxide increased 120 times and particulate matter increased 40 times. EPA’s Air Enforcement Division released a report in November 2020 finding that more than half a million diesel pickup trucks in the United States — approximately 15% of U.S. diesel trucks that were originally certified with emissions controls — have been illegally deleted.***

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Good - some accountability for violating mores

CNN — The House Ethics Committee secretly voted earlier this month to release its report into the conduct of former Rep. Matt Gaetz before the end of this Congress, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the matter. The report is now expected to be made public after the House’s final day of votes this year as lawmakers leave Washington for the holidays, those sources said. The vote, which has not previously been reported, amounts to a stark reversal for the panel after it had voted along party lines in late November not to release the results of the investigation. The decision to release the report suggests that some Republicans ultimately decided to side with Democrats on the matter, and it is unclear if the committee will once again change course now that it has voted.***

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[masterofd1saster]

CJ current events 12dec24

Signs of severe psych illness

Authorities in Butte County have identified the gunman who staged an attack Wednesday on a Christian elementary school that left two children wounded and ended with the attacker dead. On Thursday afternoon, Sheriff Kory Honea identified the shooter as Glenn Litton, 56. He described Litton as a homeless, mentally ill man with a long criminal record who targeted the school due to its affiliation with the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the scene of the attack. Authorities found a statement by Litton saying that “child executions” were imposed at the school in response to “America’s involvements in genocide and oppression of Palestinians” and attacks in Yemen. Honea identified the two injured kindergartners as 5-year-old Elias Wolford, who was shot once in the abdomen, and 6-year-old Roman Mendez, who sustained two gunshot wounds resulting in internal injuries. Both boys remained in critical condition Thursday afternoon.*** On Thursday, Honea said that Litton had a four-decade criminal history that included convictions across California, Nevada and Arizona for theft, fraud, identity theft and forgery. In March, Litton was arrested in Phoenix on suspicion of stealing more than $1,000 from a cash register at a CVS. On Nov. 12, he was arrested by San Francisco police on suspicion of being in possession of a stolen U-Haul truck and a forged license as well as having an outstanding warrant in San Bernardino County for alleged burglary.***

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Babylon Bee

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Fantastic comment on murder of Brian Thompson

The people celebrating Brian Thompson’s murder by turning him into an avatar for everything wrong with the American healthcare system remind me of nothing so much as Hollywood screenwriters, cunningly manipulating an audience into cheering on unforgivable acts of fictional violence.*** But this isn’t real. It’s just a story, a fantasy, a facile little fairy tale for ghouls. And the truth? We know what that looks like. We’ve seen it: shot from an awkward angle with poor resolution, bad lighting, and no sound. The truth is that Thompson lurches as the first bullet strikes him, the ungainly little sashay of a human being trying to regain his balance, not yet realizing he will never take another step. The truth is that, at the end, the killer jogs across the street and out of frame—and what’s left is a man, lying on the ground, shrouded in shadow and almost invisible. Dying. It’s not like in the movies at all.

***

Babylon Bee

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A prominent Black Lives Matter activist appeared to threaten Daniel Penny and called for violence after Penny was acquitted of criminally negligent homicide in the death of a deranged homeless man on the New York City subway last year. Hawk Newsome, who cofounded Black Lives Matter Greater New York and now leads a new activist group called Black Opportunities, shouted "It’s a small world" in the court shortly after the jury acquitted Penny, according to reporters in attendance. ***

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Never should have been charged

A former U.S. Marine sergeant who used a chokehold to restrain Jordan Neely, a homeless man, on a New York City subway car was found not guilty of criminally negligent homicide on Monday in Neely's death.*** "I've had enough of this; the system is rigged," Neely's father Andre Zachary told reporters outside the courthouse following the verdict.***

Oh really, Andre? Why was Jordan hungry? Why was he threatening people. Why was he unmedicated?

Maybe if you fed your son, he wouldn't be hungry. Maybe if you watched him, he wouldn't threaten people. Maybe if you cared for him, he would have taken his meds.

https://www.newsmax.com/us/daniel-perry-subway-death/2024/12/09/id/1190923

***

Still fair questions-

The UnitedHealthcare CEO who was fatally gunned down outside a Manhattan hotel reportedly lived separately from his wife – and her home now has a security guard posted outside after a sick bomb threat hoax. Brian Thompson, 50, and his wife, Paulette “Pauley” Thompson, had been dwelling in separate homes less than a mile from each other in Maple Grove, Minnesota, for years, the Wall Street Journal reported. Hours after a cold-blooded killer shot and killed Thompson on Wednesday morning in Midtown, both homes in the quiet suburban Minneapolis neighborhood received a bomb threat that evening, Maple Grove police officials said.***

If you hate the insurance company, why would you bomb the ex-wife?

If you're some poor schmo whose claim was denied, how would you know that Thompson was staying at that Hilton at that time?

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"Luigi Nicholas Mangione — a 26-year-old Ivy League grad and seething anti-capitalist"

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Bari & Co report

Police identified a top suspect in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson as an Ivy-educated former data engineer named Luigi Mangione. Authorities nabbed 26-year-old Mangione yesterday at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, with a ghost gun and a silencer as well as a handwritten manifesto and four fake IDs. Mangione was allegedly upset with the healthcare industry because of its treatment of his sick relative, according to the New York Post. Meanwhile, in January, he posted a book review of the Unabomber’s manifesto on a now-private Goodreads account, praising him as a “political revolutionary.”

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When one of the officers asked if he’d been to New York recently, he “became quiet and started to shake," according to a criminal complaint based on their accounts of the arrest.*** [His manifesto] had a line that said, “I do apologize for any strife or traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming.” Mangione also had a passport and $10,000 in cash — $2,000 of it in foreign currency, authorities said. Mangione, who said Hawaii was his most recent address, disputed the amount.***

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Wed

Stay classy Ann Arbor

Anti-Israel radicals smashed a University of Michigan regent’s window and painted "Divest" and "Free Palestine" on his wife’s car early Monday morning—the third time he’s faced such vandalism this year. Jordan Acker, a Jewish regent, said two mason jars filled with urine thrown through his window woke up him, his wife, and his three young daughters. The paint on his wife’s car also included a red triangle, a symbol commonly used by Hamas. "This is the third time that I—and now my family—have been the target of these Klan-like tactics," Acker wrote on Instagram. "We all need to call out this cowardly act attacking my family and my home for what it truly is—terrorism."***

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wed

Every law is cultural

Bari's crew -

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[masterofd1saster]

CJ current event 5dec24

British slog to euthanasia

Excellent column by Madeleine Kearns

***Even so, [Jamie] Hale—who has a master’s degree in philosophy, politics, and the economics of health—often thinks about how much his life costs the state. “I’m very aware I’m not cost-effective,” he added. “It’s very hard not to be aware you are the kind of financial burden the system is creaking under.”  Hale is deeply opposed to the assisted suicide bill that the United Kingdom’s Parliament is voting on this week. On November 29, its members will consider whether to advance a bill legalizing assisted dying for the terminally ill with a prognosis of six months or less. If the bill becomes law, an individual could self-administer a lethal drug prescribed by a physician after two doctors and a judge have signed off on the procedure. The bill legalizes assisted suicide, but not euthanasia, which is when someone else—typically a doctor—is the one to kill the patient. ***

Like many doctors who specialize in end-of-life care, Matthew Doré opposes assisted suicide. The honorary secretary of the Association of Palliative Medicine of Great Britain and Ireland, Doré said it’s common for people coming into a hospice to say, “I want to die, kill me now,” but once they have the holistic support they need, that feeling “just melts away, disappears pretty much completely in almost everyone.” What’s more, assisted suicide does not always lead to a more peaceful death, Doré said. Studies show that complications from the lethal drugs include burning, nausea, vomiting, and regurgitation, severe dehydration, seizures, and regaining consciousness. In Oregon, the annual complication rate is nearly 15 percent, although it’s likely higher given that “patients often ingest the lethal drugs without a healthcare professional present to record complications,” one study reported.

But there is another reason for legalizing assisted suicide: to save money. Once the jewel of the UK, the National Health Service has recently been dogged by staff shortages and strikes. A 2024 report found the UK lagging behind 10 other developed countries on hospital wait times. Only Canada had comparably long wait times, while the U.S. was one of the best-performing countries for timely access to care. Now, many in the UK are advocating for assisted suicide as a cost savings measure. Earlier this month, Telegraph columnist wrote that “assisted dying will leave society financially better off” as well as help “people protect their family wealth.”*** Jamie Hale agrees. “If you are genuinely saying these people are too expensive to keep alive, and for that reason we should be killing them, then you’ve completely crossed the moral Rubicon that can’t be defended,” he said. “That’s just pure eugenics . . . I don’t think it’s even worthy of a response in a civilized society.”***

wow -

just, wowza

***

How are kids getting drugs in lock up? Oh, gee, look at the time.

Denver Post notes

Lookout Mountain Youth Services Center in Golden on Friday, June 14, 2024. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post) At least 7 young people in Colorado detention facilities have been hospitalized this year after overdose-related calls At least seven young people in Colorado youth detention centers were hospitalized following overdose-related emergency calls this year, including three teens who required life-saving naloxone at a Colorado Springs facility on the same day over the summer. The Colorado Department of Human Services declined to provide The Denver Post with any information about overdoses at the state’s youth detention facilities, citing child privacy laws. The department says it doesn’t track the number of overdoses, so The Post surveyed fire departments in cities with youth services centers to compile these figures, Sam Tabachnik reports.

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Shockingly bad 'bama

*** Sherry Digmon is the co-owner of Atmore News, which covers a town of 13,000 nestled on the Alabama-Florida border. She also serves on the Escambia County School Board. Don Fletcher is the reporter for Atmore News. Cindy Jackson serves with Sherry on the board. And Ashley Fore is the payroll supervisor for the board. In a plot worthy of a John Grisham novel, last year they were all hauled into jail, in some cases strip searched, and had their mugshots aired on the local news. They were all charged with felonies that carried three-year prison sentences. Behind the charges was a scheme by long-time Escambia County District Attorney Stephen Billy to strongarm the school board into renewing the contract of then-School Superintendent Michele McClung. Both Billy and Sheriff Heath Jackson injected themselves into the issue, speaking at local GOP meetings and school board meetings, sending a threatening letter to the board, and insisting that everyone support McClung or face their “wrath.” Billy insisted that opposing McClung was a criminal act, and he reminded the board that he controlled the county’s grand jury.***

***

Must see movie

1) Vote to acquit: 2) if mistrial, DC moves court for grant of immunity.

***

Christopher Wray would have to resign or be fired first.

Pres-elect Trump has nominated Kash Patel to head the FBI. His wiki bio says

After graduating from law school in 2005, Patel worked as a public defender in Florida for eight years, first in the Miami-Dade County public defender's office and later as a federal public defender.[15][16] As a public defender he represented clients charged with felonies including international drug trafficking, murder, firearms violations, and bulk cash smuggling.[16][17] In 2014, Patel was hired as a trial attorney in the United States Department of Justice National Security Division, where he simultaneously served as a legal liaison to the Joint Special Operations Command.[15][17] In 2017, Patel was appointed senior counsel on counterterrorism at the House Intelligence Committee.[15][13][a]

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Understatement of the year: "He said Sabrina was known to 'be a little aggressive and had a temper.'” 

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Another protestor killed at Jan 6?

Rosanne Boyland died?

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Pres Biden pardoned his kid on Sun. Can Hunter stay clean through 20jan25?

***

Who knew?

Two major state programs to combat illegal cannabis recently sent out news releases lauding their collective seizures of some $544 million worth of illicit weed.*** For example, operations by the state Department of Justice’s Eradication and Prevention of Illicit Cannabis program, or EPIC, have seized about 77,000 cannabis plants in 36 counties this year. Yet, Siskiyou County alone produces an estimated 12 million to 16 million illegal plants per year. Therefore, if EPIC only focused on Siskiyou for a year, it would eradicate just 6% of the estimated local black market, he said. This sentiment was echoed by Kendall, who noted that in Mendocino County’s 35-square-mile Round Valley alone there are an estimated 1 million illegal marijuana plants. “The black market is as big and bad as ever,” he said.***

***

tues

Hunter Biden's pardon means that if he's called as witness at a grand jury or trial, he may not invoke his 5th Amendment right to silence.

BB-

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Well, she killed someone

A woman who admitted to drinking and who was driving well over twice the speed limit when she smashed into a golf cart, killing a bride who had just got married at a South Carolina beach, was sentenced Monday to 25 years in prison. Jamie Lee Komoroski pleaded guilty at the Charleston County courthouse to reckless homicide, felony DUI causing death and two counts of felony DUI causing great bodily injury before her sentencing.***

Police said Komoroski drank at several bars on April 28, 2023, and was driving 65 mph (105 kph) on a narrow Folly Beach road with a speed limit of 25 mph (40 kph) when she slammed into the golf cart leaving a wedding. Her blood-alcohol level was 0.26%, which is more than three times the legal limit to drive. The 34-year-old bride died still wearing her wedding dress. The groom suffered a brain injury and numerous broken bones. The cart was thrown 100 yards (91 meters) by the crash.***

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wed

BB-

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too good reddit not to share

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Gary Larsen crushing it

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If you don't like bad drivers on the road...

Aurora police say they’ve towed and impounded at least 193 vehicles under a new “three-strikes” law targeting drivers pulled over without a license, registration or insurance. A majority of Aurora’s City Council signed off on the law in September, with supporters arguing that confiscating the cars of drivers caught without any of the three documents was about protecting others on the road. “I’m a broken-windows kind of person in terms of criminal justice, and I believe that if you don’t get the small stuff, it turns into bigger stuff,” Mayor Mike Coffman said during a Sept. 23 council meeting. “There are a lot of people driving around with expired tags, they don’t have a valid license, and (they) don’t have insurance. And so I hope this sends a strong message.” Police spokesman Joe Moylan wrote in an email that 193 vehicles were towed from Nov. 1 through Dec. 5 under the law, which took effect at the end of October. Defendants have 30 days to bring valid registration and proof of insurance to the impound lot with either a driver’s license or another licensed driver to retrieve their vehicle. They can also hire a tow truck to take it somewhere else as long as they can provide proof that they own the vehicle, City Attorney Pete Schulte told the council.***

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[masterofd1saster]

CJ current events Thanksgiving 24

Lt Michael Bird killing Ashli Babbitt

Jonathan Turley writes -

I have previously written about the dubious investigations of the shooting of Ashli Babbitt on Jan. 6th and the alleged violation of the standards for the use of lethal force by the officer who shot her. I strongly disagreed with the findings of investigations by the Capitol Police and the Justice Department in clearing Captain Michael Byrd, who shot the unarmed protester. Now, Just the News has an alarming report of the record of Byrd that only magnifies these concerns.*** At the time, some of us familiar with the rules governing police use of force raised concerns over the shooting. Those concerns were heightened by the DOJ’s bizarre review and report, which stated the governing standards but then seemed to brush them aside to clear Byrd. The DOJ report did not read like any post-shooting review I have read as a criminal defense attorney or law professor. The DOJ statement notably does not say that the shooting was justified. Instead, it stressed that “prosecutors would have to prove not only that the officer used force that was constitutionally unreasonable, but that the officer did so ‘willfully.’” It seemed simply to shrug and say that the DOJ did not believe it could prove [the case]. While the Supreme Court, in cases such as Graham v. Connor, has said that courts must consider “the facts and circumstances of each particular case,” it has emphasized that lethal force must be used only against someone who is “an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and … is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.” *** Under these standards, police officers should not shoot unarmed suspects or rioters without a clear threat to themselves or fellow officers. That even applies to armed suspects who fail to obey orders.***

DoJ has prosecuted policemen for much less blameworthy homicides in the line of duty. Byrd said more or less that he was ok with shooting an unarmed female veteran.

The new report confirms prior accounts that Byrd had prior disciplinary and training issues. According to Just the News, they included “a failed shotgun qualification test, a failed FBI background check for a weapon’s purchase, a 33-day suspension for a lost weapon and referral to Maryland state prosecutors for firing his gun at a stolen car fleeing his neighborhood.”***

And he was promoted after killing Ashli Babbitt!

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Next time, she'll tell them to get a warrant

At about 6:30 p.m. on October 30, two police SUVs pulled up to the home of Brittany Patterson in rural Fannin County, Georgia. The 41-year-old realtor and mother of four was on the phone when she heard a knock on her door.

Police arrested her b/c her 10 y/o son walked one mile to his grandpa's house.

Apparently charged with viol OCGA § 16-5-60 (2024). That says

(b) A person who *** endangers the bodily safety of another person by consciously disregarding a substantial and unjustifiable risk that his or her act or omission will cause harm or endanger the safety of the other person and the disregard constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care which a reasonable person would exercise in the situation is guilty of a misdemeanor.

So walking to granpa's home in Fannin County when you're 10 is such a substantial and unjustifiable risk to kids that letting walk is gross deviation from reasonable care? How dangerous is Fannin County? Sounds like the problem is that Fannin County is a lawless place.

Maybe Fannin County voters should vote out their Sheriff and DA. If any judge approves of this, vote him out too.

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Explain again why drug crimes are victimless....

Lakewood mom, boyfriend arrested on suspicion of murder in 2-month-old baby’s meth exposure death

A Lakewood woman and her boyfriend were arrested on suspicion of first-degree murder after the woman’s two-month-old son died from methamphetamine toxicity, police officials said Thursday.

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Good

Matt Gaetz, the embattled former Florida congressman, withdrew from consideration for attorney general Thursday, saying he was “unfairly becoming a distraction” to President-elect Donald Trump’s transition. Gaetz dropped out amid allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, including a new report that surfaced Thursday of him having a second sexual encounter with a then-17-year-old girl in 2017. He has denied any wrongdoing.  Further, his meetings with Republican senators this week reportedly revealed that his nomination would get rejected in confirmation hearings.***

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/gaetz-attorney-general/2024/11/21/id/1188988

Maybe it was a graceful way to get him to resign from the House?

+++

Alleluia! etc

President-elect Donald J. Trump announced that he would nominate Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general, for the role. Ms. Bondi served on Mr. Trump’s legal team during his first impeachment, and she oversaw the filing of voting-related lawsuits in battleground states during his recent campaign.***

Former Florida AG.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/11/21/us/trump-gaetz-news

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Politics

Senate Democrats and Republicans clinched a late-night deal on Wednesday that clears the way for votes on a group of President Joe Biden's nominees for federal trial courts in exchange for not pushing forward with four nominees to serve on appellate courts, leaving vacancies that Republican President-elect Donald Trump can fill. The deal, described by a spokesperson for Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Thursday, was reached after Senate Republicans launched a campaign to try to stall and prevent Democrats from fulfilling their plan to confirm as many life-tenured judges as possible before Trump takes office in January.***

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/trump-senate-deal/2024/11/21/id/1189021/

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Daniel Penny case

***Dr. Satish Chundru disputed a New York City medical examiner’s determination that Daniel Penny’s chokehold killed Neely, who was behaving erratically on a subway the two men were riding. Penny’s defense says that he acted to protect frightened passengers and was trying only to restrain Neely, not to kill him.*** He told jurors that Neely’s medical records and bystander video don’t show telltale signs of known types of fatal chokeholds. Among the discrepancies, he said: the location and extent of bruising on Neely’s neck, and the small amount of petechiae — small red spots caused by subsurface bleeding — on his eyelids. “In your opinion, did Mr. Penny choke Mr. Neely to death?” defense lawyer Steven Raiser asked. “No,” replied Chundru, who has worked as a medical examiner for county governments in Florida and Texas. He said Neely died from “the combined effects” of synthetic marijuana, schizophrenia, his struggle and restraint, and a blood condition that can lead to fatal complications during exertion. “The chokehold did not cause death,” the pathologist said.***

***

National Review notes

 In February, Jackson Green and Donald Zepeda defaced the display cases for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution at the National Archives building in Washington, D.C. The vandals coated the cases in powdered red paint, supposedly to protest climate change. Both had been involved in previous climate-related disturbances, Green at the National Gallery of Art, Zepeda blocking a roadway. They were initially charged with misdemeanors. After the intervention of archivist Colleen Shogan, the DOJ raised the charges to felonies. Then, at Green’s sentencing, Shogan gave a statement in person to the federal court, calling for the maximum sentence, which is ten years. “These attacks on museums, and the unique treasures of our cultural history that we hold in trust for the nation, are not low-level, inconsequential, or victimless crimes,” she said. “Sending a strong message to clearly establish the significance of these crimes and deter future attacks is essential, not only for the National Archives, but for all cultural institutions across the country.” Green was sentenced to 18 months and Zepeda to 24 months, and both were ordered to pay restitution to the National Archives for the full cost of the damage, over $50,000. Though not the maximum, the penalties should deter any future attacks on the National Archives. Shogan’s commitment to her duty to protect our nation’s history is one of the more admirable acts by a public servant in recent memory.

***

Monterey Police Oct. 2017 Pete Hegseth rape investigation

Nobody wanted to prosecute for obvious reasons. That doesn't mean it is without political value.

***

Blunt instrument

Attorney dumps Aurora dentist just before jury selection, delaying trial in high-profile poisoning case The murder trial for an Aurora dentist accused of poisoning his wife was delayed Thursday after his attorney abruptly withdrew from the case just before jury selection was scheduled to begin. Denver attorney Harvey Steinberg cited two rules of professional conduct as reasons for his departure from the case: one, that his client was persisting in a course of action that he “reasonably believes is criminal or fraudulent,” and two, that his client was insisting on action he “considers repugnant or… has a fundamental disagreement (with),” according to the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office. Arapahoe County District Court Judge Darren Vahle on Thursday granted Steinberg’s request to withdraw from the case. That left his former client, James Craig, 46, without representation on the morning his jury trial was set to begin. The former Aurora dentist is charged with first-degree murder in the death of his wife, Angela Craig, 43. She died March 18, 2023, from lethal doses of cyanide and tetrahydrozoline, a decongestant found in over-the-counter eyedrops. Shelly Bradbury reports.

Typically, you'd be more circumspect in asking to withdraw.

***

When you leave your dna on a murder victims, it's hard to miss

***

Kill people and someone will notice

A Dallas anesthesiologist who injected dangerous drugs into patient IV bags, leading to one death and numerous cardiac emergencies, was sentenced today to 190 years in prison. Raynaldo Riviera Ortiz Jr., 60, was charged by criminal complaint in September 2022 and indicted the following month on charges related to tampering with IV bags used at a local surgical center. In April, following an eight-day trial, a jury convicted him of four counts of tampering with consumer products resulting in serious bodily injury, one count of tampering with a consumer product and five counts of intentional adulteration of a drug. He was sentenced today by Chief U.S. District Judge David Godbey for the Northern District of Texas, who found that Dr. Ortiz caused the death of his colleague and called his other conduct “tantamount to attempted murder.”*** between May and August 2022, numerous patients at Surgicare North Dallas suffered cardiac emergencies during routine medical procedures performed by various doctors. About one month after the unexplained emergencies began, an anesthesiologist who had worked at the facility earlier that day died while treating herself for dehydration using an IV bag. In August 2022, doctors at the surgical care center began to suspect tainted IV bags had caused the repeated crises after an 18-year-old patient had to be rushed to the intensive care unit in critical condition during a routine sinus surgery. A local lab analyzed fluid from the bag used during the teenager’s surgery and found bupivacaine (a nerve-blocking agent), epinephrine (a stimulant) and lidocaine (an anesthetic) — a drug cocktail that could have caused the boy’s symptoms, which included very high blood pressure, cardiac dysfunction and pulmonary edema. The lab also observed a puncture in the plastic shell that had been around the IV bag.*** Evidence at trial showed that Ortiz was facing disciplinary action at the time for an alleged medical mistake made in his one of his own surgeries, and that he potentially faced losing his medical license.***

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Lacking judicial restraint

but if it saves his life...

***

The only unsolved skyjacking

https://www.newsmax.com/us/fbi-hijacker-db-cooper/2024/11/24/id/1189228/

gives you the wavetops of the two cowboy state reports

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is not updated

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***

[masterofd1saster]

CJ current events 21nov24

Good on her - democracy works

Shelley Luther, who gained attention for defying COVID-19 restrictions at her Dallas salon

Read more at: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/115117929.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

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Why should he ever get out?

A Colorado man was sentenced yesterday to 35 years in prison and a lifetime term of supervised release for his distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and involvement with a dark-web website dedicated to CSAM. According to court documents, while still on parole for a 2013 Colorado conviction for sexual exploitation of a child, registered sex offender Christopher Carl Meier, 41, of Denver, became a member of a dark-web website dedicated to CSAM depicting boys and the discussion of the sexual abuse of minor boys. On July 9, Meier pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute CSAM and five counts of distribution of CSAM. Meier was a member of the website for more than 18 months and made more than 600 posts on the website. On this website, Meier advertised and distributed images and videos depicting minor boys engaged in sexual conduct. He made statements on the website admitting that he produced this material by tricking the boys into thinking that they were interacting online with a girl their own age and enticing them to disrobe and engage in sex acts on webcam. The FBI is aware of at least 65 victims of Meier’s conduct.***

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B/c ADA protects a right to sleep on a sidewalk and eat out of a dumpster?

The Justice Department announced today that it has opened an investigation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) into whether the State of Michigan unnecessarily institutionalizes adults with serious mental illness in state psychiatric hospitals. The department will investigate whether the state fails to provide necessary community-based mental health services to enable people to transition from the state psychiatric hospitals and remain stable in the community. Prior to the announcement, the department informed the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and the State Attorney General’s Office of the initiation of the investigation.***

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Probably thought he was smarter than FBI, Secret Service, sheriffs

Alan W. Filion, 18, of Lancaster, California, pleaded guilty today to four counts of making interstate threats to injure the person of another. Filion faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison on each count. Filion is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 11, 2025.*** According to the plea agreement, from approximately August 2022 to January 2024, Filion made more than 375 swatting and threat calls, including calls in which he claimed to have planted bombs in the targeted locations or threatened to detonate bombs and/or conduct mass shootings at those locations. He targeted religious institutions, high schools, colleges and universities, government officials, and numerous individuals across the United States. Filion was 16 at the time he placed the majority of the calls.*** According to court documents, Filion became a serial swatter for both profit and recreation. He claimed in a Jan. 19, 2023, online post that his “first” swatting was like “2 to 3 years ago” and that “6-9 months ago [he] decided to turn it into a business. . .” On several occasions, Filion placed posts on social-media channels advertising his services and swatting-for-a-fee structure. On Jan. 18, Filion, then 17-years-old, was arrested in California on Florida state charges arising from a May 2023 threat he made to a religious institution in Sanford, Florida. In that threat, he claimed to have an illegally modified AR-15, a Glock 17 pistol, pipe bombs, and Molotov cocktails. He said that he was going to imminently “commit a mass shooting” and “kill everyone” he saw. Filion pleaded guilty today in federal court to making that threat.***

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You're better than Twitter/X?

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Every society has crime

A stabbing attack at a vocational school in the eastern Chinese city of Wuxi on Saturday left eight people dead and 17 others injured, local police said. The attack took place at the Wuxi Vocational Institute of Arts and Technology in Yixing, a smaller city within Wuxi, at around 6:30 p.m. local time, the Yixing police said in a statement. The suspect, a 21-year old male student surnamed Xu, was detained on site. Police said Wu had failed his examinations and could not graduate, and that he was dissatisfied about his pay at an internship. He decided to vent his frustrations via the attack, the statement said.*** This is the second deadly attack within a week after a man drove his car into people at a sports facility in the southern city of Zhuhai, leaving 35 people dead and injured 43 others. China has seen a number of attacks in which suspects appear to target members of the public at random.*** [3 other random mass attacks.]

If you think capitalism is alienating, try communism or socialism.

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/china-knife-attack-yixing-stabbing-school-xu/2024/11/17/id/1188352

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Marlette has a point

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How could you work for an law enforcement?

White Plains, Maryland – An antifascist Redditor and self-proclaimed “anarcho-communist” has been unmasked as a Special Agent for the United States Secret Service (USSS). Thanks to publicly available information, counter-extremism researchers with the Justice Report can confidently name 30-year-old Thomas Jack “TJ” Hamil—an 1811 employee for the Department of Homeland Security—as a lifelong anarchist, left-wing extremist, and a devout follower of “Antifascist” shock jock Robert Evans. Hamil—who began his career in law enforcement as a uniformed officer for the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department in 2017—would climb the institutional ladder***

He even describes himself as a “walking talking infoshop” of anarchist political theory and credits online antifascists for radicalizing him against “the right” via several different corporate-sponsored podcasts.*** One now-deleted post made on November 8th appeared to be an urgent cry for help, with the user /u/endon40—now identified as Hamil—begging for forgiveness and asking for ways to “get out” of his “shameful” law enforcement career ahead of President-Elect Donald J. Trump’s impending second term.***

“I want to leave my job,” he said. “Maybe go work as an advocate for something like the ACLU or SPLC…I feel totally lost …Is it even possible for me to get back on the right side of things anymore?” He said. In response, Hamil’s post would receive a mixed assortment of comments from antifascists, with some outright disbelieving him, while others, staying true to their ACAB values, admitted he could never be trusted among them for being a so-called “glowie.” Frustrated, Hamil offered to show proof of his federal credentials to any one of the board’s anonymous ‘Antifa’ moderators to corroborate his claims.***

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“Keep Our Kids Safe.”

The small Columbia County town of St. Helens erupted in fury Friday over allegations that local school district officials badly mishandled the case of two St. Helens High School teachers arrested this week on charges of sexually abusing students for years. The allegations follow a $3.5 million payout earlier this year by the school district to a former student abused by another teacher and a promise nearly a year ago by Superintendent Scot Stockwell to make sure no other students would be harmed. By afternoon, Principal Katy Wagner had been placed on paid leave, school Board Chair Ryan Scholl had stepped down and the remainder of the board placed Stockwell on paid leave at a hastily called emergency meeting held via Zoom. Earlier in the day, students and their families took to the streets in protest to call for the school leaders to resign. School was canceled districtwide, with officials saying only that they hoped to be able to resume normal operations Monday.***

Stearns, 46, faces seven charges of second-degree sexual abuse and a charge of third-degree abuse after being arrested Tuesday at the school district, according to the St. Helens Police Department. Stearns is charged with abusing six students starting in 2015. Mark Collins, 64, is a retired St. Helens High School math teacher who was living in Beaverton at the time of his arrest on Tuesday, police said. He was charged with two counts of second-degree sexual abuse and one count of attempted second-degree sexual abuse of three students starting in 2017, court records show.*** Hogue said two detectives contacted Weaver after learning of the video. They began monitoring comments on the post and contacting people who alleged inappropriate physical touching by teachers for years, Hogue said.

On Oct. 15, authorities served a grand jury subpoena on the school district seeking the personnel files of both Stearns and Collins and any complaints from a list of former students.*** The material obtained through the subpoena verified that students at the time had reported alleged inappropriate physical contact involving the two teachers to the school administration but that those reports were never shared with police or state officials as required by law, Hogue said.*** In response to his video, Weaver said he started getting private messages from students still enrolled at the high school, writing that sexual misconduct involving teachers was still a problem. Others directly commented on his video, sharing similar concerns.***

Janci’s suit on behalf of Jessica Doe alleged the district’s inaction allowed Wroblewski to groom the 16-year-old girl on the track team in 2017 and sexually abuse her on school grounds and at his home over seven months until his arrest in 2018. He was sentenced to four years and two months in prison after pleading guilty to five counts of second-degree sexual abuse of an underage girl.*** Stearns has pleaded not guilty. According to the indictment, he is accused of sexually abusing six students from 2015 to 2020. He allegedly touched their necks, chests, buttocks or mouth inappropriately, the indictment says. Collins also pleaded not guilty. He is accused of abusing three students between 2017 and Jan. 21, 2023, allegedly touching their inner thighs or in one case “attempting to cause” the student to touch his penis, according to the indictment.***

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Laken Riley murder trial

ATHENS, Ga. — Slain Georgia nursing student Laken Riley “fought for her life” for a staggering 18 minutes before her skull was crushed by an illegal migrant, prosecutors said Friday — as opening statements got underway for the shocking murder case that was a cornerstone of the presidential election. Riley, 22, was found viciously murdered on the University of Georgia campus on Feb. 22, shortly after her friend reported that she had not returned from her morning run. On the first day of the bench trial, prosecutors claimed that suspect Jose Ibarra, 26 — an illegal migrant linked to the violent Venezuelan Tren de Aragua prison gang — smashed Riley’s head in and asphyxiated her when she resisted his sexual attack.***

After lunch, the judge was shown photos of Ibarra’s scratch injuries that were taken the day after Riley’s murder. The images showed cuts on his hands, wrists and arms. Riley had Ibarra’s DNA under her fingernails, prosecutors said.***

On Friday, defense attorney Dustin Kirby delivered less than 10 minutes of opening statements, focusing on the fact that the prosecution’s case was supposedly grounded in “circumstantial” evidence. “The evidence in this case is very good that Laken Riley was murdered,” Kirby said. “The evidence that Jose Ibarra killed Laken Riley is circumstantial.” Kirby said the judge shouldn’t accept the conclusions surrounding the DNA, fingerprints and other evidence. “Upon a closer look … the evidence that links Mr. Ibarra to that event is lacking,” Kirby said.

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Tues

What exactly is the context for "my bottom hurts and I like breaking the law?"

The board of commissioners chair at the center of the voting controversy in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, involving the Senate race between Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) and Republican challenger David McCormick said her comments about violating laws were “misinterpreted.” Diane Ellis-Marseglia tried to walk back her words on Monday, suggesting she did not mean she supported breaking the law or violating the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. She claimed that what she said was misinterpreted, misconstrued, and taken out of context, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. She also apologized for her comment and the “confusion it caused.” “I apologize for all the upset and confusion it caused,” said Ellis-Marseglia, a Democrat in Bucks County. *** “I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country, and people violate laws anytime they want,” Ellis-Marseglia said last week. “So, for me, if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention to it.”***

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Daniel Penny trial

Prosecution rested on Mon. Defense started presenting evidence.

Daniel Penny’s sister and childhood friend pleaded his case to jurors at his manslaughter trial Monday — describing the former Marine as a “calm and peaceful” surfing buff who earned a reputation for honesty in their tight-knit Long Island hometown. “People always spoke so highly of him,” Alexandra Fay, who grew up on the same block as Penny in beachside West Islip, told Manhattan jurors of her one-time neighbor, who is charged with “recklessly” choking homeless man Jordan Neely to death on a subway train last May. “He was so kind. If anything he was extra kind … He always spoke up,” Fay added, grinning in the direction of Penny, 26, who sat at the defense table in Manhattan Supreme Court.*** NY Post

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Wed

Maybe he doesn't want a dirtbag for AG

Damaging testimony about former Republican congressman Matt Gaetz, President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for U.S. attorney general, was accessed by an unidentified hacker, The New York Times reported Tuesday. The hacker, using the alias Altam Beezley, downloaded a computer file Monday that contained sworn testimony from a woman who said she had sex with Gaetz in 2017 when she was 17, according to the report. One of the 24 leaked exhibits also contained corroborating testimony from a second woman who said she witnessed the encounter, according to the Times. The leaked documents include information that is under seal with the Department of Justice, which opted against filing charges against Gaetz in the matter, and the House Ethics Committee, which also investigated Gaetz until he resigned from Congress in the hours after Trump announced him as his nominee for AG last week.  None of the leaked information appeared to have been made public by the hacker as of Tuesday morning, and the person's possible motive is unclear, according to the Times.***

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/hacker-testimony-matt-gaetz/2024/11/19/id/1188643

***A lawyer for two women who spoke with the Ethics Committee told CBS News on Monday that they testified that Gaetz paid them directly and repeatedly for sex, and said Venmo transactions for the encounters were obtained by the panel. The attorney, Joel Leppard, also said the women told House investigators that Gaetz asked about "party favors" and "vitamins" at upcoming parties via text messages, which was understood to be code for drugs. One of Leppard's clients testified before the Ethics Committee that she witnessed  Gaetz having sex with a 17-year-old against a game table during a July 2017 party, months after he was sworn in as a House member.

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That's going to be expensive

CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — Police on Okinawa arrested a Marine last week on suspicion of setting a hotel room on fire in an attempt gone wrong to create a romantic evening. A sergeant assigned to Camp Schwab was taken into custody at the Naha police station at 1:41 p.m. Friday after he “completely burned” the room the previous day, a spokesman for Okinawa Prefectural Police said by phone Tuesday. The Marine lit about 20 candles in the room, then left to pick up his girlfriend at Naha Airport, according to police. The room caught fire between 10 and 10:30 p.m., the spokesman said. The Marine told police he “lit the candles to prepare a surprise for his partner” and apologized for “putting the people of the hotel and surrounding area at risk,” the spokesman said.***

Pay them some gomen money, and the case might go away.

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Maybe, if Daniel Penny were not in a jury trial

It was just before 8:30 a.m. Monday, the police said, when a man approached a construction worker on West 19th Street in Manhattan and, without warning, stabbed him in the gut and ran off. The victim was soon declared dead. A violent spree was just starting, the police said. By 11 a.m., the assailant had fatally stabbed a man who was fishing by the side of the East River, and had attacked a 36-year-old woman near the United Nations. She was pronounced dead several hours later, the police said.

The rampage ended when a cabdriver who had seen the third stabbing followed the attacker from the crime scene and then alerted a police officer, who took the man into custody. The man’s clothes were spattered with blood, and he had two bloody knives, the police said. Late Monday, the police said the man, Ramon Rivera, was being charged with three counts of first-degree murder. Mr. Rivera, 51, appeared to be homeless, the police said. He was released from the Department of Correction’s custody last month after being jailed on burglary and assault charges, a spokeswoman for the agency said.*** Mr. Rivera had been arrested at least eight times in the city, most recently on a larceny charge in Manhattan in October, according to officials. That case remained active as of Monday, and the Legal Aid Society lawyer representing Mr. Rivera in the case declined to comment.***

Mr. Rivera was held in several city jails from Feb. 19 to Oct. 17, according to a Department of Correction spokeswoman. On May 7, while in custody, he was charged with assaulting a police officer and an emergency medical worker at a psychiatric prison ward at Bellevue Hospital, the police document says. His most recent arrest was the day he was released, when he was charged with larceny for stealing a bowl, the police document says. Mr. Rivera’s criminal record outside New York dates back to a battery charge in Polk County, Fla., in May 2003, the document says. He was arrested four more times in Florida on various charges from 2006 to 2010. In 2017 and 2018, he was charged with assault in two Ohio cases.***

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/18/nyregion/nyc-stabbings-manhattan.html

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Daniel Penny interrogation video - thank you Free Press

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Lake Riley

ATHENS, Ga. - Jose Ibarra, 26, was found guilty Wednesday on all counts in the murder of 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley. The verdict was delivered late in the morning by Judge H. Patrick Haggard after a high-profile trial that spanned several days of testimony and closing arguments.*** Following the impact statements, both the prosecution and defense spoke and then Judge Haggard delivered his sentence – life in prison without the possibility of parole on one count of malice murder; life in prison without the possibility of parole on one count of kidnapping; 20 years on one count of aggravated assault; 12 months for hindrance of an emergency phone call; 12 months for one county of tampering of evidence; and 5 years on one Peeping Tom count.***

https ://www .fox5atlanta .com/news/jose-ibarra-guilty-murder-laken-riley-georgia close gaps to make link work

Was the death penalty on the table in Laken Riley case? No, prosecutors before the trial chose not to pursue the death penalty against Jose Ibarra but, according to Associated Press reporting this month, did notify the court in a filing that they were seeking life without parole.***

https ://www .11alive .com/article/news/crime/trials/jose-ibarra-guilty-verdict-prosecutors-did-not-seek-death-penalty/85-fcdab416-7bb0-4051-8734-4196b31ddc04 close gaps to make link work

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Good

Thirty years after South Carolina killer mom Susan Smith was put behind bars for drowning her two toddler sons, a board unanimously voted to deny her parole after she appeared on a jailhouse court feed on Wednesday morning. Smith appeared emotional and crying on the feed.  "I know that what I did was horrible…I’m sorry that I put them through that...I wish I could take that back, I really do...I was just scared," she said. "I didn’t know how to tell the people that loved them that they would never see them again…I’m sorry, I know that’s not enough…just words, but they come from my heart."*** Smith will be eligible for parole again in two years. 

https ://www .foxnews .com/us/susan-smith-prosecutor-says-she-meant-serve-life-prison-killer-mom-gets-parole-hearing close gaps to make link work

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Idaho murders

Bryan Kohberger, the man accused of killing four University of Idaho students in 2022, can face the death penalty, a judge ruled Wednesday. On Wednesday, Ada County Judge Steven Hippler denied their motion in his ruling. "The court concludes relief in defendant’s favor is not warranted on any of the motions," Hippler wrote in his 55-page order.*** Kohberger was charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary, in connection with the fatal stabbing of four University of Idaho students – Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20.***

https://www .foxnews .com/us/bryan-kohberger-can-face-death-penalty-convicted-idaho-college-slayings close gaps to make link work

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Want to see the insanity of unchecked bureaucratic power?

Http s://www .thefp .com/p/brittany-patterson-georgia-mom-jailed you'll have to fill the gaps in the link - thanks, tumblr