#fox can have a little manslaughter as a treat

[rooksunday]

the image of an exhausted commander fox, sitting in his office, throttling a datapad and yelling WHY IS MY JOB SPREADSHEETS?? before yowling like a space banshee and frisbeeing the thing through the open window with all the force of kamino-guaranteed strength bolstered by buereaucratic rage, where the datapad sails merrily and speedily for a longer distance than many would credit before impacting with concussive force against the surprisingly soft skull of emperor palpatine, gladhanding for the press in the courtyard of the senate below

the resulting explosion is caught on many cameras

[movietvtechgeeks]

Latest story from https://movietvtechgeeks.com/hollywoods-100-years-sexual-harassment/

Hollywood's 100 years of sexual harassment

Harvey Weinstein may have brought a big reminder to everyone of just how sleazy it can be in Hollywood, but since the days of the desert town being settled, women and men have been groped, used and traded around studio heads just to land a part in a film. For anyone thinking the days of the so-called casting couch were long gone, this past week has been eye-opening. The growing list of women directing allegations at Harvey Weinstein suggests they never left Hollywood. Here’s a look at some cases from the past and present. These are just a handful that are known so you can imagine how many thousands have gone unreported. FIRST MAJOR SEX SCANDAL In the first scandal to shake Hollywood, the comedian Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle attended a wild party in San Francisco in 1921 that ended in the death of actress Virginia Rappe. Rappe, writhing in pain from a ruptured bladder, accused Arbuckle of raping her. When she died days later, he was charged with murder, which was downgraded to manslaughter. Arbuckle was acquitted after three trials. Actor Errol Flynn had a two-year affair with Beverly Aadland, starting when she was 15. At the time of the affair Flynn had already been accused — and found not guilty — of the statutory rape of two underage girls in 1942. “I was scared,” Aadland wrote in People. “He was just too strong for me. I cried. At one point he tore my dress. Then he carried me off to another room, and I was still carrying on. What was going through my head was, what was I going to tell my mother?” HARVEY WEINSTEIN'S YOUNG FIND Just hours after Ben Affleck condemned the sexual harassment allegations against Harvey Weinstein — saying he was “saddened and angered”  by claims of alleged sexual harassment and assault made against the movie mogul by some of the biggest stars in Hollywood — Hilarie Burton claimed Affleck groped her when she was a host of MTV’s TRL. A video recently surfaced from 2004 showing the "Batman" star touching Anne-Marie Losique's breasts and suggested she go topless for interviews. He then lifts and turns her in his lap so she’s facing the camera. “We could do the interview like this,” he says, embracing her tightly and nestling his face on her chest. “That’s a lovely perfume you have on,” he says, repeating an earlier comment. ‘BE NICE TO ME’ Joan Collins says she lost out on the lead role in “Cleopatra” because she wouldn’t sleep with the studio head. “I had tested for ‘Cleopatra’ twice and was the front-runner. He took me into his office and said, ‘You really want this part?’ And I said, ‘Yes. I really do.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘then all you have to do is be nice to me.’ It was a wonderful euphemism in the Sixties for you know what. But I couldn’t do that. In fact, I was rather wimpish, burst into tears and rushed out of his office.” The role went to Elizabeth Taylor. AMERICA’S LITTLE DARLING In her memoir “Child Star,” actress Shirley Temple claimed that an MGM producer known to have an “adventuresome casting couch” unzipped his trousers and exposed himself to her during their first meeting in 1940. She was 12. Being innocent of male anatomy, she responded with nervous laughter, and he threw her out of his office. Fortunately, she had already signed her contract with MGM. ‘OVERCROWDED BROTHEL’ Marilyn Monroe was no stranger to lecherous studio chiefs and filmmakers, and in her memoir, “My Story,” she didn’t hold back: “I met them all. Phoniness and failure were all over them. Some were vicious and crooked. But they were as near to the movies as you could get. So you sat with them, listening to their lies and schemes. And you saw Hollywood with their eyes — an overcrowded brothel, a merry-go-round with beds for horses.” GROPED FOR YEARS Judy Garland was pawed and propositioned for sex by studio bigwigs at MGM between the ages of 16 and 20, according to author Gerald Clarke, who wrote “Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland.” One of the most notorious harassers was allegedly Louis B. Mayer, the head of the studio. “Mayer would tell her what a wonderful singer she was, and he would say ‘you sing from the heart, ’ and then he would place his hand on her left breast,” Clarke wrote. STILL AT LARGE Filmmaker Roman Polanski pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with Samantha Geimer, then a 13-year-old aspiring actress, during a photo shoot in Los Angeles in 1977. He gave her champagne and Quaaludes. “I didn’t want to have sex,” Geimer wrote in her memoir, “The Girl.” ″But apparently that is what was going to happen.” Polanski fled the United States before final sentencing and is still wanted by judicial authorities. He has since faced more rape allegations. CASTING COUCH NOT JUST FOR WOMEN Till now many of us believe that casting-couch victims are only females, but you are completely wrong. Many male actors have experienced it but very few of them openly admitted it. In April 2010, Ryan Phillippe talked about it on a radio talk show. Ryan said when he was 19-years-old that he had to flee a “creepy” casting couch session. AMERICA’S DAD Bill Cosby, the “Cosby Show” star once known as America’s Dad, is facing a retrial on charges he drugged and molested a former Temple University employee at his home in 2004. He could get 10 years in prison. Cosby has said the encounter was consensual. He is free on $1 million bail. Dozens of additional accusers have come forward, including 13 women whom prosecutors want to call as witnesses to show that they were drugged and violated in similar fashion. ‘GOT THE WRONG GIRL’ Charlize Theron was new in Hollywood but knew the warning signs when she went to an audition. “I thought it was a little odd that the audition was on a Saturday night at his house in Los Angeles, but I thought maybe that was normal,” she told Marie Claire in 2005. “I go inside and he’s offering me a drink, and I’m thinking, ‘My god, this acting stuff is very relaxed.’ But it soon becomes very clear what the situation was. I was like, ‘Not going to happen! Got the wrong girl, buddy!’” HELEN MIRREN In 2007, Helen Mirren spoke openly about her casting-couch experience in 1964, with director Michael Winner. Helen stated, “I was mortified and incredibly angry. I thought it was insulting and sexist, and I don’t think any actress should be treated like that-like a piece of meat-at all.” However, Michael Winner denied about the incident, “I don’t remember asking her to turn around, but if I did I wasn’t being serious. I was only doing what the [casting] agent asked me—and for this, I get reviled! Helen’s a lovely person, she’s a great actress and I’m a huge fan, but her memory of that moment is a little flawed.” OSCAR WINNER Two women who worked on Casey Affleck’s film “I’m Still Here” filed sexual harassment lawsuits against him in 2010. One woman accused him of crawling into her bed without her consent while she was asleep, while the other woman said Affleck pressured her to stay in his hotel room and “violently” grabbed her arm when she refused. Both claims were settled out of court for an undisclosed amount in 2010. Affleck has repeatedly denied the allegations. He went on to win the best actor Oscar for “Manchester by the Sea.” MEGAN FOX It is quite shocking that Megan Fox had experienced casting-couch after she became famous. In an interview with British GQ in 2009, Fox told, “Any casting-couch shit I’ve experienced has been since I’ve become famous. It’s really so heartbreaking. Some of these people! Like Hollywood legends. You think you’re going to meet them and you’re so excited, like, ‘I can’t believe this person wants to have a conversation with me,’ and you get there and you realize that’s not what they want, at all. It’s happened a lot this year actually.” THE TWO COREYS In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Feldman discusses how he was repeatedly molested by adult males in the industry, saying these men would pass many young stars 'back and forth to each other.' He also reveals that his closest friend, Corey Haim, was raped when he was just 11 by a producer, the start of a long cycle of sexual abuse that Feldman believes led to his friend's problems with drugs and alcohol later in life. Haim would struggle with drugs up until his death in 2010 at the age of 38, a death that Feldman blames on the men who abused the actor. Feldman's comments come just days after another former child star, Elijah Wood, also gave an interview talking about the pedophilia problem in Hollywood.

Movie TV Tech Geeks News

[kansascityhappenings]

Heartbroken daughter remembers mother of 6 killed by wrong-way driver in I-70 crash

BLUE SPRINGS, Mo. – Less than 24 hours after her mother was killed in a wrong-way, head-on crash, the victim’s daughter described their final moments together.

She worked at Waffle House, but most of her regulars didn’t know her as Heather Blackman. Instead, she was known by both her work name tag and her license plate: “Hummingbird.”

Eighteen-year-old Chloe Atkinson said it’s because her mother loved to hum.

She and Heather were headed to Target at about 9:30 p.m. Monday. The pair was heading east on Interstate 70 near Adams Dairy Parkway in Blue Springs.

“We were driving, and then I looked down at my phone,” Chloe said. “Then I saw headlights, and then, that’s it.”

In that instant, police say a drunk driver going the wrong way on I-70 killed the 44-year-old mom.

Chloe also went to the hospital and was treated for bruises from her seatbelt and abdominal pain.

“The on-ramp kind of comes up at you, so you can’t really see anything until the last little bit,” Heather’s brother Dana Graf said. “That’s the exit they were going to take.”

Missouri Highway Patrol says 37-year-old Desiree Smith was arrested for driving drunk.

They’ll be asking prosecutors to seek involuntary manslaughter charges, but she hasn’t been formally charged at this time. As of Tuesday night, Smith was still in the hospital with serious injuries.

“We hope that by sharing our story and talking a little bit about it, that it can help prevent even one other individual from carrying out a senseless act,” Graf said.

The act took away a single mother of six, her kids ranging in age from 13 to 22. (Her family said she had one child who died as a baby.)

“She provided for these kids all by herself,” Heather’s mother Theresa Hieronymus said. “Heather, she was a very strong person, very strong willed.”

She loved playing card games over the holidays with her big family. She left behind five siblings, five kids, one granddaughter and 18 nieces and nephews.

The family’s deep grief was accompanied by occasional, reminiscent laughter.

“We’re a family of jokers, of practical jokers, and Heather was one of them,” Hieronymus said.

“As my mom joked, she once put me in the dryer,” Graf said. “We got in an argument one time. She’s four years older than me, and she punched me with my own fist!”

“She was kind and loving and she did whatever she could for us,” Chloe said through tears.

Her mother said Heather’s kids were her first priority.

“We as a family, we just ask, we beg, that before folks get behind the wheel, if they’ve had something to drink, that they pause. They stop and they think about it,” Graf said.

Friends and family have started a Facebook fundraiser page and a GoFundMe page to raise money for Blackman’s funeral expenses.

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2019/06/26/heartbroken-daughter-remembers-mother-of-6-killed-by-wrong-way-driver-in-i-70-crash/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2019/06/26/heartbroken-daughter-remembers-mother-of-6-killed-by-wrong-way-driver-in-i-70-crash/

[douglasacogan]

Is Prez Trump gearing up for a big Memorial Day clemency push for servicemembers?

The question in this post is prompted by lots of new news reports, such as this lengthy one from Fox News headlined "Trump weighs pardons for servicemembers accused of war crimes, as families await decision." Here are excerpts:

President Trump is considering potential pardons for military members and contractors accused of war crimes as Memorial Day approaches -- deliberations that have prompted warnings from critics that the move could undermine the rule of law but also raised the hopes of their families who say the servicemembers were wrongly prosecuted.

Jessica Slatten, in an interview Thursday, told Fox News she's praying for Trump to pardon her brother, Nicholas Slatten, one of several Blackwater contractors charged in the shooting deaths of Iraqi civilians in September 2007. "Nick is innocent and our family is terrified that he will die in prison for a killing that someone else confessed to multiple times," she said. The

Blackwater case, and the 2007 massacre at the heart of it, is one of the more controversial portfolios before the president. The New York Times first reported that Trump was weighing possible pardon decisions on an expedited basis going into the holiday weekend.

Speaking to reporters Friday, Trump confirmed he’s looking at a handful of cases, while indicating he could still wait to make his decision. “We teach them how to be great fighters, and then when they fight, sometimes they get really treated very unfairly, so we’re going to take a look at it,” he said. “[The cases are] a little bit controversial. It’s very possible that I’ll let the trials go on, and I’ll make my decision after the trial.”

The review spurred harsh criticism from Democratic lawmakers as well as former top military officials, especially since not all of the accused have faced trial yet. "Obviously, the president can pardon whoever he thinks it's appropriate to pardon, but ... you have to be careful as a senior commander about unduly influencing the process before the investigation has been adjudicated," said retired Navy Adm. William McRaven, former head of Joint Special Operations Command.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said in a statement: "If he follows through, President Trump would undermine American treaty obligations and our military justice system, damage relations with foreign partners and give our enemies one more propaganda tool."

The lawyers and family members of the accused, however, insist these cases are not as clear-cut as they've been portrayed -- and, to the contrary, have been marred by legal problems. The cases include those of former Green Beret Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, who admitted to killing a suspected Taliban bomb maker; Navy SEALS Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher, whose own SEALS turned him in for allegedly shooting unarmed civilians and killing a 15-year-old ISIS suspect in his custody with a knife; four Marine snipers who were caught on video urinating on the corpses of suspected Taliban members; and Slatten.

Slatten is one whose case did go to trial. In fact, he faced three of them. The first ended in a conviction, but it was later thrown out -- as federal judges said he should have been tried separately from three other co-defendants, one of whom said he, and not Slatten, fired the first shots.

The second ended in a mistrial, and the third resulted in a guilty verdict. He faces a mandatory life sentence without parole, but his legal team is fighting to set him free. "Prosecuting veterans for split-second decisions in war zone incidents is wrong," Slatten's attorney said in a letter to the White House counsel's office obtained by Fox News. "Prosecuting ones for killings they did not commit is doubly so."...

Three of the other Blackwater contractors involved in the incident -- Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard -- were convicted of manslaughter, but the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that their mandatory 30-year sentence was a violation of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

The sentences had been so severe due to a charge related to the use of machine guns. The court noted that the charge was based on a statute meant to combat gang violence, not contractors in a war zone using government-issue weapons. Their cases were sent back down to a lower court, and they are awaiting new sentences.

It is unclear if Slough, Liberty or Heard are among those Trump is considering for pardons, but Slough's wife Christin is hoping for the best. "I think that we're cautiously optimistic," she told Fox News. She said that her husband is "more than well deserving" of a pardon and is hoping that Trump will come through where other administrations have not....

Martin Dempsey, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned of the consequences that pardons could bring. "Absent evidence of innocence of injustice the wholesale pardon of US servicemembers accused of warcrimes signals our troops and allies that we don't take the Law of Armed Conflicts seriously," Dempsey tweeted Tuesday. "Bad message. Bad precedent. Abdication of moral responsibility. Risk to us."

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg also expressed concern. In a Washington Post interview, the Afghanistan War veteran described the potential pardons as "so dangerous and so insulting to people who've served."

Trump's decision could come in time for the Memorial Day holiday, though he indicated Friday he might take longer. Despite warnings that a pardon might not be appropriate for cases that have not concluded, Christin Slough noted Trump is not a "traditional president." She said he is "more interested in what's right," than how things are normally done.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8247011 https://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2019/05/is-prez-trump-gearing-up-for-a-big-memorial-day-clemency-push-for-servicemembers.html via http://www.rssmix.com/

[quietgingerfangirl]

previous tags are hilarious so

#pan back to fox in his office furiously jabbing at datapad number two#oblivious#stuff explodes on coruscant more often than you'd think and thorn will ping him if it's important#(thorn was on chancellor guard duty but had been shooed off in favour of the CSF)#(one of the shinies had to commandeer water from a passing civvie because thorn laughed so hard he started to choke)#(he recognised the lime tooka sticker on the bottom of the murderpad in the picosecond before the impact)

the image of an exhausted commander fox, sitting in his office, throttling a datapad and yelling WHY IS MY JOB SPREADSHEETS?? before yowling like a space banshee and frisbeeing the thing through the open window with all the force of kamino-guaranteed strength bolstered by buereaucratic rage, where the datapad sails merrily and speedily for a longer distance than many would credit before impacting with concussive force against the surprisingly soft skull of emperor palpatine, gladhanding for the press in the courtyard of the senate below

the resulting explosion is caught on many cameras