Many fans of Bringing up Bates believe the Bates family is “better” than the Duggars; Kelly Bates genuinely seems to love her 19 children, Gil Bates actively parents (and can also paint glow-in-the-dark eagles at impressive speeds), minimally talented country-singing son Lawson is more sociable and fun than any Duggar boy, and Erin Paine nee Bates is compelling to watch as she shares everything in her life from makeup tutorials to her struggles with fertility.

But lurking behind the admittedly gorgeous family are the same ugly beliefs that drove the Duggars to keep their child-molesting son hidden from authorities for over a year and in the same house as the sisters he molested for many more. Alongside Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, Gil and Kelly Bates share a devotion to God, an affection for TV money, and a strict adherence to the ATI (Advanced Training Institute International) homeschooling curriculum.

It’s not a secret that the Duggars follow the ATI curriculum, an educational program that tells young women to cover up their bodies lest they “defraud” the horny men around them, and an educational program that blames victims of sexual assault. But the Bates family ties to ATI run deeper and present a troubling dynamic in the Duggar molestation scandal: regardless of whether or not Gil Bates knew of Josh Duggar’s actions—an open secret in their shared tight-knit religious community—Gil Bates himself is a driving force in ATI, peddling an actively harmful and scientifically inaccurate curriculum to young men and women, and doing so while making significant amounts of money charming viewers with his family’s full-frontal hugs and exclusive breeding announcements in People.

Bates, a 50-year-old tree trimmer from Lake City, TN, currently sits on the board of the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP), the parent group of ATI:

Austin Harr was enjoying his birthday with friends about 5:07 p.m. Monday at the Oroville Wildlife Area when he tried to carry the rock across the Gridley Plunge, one of numerous dredger ponds at the 11,800-acre state park, according to the California Highway Patrol.

The Gridley, Calif., resident suddenly disappeared under the water. After several minutes passed and Harr had still had not emerged, his friends tried searching for him, and then called for help.

Nearly an hour later, rescue workers found Harr and pulled him from the water to perform CPR. He was taken to an area hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The CHP and the Butte County sheriff coroner’s office are investigating Harr’s death. CHP officials said they believe alcohol played a role in his death.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-man-drowns-carrying-rock-20150527-story.html

As Crisp was sitting on his front porch last summer, he was met by a heavily militarized SWAT team. The Williamson County Sheriff’s department was executing a search warrant of the home over an incident involving Crisp’s nephew who’d reportedly been staying at the house.

Due to the subsequent assault by the SWAT team, Crisp has filed a federal lawsuit against the city and the county.


As the SWAT team arrived, they threw a flashbang at the house which knocked Crisp off of his chair, according to the lawsuit. Officers then threw Crisp to the ground and placed him in cuffs. During the assault, Crisp’s hip was broken, according to the suit.

After the SWAT team searched the home, Crisp was brought back inside and placed on the floor by the officers. According to the suit, police refused to call paramedics and Crisp was left immobilized and alone.

“After they left I tried to get up then because I had to go to the bathroom and I couldn’t go so I just crawled over here and laid on the floor right down there and my sister came and called the paramedics and they came in here,” Crisp explained.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/swat-raids-81-year-old-navy-vets-home-broke-his-hip-left-him-dead-pool-his-own

https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=&w=1484
The photo shows two white Chicago police officers wielding guns and kneeling next to a black man who is wearing deer antlers on his head while he lays with his stomach to the ground.

The racially charged image prompted the firing of Chicago Police Detective Timothy McDermott well before the photo went public Tuesday, when it was published by the Chicago Sun-Times. The other officer pictured, Jerome Finnigan, had long been terminated from the department, and in 2011 was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison on income tax evasion and murder-for-hire scheme charges.

“This picture is disgusting, and the despicable actions of these two former officers have no place in our police department or in our society,” Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said in a statement Wednesday.

[Analysis: Fatal shootings by on-duty police officers]

The Chicago Police Department first learned of the photo in 2013. McCarthy said he moved to fire McDermott as soon as he learned of the photo and that he would have fired Finnigan had the former officer still been working for the department.

McDermott is now fighting his firing in court, the Sun-Times reported.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/05/27/photo-shows-chicago-police-officers-posing-with-black-man-wearing-antlers/

week-old kitten in Jurupa Valley may have used up one of its nine lives Tuesday after it was scooped up by a hawk and dropped in midflight from the sky.


Lindsey Gage of Jurupa Valley and her 6-year-old daughter were heading to the grocery store about 1 p.m. when she witnessed the improbable incident, according to Riverside County Animal Services.

The hawk was perched on a neighbor’s basketball hoop when she saw the kitten in its grasp. The kitten’s mother was on the ground below, hissing at the hawk, Gage said.
Seconds later, the hawk took off and flew down the street, still holding the kitten.

But at some point, the hawk lost its grasp, and the white furball dropped 12 to 15 feet from sky.

Luckily, the kitten landed safely,

“When I saw the whole thing happen, I turned my car around, drove and ran over to the little kitten, who was fine and was just meowing away on the ground,” Gage said. “She was scared.”
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-kitten-rescued-hawk-dropped-from-sky-20150527-story.html#navtype=outfit

Was it an open secret that Josh Duggar had molested underage girls?

Long before the scandal erupted, there were troubling comments on the internet aimed at Josh Duggar and his parents.



Eight years ago, in May 2007, a woman who attended church with the Duggars wrote: "Let me tell you something about the precious Duggars that you don't know."

She went on to detail Josh Duggar's history with young girls and claimed his parents, Jim Bob and Michelle, "have lied and lied about their son to protect him."

With the scandal showing no signs of letting up, food giant General Mills announced that it has pulled advertising from 19 Kids and Counting.
http://www.insideedition.com/headlines/10630-woman-in-duggars-church-tried-to-warn-of-joshs-behavior-8-years-ago

The father of Josh Duggar, the "19 Kids and Counting" star accused of child molestation, suggested in a 2002 political campaign that rape should be punished by the death penalty, campaign materials revealed Tuesday.

The comments by Jim Bob Duggar, which were first reported by the Gawker site Defamer, were made in a Q&A section of the web site his campaign put up for his 2002 run for the U.S. Senate from Arkansas.

Asked whether abortion should be permitted in cases of rape and incest, Jim Bob Duggar, a Republican, says not if it's possible to save the unborn child. Then he adds: "Rape and incest represent heinous crimes and as such should be treated as capital crimes."
http://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/tv/19-kids-josh-duggars-politico-dad-advocated-death-rapists-n365031

Fox affiliate censors breasts of $179m Picasso painting on air
A local Fox news station has censored the breasts on a cubist painting by Pablo Picasso, prompting bemusement and ridicule from art critics and audiences.

Reporting on the record-setting, $179m auction of Picasso’s Women of Algiers (Version O), New York’s Fox 5, blurred the breasts of three women in the painting, despite the stylized and distinctly unrealistic portrayal of those women mostly through blocky shapes.

The network did not censor a pair of buttocks.

The New York channel falls under the Fox umbrella network, owned by the media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Observers, sometimes conflating the affiliate with the Fox News cable channel, derided the censorship of art.
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/may/14/fox-news-picasso-painting-censorship

Coulter adds that among the victims of Latino immigration, especially, are African-Americans. “Hispanic groups will move into neighborhoods and say, ‘we don’t want any blacks here,’ and start physically attacking blacks,” she says. “It’s kind of wild. In most race relations, it’s never blacks who are victims of terror, it’s whites. Now blacks are being terrorized.”

So Ann Coulter is the voice of African-Americans now?

“I know they’re never going to adopt me, so you don’t have to say it in that sarcastic way,” she parries. “If they still hate me, I don’t care. They’re being totally screwed by this whole diversity and integration imperative, and they really are part of America. They are so important culturally in America—I mean the humor, the actors...they have the comedians and the music. I love Dave Chapelle, and my close personal friend Sherrod Small. I love Eddie Murphy, although he doesn’t do anything anymore. And Chris Rock.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/26/ann-coulter-on-the-browning-of-america.html

An anti-immigrant Arizona sheriff is asking the public to help with his legal fees while he waits for a decision on a contempt of court hearing about his department’s systemic racial profiling of suspected undocumented immigrants. In an email to supporters last week, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio wrote that he doesn’t have the “personal wealth” to pay for a lawyer and felt “targeted” by pro-immigration reform advocacy groups that are suing him to stop his acts of racial bias against Latinos.
As the Los Angeles Times reported, Arpaio wrote in his email, “In some instances I have to personally pay for attorneys to represent me in these cases. I do not have the personal wealth or the wherewithal to keep up with the costly demands of paying for attorneys to defend me.”

The hearing stems from a May 2013 landmark ruling by U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow who said that Arpaio’s office broke the law when he profiled Latinos during traffic and immigration stops. The ruling called on Arpaio and his officers to implement changes, like improving training and technology equipment, to show that the sheriff’s office would no longer systemically single out Latinos. But since then, Arpaio has made insincere efforts to address racial biases, including holding court-required community outreach meetings in districts with few Latino residents and declining to show up at meetings

Arizona taxpayers already shell out a lot of money for Arpaio, who has racked up numerous violations and lawsuits and was ordered a court-appointed monitor for his unconstitutional racial profiling tactics.

Documents submitted by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office last year in Arizona indicate that it would cost around $21.9 million for taxpayers to implement court recommendations to fix Arpaio’s acts racial bias. As of last year, Maricopa County ponied up $1.6 million in legal costs and expenses for Arpaio’s court proceedings. And an internal investigation found that Arpaio’s security detail cost taxpayers more than $120,000 between June 2012 and June 2013.http://thinkprogress.org/immigration/2015/05/25/3662524/arpaio-i-need-a-dollar-dollar-dollar/