May 26, 2022

How to Murder Your Husband writer found guilty of murdering husband

A jury in the US city of Portland, Oregon, has convicted a self-published romance novelist who wrote an essay titled How to Murder Your Husband of fatally shooting her husband.

The 12-person jury found Nancy Crampton Brophy, 71, guilty of second-degree murder on Wednesday after deliberating for two days over Daniel Brophy’s death, according to reports.

Brophy, a 63-year-old chef, was killed on 2 June 2018 as he prepared for work at the Oregon Culinary Institute in south-west Portland.

Crampton Brophy showed no visible reaction to the verdict in the crowded Multnomah county courtroom. Lisa Maxfield, one of her lawyers, said the defence team would appeal against the decision.

The defendant’s 2011 how-to treatise detailed various options for committing an untraceable killing, written in the form of a brainstorming exercise for writers.

Its opening reads: “As a romantic suspense writer, I spend a lot of time thinking about murder and, consequently, about police procedure. After all, if the murder is supposed to set me free, I certainly don’t want to spend any time in jail. And let me say clearly for the record, I don’t like jumpsuits and orange isn’t my color.”

The blogpost went on to detail motives – financial, “lying, cheating bastard”, abuser – and a discussion of possible methods. Knives were “personal and close up. Blood everywhere”, while poison, “considered a woman’s weapon”, was too easy to trace, Crampton Brophy wrote. Guns were “loud, messy, require some skill”.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/26/how-murder-husband-writer-guilty-nancy-crampton-brophy
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I almost put this under "Weird News" but decided not to

May 26, 2022

A lawsuit says a 13-year-old Black boy had his hands up when Chicago police shot him

A 13-year-old boy shot in the back by a Chicago police officer was unarmed and had his arms raised to surrender when he was hit by the bullet, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday, saying the incident illustrates deeply flawed implementation of department policy on the pursuit of suspects.

The bullet severely damaged part of the Black teenager's spine, possibly rendering him permanently paralyzed by the May 18 shooting, the filing in Chicago's U.S. District Court says. Police have said previously the boy was in a car suspected of involvement in a carjacking in a nearby suburb the day before and that he jumped out and started running. He hasn't been charged.

The excessive force lawsuit says the seventh grader, who had been a passenger, was complying with orders from several officers screaming at him to put his hands up.

The boy, referred to in the lawsuit only by his initials, "was unarmed and did as he was instructed. But the officer still shot him — recklessly, callously, and wantonly — right through his back," the filing alleges.

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/26/1101496374/chicago-police-13-year-old-shot-lawsuit
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IN THE BACK. Unarmed 13 year old kid, doing as told. Big brave officer, looking for another notch in his belt.

May 26, 2022

Illinois Will Investigate Possible Civil Rights Violations in Student Ticketing

The Illinois attorney general’s office is investigating whether one of the state’s largest school districts, located in Chicago’s northwest suburbs, violated civil rights laws when police issued tickets to students accused of minor misbehavior.

Attorney General Kwame Raoul told the Township High School District 211 superintendent last week to provide records on students cited for municipal ordinance violations related to school-based conduct or truancy, according to a letter obtained by ProPublica and the Chicago Tribune. The office also requested data and records related to suspensions, expulsions, student transfers to alternative schools and calls to police regarding students since the start of the 2018-19 school year.

The attorney general’s office decided to investigate District 211 after reading about racial disparities in ticketing across the state, which was documented by the Chicago Tribune and ProPublica for the investigation “The Price Kids Pay.” As part of the investigation, reporters created and published a first-of-its-kind database of tickets issued at Illinois public schools over the last three school years, the reasons police ticketed students and, when available, the racial breakdown of students who received tickets.

Amy Meek, chief of the Civil Rights Bureau in the Illinois attorney general’s office, said District 211 stood out in both the number of tickets issued and racial disparities in the ticketing. She said it is possible the office will examine other districts as well.

https://www.propublica.org/article/illinois-will-investigate-possible-civil-rights-violations-in-student-ticketing
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Seems like the schools are abdicating their disciplinary responsibilities here.

May 26, 2022

Herschel Walker fumbles gun control response - twice

As Republican U.S. Senate nominee Herschel Walker enters into the general election, he is struggling to answer questions about gun control.

At his victory party Tuesday night Walker was asked whether there should be new gun laws in the wake of a mass shooting earlier that day at a Texas elementary school.

“What I like to do is see it and everything and stuff,” he said as he walked through a throng of supporters with his wife, Julie.

Walker was asked about the issue again in a Fox News interview Thursday.

“What about looking at getting a department that can look at young men that’s looking at women that’s looking at their social media?” Walker asked.

“You know Cain killed Abel, and that’s a problem that we have,” he said referring to the biblical story.

Walker eventually said he supported mental health funding, but he wasn’t specific.

“This has been happening for years,” Walker said.

“The way we stop it (is) about putting money into the mental health field, it’s about putting money into other departments rather than a department that just wants to take away your rights,” he said.

https://www.ajc.com/politics/election/herschel-walker-fumbles-gun-control-response-twice/C47NTSZOV5CTHJN7W5QJ4NLIDU/
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This guy would FAR outrank Tuberville as dumbest guy in the senate. VOTE WARNOCK!

May 26, 2022

Delta cutting flights due to staffing, COVID, weather disruptions

Flight cancellations and short-staffing are already marring the start of the busy summer travel season, as Delta Air Lines warned of disruptions to flights over Memorial Day weekend and announced cuts to its flight schedule due to operational challenges.

Facing weather disruptions, short-staffing and an increase in COVID-19 cases among its employees, Atlanta-based Delta is cutting flights over the Memorial Day holiday period and through the summer.

That promises to cause frustrations for the millions of travelers expected to take to the skies for vacations this weekend and through the summer, amid a rebound in travel that has driven record demand in some areas. Delta alone expects to handle 2.5 million passengers over the Memorial Day weekend, up 25% from 2021.

Delta said it will send updates to customers if their flights are disrupted. Rescheduling passengers onto other flights could be challenging because many flights are fully booked for the holiday period.

Among the problems is that Delta has been struggling to get enough pilots hired and trained to operate its schedule as it ramps up flights. The airline is cutting about 100 flights a day for July and early August, amounting to about 2% of the airline’s flights, according to a spokesman.

https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-airport-blog/delta-cutting-flights-due-to-staffing-covid-weather-disruptions/KTVMRPJPZBD47OFUA5PHVGII6A/
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I guess Delta gets my traveling "Shithouse of the Skies" trophy this week

May 26, 2022

How about this for a new slogan

"MORE GUN CONTROL, LESS GYN CONTROL"

I figure that kind of covers it all.

May 24, 2022

Another Russian General Reported Dead in Ukraine

Three months into Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, another Russian general has reportedly been killed by Ukrainian forces.

Retired Russian Air Force Major General Banamat Botashev, 63, has become the 13th general to die in Ukrainian territory since Russia invaded on Feb. 24, according to a tally by Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense. (Russia’s Defense Ministry has confirmed only two, and U.S. officials have not given a specific number). He was reportedly shot down by Ukrainian forces over the Luhansk region on Sunday, becoming the highest-ranking air force commander to be killed in the war.

Ukraine’s military had announced the downing of an Su-25 fighter aircraft and released a photo of what it said was the burning aftermath. It said the pilot did not have time to eject.

The BBC’s Russian service said it managed to confirm Botashev’s death by speaking with several men who had previously been under his command and stayed in touch with him.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/another-russian-general-retired-air-force-major-general-banamat-botashev-reported-dead-in-ukraine?ref=home
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Not sure if he counts since he was retired but we'll take it! Chalk it up!

May 24, 2022

Monkeypox Conspiracy Theorists Are Already Blaming Bill Gates and the Democrats

It’s been barely three weeks since the WHO first confirmed that cases of monkeypox had started spreading throughout western Europe and North America. Over 100 cases of the virus, which is endemic in parts of west and central Africa, have been detected in nearly a dozen countries, including the UK, and Canada and the US. Still, that has offered plenty of time for right-wing conspiracy theorists to push deeply false information about the impact and origins of the virus.

A leading proponent of these unfounded claims is US congresswoman and anti-vaxxer Marjorie Taylor Greene who is pushing the theory that coverage of the outbreak is a coordinated ploy by Bill Gates and the governments of the world to profit off the return of masks and lockdowns.

In a live video on Facebook, Greene claimed that “disgusting” and “terrifying” images of the skin of monkeypox sufferers will be used to scare people into submission. When that’s done, she told viewers, Gates will then attempt to make money by forcing you to buy a “Bill Gates pillow” to go alongside your “Dr Fauci pillow” that you can “cuddle with every night because Bill Gates is going to save the day.”

“Bill Gates is very concerned about monkeypox because this is something, apparently, he can make a lot of money off of,” Greene added. "Him and his other buddies; you know, all the Democrat donors, that is.”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dgnzz/monkeypox-conspiracy-theories-debunked

One of my former co-workers was from the Caribbean and would lapse into patois when annoyed: "Look who runnin' she mouth again!"

May 24, 2022

The Supreme Court just condemned a man to die despite strong evidence he's innocent

In 1995, Barry Jones was convicted of murdering Rachel Gray, his girlfriend’s 4-year-old daughter, and sentenced to die. Since then, the case against him has shattered.

Gray died of a laceration of her small intestine, an extremely painful injury that slowly floods the victim with poisonous fluids. The prosecution’s theory was that Jones must have inflicted this injury on Gray during a four-hour period when he was taking care of her on May 1, 1994. Gray died about 12 hours later.

But this theory does not make sense medically. Gray’s injury would have killed her slowly, and should not have proved fatal in only 12 hours. In a comprehensive article reviewing the evidence against Jones, the Intercept’s Liliana Segura quotes three physicians who say that the prosecution’s theory is wrong.

One, who Segura describes as a “renowned pediatric forensic pathologist,” said that Gray’s injury “could not possibly have been inflicted on the day prior to her death.”

There are also several other potential suspects. Gray’s mother Angela, for starters, was eventually convicted of child abuse and sentenced to eight years in prison. There’s evidence that Gray’s brother sexually preyed on young girls. And, on top of all of that, Gray reportedly said shortly before her death that a boy had hit her in the stomach with a metal bar.

Simply put, no sensible jury confronted with all of this evidence would have concluded that Jones was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

But Jones’s lawyers failed to present crucial evidence at his trial. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in an opinion released on Monday, “Jones’ trial counsel failed to undertake even a cursory investigation and, as a result, did not uncover readily available medical evidence that could have shown that Rachel sustained her injuries when she was not in Jones’ care.” Then, after Jones challenged his conviction in a state court proceeding, he was met with, as Sotomayor put it, “another egregious failure of counsel.”

In the words of the law, Jones was denied his constitutionally required right to effective assistance of counsel — twice.

Sotomayor, however, wrote these words in a dissenting opinion. On a party line vote in Shinn v. Ramirez, the Court held that Jones will not receive a fair trial despite his lawyers’ poor performance.

https://www.vox.com/2022/5/23/23138100/supreme-court-barry-jones-shinn-ramirez
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And look who wrote the majority opinion---Uncle Clarence his own unqualified self!

May 22, 2022

While we are on the subject of religious dirty laundry.....

Explosive Southern Baptist sex abuse report expected to be released Sunday

Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention on Sunday released a major third-party investigation that found that sex abuse survivors were often ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by top clergy in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The findings of nearly 300 pages include shocking new details about specific abuse cases and shine a light on how denominational leaders for decades actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. They also lied to Southern Baptists over whether they could maintain a database of offenders to prevent more abuse when top leaders were secretly keeping a private list for years.

The report — the first investigation of its kind in a massive Protestant denomination like the SBC — is expected to send shock waves into a conservative Christian community that has had intense internal battles over how to handle sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with other religious institutions in the United States, has struggled with declining membership for the past 15 years. Its leaders have long resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse crisis and that of the Catholic Church, saying the total number of abuse cases among Southern Bapitists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost two decades, survivors of abuse and other concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report child molesters and other abusers who were in the pulpit or employed as church staff members.

The report, compiled by an organization called Guidepost Solutions at the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails were “only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who were concerned more with protecting the institution from liability than from protecting Southern Baptists from further abuse.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/05/22/southern-baptist-sex-abuse-report/?itid=hp-top-table-main
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What really sucks is that, since the SBC is not hierarchical, they will refer everything back to the congregations, IOW, giving the rats free reign over the garbage