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from this week

https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2018/07/01/unarmed-man-tased-police-sidewalk-pennsylvania-vpx.hln

Cop stun-guns man sitting on sidewalk
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, police are investigating a video showing an officer using a stun-gun on an unarmed man sitting on a sidewalk. Source: HLN

https://www.yahoo.com/news/cop-uses-stun-gun-man-171127300.html

In the video, Bernot repeatedly asks Williams to sit on the curb and stretch his legs "straight out." Williams stretches his legs, though his knees are still slightly bent, to which an officer tells him "legs straight out or you’re getting tased."

A second officer can be hear saying “put your legs straight out and cross them now.”

Williams moves his legs out and then brings them closer to the curb. Bernot can then be seen using a taser aimed at Williams's back, causing him to writhe on the ground in pain.

_

Williams told the network that he doesn't know why he was tased.

Mayor Danene Sorace told Lancaster Online that she was upset by the incident and that an investigation into the officer's use of force is underway.

“Like you, when I saw the video I was upset by it and it is of great concern to me. We take the use of force very seriously,” Sorace said in a statement.

The incident comes as police departments around the nation face heightened scrutiny over their use of excessive force, particularly on black men.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-news-evangelical-leaders-downplay-roe-reversal-20180701-story.html


NEW YORK — For evangelical Christian leaders like Jerry Falwell Jr., this is their political holy grail.

Like many religious conservatives in a position to know, the Liberty University president with close ties to the White House suspects that the Supreme Court vacancy President Donald Trump fills in the coming months will ultimately lead to the reversal of the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade. But instead of celebrating publicly, some evangelical leaders are downplaying their fortune on an issue that has defined their movement for decades.

"What people don't understand is that if you overturn Roe v. Wade, all that does is give the states the right to decide whether abortion is legal or illegal," Falwell told The Associated Press in an interview. "My guess is that there'd probably be less than 20 states that would make abortion illegal if given that right."

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And while these are the very best of times for the religious right, social conservatives risk a powerful backlash from their opponents if they cheer too loudly. Women's groups have already raised the alarm for their constituents, particularly suburban women, who are poised to play an outsized role in the fight for the House majority this November.

Two-thirds of Americans do not want to see Roe v. Wade overturned, according to a poll released Friday by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. Among women of reproductive age, three out of four want the high court ruling left alone. The poll was conducted before Kennedy's retirement was announced.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/fl-reg-puerto-rico-florida-politics-poll-20180629-story.html


http://www.trbimg.com/img-5b369a81/turbine/fl-1530305150-bolwepl6bd-snap-image/679/679x382

Poll of Puerto Ricans in Florida has good news for Dems — and for Gov. Scott


public opinion poll released Saturday of Puerto Ricans living in Florida reveals reasons for Democrats and Republicans to be relieved — and worried.

Good news for the Democrats: 57 percent of surveyed Puerto Ricans in Florida said they were most likely to vote for Democratic candidates. Just 7 percent said they were most likely to vote for Republican. The rest were open to voting for either party.

Good news for the Republicans: The poll has some positive signs for Gov. Rick Scott, the GOP candidate challenging U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.

An influx of Puerto Ricans to Florida began in 2010 and intensified since Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017. As U.S. citizens, Puerto Ricans have the right to register and vote, and they’ve become a highly sought after group of voters in 2018.








An estimated 1.2 million Puerto Ricans now live in Florida, a population that rivals the number of Cubans, who have historically been enormously influential in Florida politics, said Eduardo Gamarra, a political science professor at Florida International University.

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Scott is viewed much more positively than Trump. Though 43 percent of Puerto Ricans who came to the state before 2012 view him negatively, compared with 55 percent who see him positively, those who have arrived since view the governor much more positively.

Scott was rated positively by 82 percent of people who arrived in 2017 and 2018, 81 percent of those who arrived in 2015 and 2016, and by 79 percent of those who arrived from 2012 through 2014.

?quality=90&auto=webp

BEIJING — For a moment, it looked as if China’s rigid beauty standards were on the brink of being upended — or at least expanded slightly.

“Produce 101,” a popular online talent show, puts women through their paces for one of 11 spots in a female pop band; at first, Wang Ju, a 25-year-old model manager who’d almost lost her place on the show earlier in the season, seemed an unlikely candidate for success. But over the course of a few weeks in June, Ms. Wang rode a mounting wave of public affection to find herself, as of midmonth, ranked second among the show’s 22 finalists. Suddenly, Chinese commentators were at pains to explain just how Ms. Wang — a woman Chinese media variously referred to as “stout,” “dark” and “not pretty enough” — got there.

Anyone outside China might be surprised to learn that Ms. Wang has been viewed as a mold breaker: She is, in fact, rather pretty, and her body hardly seems outside the range of average. But in a sea of bai shou meis, Ms. Wang’s differences — her slightly darker skin, her slightly larger body, and her unwillingness to apologize for them — made her stand out. Ms. Wang embraced her so-called flaws: In one video, she was shown jokingly grabbing her stomach in front of a more slender friend, who later offered her a slice of pizza. And she displayed a self-confidence that drew comparisons to American pop stars like Beyoncé: A rap she performed included the English lyrics “You don’t have to put a ring on me, I can buy my own (bling bling).”

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Jim Carrey
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Jun 22
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Who needs NATO when our leader has so much more in common with Russia and North Korea. REGISTER TO VOTE! http://www.vote.gov

https://nypost.com/2018/06/29/hospital-charges-18000-to-treat-baby-with-a-bottle-and-a-nap/

Vox.com reported that a family from South Korea was visiting the city in 2016 when their infant son fell off a hotel bed and hit his head. The baby reportedly never lost consciousness but was crying hysterically. So out of an abundance of caution, the family took him to Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, the outlet reported.

Doctors quickly determined that 8-month-old Park Jeong-whan was fine. The family told the news site that the baby had some formula, took a little snooze and they got on with their vacation.

Two years later, the family said, they were handed the bill: $18,836.

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The report pointed out that the family was charged more than $15,000 for “trauma activation.”

The fee, according to the report, is due to the hospital’s response to a potentially serious visit. These charges can range from $1,000 to $50,000, according to the report. One expert likened the charge to “the Wild West.”

Hospitals defend the charge by essentially saying it costs money to keep a good response team on hand.


“We are the trauma center for a very large, very densely populated area. We deal with so many traumas in this city — car accidents, mass shootings, multiple vehicle collisions,” a hospital spokesman told Vox. “It’s expensive to prepare for that.”

The president’s remarks at a South Carolina rally on Monday were even more egregious. Trump said he’d rejected a request to add 5,000 judges to the border after “they” came into his office. But it’s not clear who “they” are, and there have been no public reports of any meeting like this.

“They came to me three days ago and they said, ‘Sir, we’d like you to sign this order,’” Trump told his audience. “What is the order? ‘We need 5,000 judges on the border.’ I said, ‘Judges? What other country has judges?’ I said, ‘How many do we have now?’ They didn’t even know. So we have thousands of judges and now we’re going to have 5,000.”

In fact, there are about 334 immigration judges currently serving, not “thousands” as Trump claims. Additionally, only another 365 judges would be needed to eliminate the backlog of cases, according to Dana Leigh Marks, president emeritus of the National Association of Immigration Judges.

Trump presumably offered the anecdote as a way of suggesting that the government’s adherence to fundamental constitutional rights like due process requires unnecessary resources. But it only gave the impression that he has no clue about the immigration judicial system.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-rallies-lies_us_5b34dc6de4b0cb5605200483

http://www.newser.com/story/261298/they-married-each-others-daughters-the-girls-were-7-8.html?utm_source=part&utm_medium=uol&utm_campaign=rss_top



A Utah man who said he was the prophet of a polygamist sect is headed to prison after his conviction and sentencing this week on a child sodomy charge. Samuel Shaffer is the Knights of the Crystal Blade leader who was arrested in December on kidnapping charges involving his two daughters, as well as the two daughters and two sons of sect co-founder John Coltharp, who was also arrested. On Wednesday in Sanpete County, Shaffer pleaded guilty to felony sodomy on a child and was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison, KUTV reports. Among the details Shaffer shared with detectives as they looked into his case, per People: that he'd "married" Coltharp's 8-year-old daughter, and Coltharp had done the same with his 7-year-old daughter.

Shaffer, listed as either 34 or 35, had previously been sentenced to 26 years to life in Iron County on child rape and child abuse charges; his new sentence will run concurrent with that one. "I sincerely believed that child marriage was a correct principle from God," Shaffer told Sanpete County Judge Marvin Bagley, per USA Today. "And I've seen the consequences of what's happened, and I know that I shouldn't have done it now." But Bagley wasn't buying his excuses. "I'm not aware of any religion in this world that justifies an adult having a sexual relationship with an 8-year-old girl," Bagley said. "Certainly it's a violation of Utah law." Coltharp is set to be sentenced Aug. 8.