20 years later, the dog looks the same.
Day: September 3, 2014
After finding Theodore Wafer guilty of killing Renisha McBride on his front porch when she knocked his door seeking help, the sentence for the crime was handed down today and 55-year-old Wafer will be locked away for a long time.
After an emotional trial in a city where racial tensions have been escalating during bankruptcy proceedings, Wafer was sentenced Wednesday to 17 to 32 years in prison as McBride’s family watched. Wafer is white and McBride was black.
“I do not believe that you are a coldblooded murderer or that this case had anything to do with race,” Judge Dana M. Hathaway told Wafer as she handed down the sentence. “I do believe that you acted out of fear, but an unjustified fear has never been an excuse for taking someone’s life.”
Wafer’s attorneys have already said that he plans to appeal. Wafer, an airport maintenance worker, read a short apology in court.
“To the parents, family and friends of Renisha McBride, I apologize from the bottom of my heart and I am truly sorry for your loss. I can only hope and pray,” he said, tearing up, “that somehow you can forgive me.”
Wafer will serve 17 years before he is up for parole
Victimizing the victim! Of course! Why not. This is how they make and deliver ‘news.’ It’s how they contaminate any potential jurors against Mike Brown. This is how they cultivate people’s opinion, planting doubts about the victim and raising questions like, was Brown really capable of being a good kid? This is how they attempt to soften the effects of this horrendous crime, where a police officer opened fire, almost emptying his clip as the unarmed teenager ran away for his life.
Requesting this information about Brown’s past served no real constructive purpose of course but Charles C. Johnson, a conservative blogger, and The Post-Dispatch filed a petition in St. Louis County Circuit Court to unseal and reveal something, anything to show that Brown may have had a ‘criminal’ past. Johnson and others have claimed that Brown was facing a murder charge at the time he was shot to death.
What did the records reveal?
Cynthia Harcourt, a lawyer for St. Louis County Juvenile Officer Kip Seely, argued against releasing those records, but acknowledged there were no convictions for the most serious types of felonies. After the hearing, she told the Post-Dispatch Brown was not facing any serious felony charges when he died.
Class A felonies include second-degree murder and first-degree robbery; the penalties in adult court range from 10 years in prison to death. Class B felonies include voluntary manslaughter, second-degree robbery and first-degree burglary, with a maximum penalty of five to 15 years.
So, do you think they will stop victimizing the victim now that his records show no serious infractions? Do you think they will now look at the record of officer Darren Wilson – the actual killer – to see whst his past looks like?
Don’t hold your breath!
The vice president expressed some of the same sentiments shared by many Americans who saw the brutal murders of American journalists, James Foley and Steven Sotloff. And in his statements today, Joe Biden promised that we will follow ISIL and bring them to justice, even if it means taking a trip “to the gates of hell.”
Speaking at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Biden said the Islamic State militant group responsible for beheading James Foley and Steven Sotloff won’t intimidate the United States.
“The American people are so much stronger, so much more resolved than any enemy can fully understand,” Biden said. “As a nation, we’re united. And when people harm Americans, we don’t retreat, we don’t forget.”
A videotape showing Sotloff’s murder was broadcast Tuesday, two weeks after the same group released a video showing Foley’s killing. Foley was from New Hampshire and Sotloff attended school there, bringing their killings close to home at the shipyard situated on an island in a river that runs between Maine and New Hampshire.
“We take care of those who are grieving and when that’s finished, they should know we will follow them to the gates of hell until they are brought to justice,” Biden said. “Because hell is where they’ll reside.”
I was going to name this post, “Laura Ingraham Thinks Black People Voting is Pointless,” but who am I fooling. Laura Ingraham does not think, so the title would have been absurd.
As she filled the seat of Fox’s Bill O’Reilly, who was missing in action, Ingraham focused on the voter registration efforts going on in Ferguson MO., after the murder of unarmed black teen Mike Brown. It is apparently Laura’s thinking (there I go again with the thinking thing) that black people going to the polls to have a say in who gets elected is a divisive act, spearheaded by Democrats to keep senate seats. Nothing else.
“The racists are coming, the racists are coming” Laura says, implying that those words are being used by Democrats to get Blacks to the polls. And she concluded by saying that having back people vote would not stop the next Mike Brown, would not keep black men out of jails or give black people jobs.
Now, besides the obvious racism in Laura’s commentary suggesting that black men are jobless convicts with no hope or future, her suggestion that blacks should not vote because their life will remain the same shows her obvious bias and racism. If voting is pointless for blacks and minorities, then shouldn’t we expect similar commentary telling whites to stay home on election day?
Of course that advice to whites will never come, for it is the hope of racists like Laura Ingraham, to keep minorities in the minority. To have them think that voting is silly and trivial, and a waste of their time. Laura Ingraham and all the other Republicans in government know, that the best way to keep minorities in the minority is to take away their right to vote.
Video
The Secretary of State released a statement regarding ISIS and their second beheading of an American freelance journalist, calling the acts “unfathomable brutality” and an “act of medieval savagery by a coward hiding behind a mask.”
The full statement.
Yesterday, the world bore witness again to the unfathomable brutality of ISIL terrorist murderers when we saw Steven Sotloff, an American journalist who left home in Florida to tell the story of brave people in the Middle East, taken from us in an act of medieval savagery by a coward hiding behind a mask.
There are no words strong enough to express the sorrow we feel for his family, particularly his mother, whose heartbreaking video plea spoke to every single parent who has ever worried about a son or daughter who goes to dangerous places to do the work they love.
This young man was a driven and courageous journalist, reporting from places like Syria, Libya, and Egypt. Steven Sotloff’s reporting was as empathetic as his killers are evil. He focused on the stories of average people trapped in war, and documented their day-in and day-out struggle for dignity. Like Martha Gellhorn, he chronicled humanity in the face of inhumanity, and he told the story of enormous generational events as if they were happening to someone you knew from your own life.
For so many who worked so long to bring Steven and the other Americans home safely, this was not how the story should’ve ended. It’s a punch to the gut. The U.S. Government has used every military, diplomatic, and intelligence tool we have, and we always will. Our special operations forces bravely risked a military operation to save these lives, and we’ve reached out diplomatically to everyone and anyone who might be able to help. That effort continues, and our prayers remain – as they always are – with the families of all hostages who remain trapped in Syria today.
Barbarity, sadly, isn’t new to our world. Neither is evil. We’ve taken the fight to it before, and we’re taking the fight to it today. When terrorists anywhere around the world have murdered our citizens, the United States held them accountable, no matter how long it took. And those who have murdered James Foley and Steven Sotloff in Syria should know that the United States will hold them accountable too, no matter how long it takes.
I remember a time when democracy meant the best man won. When two candidates put forth their vision of how they would help their constituents and the people voted based on who they thought had a better plan to right the wrongs and make things better.
Those days are long gone as voters today would prefer to suffer the consequences of their vote and elect someone with a proven record of destruction, simply because that someone is of their political party.
This poll from the Republican state of Florida proves my point, as Republican governor Rick Scott – Mr. Destruction himself – has a better shot of winning in the midterm election for governor over his democratic challenge Charlie Crist.
Scott received support from 40.9 percent of those surveyed, Crist drew 35.7 percent and Libertarian Adrian Wyllie 6.3 percent. When asked to choose between only Scott and Crist, Scott’s lead grew to 6 points over Crist, 43.7 percent to 37.6 percent.
An overwhelming seven in 10 voters said the governor “can do a lot” about the state’s economy, while 48.7 percent said Florida’s economy is recovering and another 25.2 percent said it will recover soon.
You’ve always heard that cops and ticket agents have daily or monthly quotas they must meet. That they must generate a certain amount of cash from the people they’re supposedly “serving.” And you may have found this hard to believe. How can police intentionally go after ordinary citizens, sometimes setting up traffic-traps to force people into breaking the law in order to issue them a ticket?
Meet Waldo Florida.
The north Florida town of Waldo has long had a reputation as a speed trap, and it’s no wonder. A small segment of highway that runs through Waldo requires drivers to speed up and slow down six times: 65 mph becomes 55 mph; 55 becomes 45; then goes back to 55; then back down to 45; to 55 again and eventually, 35 mph.
AAA named the tiny town between Jacksonville and Gainesville one of only two “traffic traps” nationwide and even placed an attention-getting billboard outside the limits of the town to warn drivers to slow down before entering.
Now Waldo faces a scandal following allegations that the town victimizes motorists to turn a profit. Two police chiefs have been suspended, the police department has rebelled and the state is investigating possible wrongdoing.
The situation simmered for years until this month, when Police Chief Mike Szabo was suspended Aug. 12, apparently in response to an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement into suspected improprieties in the way officers write tickets.
The issue then burst into the open two weeks later at a Waldo City Council meeting, when a group of police officers said they had been ordered by Szabo to write at least 12 tickets per 12-hour shift or face repercussions.
The officers also leveled allegations at the Aug. 26 meeting against Cpl. Kenneth Smith, who had been picked to fill in for Szabo. The officers complained that Smith had, among other things, mishandled evidence. The city council then suspended Smith.
Not surprisingly, things are tense at the tiny stucco storefront office that serves as Waldo City Hall. On Friday morning, Mayor Louie Davis and City Manager Kim Worley met in a small cluttered office to discuss the controversy, slamming a door shut with a “no comment” when a reporter walked in seeking information.