Did the controversy surrounding Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson take a toll on the show’s appeal? A&E’s flagship reality series clocked 8.5 million viewers Wednesday night, snapping a streak of ratings records and posting its first season-to-season drop. Among adults 18-49, the premiere averaged 4.2 million viewers, down 33%. Those are still huge numbers for a cable series, but the Season 5 opener was down from the show’s Season 4 debut, which drew nearly 12 million to become the No. 1-rated nonfiction series telecast in cable history. It edged the Season 4 finale, which was watched by 8.4 million. More recently, the one-hour Duck Dynasty Christmas special logged nearly 9 million viewers.
The two back-to-back episodes were the first appearance on A&E of the Robertson family since patriarch Phil’s controversial comments about gay men and blacks in a GQ interview that caused A&E to suspend him. After the rest of the family indicated they would not do the show without him, and religious organizations and a legion of conservatives stood by him, A&E reversed its decision, lifting Phil’s suspension.
Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) on Wednesday introduced legislation to require food stamp recipients to produce a valid photo ID every time they purchase food with their Electronic Benefits Transfer card. Under the Food Stamp Fraud Prevention and Accountability Act, anyone caught using someone else’s EBT card illegally would be banned from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
“Using a photo ID is standard in many day-to-day transactions, and most of those are not exclusively paid for by the taxpayer dollars,” Vitter said in a press release Wednesday. “Food stamps have more than doubled in cost since 2008 and continue to grow in an unsustainable way.”
Vitter’s bill comes after an October system glitch that temporarily disabled the spending limit on EBT debit cards, leading some recipients to take advantage by exceeding their normally allotted cap.
“A photo ID would not have stopped people from taking advantage of the system failure that day,” The Times-Picayune reported. “But Vitter said requiring photo IDs would make it harder for someone to use a stolen or fraudulently obtained [EBT card].”
National advocacy groups for low-income Americans criticized Vitter’s proposal as ineffective and harmful to struggling beneficiaries.
“Many poor people do not have photo IDs, and it costs money they do not have to get them,” Deborah Weinstein, executive director of the Coalition on Human Needs, told The Times-Picayune on Wednesday. “Senator Vitter’s proposal will be especially tough on elderly and poor people who do not have the documents needed to get their photo ID, and who will struggle even to get to the necessary offices. They will wind up going without food.”
We all may have missed this little piece of information yesterday, but it didn’t get pass the watchful eyes of Rachel Maddow.
On her show yesterday, Maddow explained that a recent appearance by New Jersey’s embattled governor Chris Christie may have contained news about his 2016 presidential prospects.
In his appearance, Christie explained that he was governor of Jersey for eight years, not four. He also said that he was born in Jersey and will stay in Jersey.
This information was interpreted by Maddow to mean that Christie’s Bridge-Gate scandal is taking its toll and the last Republican hope for 2016, is calling it quits.
Authorities in Queens are investigating the discovery of remains found next to the East River, and sources tell Eyewitness News that police have notified the family of missing autistic teenager Avonte Oquendo about the investigation.
The remains, said to be a human arm and legs, were found on a rock in the water near the College Point Yacht Club around 7 p.m. Thursday. Police responded to a 911 call in the vicinity of Powell Cove Boulevard and Endeavor Place after a 14-year-old girl stumbled across the limbs.
The sources said a pair of sneakers was also found, but it could not be confirmed if it belonged to the 14-year-old non-verbal boy who disappeared after running out of his Long Island City school 15 weeks ago Friday, on October 4.
The remains were removed to the Queens County Morgue as Harbor Patrol divers and helicopters searched the cold, dark waters for additional body parts. The tide quickly came in and the search had to be suspended, but it resumed at daybreak.
The Medical Examiner will determine the cause of death. No positive identification has been made, but police have been in contact with the Oquendo family.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) on Thursday said that lawmakers and the media should move past the controversy surrounding New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) and the lane closures on the George Washington Bridge last year, noting that the governor has “held people accountable.”
“It’s time to move on,” he said during a Thursday press conference. “I think the governor made clear that mistakes were made.”
Boehner would not address whether Christie should campaign for House Republicans now that the state legislature is investigating potential political motives behind the lane closures.
The federal government is running a separate probe into Christie’s use of Sandy relief funds.
After sending out a tweet asking the good folks on Twitter to tell them their issues, the good folks on Twitter took them up on it and began telling the GOP their issues. Below are just some of the responses.
I'm still pissed when I think about the Red Wedding. RT @GOP: Tell us your top issues. Let’s win big in 2014.
Amazing, that the man who could be behind the traffic nightmare on the world’s busiest bridge in Fort Lee New Jersey, explained recently that he loves being a governor because one of the perks is getting away from traffic.
A little girl named recently asked the New Jersey governor the question, what do you enjoy most about being governor. The BridgeGate centerpiece then went into a long explanation, stating that he hates traffic and that anytime he travels to New York, they stop traffic so that his entourage could drive through.
For the first time, the world is hearing the chilling voice of Adam Lanza, the man responsible for the horrific shooting of twenty first graders in Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown Connecticut.
In an audiotape of a call Lanza made to an Oregon college radio station obtained by The Daily News – and vouched for by two old friends – the madman waved a giant red flag that he was about to explode almost exactly a year before the Sandy Hook massacre.
Using the name Greg and apparently taking pains to disguise his voice, Lanza weighed-in on mass murder by comparing “a teenage mall shooter” to Travis, a chimpanzee who became infamous after ripping the face off a Connecticut woman in 2009.
In doing so, Lanza provided a frightening look not seen thus far into the twisted logic and troubled mind of the 20-year-old killer.
“His attack can be seen entirely parallel to the attacks and random acts of violence that you bring up on your show every week, committed by humans, which the mainstream also has no explanation,” Lanza says of Travis at one point.
“I just … don’t think it would be such a stretch to say that he very well could have been a teenage mall shooter or something like that.”
Those words, uttered on Dec. 11, 2011, did not set off any alarms with “Anarchy Radio” host John Zerzan, who is himself a controversial fringe figure.
How out of touch are Republicans? Maybe this examoke will help you answer that question. This Republican actually said that spousal rape is not really rape, because the woman is “sleeping in the same bed” with her husband and she’s “wearing a nightie.”
The statement was made by virginia’s state Sen. Richard H. “Dick” Black.
Democrat Shawn Mitchell had uncovered the 2002 video of Black talking about spousal rape for an attack ad during the 2011 campaign for Virginia state Senate.
Republicans practically live off the words of this man. He could do no wrong.
Picking one’s nose is not necessarily a bad thing, but someone in Rush’s class could pay to have his picked. We’re hearing congressional Republicans aren’t busy these days.
The question is, did he feast on his findings afterwards?
The Justice Department will significantly expand its definition of racial profiling to prohibit federal agents from considering religion, national origin, gender and sexual orientation in their investigations, a government official said Wednesday.
The move addresses a decade of criticism from civil rights groups that say federal authorities have in particular singled out Muslims in counterterrorism investigations and Latinos for immigration investigations.
The Bush administration banned profiling in 2003, but with two caveats: It did not apply to national security cases, and it covered only race, not religion, ancestry or other factors.
Since taking office, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has been under pressure from Democrats in Congress to eliminate those provisions. “These exceptions are a license to profile American Muslims and Hispanic-Americans,” Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said in 2012.
Of course my wish would be that we won’t actually need to implement these suggestions, but if you happen to find yourself arrested, these suggestions from Free Advice are on point.
1. Don’t try to convince the officer of your innocence. It’s useless. He or she only needs “probable cause” to believe you have committed a crime in order to arrest you. He does not decide your guilt and he actually doesn’t care if you are innocent or not. It is the job of the judge or jury to free you if he is wrong. If you feel that urge to convince him he’s made a mistake, remember the overwhelming probability that instead you will say at least one thing that will hurt your case, perhaps even fatally. It is smarter to save your defense for your lawyer.
2. Don’t run. It’s highly unlikely a suspect could outrun ten radio cars converging on a block in mere seconds. I saw a case where a passenger being driven home by a drunk friend bolted and ran. Why? It was the driver they wanted, and she needlessly risked injury in a forceful arrest. Even worse, the police might have suspected she ran because she had a gun, perhaps making them too quick to draw their own firearms. Most police will just arrest a runner, but there are some who will be mad they had to work so hard and injure the suspect unnecessarily.
3. Keep quiet. My hardest cases to defend are those where the suspect got very talkative. Incredibly, many will start babbling without the police having asked a single question. My most vivid memory of this problem was the armed robbery suspect who blurted to police: “How could the guy identify me? The robbers was wearing masks.” To which the police smiled and responded, “Oh? Were they?” Judges and juries will discount or ignore what a suspect says that helps him, but give great weight to anything that seems to hurt him. In 24 years of criminal practice, I could count on one hand the number of times a suspect was released because of what he told the police after they arrested him.
4. Don’t give permission to search anywhere. If they ask, it probably means they don’t believe they have the right to search and need your consent. If you are ordered to hand over your keys, state loudly “You do NOT have my permission to search.” If bystanders hear you, whatever they find may be excluded from evidence later. This is also a good reason not to talk, even if it seems all is lost when they find something incriminating.
5. If the police are searching your car or home, don’t look at the places you wish they wouldn’t search. Don’t react to the search at all, and especially not to questions like “Who does this belong to?”
6. Don’t resist arrest. Above all, do not push the police or try to swat their hands away. That would be assaulting an officer and any slight injury to them will turn your minor misdemeanor arrest into a felony. A petty shoplifter can wind up going to state prison that way. Resisting arrest (such as pulling away) is merely a misdemeanor and often the police do not even charge that offense. Obviously, striking an officer can result in serious injury to you as well.
7. Try to resist the temptation to mouth off at the police, even if you have been wrongly arrested. Police have a lot of discretion in what charges are brought. They can change a misdemeanor to a felony, add charges, or even take the trouble to talk directly to the prosecutor and urge him to go hard on you. On the other hand, I have seen a client who was friendly to the police and talked sports and such on the way to the station. They gave him a break. Notice he did not talk about his case, however.
8. Do not believe what the police tell you in order to get you to talk. The law permits them to lie to a suspect in order to get him to make admissions. For example, they will separate two friends who have been arrested and tell the first one that the second one squealed on him. The first one then squeals on the second, though in truth the second one never said anything. An even more common example is telling a suspect that if he talks to the police, “it will go easier”. Well, that’s sort of true. It will be much easier for the police to prove their case. I can’t remember too many cases where the prosecutor gave the defendant an easier deal because he waived his right to silence and confessed.
9. If at home, do not invite the police inside, nor should you “step outside”. If the police believe you have committed a felony, they usually need an arrest warrant to go into your home to arrest you. If they ask you to “step outside”, you will have solved that problem for them. The correct responses are: “I am comfortable talking right here.”, “No, you may not come in.”, or “Do you have a warrant to enter or to arrest me in my home?” I am not suggesting that you run. In fact, that is the best way to ensure the harshest punishment later on. But you may not find it so convenient to be arrested Friday night when all the courts and law offices are closed. With an attorney, you can perhaps surrender after bail arrangements are made and spend NO time in custody while your case is pending.
10. If you are arrested outside your home, do not accept any offers to let you go inside to get dressed, change, get a jacket, call your wife, or any other reason. The police will of course escort you inside and then search everywhere they please, again without a warrant. Likewise decline offers to secure your car safely.
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