In this case the video existed, and it showed the final moments of Walter Scott’s life as he ran away from the officer who ended up shooting him in the back. Earlier this week, the grand jury in South Carolina indicted officer Michael Slager on a murder charge.
Mr. Scott was originally pulled over on April 4th for a busted break light, but is later seen on dash cam running away from the officer with the officer giving chase. A passerby later saw the final confrontation between the officer and the man and began recording the events on his cell phone. Moments later, Mr Scott is seen on cell phone video breaking away from the officer and attempted to run, but this time, he did not get too far. The unarmed man was shot in the back by the police officer and died.
Michael Slager was immediately fired from his job as a South Carolina police officer and later arrested.
A man was being sought in connection with the sexual assault of a homeless woman early Saturday morning in Pasadena, KTLA reports.
The victim and her boyfriend had been asleep in their encampment about 2:50 a.m. when the woman woke up, “startled to find herself partially unclothed and the suspect sleeping behind her,” the Pasadena Police Department said in a news release.
The intruder stood up and fled the scene on foot as the victim’s boyfriend ran after him, the statement said. The suspect, a homeless man, managed to escape and remained at large on Monday.
He was identified as 47-year-old Emilio Buch.
Investigators released a photo of Buch and asked anyone with information to call Lt. Terysa Rojas of the Pasadena Police Department at 626-744-4522 during business hours, or the non-emergency dispatch center at 626-744-4241. Tips can be submitted anonymously at LACrimeStoppers.com or wetip.com.
Politicians can talk all they want about how changes to the American education system such as the Common Core, new testing rubrics and teacher evaluation systems will vault us into the top tiers of learned nations over the next few years, but, really, that’s not going to happen if what’s happening in Arizona and other states doesn’t get fixed.
Consider:
At least 30 states spent less per student this school year than in the year before the economic downturn began, and 14 states, including Arizona, have cut per-pupil funding by more than 10 percent over that period.
The drop is not simply a reflection of state economies still struggling to recover. Experts say politics and policy have also played a role.
Of the seven states with the deepest cuts in education from kindergarten to 12th grade, six — Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Wisconsin — also cut income tax rates, leading to a series of vigorous protests and public disputes between lawmakers and educators that are still playing out.
The Great Recession was terrible, but that part about cutting taxes and school funding is reprehensible. There is simply no excuse to give money back to taxpayers when the schools have a library that nobody can use or that run out of supplies before the end of the school year.
But that’s not the only problem. Here in New Jersey, Governor Christie recently did an about-face and said that he no longer supports the Common Core Curriculum Standards but does support the PARCC tests that are based on…the Common Core. This neat bit of contradiction, endemic to Republican politicians, not only makes no sense; it invites testing students on skills and content that they will not learn in their classrooms. Couple this with the Governor’s previous bashing of teachers and their association, and his severe education budget cuts and you have the scary proposition of someone sitting in the Oval Office who supports testing, but not the people who will be delivering a curriculum that is yet to be determined.
Christie has good company in another soon-to-be Republican presidential candidate, Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin. Not only did he and the GOP-led legislature end collective bargaining for public employees, now he’s proposing a bill that would significantly affect tenure in public colleges and universities. That law would repeal the idea of shared governance when it comes to tenure and is best explained this way:
Shared governance gives powers to faculty, staff and students over such matters as instruction, personnel matters and student services. The shared power is not the adversarial relationship many think of, Fair said. “It’s a conversation across the different bodies to reach consensus on what is best for the institution,” she said.
And while the employment protections conveyed by tenure can seem self-serving, Compas said, that is not what it is about.
“Tenure doesn’t protect anyone who breaks university rules or doesn’t do their job. Instead, it is a cornerstone of academic freedom,” he said. “It provides protection for faculty to challenge conventional notions and present ideas that often are unpopular,” said Compas, who has tenure.
What Walker wants to do is to take tenure decisions away from the shared model and transfer authority to a state body that is–surprise!–appointed by the governor. I’m guessing that the makeup of the body will be sharply different than the people making tenure decisions now. And I can see great mischief in how it will be applied should this bill pass. Which it most likely will.
These are but three examples of how terribly education policy is made and implemented in the United States. After 2016, it could get even worse.
Well, in his sick demented mind, posting a picture of a beheaded woman on his Facebook page was a splendid idea, and a great way to get his point across. What was his point? To bring back the death penalty to Nebraska.
Senator Bill Kintner (R) took down the offensive post after his comment section grew out of control from constituents who thought it was insensitive of the lawmaker to use the offensive picture in order to make the point that he wants to bring the death penalty back
The Nebraska legislature recently banned the death penalty in the state, with enough votes to override the governor’s veto.
Kintner, a death penalty supporter, re-posted the photo after discovering it on his timeline, explaining, “I saw it and I said, ‘Well, that makes the point.’”
According to Kintner he had no idea where the picture was taken or who beheaded the woman.
“But if it happened in our state, we couldn’t do anything,” he explained. “We’d just put him in jail for 50 years and feed him nice meals. That doesn’t sound right to most Nebraskans.”
Faced with a public outcry, he pulled the picture Wednesday night, writing, “The amount of comments this FB page has gotten in the last week are off the charts and my staff and I do not have the time to police the comments. The longer a thread gets the harder it is to police. I know I am partly to blame by by posting content that pokes folks on the other side of the issues mentioned.”
September 30, 2014 - New York, NY: NYPD ESU units leave 225 West 35th street packing up, having not found the hotel robber. The robber would be found later by regular uniformed police. Two Swedish tourists, Andreas Mansson and Viktor Lofgren were the victims of a robbery at the Wingate by Wyndham on 35th street and 8th avenue in Manhattan. NYPD later caught the man in the building next door, 225 west 35th street. The robber then passed out after being caught and was taken away in an ambulance.
She was sent to the man’s apartment to check up on him after he failed to report for work. But when officer Umaccula Pierre arrived at his residence, she met 65-year-old Kenneth Sanden, dead in his home. The allegation against officer Pierre states that she stole the man’s credit card and placed a $3200 order for a ring at Zales.com
Pierre – an officer working in the 6th Precinct – is charged with identity theft and official misconduct.
The Vice President of the United States just suffered another one of life’s tragedies with the loss of his 46-year-old son Beau Biden to a brain tumor. And while the rest of the country respectfully allowed the Bidens to mourn their loss, Republican Ted Cruz, a current presidential candidate for 2016, jumped at the opportunity to tell a cruel “joke” about the Vice President.
Cruz, speaking to an enthusiastic crowd of roughly 650 Republicans at a Livingston County GOP dinner, told a series of jokes about Democrats, including the poorly timed jab at the vice president.
“You know, Vice President Joe Biden,” he said as a few chuckles emerged from the crowd, setting up the joke for him.
“You know the nice thing. You don’t need a punchline. I promise you it works. At the next party you’re at, just walk up to someone and say, ‘Vice President Joe Biden,’ and just close your mouth. They will crack up laughing.”
A little later, a reporter asked Cruz why he would do such a horrible thing as joke about the vice president while he is getting ready to bury his son. Instead of using the time to realize his mistake and offer a sincere apology, Cruz is caught on camera running away from the reporter like the classless fool his truly is.
Call it pure Insanity or just American stupidity. The man whose policies erased a surplus and dragged this country into the second great depression while losing 700,000 jobs a month, is seen more favorably than the man whose policies added over 11 million jobs to the economy so far, brought the unemployment rate to the lowest it’s been in years and brought health care to millions of Americans… just to name a few.
I’ll call this the true definition of pure, unadulterated American stupidity.
A new CNN/ORC poll reveals that 52 percent of Americans see Mr. Bush positively, while 43 percent do not. In contrast, 49 percent view Mr. Obama favorably, while 49 percent do not. That makes Obama the least-popular president among all his predecessors today.
“The second term doldrums do exist, but time does seem to heal all,” Douglas Astolfi, a professor of history at Saint Leo University, summed up CNN’s findings.
Presidents and the economy: Who was best, worst? Take our quiz.
Obama’s numbers are down as dramatically as Bush’s are up. In January 2009, shortly after Bush left and Obama entered office, only 35 percent of Americans viewed Bush favorably, while Obama enjoyed stratospheric approval ratings of 78 percent
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), speaks at the socially conservative Faith and Freedom Coalition "Road to Majority" conference in Washington D.C. on June 20, 2014. McCarthy is the Majority Leader-elect of the United States House of Representatives, elected on June 19, 2014 to replace outgoing Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who will leave the Leader position on July 31, 2014. (Photo by Jeff Malet)
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), speaks at the socially conservative Faith and Freedom Coalition “Road to Majority” conference in Washington D.C. on June 20, 2014. (Photo by Jeff Malet)
Republicans are in full control. They now control the House of Representatives and the Senate, and have promised their base to expect fast, sweeping changes to Obamacare when the new legislative session began in January. Much was said and many anticipated seeing a glimpse of the Republican healthcare plan, but so far, nothing. And from the looks of it, nothing will happen in the near future.
A piece written on Salon looked at this Republican quagmire and correctly called it a “massive deception” by congressional Republicans. The piece dug deep and uncovered the reason Republicans promised their version of the ‘Obamacare replacement,’ but failed to deliver. And according to Salon, the reason of course, is Politics.
Speaker John Boehner went on Fox News and promised that his party would agree on an Obamacare replacement plan and that it would come up for a vote before the year was out. “There will be an alternative,” he said, “and you’re going to get to see it.” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy also got in on the act, announcing the creation of “a new working group” consisting of Reps. Paul Ryan, Fred Upton, and John Kline that would “continue to build on patient-centered health care solutions with which to replace Obamacare.”
In keeping with the tired conventions of official Washington, these statements and actions were directed at the “hardworking taxpayers” who were at risk from “the fallout of Obamacare.” But the real intended audience was far smaller: the five conservative justices on the Supreme Court. The high court had, at that point, already agreed to hear arguments in King v. Burwell, the case that threatens to invalidate health insurance subsidies to the majority of states. Republicans obviously wanted the court to endorse the dodgy, bad-faith arguments brought by the plaintiffs, but they also had to consider the implications of a ruling against the ACA. If the subsidies were struck down, the insurance markets in those states would descend into chaos and put people’s lives at risk, and that might give the conservative justices pause.
So, they started sending every signal they could that the Republicans in Congress would be ready to cope with the pandemonium of a ruling against the ACA. McCarthy’s statement announcing the healthcare working group said that it would “develop a contingency plan… to enact in case the Supreme Court rules in King v. Burwell that Obamacare subsidies offered on the federal exchange are illegal.” The message was perfectly clear for those inclined to listen: don’t worry, pull the trigger, we got this.
The day before oral arguments in the case began in March, the three working group members published an op-ed laying out in determinedly vague terms the principles for their Obamacare “off-ramp” proposal. After the oral arguments, the working group released a statement saying “we will be ready to act” if the court rules for the plaintiffs. That was three months ago. The court’s ruling is expected to be released very soon. So where is the “contingency plan” majority leader McCarthy said would be forthcoming back in January?
Well, apparently he’s of a different mind now over whether it’s right and proper for the House working group to weigh in before the Supreme Court has actually released its ruling. According to the Wall Street Journal:
Mr. McCarthy told reporters Monday that Republicans would be prepared regardless of what the court decides, but that they would not unveil a proposal before a ruling.
“Don’t expect us to pre-determine the Supreme Court. We have to first see what their decision is and what we have to solve,” Mr. McCarthy said. Republicans still might release outlines of their response, but not a formal bill, an aide said.
AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka told USA Today that Clinton, who has so far refused to say where she stands on the deal, will have to say where she is – and warned if she doesn’t stand with them on the issue, she may lose out on their endorsement.
“She’s going to have to answer that,” he said. “I think she won’t be able to go through a campaign without answering that and people will take it seriously and it will affect whether they vote for her or don’t vote for her.”
Trumka warned that if Clinton does back the 13-country deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership “it will be tougher to mobilize working people.”
He also said it’s “conceivable” that the 12 million-member AFL-CIO might not endorse a presidential candidate “if both candidates weren’t interested in raising wages and creating jobs.”
It’s been an interesting week in the conservative heartland. Nebraska legislators overturned the governor’s veto and abolished the death penalty, while in Kansas, the state legislature is thinking about raising taxes because, well, that old conservative orthodoxy that says you can cut taxes and spur economic growth doesn’t seem to be working. Even would-be conservatives like Governor Chris Christie are paying the price for slow growth, and Christie still wants to cut taxes.
But there’s more. In a new Gallup survey, the number of people who consider themselves socially liberal has caught up to those who say they are socially conservative, a large jump from previous polls. Couple this with the news that younger Evangelical Christians are more socially progressive than their elders and you have the beginnings of the swing back to the middle this country so desperately needs.
The fever, it seems, might be breaking after all.
This was inevitable, as social and political shifts have been occurring approximately every 30 years. What began in the 1980s as a swing to the right, with Ronald Reagan’s presidency and gained momentum and roots with the conservative takeover of the Republican Party during the 1990s has evidently peaked and is now poised for a slow decline that will gain speed as a new generation of voters – who tend to be more progressive – participates in greater numbers. I certainly remember moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats in the 1960s and 70s, and I look for them to return sometime soon.
The main problem for the Republicans is that this new attitude might not save them for the 2016 presidential race. Social conservatives who vote in large numbers tend to be older than the new progressives, and they turn out for primaries. That’s why somewhat more moderate candidates, such as George Pataki and Chris Christie, will find it difficult to gain traction. But that movement away from the far right will also doom Rick Santorum and Rick Perry. Rand Paul could benefit, but my sense is that he’s ahead of the GOP curve. By 2024, he could be the mainstream nominee.
What we are seeing is the beginning of a new alignment that will take a couple of election cycles to define itself. How each party reacts to this is key, but the effects on the country will be real.
It is common knowledge that while Newt Gingrich masterminded the impeachment of President Bill Clinton for having an affair with Monica Lewinsky, Gingrich himself was busy having an affair of his own. And it is common knowledge that while Clinton was being impeached for said affair, another Republican leader, Rep. Bob Livingston of Louisiana, had to step down from being House Leader because he too was involved in multiple affairs.
Balls, right? Yea, I know.
But that’s not the end of if. Apparently, the biggest balls of all go to the next Republican who took over as House Speaker and became the longest-serving Republican House speaker in U.S. history, Dennis Hastert. It is now being revealed that Hastert had a secret of his own, and his secret was big… very big. Big enough that Hastert felt it was necessary to pay $3.5 million to a blackmailer to keep the secret… secret.
What was Hastert’s secret? Was it sexual in nature? Hell yea! He is a Republican after all. But unlike the sexual nature of his predecessors Newt and Livingston, Hastert’s sexual secret involved another man who might have been underage when Hastert had sex with him.
“It goes back a long way,” said one official discussing the recent seven-page indictment against Hastert.
On Friday, federal law enforcement dropped the anvil when they revealed that Hastert paid $1.7 million of the $3.5 million to a male he’s accused of sexually abusing when the boy was his student in Illinois.
And if they can all do it over, I’m sure Gingrich, Livingston and Hastert would all impeach Bill Clinton again for his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
We use cookies to improve your experience on our site. By agreeing to this, we can analyze browsing behavior and unique IDs on this site. Declining or revoking consent may affect certain features.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
