Tag: Utah

Categories
Politics shooting

Utah Police Officers Shot Dead Another Black Man In The Back

Photograph: Jocelyn Hansen

Another story to add to our ever-growing folder on excessive force and police brutality.

A Preliminary autopsy states that the young man was shot in the back corroborating eyewitness’ account that the man was running away from police. You wanna know what was the Police account of the shooting? They said the young man was coming towards them with a sword, so they shot him in the back?

Huh? How… wa… I don’t… *sigh*

ThinkProgress reports that last Wednesday, 22-year-old Darrien Hunt was shot dead by police in Saratoga Springs, Utah, about 35 miles south of Salt Lake City.

For three days, police said nothing about the cause of the shooting while witnesses reported that he was running away as officers shot outside a Panda Express. On Saturday, police issued a brief statement saying he lunged at them with a sword. But Hunt’s lawyer says an independent autopsy shows Hunt was shot in the back and not in the front, and his mother Susan Hunt says the “sword” was a blunt-edged vanity version of a Japanese “Katana” sword he bought at an Asian gift shop.

“Those stupid cops thought they had to murder over a toy,” Susan Hunt told the Associated Press. The family’s lawyer, Randall K. Edwards, declined requests from the Los Angeles Times to provide the name of pathologist who performed the alleged autopsy, or to provide a copy of the autopsy.

Hunt told the Associated Press that she returned to Utah recently after separating from her husband and fleeing an abusive relationship, to start a new life with her children. She said Darrien was coping with the separation and looking for jobs in Saratoga Springs

Categories
Featured Gun Control Teacher

Utah Elementary Teacher Almost Shot Herself in The Butt

In Utah, the law allows teachers to carry concealed weapons in schools and these teachers are not required to disclose that they are packing and administrators are forbidden from asking that teacher if they’re carrying.

Utah’s law also requires that teachers must keep their guns on them at all times, even in the bathroom. So when Michelle Ferguson-Montgomery went into the bathroom at the Westbrook Elementary School and a shot was later heard, the first thought was that she had shot herself. But it seems that her gun went off, shattering the toilet and causing fragments of the toilet to injure her Second Amendment, right on her leg.

The teacher was taken to a Salt Lake hospital and listed in good condition. The authorities are investigating.

Categories
Politics

This Republican Introduced a Bill to Increase CO2 in The Atmosphere

Jerry Anderson

A Republican member of Utah’s Legislature has introduced a bill to curb the state’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. Rep. Jerry Anderson, a retired science teacher, told a committee on Tuesday that doubling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would pose no harmful consequences.

In fact, to support his cause, Anderson said that when dinosaurs walked the Earth, the level of CO2 concentrate was at 600 parts per million and “they did quite well,” he told the Salt Lake Tribune.

“We are short of carbon dioxide for the needs of the plants,” he said.

The bill further clarified that the meaning of the term “air contaminants” to state that it should exclude “natural components of the atmosphere, including nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and other noble gases, water vapor, steam, and carbon dioxide in amounts less than 500 parts per million, or any combination of them.”

Anderson’s belief is contrary to current science. According to a study from the Carnegie Institution for Science, which was reported in Science Daily, trees and other type of plants help cool the planet. However, increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere “are turning down this global air conditioner.” Researchers also found that more than a quarter of the warming because of higher levels of carbon dioxide is a result of its direct impact on plants. It is a “heat-trapping greenhouse gas,” scientists say.

Categories
Tid Bits

Army Dad Reunited With Child Given Up For Illegal Adoption

Finally, Justice for Terry Achane

A father has been reunited with his 22-month-old daughter who was given up for adoption at birth without his knowledge. After a grueling custody battle between the army drill sergeant, Terry Achane, and the Frei family who had adopted his daughter, a Utah judge ruled that the girl must be returned to her biological father.

“I’m just happy right now. I’m with my daughter,” Sgt. Terry Achane told “Good Morning America.”

Achane was stationed in South Carolina when his now ex-wife, Tira Bland, gave birth to their daughter Leah (who he calls Teleah) in March 2011. He expected to return to his wife and baby in Texas, where he expected the birth would take place, after the child was born, the Salt Lake Tribune reported in December. But Bland delivered Leah in Utah, instead, and gave her up for adoption just two days later. It was weeks before Achane knew his daughter had been placed for adoption.

“Utah’s laws appeal to people who want to get it done quick, rather than to people who want to get it done right,” Adam Pertman, executive director at the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, told GMA.

h/t HuffPost

Categories
Newt Gingrich Politics

Newt Gingrich’s Check, Bouncing Like a Rubber Ball

Five Republicans have filed the necessary papers and $500 fee to qualify for the June 26 Utah presidential primary election, but with Rick Santorum dropping out of the race Tuesday, only four will be on the ballot.

Or possibly three.

Utah Elections Director Mark Thomas said a designated agent for the Gingrich campaign brought the filing papers and a check for $500 in March, but the state was notified by the bank that the check had bounced. He said the office has tried to contact the Gingrich campaign through the telephone number and email provided on the application, but has not received a response.

Recently, the state sent a certified letter to the campaign, stating that if the fee isn’t paid by April 20, Gingrich will be disqualified and will not be on the ballot.

Source: The Salt Lake Tribune

Categories
Abortion Domestic Policies South Dakota women's

In Four Months, Republicans Introduced 916 Bills Against Women’s Right To Choose

It’s almost an unbelievable figure – 916. That’s the amount of legislation that Republicans introduced from January to April, trying to regulate a woman’s reproductive system. It’s absolutely stunning!

This information comes from a report by The Guttmacher Institute, and it finds that 49 states have contributed to this number with various bills geared towards regulating abortions and a woman’s right to choose. The report says that in 15 states, the following measures became law:

  • expand the pre-abortion waiting period requirement in South Dakota to make it more onerous than that in any other state, by extending the time from 24 hours to 72 hours and requiring women to obtain counseling from a crisis pregnancy center in the interim;
  • expand the abortion counseling requirement in South Dakota to mandate that counseling be provided in-person by the physician who will perform the abortion and that counseling include information published after 1972 on all the risk factors related to abortion complications, even if the data are scientifically flawed;
  • require the health departments in Utah and Virginia to develop new regulations governing abortion clinics;
  • revise the Utah abortion refusal clause to allow any hospital employee to refuse to “participate in any way” in an abortion;
  • limit abortion coverage in all private health plans in Utah, including plans that will be offered in the state’s health exchange; and
  • revise the Mississippi sex education law to require all school districts to provide abstinence-only sex education while permitting discussion of contraception only with prior approval from the state.

The report continues;

In addition to these laws, more than 120 other bills have been approved by at least one chamber of the legislature, and some interesting trends are emerging. As a whole, the proposals introduced this year are more hostile to abortion rights than in the past: 56% of the bills introduced so far this year seek to restrict abortion access, compared with 38% last year. Three topics—insurance coverage of abortion, restriction of abortion after a specific point in gestation and ultrasound requirements—are topping the agenda in several states. At the same time, legislators are proposing little in the way of proactive initiatives aimed at expanding access to reproductive health –related services; this stands in sharp contrast to recent years when a range of initiatives to promote comprehensive sex education, permit expedited STI treatment for patients’ partners and ensure insurance coverage of contraception were adopted.

Four months, 916 bills introduced. Sounds like a new record is about to be set. Whatever happened to Roe v. Wade? You know, the 1973 decision by the Supreme Court that gives women the right under the 14th amendment of the Constitution to have a choice? The law that has guided this issue for the last four decades.

Why is Roe v. Wade now a mute issue?

 

Exit mobile version