Police are dealing with a somewhat unique crime in Turlock, California where thieves stolen tanks from a truck. Since they also stole gasoline from the truck, the thieves might not have been aware of what was in the tanks but had succeeded in stealing $50,000 of bull semen.
Category: Society
There is a surprising development out of Texas in the investigation of into Planned Parenthood and the scandal over the selling of fetal tissue and body parts. The Center for Medical Progress had gone undercover to record officials with the organization speaking about the sales in ways that outraged the public and triggered a backlash against Planned Parenthood. However, the grand jury opted not to indict anyone at Planned Parenthood and instead charged David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt with the Center of Medical Progress for tampering with a governmental record, a second-degree felony. Perhaps the most interesting charge was the indictment of Daleiden with the purchase and sale of human organs, a class A misdemeanor. The group has insisted that it was using standard journalistic practices in showing that Planned Parenthood was illegally profiting from the sale of fetal tissue. Planned Parenthood has been cleared of any wrongdoing in various states. However, Planned Parenthood was forced to apologize for the casual tone of its officials and changed its policy on reimbursements for tissue and body parts.
Continue reading “Video Makers In Planned Parenthood Scandal Indicted By Texas Grand Jury”
There is a truly disgraceful story out of Lakewood, New Jersey where homeless man Ronald Leggatt, 65, was offered $5 by a stranger to pour a hot cup of coffee over his own head — twice. Carlos Mejia, 22, of Jackson, posted a video of Leggatt discussing the demeaning act. Mejia witnessed the scene and at first thought the man was going to help Leggatt and was horrified as Leggatt poured the coffee over his own head. The coffee reportedly left burn marks on Leggatt’s face. Mejia confronted the man who paid for the act. Mejia said that the culprit was an Orthodox Jew, who allegedly told Mejia that nothing would happen to him because “we run the town.” (Lakewood has a large Orthodox population). The police located the sadist but decided that there was no crime to charge because the act by Leggatt was voluntary. Others in the Orthodox Jewish community were ashamed by the conduct of the culprit and came forward to help Leggatt.
Stories of this kind leave me baffled. With all of the money and harsh measures imposed on the public by the Transportation Security Administration, the TSA itself seems barely accountable for continual stories of bungling and gross negligence. Recently, it was revealed that an international flight was allowed to simply go directly from the aircraft to the streets without passing through customs. People were horrified. Now it has happened again with American Airlines Flight 1223 from Cancun, Mexico and one passenger even alerted the TSA at the time and was told to just leave with the rest of the passengers from Mexico. The only reassuring thought is that any drug mule or terrorist would have assumed that this was a trick since no one is this dumb.
Continue reading “Kennedy Airport Allows Another International Flight To Skip Customs”
I have long admired Bill Gates for his incredible philanthropy around the world. It is for that reason that I was astonished by the news that Gates had sold the rights to a huge number of photos to the Visual China Group. The sale will now placed images from Tiananmen Square, including the iconic Tank Man photo, in the hands of the Chinese who hope to bury them and any memory of the uprising. The sale of Gates’ Corbis likely made a tidy profit but it is a political bonanza for the censors of the Chinese government.
We have been following the controversy surrounding the outrageous conduct of University of Missouri Mass communications professor Melissa Click attacking the media covering a “Black Lives Matter” protest.” She has now been charged with third-degree assault — an offense that is criminal but likely to result in only a fine.
Continue reading “University of Missouri Communications Professor To Be Charged With Assault”
We have been reporting on the protests occurring on college campuses and the troubling demands sometimes made by the “Black Lives Matter” movement in terms of academic components and programs, including college newspapers. Oberlin College President Marvin Krislov finally had enough after receiving a list of rambling demands from black students — demands declared to be nonnegotiable for the Administration. Krislov correctly refused to concede core control over the academic mission and yield to such demands which included things like the firing of certain employees and enrolling recently released prisoners.
Continue reading “Oberlin President Rejects List of Rambling Demands From Black Students”
New York city has reportedly agreed to pay two Occupy Wall Street protesters $52,000 for their arrest in 2013 after flipping off two New York City police officers on a Queens subway train. The arrests of Nicholas Thommen, 21, and Channing Creage, 26, clearly violated the first amendment and lacked probable cause of any crime. The question is not the settlement but, again, the absence of any indication of discipline of these officers for knowingly violating the constitutional rights of citizens.
Continue reading “New York Settles Case Of The Arrest Of Two Protesters For Insulting Police”
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
The weather here was cool and sunny. As an act of mercy for youse guys in the Northeast I thought I would help warm your spirits and stomachs with a recipe. I made this for dinner tonight. Of course, your stores are depleted from the pandemonium inherent with some folks facing two or three days of snow. But if you can scrape a few things together, you might enjoy some Salmon & Sweet Potato Soup.
Continue reading “Snow Soup For You! Something for the DC Shut-ins”
We are all hunkered down in our house with two feet of snow outside with drifts of around five feet. My Chicago upbringing however is hardwired. I cannot stay inside the house with a snow covered driveway. I just can’t. So I have cleared my driveway and can now drive to the wall of about three feet of snow on the street. In Virginia, they call snow removal “Spring.” However, I can drive up and down my driveway in a personal triumph against winter.
Continue reading “Man v. Snow: The Eternal Struggle Continues . . .”
There is another surprising report out today on the Clinton email scandal. Fox News Reporter Catherine Herridge is reporting that at least one of the emails on Hillary Clinton’s private server contained extremely sensitive information identified as “HCS-O,” the code used for reporting on human intelligence sources in ongoing operations. We previously discussed the disclosure that emails had been identified with Special Access Program information that even the Inspector General could not review without added clearances. In the meantime, some in the Clinton camp may be singing “Let It Snow, Let It Snow.” The State Department is citing the winter storm for yet another delay in releasing the remaining emails — possibly pushing their release past the first primary contests. Any break would likely be welcomed, particularly after a growing number of people including Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have said that Clinton’s decision to use an unsecure private email system probably resulted in the emails being hacked by various hostile powers.
Continue reading “Report: Clinton Emails Contained Human Intelligence Classified At Highest Levels”
We have previously discussed the wacky views of Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Sheikh like declaring that Twitter is “the source of all evil and devastation.” Now the grand mufti has ruled that chess is forbidden in Islam even though Arabs helped spread chess around the world after conquering Persia in the Seventh Century. Yet, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s supreme Shia religious authority, has previously issued rulings forbidding chess. Likewise, after the 1979 revolution in Iran, chess was declared haram, or forbidden.
Continue reading “Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Declares Chess UnIslamic”
Fox News and NBC are reporting that Congress has been informed that Hillary Clinton’s unsecure home server contained information classified at levels higher than previously known, including classified Top Secret/Special Access. That would represent some of the most sensitive information to U.S. intelligence. I have held a TSSCI clearance since the Reagan Administration and I am again astonished by the remarkably bad judgment in the use of this server. In dealing with this type of information, it is generally restricted to SCIF and other highly restrictive access rules. Indeed, the limitations impose restrictions that have many of us grumbling constantly about the time and travel needed to deal with such documents in a safe and secure manner. CNN is reporting that “several dozen” new emails have been identified at the high classification level.
In a major victory for Congress, U.S. District Judge Amy Jackson Berman rejected the executive privilege claims of the Obama Administration in withholding documents from a House Committee looking into the Fast and Furious “gun-walking” scandal. I have long maintained that the refusal of the Administration to turn over material to this and other committees is denial of congressional authority protected under Article I. The case is Comm. on Oversight & Gov’t Reform v. Lynch, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5713.
Iran’s idea of an election has always been something of a curiosity. No more so than this week. The Guardian Council, an unelected group composed of Muslim clerics and hardliners, disqualified all but 30 of the 3,000 reform candidates seeking to appear on ballots for the parliamentary elections. Six of the 12 members of the Council are clerics selected by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Continue reading “Iranian Council Disqualifies Virtually All Reformers From Running For Office”