According to a number of accounts, President the Donald ignored the recent murders and serious injury on a Portland light rail "train". The reality is: he did not.
The violent attacks in Portland on Friday are unacceptable. The victims were standing up to hate and intolerance. Our prayers are w/ them.
While I do wish someone would cancel his Twitter account, the fact of the matter is that shortly after arriving back on American soil, he did in fact respond to the attacks. The media just has TDS.
In brief, here's what happened last Friday:
Rick Best, Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche and Micah Fletcher saw two girls being berated on a Portland light rail train. They didn't sit still. A man was confronting the two teens -- including one who was wearing a hijab -- and started spouting "hate speech toward a variety of ethnicities and religions," Portland Police Sgt. Pete Simpson said.
"He told us to go back to Saudi Arabia and he told us we shouldn't be here, to get out of his country," Destinee Mangum, 16, told CNN affiliate KPTVof the experience.
When the trio of men tried to calm the suspect, all three were stabbed. Best and Meche died; Fletcher was stabbed 1 millimeter away from his jugular.
Although such bullies generally back off when verbally challenged, this 35 year-old jackass didn't, which is abnormal and leads some to suspect that he's a sociopath. The jackass is presently being held without bail; arraignment is set for tomorrow.
Mangum and her friend were riding the MAX light rail Friday afternoon when the suspect allegedly targeted them. He yelled at Mangum, who is not Muslim, and her friend, using what police described as "hate speech toward a variety of ethnicities and religions."
"Me and my friend were going to get off the MAX and then we turned around while they were fighting and he just started stabbing people," she said. "It was just blood everywhere and we just started running for our lives."
"It's haunting me," she said.
After giving her statement, she and her family have asked to be left alone for the time being, as they try to process what happened.
They wasted no time with this guy, the old bromide about being presumed innocent until proven guilty notwithstanding.
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A two-term Oklahoma Republican state senator's fall from political power following his arrest on child prostitution charges has been stunningly fast. Before state Sen. Ralph Shortey was even arrested or formally charged, Senate workers already had scraped his name from his office door, changed the locks and painted over his name in the parking lot.
35, married with three young daughters, now charged with felony solicitation of a 17 year-old guy; this guy really knows what conservatism's all about....
The officers smelled marijuana smoke coming from the room and found Shortey and the teen alone inside.
Easy come, easy go, I guess. At least he's got his name in the media; politicians love that.
In the current trial, two defendants, Jason Patrick and Darryl Thorn, were found guilty of conspiracy and face up to six years in prison. Two others, Duane Ehmer and Jake Ryan, were found guilty of deprivation of government property but acquitted of conspiracy.
That's Duane, above, on his horse "Hellboy". It's an interesting facet of our legal system: juries can come to different conclusions even when the facts are nearly identical; the Bundys and their five co-defendants won their case, while these four, tried by a different jury, lost theirs. And in addition to being "patriots", they now have a new title: felon.
Probably their big mistake was that they didn't wear masks and smash windows like the lefties here in Portland do.
The next round of trial for participants in the Great Branch Dildonian Occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon seems off to a good start, as federal prosecutors seem better prepared - perhaps having learned something after the first batch of defendants were acquitted on all charges. This time, they have video of a meeting that took place in the firehouse on the refuge the day after "LaVoy" Finicum assumed ambient temperature, in which there's some discussion of taking a fire truck, hightailing it to Idaho, and "laying down lead" if anybody tried to stop them. The plan was vetoed, but an interesting discussion nonetheless.
The sheriff in Grant County, Oregon is a certified loon. He's a member of some wingnut group of "Constitutional Sheriffs" and appoints a new "civil deputy" every time he takes a leak. I think he's got around 65 of 'em now.
This clown sided with the Bundy gang when they took over the wildlife refuge last year around this time. He's such a nutter that the FBI and other real law enforcement people left him out of the loop because he'd squeal to the wannabe cowpokes at the refuge.
In a unanimous motion Dec. 28, the court members said, after investigation, they will not pay the $78,000 in attorney fees requested by The Oregonian, or fees incurred in Palmer’s defense, because the lawsuit was not covered under the Oregon Tort Claims Act. They also requested county attorney Ron Yockim to further investigate the matter and said they may revisit it.
The Oregonian requested the attorney fees after suing Palmer, the sheriff’s office and Civil Deputy Sally DeFord, requesting a judge to declare certain records to be public records and to compel their disclosure, according to documents filed in Grant County Circuit Court. The Oregonian said in the documents Palmer refused to produce the records before the lawsuit, which entitles them to attorney fees.
Imagine that. The embattled sheriff wanted the county to pay for his continued refusal to abide by the law. The county's insurer said that nope, they won't pay, and now the county says they won't pay, and that sorta leaves ol' Sheriff Palmer on the hook to the tune of around a hundred thousand dollars, due to the legal fees that are his responsibility and ongoing expenses incurred in relation to the ongoing criminal investigation into his activities by the state DoJ.
County Judge Scott Myers said attorney D. Zachary Hostetter, who represented Palmer and DeFord in the lawsuit, told the county it would be responsible for paying the attorney fees but, for a price, Hostetter would negotiate the fees on behalf of the county.
“(Hostetter) says, ‘Right now, you guys are going to owe $78,000, but I think I can get it down to half of that if you send me a check for $2,000,’” Myers said.
Nice try, Sleazeball, but the county didn't incur the expenses; the idiot Sheriff did, and all by his little self.
Those were the last words that Pootriot "LaVoy" Finicum uttered while stumbling around in a snowbank last January before he was shot and killed by OSP officers as he reached for his gun. The sheriff he was going to see was Grant County sheriff Glenn Palmer, a Pootriot sympathizer (the so-called Patriot movement, which refers to a range of anti-government groups, including militias, tax protesters and so-called “sovereign citizens”) who tomorrow night will find out if he's still the sheriff out around John Day, Oregon. He's up for reelection, and his sympathy for the Bundy gang, who took over a National Wildlife Refuge in next-door Harney County, rubbed a lot of folks the wrong way.
Palmer's also associated with the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), a group resolved to assert the authority of local sheriffs in the face of any federal attempt to register or seize firearms, arrest or search individuals, or use military force against citizens. They argue that federal agents should not arrest people or seize property “without first notifying and obtaining the express consent of the local sheriff”.
In short, they believe that the county sheriff is the highest legal authority in the land (they even claim that “the power of the sheriff even supersedes the powers of the president”). In that, they share the same basic hostility to the federal government, and the same reading of the constitution, as the Malheur occupiers.
In other words, he's a nut. With an investigation proceeding by the Oregon DoJ involving records tampering, among other things. So will he be reelected? In that county, it's hard to say; a lot of them like that Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution:
The federal government shall exercise authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards, and other needful buildings.
Many in the Patriot movement believe that these are the only purposes for which the federal government can acquire land. National parks, forests, wildlife reserves and public land are, they believe, simply unconstitutional.
As does Palmer. Indeed, that interpretation was cited as the reason behind the Bundy gang's armed takeover of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge; they demanded that the land be returned to the county.
It's going to be interesting to see how the election pans out over there, as a victory for Palmer may well serve to bolster the Pootriot movement.
The Bundy Gang acquittals a couple of days ago disturbs the head of the Department of Interior:
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell says she's "profoundly disappointed" by a jury's decision to acquit several key figures in the armed occupation of a national wildlife refuge in Oregon last winter.
In a message Friday to all Interior Department employees, Jewell says she's concerned about the verdict's potential effect on workers and on the effective management of public lands.
She encourages employees to care of themselves and their co-workers, stay vigilant and report any suspicious activity to supervisors and, if appropriate, law enforcement.
Jewell's message notes that she visited the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge after the occupation and found it disheartening to survey the damage.
The occupiers contend they improved the refuge, and law enforcement caused damage during the investigation.
The college kid, "Juror #4" claims to be "baffled" by the negative reaction to their verdicts. Like many college kids, his knowledge and experience exceeds that of most common people:
"don't they know that 'not guilty' does not mean innocent?"
Thanks for the civics lesson, kid.
I think that when you have armed people in a watch-tower and armed people at the entrances, stopping vehicles and questioning the occupants, there's a reasonable case for both conspiracy and intimidation.
It was a wild and crazy time at federal court in Portland yesterday:
The jury returned its verdict after six weeks of testimony followed by less than six hours deliberations, and the last minute replacement of a juror after an allegation surfaced that he was biased. The jury was instructed to disregard its previous work and to re-consider the evidence.
The allegation of bias was made by Juror #4, a full-time business administration student at a minor-league college in a Portland suburb, against Juror #11, a former ranger and firefighter who retired from the Bureau of Land Management twenty years ago. He was dismissed on Wednesday, and his replacement arrived yesterday morning; at which time "deliberations" began anew, supposedly. Less than six hours later, they declared all seven defendants not guilty. Pandemonium ensued when the Bundy boys were ordered held to face charges in Nevada; Ammon Bundy's lawyer protested, at one point yelling at the judge before being tackled by half a dozen U.S. Marshals, tazed, and handcuffed.
Margaret "Margie" Paris, a University of Oregon law professor and former dean, said she couldn't believe what occurred when she learned of the confrontation.
"It just blows my mind,'' Paris said. "To have a lawyer who's making an argument in court physically restrained and taken down is extraordinary. He's entitled to make these arguments. If he was repeating himself over and over, the more typical response is to hold him in contempt. But to physically accost him is just shocking.''
Actually, it was more like stunning, but that's a purely semantic discussion. Many were taken aback by the federal use of force against a lawyer in a federal courtroom; the judge ordered the courtroom cleared.
Many people people across the country took to Twitter and other social media to play the race card, claiming that the outcome would have been different had the defendants been black. They appear outraged that the defendants were all white, the attorneys were all white, and so was the judge and the jury. That should not have come as any great surprise, given the demographic makeup of the state, which is overwhelmingly white; blacks make up only around 2.6% of the population (although at the rate black gang members are shooting one another - there were three more shot overnight in northeast Portland - the percentage may well decrease).
Amusingly, one guy complained that it was an LDS conspiracy, since the Bundy boys are Mormon and the whole place is infested with Mormons, so the jury was likely all Mormon. Obviously, he doesn't know much about Oregon, since the predominant belief system here is Fundamentalist Idiocy.
What the jury "found" was that prosecutors did not prove conspiracy nor intent to impede federal workers through intimidation, threats, or use of force. That seems an odd finding; don't know about you, but a lot of folks would find the presence of armed guards at the entrance and armed men in a watch-tower somewhat intimidating.
This is bound to be a hot topic of discussion around the country between now and the election, unless something big blows up between now and then.
This clown sided with the Bundy gang when they took over the wildlife refuge last year around this time. He's such a nutter that the FBI and other real law enforcement people left him out of the loop because he'd squeal to the wannabe cowpokes at the refuge.
