JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
An unnamed producer wrote in an email to Sony chairman Michael Lynton that films with black actors — using Denzel Washington in The Equalizer as an example — don’t perform well because the international audiences are “racist,” according to documents found in the Sony hack. The producer suggested that the two-time Oscar winner should not star in big-budget films as the international audience will not accept him in a leading role because of his race.
“I believe that the international motion picture audience is racist —in general pictures with an African American lead don’t play well overseas. When Sony made Equalizer they had to know that Denzel opens pics domestically, however the international gross would be somewhat limited,” the producer wrote in an Oct. 27 e-mail.
Lynton wrote back asking if he was saying The Equalizer “shouldn’t have been made or that African American actors should be excluded?”
“No, I am not saying ‘The Equalizer’ should not have been made or that African American actors should not have been used (I personally think Denzel is the best actor of his generation),” the producer responded. “Casting him is saying we’re ok with a double if the picture works,” the producer wrote, using a baseball analogy.
Washington is “reliable at the domestic [box office], safe, but has not had a huge success in years. I believe whenever possible the non event pictures, extra ‘bets’ should have a large inherent upside and be made for the right price. Here there isn’t a large inherent upside,” the producer wrote.
The producer also wrote that he or she hoped the statement wasn’t “inappropriate or provocative.”
The Equalizergrossed about $191 million worldwide. Approximately $90 million was earned overseas. The producer said this figure would have been higher if a black man wasn’t in the lead role.
According to the emails, a sequel to the movie was set for 2017, but would be “a double, with a remote chance of a home run.”
Calls to Denzel Washington’s publicist were not immediately returned.
A pregnant St. Louis woman lost her left eye after a violent run-in with law enforcement earlier this week.
Dornnella Conners says an
officer fired a non-lethal bean-bag round at the car she was in –
shattering the passenger side window.
Shards of glass bloodied her face and robbed her of sight in her left eye, according to reports.
“I will have justice for what they did to me but I’m happy I’m alive,” she wrote on Facebook on Thanksgiving.
Conners was injured early
Tuesday morning shortly after the announcement that Darren Wilson would
not be indicted in the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown.
Crowds of demonstrators had taken to the streets to protest what they consider a travesty of justice.
Conners, who was angry about the
grand jury’s decision, and her boyfriend, De’Angelas Lee, were parked
at a BP gas station on New Halls Ferry Road in St. Louis, just north of
Ferguson, KMOV reported.
As her boyfriend started to drive away, she says, several police officers arrived.
“They pulled up while we were coming towards the street, De’Anglas
was trying to get away, they blocked us from the side, front and back,”
Conners told the CBS affiliate.
That’s when an officer fired the bean bag round because he feared for his safety, police said.
Conners found another officer who could help her get medical attention.
Dornella’s father, Donnell Conners, says he understands that the cops
have a difficult job to do but there was no excuse for what happened to
his daughter.
“I’m very upset, very disappointed with tactics that they used trying to get control of situation,” he told KMOV.
“I understand tough job, I understand that it was chaos, there was no
reason to fire upon innocent person sitting in a vehicle.”
Conners says her left eye was so badly damaged that it needed to be
removed and reports blurriness in her right eyes but is thankful she can
still see the world at all.
Police say they arrested 16 suspects at the station after gunshots were reportedly fired.
Authorities have issued a warrant for Lee’s arrest, according to reports.
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday that the Americas were discovered by Muslims in the 12th century, nearly three centuries before Christopher Columbus set foot there.
"Contacts between Latin America and Islam date back to the 12th century. Muslims discovered America in 1178, not Christopher Columbus," the conservative president said in a televised speech during an Istanbul summit of Muslim leaders from Latin America.
"Muslim sailors arrived in America from 1178. Columbus mentioned the existence of a mosque on a hill on the Cuban coast," Erdogan said.
Erdogan said that Ankara was even prepared to build a mosque at the site mentioned by the Genoese explorer.
"I would like to talk about it to my Cuban brothers. A mosque would go perfectly on the hill today," the Turkish leader said.
History books say that Columbus set foot on the American continent in 1492 as he was seeking a new maritime route to India.
A tiny minority of Muslim scholars have recently suggested a prior Muslim presence in the Americas, although no pre-Columbian ruin of an Islamic structure has ever been found.
In a controversial article published in 1996, historian Youssef Mroueh refers to a diary entry from Columbus that mentions a mosque in Cuba. But the passage is widely understood to be a metaphorical reference to the shape of the landscape.
JohnButts@JBmedia - Reports:
Ben Carson, the popular conservative activist who rose to national prominence in 2013 when he delivered a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast that was widely hailed in conservative circles, is apparently running for president, and kicking off his campaign this weekend with an hour-long infomercial for himself.
Though Carson has not officially declared his run for the Republican 2016 presidential nomination, the infomercial entitled Ben Carson: A Breath of Fresh Air; A New Prescription for America is set to air in 22 states and Washington D.C. after Carson’s friend and reported business manager Armstrong Williams bought airtime on numerous local and network stations to broadcast what is being called the first campaign ad of the 2016 campaign.
Just a few weeks ago, Carson said that he was reluctant to run for president in part because he feared that the 2016 presidential election might be canceled due to “widespread anarchy.”
Since his 2013 Prayer Breakfast speech, Carson has been known mainly for his controversial and hyperbolic public statements, particularly with regard to the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act, better known as “Obamacare.”
In a speech last year, the 63-year-old Carson, an African-American and a leading neurosurgeon formerly at Johns Hopkins University, called the healthcare reform law “the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery.”
Carson has also described the healthcare law, which according to the New York Times has allowed 10 million previously uninsured Americans to obtain health coverage, as worse than the 9/11 terrorist attacks “because 9/11 was an isolated incident.” He later walked back that statement.
Carson has been a paid commentator for the conservative news network Fox News, but on Saturday, he announced that he had quit his job with the network, a move generally seen as signaling his initial entry into electoral politics.
Among his numerous other contentious public pronouncements, Carson has said that the United States “is very much like Nazi Germany,” adding, ” I know you’re not supposed to say ‘Nazi Germany,’ but I don’t care about political correctness.”
As the basis for his comparison between the United States and the fascist state of Nazi Germany, in which Jews and other minority groups were persecuted, imprisoned and murdered by the millions, Carson cites his view that, “We now live in a society where people are afraid to say what they actually believe.”
Carson did not note, however, that he, himself, delivered his Prayer Breakfast speech harshly critical of President Barack Obama with the president sitting on the podium next to him.
And yet not only did Ben Carson escape arrest and incarceration for saying what he actually believed, he was rewarded with national recognition and a paid contributor’s position on a national television network.
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
The woman who was kidnapped on Sunday off a desolate Philadelphia street -- a harrowing crime that was caught on surveillance camera -- was found alive today in Maryland, while her abductor was arrested, authorities said.
Carlesha Freeland-Gaither, 22, was found by FBI agents inside a parked car in Jessup, Maryland.
Her alleged abductor, Delvin Barnes, 37, was arrested at the scene, according to the FBI.
Ed Hanko, the special agent in charge of the Philadelphia FBI field office, said that because of tips called in from the public, investigators were "able to identify this individual, identify his car and track it into Maryland."
FBI agents were joined by U.S. Marshals and Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms agents who located the car and approached when Barnes stepped out of the vehicle.
Freeland-Gaither was found inside the car and is now being treated at a local hospital, police said.
Hanko said that she is "in good shape," but police still have not had a chance to interview her.
Freeland-Gaither's mother, whose name was not released, attended tonight's news conference and said that she has been able to speak to her daughter by phone from the hospital, but will be reunited later this evening.
"She was very upset. She was crying," she said of her daughter.
"Thank you for keeping me up. Thank you for being there for us. I'm taking my baby home," she added.
Barnes is being held as a result of an outstanding attempted capital murder warrant that was issued for him in Virginia, though he is expected to face federal charges once the ongoing investigation into Freeland-Gaither's case is complete.
Investigators said that they have no reason to believe Barnes knew his victim before the abduction.
"He's a thug and this is what he does apparently," Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey told reporters. "People like this, there's nothing that makes sense."
In the surveillance video released Monday, Freeland-Gaither can be seen fighting to get away from her attacker during Sunday's abduction.
Freeland-Gaither was pulled down the street in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia toward the man’s car, which police believed to be a 2000 or 2002 gray Ford Taurus. At one point, she even fell to the ground to try and get away before she was pushed into the car.
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis didn't have any problem jamming through a so-called "voter ID" law that was intended to take away the voting rights of thousands of North Carolinians -- including many African Americans.
But the moment Democrats or civil rights organizations exhort African Americans to go to the polls and stand up for their right to vote -- and prevent Tillis from being elected to the U.S. Senate -- the Republicans squeal like stuck pigs.
"Oh, that's unfair, that's playing the racial card," they say. Wrong. That's being held accountable for policies that intentionally attack the interests of African Americans and millions of other ordinary voters.
With Tillis as speaker, the North Carolina legislature passed "Stand Your Ground" legislation similar to the law that allowed the acquittal of Trayvon Martin's killer in Florida. But the GOP thinks it is utterly unfair for him to be tied to the real-world consequences of his actions in government.
Community and civil rights organizations throughout the South -- and around the country -- are exhorting African American voters to go to the polls in the mid-term elections by pointing out that when African Americans don't vote they get outcomes like Ferguson, Missouri. And they are dead on. Sixty-seven percent of the city's 21,000 residents are black, but only 12 percent of the voters in the last municipal election were black. The result: a city council with only one African American member and a police force of 53 officers -- of which only three are black.
There could be no better example of what African Americans get if they don't vote. Yet the Republicans think that reference to Ferguson is "inflammatory."
It's not the least bit "inflammatory." It simply means that the African American community intends to stand up for itself in the political process.
It is tribute to the fact that the leaders of African American organizations realize that if you're not at the table, you're on the menu -- and that goes for all of us.
Democrats and everyday Americans of all backgrounds should take a lesson from the way African American leaders are standing up for President Obama. They are pointing out in radio spots and mailings that while it is perfectly legitimate to criticize the president in a democratic society; many of his Republican and right-wing
critics have crossed the line to disrespect. They are telling African American voters: "It's up to us to have the president's back -- vote."
Republicans don't like to hear that. In fact, the corporate CEOs and Wall Street billionaires who control the Republican Party -- in coalition with groups of tea party extremists -- don't want most ordinary Americans to wake up and go the polls.
That doesn't just go for African Americans. They are hoping that Hispanics, women, working people, and young people of all sorts stay home and forget there is an election. That way they hope they can elect a Republican Senate so that if a vacancy occurs on the Supreme Court they can prevent President Obama from appointing a justice that is not in Wall Street's back pocket.
They want a Senate that can work with the tea party-controlled House to hold the president and the country hostage unless they are allowed to slash tax rates for big business, eliminate the Medicare guarantee, cut Social Security benefits, gut the regulation of Wall Street, dramatically restrict women's right to choose and limit access to contraception. And none of that is an exaggeration. Those are the positions they put right on their campaign websites.
If you are reading this article and haven't voted, make a plan right now for how you plan to vote before Tuesday. In most states you can vote by mail, vote early at many locations or -- of course -- go to your precinct on Tuesday and cast your ballot.
Figure out now what time you plan to vote and how you plan to get to the polls or the early vote location. Don't put it off.
Many critical elections in state after state are on a knife's edge -- they will be decided by a handful of voters.
Tens of thousands of Americans have given their lives -- on battlefields far away and in struggles for voting rights here at home -- so that every single American can have the right to have a say in determining our country's leaders.
If you think that it doesn't matter -- or that it won't affect you, or that your vote won't influence the outcome -- you are simply wrong.
In the end the big issues that completely shape our individual lives and the future of our society are decided by who votes.
Will there be job opportunities for our kids? Will a small group of Wall Street speculators be allowed to sink our economy once again like they did in 2008? Will you have the right to control your own reproductive decisions? Will your monthly Social Security check be cut? Will we leave our kids a planet that is so filled with carbon pollution that we can't grow enough food or our cities are regularly swamped by monster storms like Hurricane Sandy? Will ordinary people finally get wage increases from our growing economy or will all of the growth continue to be siphoned off by the wealthiest one percent?
If you don't plan to vote, are you really willing to allow the billionaires and CEOs to get what they want? Are you willing to let them steal your family's security while we sleep through the election?
Don't let it happen. Get up off the couch and go vote. Better still, call your neighbors, your sons and daughters. Tell your spouse to vote. Volunteer with a campaign to get other people out to vote -- it works.
The plain fact is that if we don't vote it won't just be some politician who loses an election. If we don't vote, we lose.
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Ex-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano — who oversaw a sweeping directive that gave hundreds of thousands of young immigrants a reprieve from deportations — says she is backing President Barack Obama’s planned executive action on immigration.
“If Congress refuses to act and perform its duties, then I think it’s appropriate for the executive to step in and use his authorities based on law … to take action in the immigration arena,’’ Napolitano said in an interview with The Washington Post published Monday.
The comments came in advance of a speech that Napolitano will deliver later Monday at the University of Georgia School of Law. The Post reported that the speech, called “Anatomy of a Legal Decision,” will dissect the internal debate over the federal 2012 directive, called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, that halted deportations of young undocumented immigrants and gave them work permits.
“It just seemed to me that we needed to do something for this group of young people,” Napolitano, now the president of the University of California system, told the paper. “They were brought here as kids, not of their own volition. They really are kind of the worst victims of the lack of immigration reform.”
The comments are particularly notable given Napolitano’s role in implementing DACA — which is widely expected to be a model for the executive action promised by Obama later this year — and also because of her mixed history with immigration advocates during her tenure at the Department of Homeland Security.
The former Arizona governor came under criticism for an administration enforcement policy that led to record levels of deportations of immigrants without legal status. At the same time, Napolitano has drawn attacks from groups and lawmakers that want tougher immigration enforcement.
After comprehensive immigration reform died a slow death in Washington this year, Obama promised to take executive action to ease deportations and unilaterally make other tweaks in the nation’s immigration system.
But Obama said last month that he would punt that decision until after the November midterms, as Senate Democrats grew increasingly nervous about potential political blowback from any sweeping order.
Napolitano’s successor, Jeh Johnson, is leading the administration’s review of its immigration enforcement policies and preparing recommendations for Obama on what kinds of executive actions the president can take.
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Once again the U.S. Supreme Court is correcting its own record, but Wednesday marks the first time that the court has called attention to its own mistake with a public announcement. And it was the erring justice herself, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who asked the court's public information office to announce the error.
Last Friday Ginsburg pulled an all-nighter to write a dissent from the court's decision to allow the Texas voter ID law to go into effect while the case is on appeal. The dissent, released Saturday at 5 a.m. and joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, listed a variety of photo ID forms not accepted for purposes of voting under the Texas law. Among those listed in the Ginsburg dissent as unacceptable was a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs photo ID.
Three days after the opinion was released, professor Richard Hasen of the University of California, Irvine said on his election law blog that the state does in fact accept the Veterans Affairs IDs. Upon confirmation of that fact by the Texas secretary of state's office, Ginsburg amended her opinion.
Not surprising. What was surprising is that, according to Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg, Justice Ginsburg instructed the press office to announce that the opinion had "contained an error" and that it was being corrected.
On Wednesday, the court announced the mistake and the correction.
Errors of this sort are not exactly rare. In this case, it appears that Ginsburg may have gotten the Wisconsin and Texas voter ID provisions, both before the court, mixed up.
Until the era of the blogosphere, however, this sort of mistake was the stuff of academic gossip. Now it is the stuff of academic blogs, which sometimes get picked up in the popular press. A more embarrassing mistake by Justice Antonin Scalia was caught by Harvard Law professor Richard Lazarus last spring; the error was quickly fixed, but it was not announced. Nor was another error made and corrected by Justice Kagan.
Ginsburg is the first justice to call the public's attention to her own mistake.
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Doug Wortham used a Defense
Department giveaway program for law enforcement to stock his office with an assault rifle, a handgun and a Humvee — even though the people in
his custody are in no condition to put up a fight.
They're dead. Wortham
is the Sharp County, Arkansas, coroner. He says the Humvee helps him
navigate the rugged terrain of the Ozarks foothills, but he struggled to
explain why he needs the surplus military weapons he acquired more than
two years ago.
"I just wanted to protect myself," he said.
His
office isn't the only government agency with limited policing powers
and a questionable need for high-powered weaponry to take advantage of
the program. While most of the surplus weapons go to municipal police
departments and county sheriffs, an Associated Press review shows that a
diverse array of other state and local agencies also have been scooping
up guns and other tactical equipment no longer needed by the military.
Military-grade
weapons have gone to government agencies that enforce gaming laws at
Kansas tribal casinos and weigh 18-wheelers in Mississippi, to the
Wyoming Livestock Board and the Cumberland County Alcoholic Beverage
Control Board in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Other military surplus
items have been bestowed on an animal control department in Cullman
County, Alabama; a harbormaster in Dartmouth, Massachusetts; and the
California Assembly's Sergeant-at-Arms.
Kim Clark, senior investigator for the Wyoming Livestock Board, gets his horse ready to load onto a …
The Pentagon's 1033 Program has been controversial; the White
House ordered a review of it and similar programs in August after a
deadly police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, led to clashes between
protesters and officers decked out in combat gear.
Under the 1033
Program, thousands of law-enforcement agencies have acquired hundreds of
millions of dollars in weapons and other military castoffs. Among them
were dozens of fire departments, district attorneys, prisons, parks
departments and wildlife agencies that were eligible to join the program
because they have officers or investigators with arrest powers.
Guns,
armored vehicles and aircraft only account for a fraction of the
equipment up for grabs. Several agencies surveyed by the AP said they
never asked for any weapons and only enrolled in the program to get free
office equipment and other common items that wouldn't be deployed on
any battlefield.
The agencies receiving firearms are difficult to
pinpoint because the federal agency overseeing the program releases only
county-level data on weapons transfers, citing security concerns. But
some participating agencies — or state officials who coordinate the
program — were willing to disclose their inventories.
Wortham was
qualified to enroll in the 1033 Program because Arkansas coroners have
arrest powers. Elected to his first term as coroner in 2010, he obtained
a .45-caliber pistol and an M-16 rifle in 2012 after getting a Humvee
the previous year. He said he is trying to arrange for a local police
department to take the two weapons.
Kim Clark, senior investigator for the Wyoming Livestock Board, poses for a picture with his Colt .4 …
State program officials said they couldn't find Wortham's
written justification for requesting the weapons. An official from the
federal office that oversees the program approved both transactions.
"What
does a coroner need a big gun for?" asked Marshall County, Illinois,
coroner Davey Lenz, who used the program to obtain body bags. "I have
never carried a weapon in my 20 years on the job."
Steve Melo, the
harbormaster in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, said he hasn't received any
weapons but acquired a Humvee for driving in marshy areas and a
night-vision scope to spot boaters in the dark. The Humvee was stripped
of weapon holders and the scope isn't attached to a gun, he said.
"We
have looked at it as saving this town big money," he said. "We're not
out there in tanks. We're not dressing in battle uniform-type stuff."
The
Arkansas Tobacco Control agency obtained five 12-gauge shotguns for its
agents, who help regulate tobacco retailers and wholesalers.
Kim Clark, senior investigator for the Wyoming Livestock Board, shows his Colt .45 semi-automatic pi …
"A lot of the convenience store owners who are involved in
(tobacco) smuggling are also on the terrorist watch list, have
connections to organized crime, etc.," said Roland Darrow, an agency
attorney. Darrow said his agency's law-enforcement officers have
arrested at least one person whose name was on Homeland Security's
terrorist watch list, but he declined to provide details, saying the
information was classified.
The Wyoming Livestock Board's
law-enforcement unit issues Glock-made handguns to its officers, who investigate cattle thefts and other industry-related crimes. But the
board also obtained seven .45-caliber handguns from the military surplus
program roughly three years ago.
"I guess primarily because I can't stand Glocks," said senior investigator Kim Clark.
Similarly,
Kansas State Gaming Agency enforcement director Jamie Nickoley said its
10 surplus M-16 rifles are "just another tool" for its law-enforcement
agents, who also have agency-issued handguns.
The Mississippi
Department of Transportation, which has an office that enforces laws
governing commercial vehicles, obtained seven M-14 rifles through the
program.
Kim Clark, senior investigator for the Wyoming Livestock Board, shows off his Colt .45 semi-automati …
"We don't actually shoot them or anything. They're basically
used as props during our ceremonies," said department spokesman Kenny
Foote.
The 1033 Program isn't the only source of surplus property
for law-enforcement agencies. They also can purchase equipment at
discounted prices through the separate 1122 Program, which is overseen
by the Army. State and local government agencies of all stripes can
acquire other types of non-military surplus property through a program
overseen by the U.S. General Services Administration.
Wortham's
office also obtained property through the GSA-run program but lost its
privileges last year after state officials learned of concerns about
some of its acquisitions, including a kayak, according to Tina Owens,
deputy director of the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management.
"Why would a coroner's office need a kayak?" Owens asked.
Owens'
department referred the matter last year to the GSA inspector general's
office, which is investigating. Neither agency would elaborate.
Wortham,
who is running for re-election and recently defeated a primary
challenger who stars on a reality TV show about the Ozarks, denies any
wrongdoing.
"This has been a political thing from the word go," he said.
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Vice President Joe Biden took a shot at former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Thursday night for his 'inappropriate" criticisms in a new book of President Barack Obama's strategy in Syria.
During remarks at the Harvard Institute of Politics, an audience member asked Biden if he thinks the United States should have acted sooner to arm Syrian moderates to counter Syrian President Bashar Assad, as well as to combat Islamic State militants. Biden said no, explaining that the United States has been engaged in a long process to identify who those moderates are.
"We Americans think, in every country in transition, there's a Thomas Jefferson hiding behind some rock or a James Madison beyond one sand dune," he said. "The fact of the matter is, the ability to identify a moderate middle in Syria was, there was no moderate middle, because the moderate middle are made up of shopkeepers, not soldiers."
The vice president then took aim at Panetta, without naming him, for his harsh words on Obama's Syria strategy in his forthcoming book, Worthy Fights. In it, Panetta, who also served as CIA chief under Obama, slams the president for "hesitation and half steps" in his approach to stemming Syrian violence.
"I’m finding that former administration officials, as soon as they leave, write books, which I think is inappropriate. But any rate," Biden said, trailing off as a few in the audience laughed. "No, I’m serious. I do think it's inappropriate. At least give the guy a chance to get out of office."
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
A federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered a lower court to block two new voting restrictions in North Carolina, saying there was "no doubt" the measures would disenfranchise minorities.
North Carolina will now be required to reinstate same-day voter registration, as well as allow voters to cast ballots even if they show up to vote in the wrong precinct.
In a two-to-one ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled that "whether the number is thirty or thirty-thousand, surely some North Carolina minority voters will be disproportionately adversely affected in the upcoming election" and that it was important to act now, since "there could be no do-over and no redress" once the election was over.
The appeals court ruled that the lower court "failed to adequately consider North Carolina’s history of voting discrimination" and said the new law eliminated "voting mechanisms successful in fostering minority participation."
"The injury to these voters is real and completely irreparable if nothing is done to enjoin this law," the ruling said.
North Carolina began considering new voting restrictions last June, the day after the Supreme Court gutted a provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that protected minority voters in certain states with a history of discrimination. Gov. Pat McCrory (R) ultimately signed House Bill 589 into law in August 2013.
The law eliminated a number of measures intended to protect would-be voters from being disenfranchised and required them to show photo identification at the polls.
The Justice Department joined civil rights groups in suing over the law a month later.
"The election laws in North Carolina prior to House Bill 589’s enactment encouraged participation by qualified voters," the appeals court ruled Wednesday. "But the challenged House Bill 589 provisions stripped them away. The public interest thus weighs heavily in Plaintiffs’ favor."
The court did, however, affirm the lower court's decision to allow North Carolina to reduce the number of early-voting days, expand the basis for voter challenges and enact several other new restrictions.
"With respect to these provisions, we conclude that, although Plaintiffs may ultimately succeed at trial, they have not met their burden of satisfying all elements necessary for a preliminary injunction," the court ruled.
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
A Texas man just back from West Africa has been confirmed as having the first case of Ebola to be diagnosed in the U.S.
Authorities with the Centers for Disease Control revealed the finding Tuesday, a day after the unidentified patient arrived at a Dallas hospital with suspicious symptoms.
Officials at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas put the man into “strict isolation” and sent a specimen to the CDC in Atlanta for testing.
The CDC said preliminary results show the man has the deadly disease which has been linked to more than 3,000 recent deaths in Africa. According to the World Health Organization, there have been more than 6,500 cases confirmed in Africa, with Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone among the hardest hit.
Dr. Christopher Perkins with the Dallas County health department told reporters that the Texas man didn’t start showing symptoms until he arrived home.
“We know at this time this person was not symptomatic during travel but became symptomatic once arriving here and being home for several days,” said Perkins, according the Dallas Morning News. “So that decreases the threat that might be to the general population.”
Four American aid workers have contracted Ebola in West Africa and been evacuated to the U.S. for treatment since late July. Three of them were released after making full recoveries. A fourth patient arrived in Atlanta on Sept. 9, but a spokesperson with Emory University Hospital said privacy laws prevented the release of an updated condition. On Sunday, a U.S. doctor who had been volunteering in an Ebola clinic in Sierra Leone was brought to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland as safety precaution after he was exposed to the disease.
In past years Ebola has killed up to 90 percent of those it has infected, but the death rate in the current outbreak is closer to 60 percent due to early treatment.
Several weeks after the turbulence that followed the August 9 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., a new round of unrest is being reported.
As NBC News and others are noting, the catalyst for the renascent
protests appears to be the burning down of a Michael Brown memorial in
Ferguson:
Local news affiliate KSDK reported that there was a break-in Tuesday at Beauty Town, a West Florissant
cosmetics supply store. There were also reports of gun shots fired near
the apartment complex where Brown lived and allegedly outside of Beauty
Town. Roughly 200 protesters eventually converged on the scene,
according to KDSK.
It's
unclear if the memorial was intentionally burned down or if, as some
suggest, the fire resulted from the many candles at the memorial.
Nevertheless, on Tuesday evening and into Wednesday morning, there were numerous accounts
of protests in Ferguson, light clashes between police and a crowd of a
few hundred demonstrators including some reports of rock-throwing,
damage to police vehicles, and seven arrests.
The Post Dispatch added: Police
officials, including Missouri Highway Patrol Capt. Ronald S. Johnson,
St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar and St. Louis Police Chief Sam
Dotson, went to the scene. The crowd eventually dwindled to about 50 to
75 shortly before midnight. A line of about a dozen police faced the
remaining protesters.
Police
reported eschewed riot gear and were said to have worn body cameras.
Numerous Twitter accounts posted the photo below, allegedly of a police
officer wearing a bracelet in tribute to Darren Wilson — the police
officer who shot Michael Brown.
If authentic, this could augur badly for restoring calm in Ferguson.
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports: Vladimir Putin allegedly threatened World War 3 during talks about Ukraine, claiming that Russia could potentially invade and take over the capitals of many European countries within two days.
In a related report by The Inquisitr, both Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton claim Putin wants to restore Russia to the glory of an empire that spreads across the globe, and even made comparison to Nazi Germany. Hillary does not believe Putin and Hitler can be directly compared, or claim that Putin starting World War 3, but she did make a comparison to how the Nazis used the German minorities in Poland and Czechoslovakia as an excuse to invade. Some say the situation prior to World War 2 is similar to today since “protecting” Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine are used as the justification for intervention in Ukraine.
The rhetoric related to the Ukraine war has been stepping up to a dangerous level in recent weeks. First, Russia’s nuclear weapons were test fired as a demonstration of Russian military might, and then Vladimir Putin promised to rebuild Russia’s nuclear arsenal. In response to recent advances by Russia within Ukrainian territory, Ukraine also threatened to restart its nuclear weapons program.
An influential German newspaper called Sueddeutsche Zeitung
is reporting that Vladimir Putin allegedly had a private meeting with
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and European Commission President
Jose Manuel Barroso. During the course of their discussion, Putin
essentially threatened World War 3.
“If I wanted, in two days I could have
Russian troops not only in Kiev, but also in Riga, Vilnius, Tallinn,
Warsaw and Bucharest.”
ADVERTISEMENTAn influential German newspaper called Sueddeutsche Zeitung is reporting that Vladimir Putin allegedly had a private meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. During the course of their discussion, Putin essentially threatened World War 3. “If I wanted, in two days I could have Russian troops not only in Kiev, but also in Riga, Vilnius, Tallinn, Warsaw and Bucharest.”
This threat by Putin matches a similar statement allegedly said earlier in the month, in which Russia’s leader proclaimed their military force of 20,000 men camped outside Ukraine’s border could take the capital city Kiev within two weeks. In this case, that threat was expanded to include countries like Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland and Romania.
It’s possible that Putin was indirectly responding to a speech given by U.S. President Barack Obama earlier in the month, who also mentioned some of those NATO members.
“An attack on one is an attack on all. So if, in such a moment, you ever ask again, ‘who will come to help,’ you’ll know the answer – the NATO alliance, including the armed forces of the United States of America,” Obama said. “We’ll be here for Estonia. We will be here for Latvia. We will be here for Lithuania.”
If this alleged conversation between Putin, Poroshenko, and Barroso did take place, it would be the first time Putin has directly threatened members of the European Union and NATO. If Russia were to actually ever act on this threat, it really would mean World War 3 would start since Article V of NATO’s Washington Treaty declares that “an attack on one is an attack on all,” which is what President Obama was referring to in his speech. While both the United States and England have rejected calls to send lethal aid into Ukraine, both countries would be obligated by NATO treaties to respond with military force if Russia’s actions were to ever match Putin’s rhetoric. According to the NATO website, “Article 5 has been invoked once – in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States.”
Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/1484957/vladimir-putin-threatens-world-war-3-says-russia-could-invade-europe-within-two-days/#gcHtXXEj8H4YtZmB.99
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
A proposed constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s controversial 2010 Citizens United ruling and give lawmakers greater ability to prevent large donors from corrupting government failed in the United States Senate on Thursday on a party-line vote. Among the 42 Republicans voting no was Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who in the past had been a campaign finance reform advocate.
Citizens United decision found, for the first time, that the First Amendment’s free speech protections guaranteed corporations and unions the right to spend unlimited sums of money on political advertisements. McCain denounced the ruling as the Supreme Court’s “worst decision ever.”
In 2012, McCain promised that “there will be huge scandals… because there’s too much money washing around, too much of it… we don’t know who, who contributed it, and there is too much corruption associated with that kind of money.” He blasted the Supreme Court’s view that corporations are people and denounced the Roberts Court for demonstrating “a combination of arrogance, naivete, and stupidity, the likes of which I have never seen.”
The amendment, proposed by Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) would have given Congress and the states the authority to “regulate and set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections,” as long as doing to did not abridge the freedom of the press, and would have allowed them to “distinguish between natural persons and corporations or other artificial entities created by law, including by prohibiting such entities from spending money to influence elections.” Like all constitutional amendments, it would have required a two-thirds vote in the House and Senate and ratification by three-fourths of the states’ legislatures.
But McCain cast the deciding vote against the DISCLOSE Act in 2010, which would have required disclosure of the major funders of political ads. He has refused to back similar legislation to require transparency for outside political spending in every Congress since.
Update: Brian Rogers, communications director for Sen. McCain, told ThinkProgress: “Senator McCain is proud of his long record of fighting special interests in both parties to reform our broken campaign finance system, and doesn’t need to vote for a partisan, hypocritical, election-year stunt in order to prove it. At a time when the Senate has not passed a single appropriations bill, the Defense Authorization Act has not been brought to the floor, and during turbulent times for America’s national security, it is unfortunate that Majority Leader Reid has decided to spend the Senate’s short time in session on a bill everyone knows cannot pass the House and was introduced for purely political purposes.”
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Denzel Washington’s experience shooting his new movie The Equalizer in Boston revived memories of racial discrimination he encountered more than 30 years ago.
Washington was at the Toronto Film Festival press conference Sunday for Equalizer, which premieres at Roy Thomson Hall. For most of the time, he, director Antoine Fuqua and actors Chloe Grace Moretz and Marton Scokas talked about acting methods and the uneasiness of the first day of shooting. But a question about filming the movie in Boston and a comment Washington made about his wife’s upcoming one-woman show led to unexpected revelations.
Washington recalled how about three decades ago he was in Boston with wife Pauletta Learson Washington, who was performing in a play, and some people in his hotel thought he was a pimp, and she was a prostitute. Security was called, and a fight broke out.
“I didn’t know how to fight, but I knew how to win,” Washington told the assembled media.
He also recalled how he walked to his wife’s show one night and was called the N-word.
“‘Hey n—, n—, n—, n—, hey boy.’ I was like, ‘Damn.’ That was the taste I had about Boston,” he said.
Then he recounted how the first time he was called the N-word was when he was in Florida on a balcony around the age of nine. He was called the pejorative word by a group of kids and then went into the house and asked his mother why.
“And she said, ‘Oh, that’s just somebody worried about you taking their place.’ It was like crabs in the bottom of the barrel. And in Southwest Boston, they were all right there,” he said, referring to homes in poor areas that are packed next to each other. “They are at the bottom. So it was like, ‘We’re better than you.’ Yeah, so I came in (to Boston) with all those kinds of memories.”
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports: Atlanta Hawks owner Bruce Levenson will sell the franchise after the revelation of a 2012 email he wrote stereotyping African-American fans.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver and Levenson made the announcement Sunday morning with joint statements. Silver discussed the issue with some owners late last week, but many other owners and team officials did not know of it until Sunday's announcement, league sources told Yahoo Sports.
The announcement comes a little more than four months after the release of an audio tape in which former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling made racial comments to his reported girlfriend. Silver banished Sterling from the NBA and forced him to sell the team. Sterling's wife Shelly closed the sale of the franchise to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer for $2 billion last month.
Levenson apologized for the August 2012 email, which was sent to Hawks general manager Danny Ferry and stereotyped the differences between black and white fans in Atlanta.
“Over the past several years, I’ve spent a lot of time grappling with low attendance at our games and the need for the Hawks to attract more season ticket holders and corporate sponsors," Levenson said in the statement. "Over that time, I’ve talked with team executives about the need for the Hawks to build a more diverse fan base that includes more suburban whites, and I shared my thoughts on why our efforts to bridge Atlanta’s racial sports divide seemed to be failing.
"In trying to address those issues, I wrote an email two years ago that was inappropriate and offensive. I trivialized our fans by making clichéd assumptions about their interests (i.e. hip hop vs. country, white vs. black cheerleaders, etc.) and by stereotyping their perceptions of one another (i.e. that white fans might be afraid of our black fans). By focusing on race, I also sent the unintentional and hurtful message that our white fans are more valuable than our black fans.
"If you're angry about what I wrote, you should be. I'm angry at myself, too. It was inflammatory nonsense. We all may have subtle biases and preconceptions when it comes to race, but my role as a leader is to challenge them, not to validate or accommodate those who might hold them."
Silver said Levenson notified the NBA of the email in July, and the league followed with its own investigation. Nevertheless, a high-ranking league official with direct knowledge of the probe disputed that Levenson simply self-reported the email to the NBA.
"Prior to the completion of the investigation, Mr. Levenson notified me [Saturday] evening that he had decided to sell his controlling interest in the Atlanta Hawks," Silver said. "As Mr. Levenson acknowledged, the views he expressed are entirely unacceptable and are in stark contrast to the core principles of the National Basketball Association." Hawks CEO Steve Koonin will oversee team operations while the franchise works through the sale process.
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Last summer after a jury found George Zimmerman not guilty for the shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, a poll of Americans revealed something remarkable. While about two-third of African Americans continued to believe the criminal justice system is biased against blacks, just 25 percent of whites did, signifying the greatest chasm between whites’ and blacks’ perceptions of bias since Gallup began polling in the early 1990s. That gap also translated into views about the verdict. Eighty-five percent of blacks viewed the verdict acquitting Zimmerman for murder as wrong, while 54 percent of whites said the verdict was correct.
These disparate perceptions of racism in the criminal justice system can play as much of a role in the racial tensions exposed by the shooting of Michael Brown as disproportion itself, according to a new report by the Sentencing Project. It means that whites are more likely to attribute disparate outcomes such as long sentences or high arrest rates solely to individuals’ own mistakes rather than to racism in the system. And it may be an explanation for why whites are more supportive of punitive policies like Three Strikes laws and the death penalty, even though blacks are significantly more likely to be the victims of crimes:
CREDIT: The Sentencing Project
CREDIT: The Sentencing Project
With momentum for reform after the shooting of Michael Brown, the Sentencing Project’s report compiles and interprets two decades of data on racial perceptions of the criminal justice system that “have bolstered harsh and biased criminal justice policies. ” In addition to noting disparate perceptions of justice between blacks ans whites, the report also highlights significant data that whites over-estimate the amount, severity, and nature of crimes committed by minorities. While some minority groups do make up a disproportionate percentage of both crime victims and arrestees, whites tend to think African Americans have committed a proportion of crime 20-30 percent higher than reflected in crime statistics. And a number of studies have exhibited the implicit bias that breeds assumptions African Americans are more likely to be dangerous, and are more likely to have a gun. “Even afte accounting for differing crime rates and other measures of disorder, researchers have found that the ‘percentage [of] young black men is one of the best predictors of the perceived severity of neighborhood crime’,” the report explains.
“Together, these studies reveal that even white Americans who denounce racism still hold unconscious and unintentional racial biases, associating people of color with criminality,” the report explains. “By demonstrating that race distorts perceptions of risk, this research sheds light on the circumstances leading to the deaths of unarmed men and women including Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride, and Michael Brown.”
