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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
w00t, the wheels just keep coming round these days eh?
3 Dead, 7 Injured in Lafayette Louisiana Theater Shooting, Police Say
Yep, and that one was a white male. Though this kind of shooting seems to be heavily slanted to men to the point where women are far less likely. At least it doesn't look like they can blame it on Muslims. But that means it probably won't be labelled as a terrorist action.
edited 23rd Jul '15 8:24:15 PM by shimaspawn
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. DickFemale killers have historically tended to prefer less overtly loud methods such as bladed weapons and poison than firearms - there's also the aspect that the physical bodies of men typically can accommodate the violent kick and heavy weight of firearms better.
The most common murder weapon in the US remains by far the automobile however.
Obama departs for Kenya, returning to his father's homeland
Obama, the first black U.S. president, is the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas. He traveled to Kenya as a U.S. senator but has not gone since winning the White House.
Obama is expected to meet with family members while in Nairobi, but he will not be traveling to the village most closely associated with his family name.
The trip will focus otherwise on security and economic initiatives as the president shores up his legacy on the African continent.
Obama will also do some lobbying of lawmakers who are coming along for the visit. The president is seeking support from Congress for a deal to curb Iran's nuclear program.
The White House released a list of 10 lawmakers flying with Obama on Air Force One including nine Democrats and one Republican, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona.
The Democrats are Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Representative Karen Bass of California, Representative G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina, Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas, Representative Barbara Lee of California, Representative Gregory Meeks of New York, Representative Charles Rangel of New York, and Representative Terri Sewell of Alabama.
On the return flight to the United States, a second group of 10 Democratic representatives will join Obama, the White House said.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Sandra Maler)
So everyone knows about civil forfeiture, right? That's when police confiscate any money or property used in a crime, acquired with the profits of crime, or simply belong to a criminal. Lately it's been drawing attention
that motorists who are stopped but not charged with a crime may have their cash taken anyway if they have a lot of it in the car, and often have a very difficult time getting it back.
A brief bit about that:
The Post found:
There have been 61,998 cash seizures made on highways and elsewhere since 9/11 without search warrants or indictments through the Equitable Sharing Program, totaling more than $2.5 billion. State and local authorities kept more than $1.7 billion of that while Justice, Homeland Security and other federal agencies received $800 million. Half of the seizures were below $8,800.
Only a sixth of the seizures were legally challenged, in part because of the costs of legal action against the government. But in 41 percent of cases — 4,455 — where there was a challenge, the government agreed to return money. The appeals process took more than a year in 40 percent of those cases and often required owners of the cash to sign agreements not to sue police over the seizures.
Hundreds of state and local departments and drug task forces appear to rely on seized cash, despite a federal ban on the money to pay salaries or otherwise support budgets. The Post found that 298 departments and 210 task forces have seized the equivalent of 20 percent or more of their annual budgets since 2008.
Well, there's a story brewing in Oklahoma about how the money seized, often from people not charged with a crime, has gone missing or been used for personal purposes.
Among the violations were using seized money to pay on a prosecutor’s student loans and allowing a prosecutor to live rent-free in a confiscated house for years, records show.
The cases were cited in a state commission hearing Tuesday in which authorities objected to new legislation aimed at curbing abuses of civil asset forfeiture by state and local law enforcement agencies. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Kyle Loveless, R-Oklahoma City, has spurred heated opposition from district attorneys and sheriffs.
...
A 2009 audit of the District Attorney’s Office that represents Beaver, Cimarron, Harper and Texas counties found that a Beaver County assistant district attorney began living rent-free in a house obtained in a 2004 forfeiture. A judge had ordered the house sold at an auction, but the prosecutor lived there through 2009. Utility bills and repairs made to the house were paid out of the district attorney’s supervision fee account, the audit states. The audit recommended the house be sold and the supervision fee account be reimbursed. “These conditions resulted in expenditures that were not for the enforcement of controlled dangerous substances laws, drug abuse prevention and drug abuse education,” the report stated. The audit also found the District Attorney’s Office didn’t report the benefit as income for tax purposes.
In a 2014 audit of the DA’s office representing Washington and Nowata counties, the State Auditor’s Office found that $5,000 in forfeiture funds had been used to make payments on an assistant district attorney’s student loans. The report said the district attorney maintained the expense was justified because most of the cases the assistant DA prosecuted were drug cases. After the issue came to light, the Oklahoma District Attorneys Council reimbursed the $5,000 using funds from its own student-loan program, the State Auditor’s report states.
An Oklahoma Watch examination of audits from 2007 to 2014 also shows at least a dozen cases of forfeited cash, guns and vehicles missing or not inventoried.
In a 2014 audit of District 21, which is Mashburn’s district and includes Cleveland County, three firearms seized and forfeited were found to be missing. The auditor cited a lack of policies and procedures in place to safeguard and track seized items.
The audit said the District Attorney’s Office disagreed it lacked proper policies and procedures to safeguard seized property but conceded that the three firearms were missing and steps had been taken to report the guns as stolen to a federal database. Mashburn could not be reached for comment on the finding.
So, is there anyone that wants to bet this is limited to Oklahoma and isn't going on in their home state?
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |Why is it so hard to get a great bagel in California
The poor heathens will never be able to achieve this the greatest mark of civilization
New Republic: Why Donald Trump terrifies Republicans
(Basically he's destroyed the Republican narrative that there is a soft side of the Republicans for immigration.)
(Krugman) The Village, the Base, and Saint John
Basically the Beltway may put McCain on a pedastal, but the primary voters don't give a shit with regards to Trump's bashing, and the Beltway elite are beginning to realize the primary voters don't think like them.
edited 24th Jul '15 5:48:01 AM by PotatoesRock
Meanwhile, for the Progressive Red Meat
(Vox) Hillary Clinton's capital gains tax reform, explained
Basically she wants to make it harder to qualify for long-term capital gains tax status, to encourage a less quarter-to-quarter (i.e. short term) behavior in Wall Street and reward long term patient investors.
So that guy in Louisiana who shot up a theater? He left a pretty obvious online trail. his forum posts
paint the picture of a right-wing nutter with a special hatred of blacks/the media/poor people. Bigger dump of his forum posts here
.
I'm not entirely sure if I should screen shot everything before it gets nuked or if those posts are clear enough. The rest are basically the same with little variation.
EDIT: not sure about our rules regarding this type of thing. I only managed to dig it up after CNN revealed his name AND face AND age AND location. All of those markers are consistent with CNN's reporting and this profile is way to old to be a troll or something.
edited 24th Jul '15 7:26:27 AM by thatguythere47
Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?He can't be both?
These were all from 2+ years ago; he seemed to flare up on several different sites (his twitter is literally two tweets, same style as these) around that time then did another 4 posts on a 'nother forum a year ago. Afraid my internet sleuthing skillz aren't great so I can't dig up much else. Apparently he's a fan of golden dawn; the neo-nazis in greece.
I'm guessing the target was chosen to show his disapproval of feminism. There's reports that he had disguises and shit so he might have planned to get away and attack other symbols of progress.
Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?Obama tells BBC "Failure to pass common sense gun laws is the biggest frustration of my presidency".
Predictably, the comments are mostly UKIP knuckle draggers whinging about the EU, despite the fact that the article has nothing to do with it.
I'm only vaguely aware of British politics but it seems to me that UKIP is like if all the bigoted uncles in England gathered together and formed a party.
Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?

All I know about him is he used to sub for O'Reilly.