June 21, 2016


News and Views


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/officials-group-arrested-with-weapons-ammo-in-holland-tunnel/

Officials: Group arrested with weapons, ammo in Holland Tunnel
By CRIMESIDER STAFF CBS NEWS
June 21, 2016, 12:15 PM

Photograph -- Weapons uncovered after a traffic stop in the Holland Tunnel


NEW JERSEY -- Authorities arrested several people Tuesday morning in the Holland Tunnel, which connects New York and New Jersey, after weapons and ammunition were discovered in their car, reports CBS New York.

The arrest happened on the New Jersey side of the tunnel after a traffic stop, the station reports. The vehicle was pulled over because it had a crack in its windshield, a law enforcement source tells CBS News senior investigate producer Pat Milton.

Authorities are investigating the incident as a drug-related weapons crime and are looking into whether the group was intending to shoot a rival drug dealer, the source told Milton.

The exact number of people arrested wasn't immediately confirmed.

The Port Authority and Joint Terrorism Task Force are investigating.



Two quirky stories on shootings, both sad --


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/stacey-feeley-facebook-viral-photo-gun-control-active-shooter-3-year-old/

Photo of little girl standing on toilet goes viral for unusual reason
CBS NEWS
June 21, 2016, 12:09 PM

Photograph -- A photo posted to Facebook by Michigan mom Stacey Feeley showing her three-year-old daughter practicing the active shooter drills she was taught in preschool. STACEY WEHRMAN FEELEY VIA FACEBOOK


A Michigan mom thought her daughter was just being funny when she was standing on their toilet.

But when Stacey Feeley's 3-year-old daughter explained what she was doing, Feeley broke down, reports CBS Pittsburgh.

Feeley says her daughter was actually practicing a lockdown drill, hiding from a potential attacker.

She posted the photo on Facebook with the following caption:

"Politicians - take a look. This is your child, your children, your grandchildren, your great grand children and future generations to come. They will live their lives and grow up in this world based on your decisions. They are barely 3 and they will hide in bathroom stalls standing on top of toilet seats. I do not know what will be harder for them? Trying to remain quiet for an extended amount of time or trying to keep their balance without letting a foot slip below the stall door?"

Her post came just days after a gunman in Orlando carried out the most deadly mass shooting in American history.

Thousands of Facebook users have reacted to the post and it's been shared more than 10,000 times.

Some users have written, "This is heartbreaking, no child should have to worry about such things, what a sad reflection of today's society."

Another wrote, "Thank you for showing us how this insanity is already effecting our children from early age on."

On Monday, a divided Senate rejected rival plans to bolster the federal background check system and moved toward blocking other proposed curbs on guns.

The two competing measures for keeping firearms from terrorists also faced defeat along mostly party lines, with each side accusing the other of dangerous political grandstanding and inflexibility. Democrats said the GOP proposals were unacceptably weak while Republicans faulted the Democrats' plans as overly restrictive.

None of four amendments to pending legislation garnered the 60 votes necessary to advance in the 100-member chamber.



What the recent news is clearly doing to this little girl is sad, but the fact that the Republican Party has again blocked improved common sense gun control is at least as bad. Where are we going as a country?



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/story-of-man-claiming-he-was-in-pulse-nightclub-during-orlando-mass-shooting-questioned/

Story of man claiming he was in Pulse during massacre questioned
CBS NEWS
June 21, 2016, 7:35 AM

Photograph -- Clint Lampkin addressing crowd during June 18, 2016 Huntsville, Alabama memorial service for Orlando mass shooting victims WHNT-TV


HUNSTVILLE, Alabama -- When Clint Lampkin took the stage here Saturday at a memorial service for the Orlando mass shooting victims and recounted what he said was his near-death experience in the Pulse nightclub, he was given a standing ovation by the hundreds of people in the crowd and hugs by people on stage with him.

But now there are questions about whether he was actually there, reports CBS Huntsville affiliate WHNT-TV.

One of Lampkin's Facebook friends from his home state of Arkansas sent WHNT a screenshot from Clint's Facebook page in which he said of the Orlando massacre, "Glad I wasn't at that one." The post was dated June 12 -- the morning of the attack.

When asked about it by WHNT, Lampkin claimed his Facebook account had been hacked and that he'd never put up that post.

He still claims he was at Pulse the night of the shooting. "I have really bad anxiety attacks, so I just kinda -- I don't know, my mind is just gone," he told the station.

When asked for more details about what went on inside the club, Lampkin gave the same response -- that the trauma of what he witnessed has erased his memory.

"I did lose a friend that got shot," he told the crowd Saturday.

When asked for the friend's name, Lampkin replied that he'd only known the friend for a short time and didn't remember the victim's name.

"You don't want to think that anyone would take advantage of the situation, and quite honestly, I don't know whether he did or not," says James Robinson, CEO of Free2Be and Organizer of the Rocket City Pride Memorial Service.

Robinson says he's also fielded calls from individuals who claim Lampkin's story isn't true. "I don't know anything about Clint. He's not affiliated with Free2Be and he's not one of the planned speakers at the Rocket City Pride Memorial," Robinson says.

WHNT left a message with the FBI Field Office in Tampa, Florida to see if it could confirm that Lampkin was inside the club.



Too bad Lampkin apparently chose to seek attention by this ploy. I hope he gets mental health care soon.


AN UNFORTUNATE FACEBOOK POST – TWO ARTICLES


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pittsburgh-newscaster-wendy-bell-canned-for-racial-comments-seeks-to-turn-tables/

Newscaster canned for racial comments seeks to turn tables
CBS/AP
June 21, 2016, 6:01 AM


PITTSBURGH -- A Pittsburgh newscaster fired after her comments in a Facebook post about a shooting were deemed racially insensitive sued her former employer Monday, saying the television station let her go because she is white.

Wendy Bell said her federal lawsuit that WTAE fired her on March 30 "because of her race," violating her civil rights.

"Had Ms. Bell written the same comments about white criminal suspects or had her race not have been white, Defendant would not have fired her, much less disciplined her," the lawsuit reads. "Ms. Bell's posting of concern for the African-American community stung by mass shooting was clearly and obviously not intended to be racially offensive."

A message left with station management was not immediately returned. Bell is seeking back pay, punitive damages and her old job.

In a Facebook post, Bell commented on the March 9 shooting of five black people in the poor Pittsburgh suburb of Wilkinsburg.

"You needn't be a criminal profiler to draw a mental sketch of the killers who broke so many hearts," Bell wrote March 21. "They are young black men, likely in their teens or in their early 20s. They have multiple siblings from multiple fathers and their mothers work multiple jobs. These boys have been in the system before. They've grown up there. They know the police. They've been arrested."

In the same post, she praised a black restaurant worker in a way some readers felt was condescending.

After a social media backlash, Bell apologized, saying her words "were insensitive and could be viewed as racist." The station also apologized, saying Bell's remarks showed "an egregious lack of judgment."

After Bell posted her comments, the Pittsburgh Black Media Federation issued a statement, which read, in part: "The irresponsible statements demonstrate a persistent problem with how African-Americans are negatively stereotyped by too many journalists and news organizations."

No arrests have been made in the case.

While Bell's comments sparked a backlash from some who saw her words as racist, they also drew defenders who found her post honest.

Bell was fired nine days later after WTAE determined her remarks violated the company's journalism and ethics standards.

In an interview with The Associated Press on the day she was fired, Bell said she did not get a "fair shake" from the station, and that the focus on her comments was a distraction from the issue of "African-Americans being killed by other African-Americans."

Bell joined WTAE in 1998 and has won 21 Emmy Awards.



http://fusion.net/story/287126/wendy-bell-wtae-fired-facebook-post/

This Pittsburgh TV anchor was fired after posting a racially insensitive, misleading Facebook post
By Danielle Wiener-Bronner
4/1/16 3:38 PM

Go To Website Above To View both of these images I order to read her actual Facebook post. It is no longer available on the Net.
Image -- Bell-screen-shot-1, Screengrab via PBMF – Facebook post verbatim
Image -- Bell-screen-shot-2, Screengrab via pbmf – Facebook post verbatim, continued


A local Pittsburgh news outlet, WTAE-TV, announced Wednesday that it has cut ties with award-winning anchor Wendy Bell after she posted a confusing, racially-charged post on Facebook. Bell’s firing is the culmination of weeks of controversy.

On March 9, six people were killed during a backyard barbecue in Wilkinsburg, a suburb of Pittsburgh. The suspects remain at large, though officials say they are close to making arrests. No information has been disclosed about the suspects.

A week and a half after the shooting, Bell, who is white, wrote a speculative post on Facebook (the post, and her account, has since been deleted).

“You needn’t be a criminal profiler to draw a mental sketch of the killers who broke so many hearts two weeks ago Wednesday,” she wrote, adding (emphasis mine):

I will tell you they live within 5 miles of Franklin Avenue and Ardmore Boulevard and have been hiding out since in a home likely much closer to that backyard patio than anyone thinks. They are young black men, likely teens or in their early 20s, They have multiple siblings from multiple fathers and their mothers work multiple jobs. These boys have been in the system before. They’ve grown up there. They know the police. They’ve been arrested. They’ve made the circuit and nothing has scared them enough.

Bell then segued into an anecdote about seeing a young, motivated black man working in a restaurant.

She wrote:

A young, African American teen hustling like nobody’s business… this child stacked heavy glass glasses 10 high and and carried three teetering towers of them in one hand with plates piled high in the other. He wiped off the tables. Tended to the chairs. Got down on his hands and knees to pick up the scraps that had fallen to the floor. And he did all this with a rhythm and a step that gushed positivity… He’s going to Make It.

Bell said that she told the restaurant manager that the “young man was the best thing his restaurant had going.” She added, “I wonder how long it had been since someone told him he was special,” and concluded, “Give part of You to someone else. That, my friends, can change someone’s course.”

Bell’s post raised eyebrows, for a number of reasons. Pittsburgh Black Media Federation (PBMF) released a statement calling the Bell’s words “irresponsible.” PBMF added that Bell’s Facebook post “demonstrate a persistent problem with how African-Americans are negatively stereotyped by too many journalists and news organizations… there is also the issue of a reporter completely trampling on journalistic ethics by inserting her opinions publicly into an important issue.”



In reading both segments of her Facebook post, it does seem to me that the intention was probably not hateful or scornful, but discouraged, clumsy and perhaps sad. On the other hand, perhaps she really meant to be a witch. Her thoughts, her words and the visual images she described, however, do very much appear to be racially biased in the stereotypes she used, and full of negative expectations. The invisible factor that stultifies so many black children’s education is not necessarily active maltreatment, but negative expectations. They don’t get the faith and encouragement from the school system that white and well-to-do kids get. She even sneaked in that old tainted word “rhythm” and the reference to “dancing,” when she could have expressed her thought in a better way. Whether she meant harm or not, however, I don’t believe she was fired “because she was white.” It was because she was careless and unthinking.

We as white people do need to learn to rethink, learn more, observe fully before drawing conclusions, and in general modify the way we view black society, because it does negatively affect a whole race of people to talk about their “lack of a stable home, early brushes with crime,” etc. It produces a strong and pervasive attitude in most of white society that affects the text and meaning of laws that are enacted and creates interpersonal hostility without good reason. It also is the foundation for the worst of the police brutality that keeps occurring in mainly black communities, where the cops either “fear for their lives,” or “feel a desire to abuse” a convenient population who have little self-defense against them. Applying racially tinged expectations and stereotypes is something that indirectly, but materially, changes how people are treated; as the society as a whole respond to them with that edge of scorn or distrust. The next step is scapegoating, and that happens here in the US, already. We aren’t as far to the Right as the Nazis yet, but we are drifting in that direction.

As for being fired for her race, per se, we’ll see what the judge decides about her claims. It won’t be the first time an employee has been fired because of foolish statements in Facebook, or is not hired in the first place. There is no such thing as privacy on the Internet. A major news outlet does have to protect its’ reputation, after all.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/senators-strike-compromise-to-ban-suspected-terrorists-from-buying-guns/

Senators strike compromise to ban suspected terrorists from buying guns
By REBECCA SHABAD CBS NEWS
June 21, 2016, 2:38 PM

Play VIDEO -- Senators outraged after gun control fail


A group of nine senators on Tuesday unveiled a bipartisan compromise aimed at keeping guns out of terrorists' hands in the wake of the June 12 Orlando shooting.

The legislation spearheaded by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, would prohibit people on the government's no-fly list and the government's selectee list used for extensive screening at airports from purchasing a gun.

The bill would allow U.S. citizens and green-card holders to appeal a decision blocking his or her purchase of a firearm, and if successful, to be awarded attorney's fees. It also contains a look-back provision so that if anyone has appeared in the government's broad terrorism database over the last five years, the FBI would be immediately notified if they attempt to buy a gun.

"Our goal is simple and straightforward: We want to make America safer," Collins said at a press conference unveiling the proposal, which she said "would help keep guns out of the hands of terrorists."

The total number of people on the watch lists under the legislation totals 109,000, Collins said, and most of them are foreign nationals.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, is among the nine senators who are backing this legislation.

"I'm sick of the shootings. I'm sick of the vigils. I'm sick of the homicide victim support groups. I'm sick of the claims that we'll do something about it. I'm sick of the partisan rhetoric, and I'm really sick of getting to the end of all of it and not doing something about it and seeing that happen again and again and again," Kaine said at the press conference as he explained why he supports the measure.

The introduction of the deal comes a day after the Senate rejected four measures that were intended to address the issues of terrorists' ability to buy guns and background checks. Each of those proposals was considered to be partisan, though there were a few members from each party who defected on the measures.

Kaine feels that there will be no meaningful gun control reform unless it is bipartisan.

"We've got to make progress and in order to make progress, we've got to do it in a bipartisan fashion," he said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, also supports the proposal. He said he owns an AR-15 himself and he addressed the concerns of some Republicans that the watch lists include people who shouldn't be on them.

"The likelihood of someone being on this list and buying a gun to use it in a terrorist act to me is far greater than the likelihood of an innocent person being on the list," Graham said. "We can fix the problem with the innocent person."

The other senators co-sponsoring the legislation are Sens. Heidi Heitkamp, D-North Dakota; Kelly Ayotte, New Hampshire; Bill Nelson, D-Florida; Jeff Flake, R-Arizona; Angus King, I-Maine; and Martin Heinrich, D-New Mexico.

While it's up to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, to schedule a vote on the proposal, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, said that Collins would get a vote on her langauge if she wants one.

These developments on Capitol Hill come just over a week after the Orlando shooting that left 49 people dead and 53 wounded. The FBI had investigated the gunman, Omar Mateen, in 2013 and 2014 and interviewed him several times. He was still able to purchase and use in the shooting an AR-15-style rifle and a semi-automatic pistol.



Today’s article, while hopeful, does not even mention mental illness. The one from yesterday which was not voted in, does discuss it briefly, to say that legislators have a conflict as to what the term means. See the excerpts from yesterday’s article. There is a mention of conflict in how mental illness should be defined as an issue, but exactly how that would be done in the bill is not specified, in other words too little information. To me, that is probably due to insufficient care in the reporting of the story. I will say this, if people in the Republican Party are going to continue to use the idea that the mentally ill are “incapable of telling right from wrong,” which is what I suspect it said, that is an outdated legalistic definition that is totally separate from the actual illnesses which in the last 75 years or so have been studied so well by psychologists and psychiatrists.

The shooters who do most of these things aren’t people who “don’t know right from wrong,” or “terrorists,” either, but people with little ability to think logically, or control their actions. They’re, to use a crude term, “bonkers.” They belong in a locked wing of a permanent hospital like St. Elizabeth’s in DC or Butner in Raleigh, NC. The diagnosis and treatment of such people is much improved today, and also predictions of who is DANGEROUS are better. Not all mentally ill people are dangerous. Still, even after being competently diagnosed, those people who are indeed a serious problem are, amazingly, getting guns.

See the excerpt from yesterday’s article below. Neither yesterday’s nor today’s mentions automatic assault rifles which need to be banned entirely, and which is half of the problem in number of casualties. The problem is far from being solved.



http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/20/politics/senate-gun-votes-congress/

Senate rejects series of gun measures
By Tom LoBianco, Deirdre Walsh, Betsy Klein and Manu Raju, CNN
Updated 8:47 PM ET, Mon June 20, 2016


“. . . . The Senate rejected first a Republican proposal to update the background check system for gun purchases, which would have required states to add more information on mental health records to a national database. It also included a provision to alert law enforcement agencies when an individual who was on a government terror watch list in the last five years buys a gun.

The proposal, sponsored by Iowa GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley, failed to get the 60 votes for passage. The vote was 53-47, largely along party lines. Some Senate Democrats warned that the legislation's revised definition of who would be considered mentally ill could potentially still allow those with significant psychological issues to legally purchase guns. . . . ."