September 30, 2016


News and Views


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/seychelles-police-autopsies-sisters-found-dead-resort-island-villa/

Seychelles police: Autopsies done for sisters found dead in island villa
CBS/AP
September 30, 2016, 11:00 AM

Photograph -- Annie Korkki, 37, and Robin Korkki, 42, are seen in the Seychelles in a photo posted to Annie’s Facebook account on Sept. 19, 2016, three days before sisters were found dead in their resort room by staff. ANNIE KORKKI/FACEBOOK


VICTORIA, Seychelles -- Police in Seychelles say two American sisters found dead in their island villa died of excess fluid in their lungs.

The bodies of 37-year-old Annie Korkki and 42-year-old Robin Korkki were found last week at the Maia resort on Seychelles’ main island, Mahe. Seychelles is an archipelago nation off Africa’s east coast in the Indian Ocean.

The police report, obtained by U.S. television station KARE, says autopsies show the Minnesota natives died from acute pulmonary edema, or having fluid in their lungs. Cerebral edema, or fluid in the brain, was also cited in Anne Korkki’s death.

The report says no visible signs of injuries were found.

The autopsies were done Wednesday by a forensic pathologist in Mauritius, a neighboring island.

According to the Mayo Clinic, there are a number of possible causes for pulmonary edema, including heart problems, pneumonia, exposure to certain toxins and medications, or trauma to the chest wall. (It can also result from living or exercising at high elevations, but the Seychelles are not high altitude.) The condition can be treated if emergency medical care is received in time.

It is unclear what may have caused it in the sisters.

Annie Korkki lived in Denver. Robin Korkki lived in Chicago.

The women’s brother, Chris Korkki, of Lakeville, Minnesota, told CBS station WCCO-TV that his sisters were outgoing, generous, kind and “lived life to the fullest.”



The fact that both sisters had the same problem at the same time frame indicates that they died of poisoning, unless some attacker physically caused suffocation or “trauma to the chest wall,” which is as unlikely as any of the other causes mentioned here. I do hope the family with take their bodies home and get them examined by a top level pathologist. They need to look for poisons.

In scanning the entries for the symptom of edema in both brain and lungs searched along with the term “poisons,” I found acute opium and heroin intoxication, acute respiratory distress, some heart problems, carbon monoxide poisoning, and Parathion poisoning. Parathion can cause both cerebral and pulmonary edema, and is an insecticide, usually used for agricultural purposes, but also used to kill mites and bed bugs, and has been used as a chemical weapon. From Wikipedia, “Parathion has been used as a chemical weapon, most notably by the Selous Scouts during the Rhodesian Bush War.”

I can see Parathion being present in a hotel room if there were insect pests there. Maybe the sisters complained of bugs? Maybe the hotel staff then overcorrected the situation by careless use of the chemical. Parathion use on the sheets without washing them afterward could do this to both sisters. Parathion is like nicotine in that it can be absorbed through the skin, and can be deadly. In the old days, when I lived at home, nicotine was the ingredient in a chicken mite killer called Black Leaf 40, and the warnings say that if any gets on the skin it should be thoroughly washed off with water followed by medical treatment immediately. Black Leaf 40 can still be bought on the Internet, though farmers’ supply businesses aren’t carrying it anymore. I used that in a murder mystery that I wrote.

Less fascinating is the possibility of accumulation of water in the brain due to binge drinking, which the two sisters seem to have been doing, and they probably didn’t know to drink water as well as alcohol to prevent edema. See: http://www.progressivehealth.com/edema-alcohol.htm. This article did NOT mention pulmonary edema, but it did speak of swelling of the feet and hands, so very likely pulmonary edema be a symptom, too. Both women, however died of pulmonary edema and only in one of the cases was cerebral edema mentioned, so I vote for Parathion. The family should get a better pathologist report and then maybe sue the hotel.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/shimon-peres-jerusalem-funeral-benjamin-netanyahu-bill-clinton-president-obama/

Obama honors Shimon Peres, who "never stopped dreaming"
CBS/AP September 30, 2016, 4:46 AM

Play VIDEO -- Legacy of former Israeli President Shimon Peres
Play VIDEO -- Shimon Peres hailed as "a soldier for Israel"
Photograph -- ap-120613038369.jpg, President Obama looks at Israeli President Shimon Peres after awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a dinner in the East Room of the White House in Washington, June 13, 2012. AP
Photograph -- bill-clinton-shimon-peres-funeral-ap-16274280760552.jpg, Former President Bill Clinton passes the flag-draped coffin of former Israeli President Shimon Peres during his funeral at the Mount Herzel national cemetery in Jerusalem, Sept. 30, 2016. AP


JERUSALEM -- Shimon Peres was being laid to rest on Friday in a ceremony attended by thousands of admirers and dozens of international dignitaries - in a final tribute to a man who personified the history of Israel during a remarkable seven-decade political career and who came to be seen by many as a potent symbol of hopes of Mideast peace.

President Obama, former U.S. President Bill Clinton and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas headlined a long list of world leaders who converged on Israel’s national cemetery, Mount Herzl, for the event. In a nod to the Palestinian leader, Abbas sat in the front row at the memorial service.

President Obama hailed Peres as a man who showed the world that justice and hope are at the heart of the Zionist ideal and saw “all people as deserving of dignity and respect.”

Wearing a Jewish skullcap as a sign of respect and reverence, Mr. Obama said in his eulogy that Peres understood the Palestinians must be seen as equal in dignity to Jews and therefore must be equal in self-determination.

“Shimon never saw his dream of peace fulfilled,” noted Obama, speaking at Israel’s national cemetery, Mount Herzl. He said Peres believed that the Zionist idea would be protected when Palestinians had a state of their own.

“The region is going through a chaotic time,” the president said. “Threats are ever-present and yet he did not stop dreaming and he did not stop working.”

Mr. Obama noted that he was the 10th U.S president to meet Peres and “fall prey to his charms.” In many ways, he said that Peres reminded him of other giants like Nelson Mandela and Queen Elizabeth, leaders “who speak with depth and knowledge, not in sound bites.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the gathering of world leaders was a testament to Peres’ optimism, quest for peace and love for Israel.

“He was a great man of Israel. He was a great man of the world. Israel grieves for him. The world grieves for him,” Netanyahu said.

Peres, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who held every major office in Israel, including president and prime minister, died Wednesday, two weeks after suffering a stroke. He was 93.

Friday’s funeral was Israel’s largest gathering of international dignitaries since the funeral of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Peres’ partner in peace, who was killed by a Jewish nationalist in 1995. The funeral created numerous logistical and security challenges, and roads, including the main highway from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, were closed.

Peres and Netanyahu were fierce political rivals and had vastly different world visions. But Netanyahu said they enjoyed a strong personal relationship and described Peres as a man of vision.

“I loved you. We all loved you. Farewell Shimon. Dear man. Great leader,” he said.

Peres’ casket lay in state on Thursday outside the parliament building, where thousands of people, including Clinton, came to pay their respects. Early Friday, an honor guard escorted the casket, along with Peres’ family, along the short route to the cemetery.

Clinton, who was president when Peres negotiated a historic interim peace accord with the Palestinians in 1993, said it was an honor to serve at the same time as the late Israeli statesman.

But Clinton said he was also honored to have been as his friend, “someone who listened to, learned from, and laughed with him, and always was in awe of his endless capacity to move beyond even the most crushing setbacks in order to seize the possibilities of each new day.”

“He started off life as Israel’s brightest student, who became its best teacher, and ended up its biggest dreamer. He lived 93 years in a state of constant wonder over the unbelievable potential of all the rest of us to rise above our wounds, our resentments, our fears, to make the most of today, and claim the promise of tomorrow,” lauded Clinton.

The U.S. delegation also included Secretary of State John Kerry and about 20 members of Congress and several administration officials. French President Francois Hollande, Britain’s Prince Charles, German President Joachim Gauck and scores of other world leaders were also attending.

In one of the most symbolic moments of the funeral on Friday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Netanyahu -- who have barely spoken to one another during the past seven years -- were seen shaking hands and chatting briefly.

Abbas attended the funeral with a delegation of top Palestinian officials, including his chief negotiator Saeb Erekat, with whom Netanyahu also shook hands and spoke.

Abbas is one of the lone Arab voices to express his sadness over Peres’ death, and his aides say he wanted to recognise Peres for his years of efforts to promote peace.

While Peres is viewed in the West as a visionary advocate for peace, his legacy in the Arab world is mixed and reaction has been subdued. Animosity toward Israel remains strong in the Arab world, especially at a time of deadlock in peace efforts, and Peres is still associated with wars and settlement construction that took place during his lengthy career.

Abbas greeted the families of Peres and Rabin, shaking hands and hugging dovish Israeli leaders before he was seated in the front row.

In an unprecedented seven-decade political career, Peres filled nearly every position in Israeli public life and was credited with leading the country through some of its most defining moments: creating what is believed to be a nuclear arsenal in the 1950s; disentangling its troops from Lebanon and rescuing its economy from triple-digit inflation in the 1980s; and guiding a skeptical nation into peace talks with the Palestinians in the 1990s.

A protege of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, Peres served in parliament for nearly half a century, held every major Cabinet post, including defense, finance and foreign affairs, and served three brief stints as prime minister. He was the country’s elder statesman as its ceremonial president between 2007 and 2014.

Peres created his non-governmental Peres Center for Peace, which raised funds and ran programs for cooperation and development projects involving Israel, the Palestinians and Arab nations. He was a huge proponent of Israeli technology and innovation, and gained international recognition as a globe-trotting celebrity preaching peace and coexistence.



“Shimon never saw his dream of peace fulfilled,” noted Obama, speaking at Israel’s national cemetery, Mount Herzl. He said Peres believed that the Zionist idea would be protected when Palestinians had a state of their own.”


All people are really asking for is respectful treatment in most cases. When that is denied to a group of people it becomes cause for war. I do hope the world can get past these perpetual hostilities and into a condition of world peace. I do fear the tinderbox that the Middle East is. It may be over across the ocean from here, but we are a much more highly connected world now than when I was young, and I don’t feel safer just because we may have beefed up our nuclear arsenals.



Look over these three articles concerning Judge Roy Moore, whose injection of religion (Christian, of course) into US governance is his primary characteristic over his career.


JUDGE MOORE AND THE US CONSTITUTION’S ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE – SEE ALSO WIKIPEDIA’S BIOGRAPHY BELOW --

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/alabama-chief-justice-roy-moore-suspended-defying-feds-same-sex-marriage/

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore off bench for defying feds on same-sex marriage
AP September 30, 2016, 12:35 PM

32 PHOTOS -- Supreme Court says "I Do"
29 PHOTOS -- A history of gay rights in America


MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore’s defiance of federal court rulings on same-sex marriage violated judicial ethics, a disciplinary court ruled on Friday before suspending him for the rest of his term.

The punishment effectively removes Moore from office without the nine-member Alabama Court of the Judiciary officially ousting him. Given his age, he will not be able to run for chief justice again under state law.

Moore was found to have encouraged probate judges to deny marriage licenses to gay couples six months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that everyone has a fundamental right to marry in all 50 states.

Moore vehemently denied that his administrative order was an act of defiance and said his personal beliefs had nothing to do with it.

The same panel removed the outspoken Republican in 2003 because he refused to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state judicial building. Voters later re-elected him as chief justice after he lost a race for governor.

This time, Moore sent an administrative order to the state’s 68 probate judges, maintaining that the Alabama Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage ban remained in “full force and effect” despite the ruling from the nation’s highest court.

Moore testified that his personal beliefs had nothing to do with it, and that his January order merely provided judges with a status report on a technical aspect of the law.

Moore, 69, had already been suspended from the bench since May, when the state’s Judicial Inquiry Commission accused him of violating judicial ethics. By the end of his term in 2019, he’ll be beyond the age limit of 70 for judges, unless voters raise the limit in November.

“We are here 13 years later because the Chief Justice learned nothing from his first removal. He continues to defy the law,” John Carroll, a lawyer representing the commission, argued Wednesday in Moore’s judicial court hearing.

Moore was loudly applauded when he entered the ornate chamber where he usually presides over the state Supreme Court. He told his inquisitors that the ethics charges were “ridiculous.”

“I gave them a status in the case, a status of the facts that these orders exist. That is all I did,” Moore testified.

Moore’s ethics trial came amid upheaval in all three branches of Alabama’s government. The Republican speaker of the state House of Representatives was removed from office this summer for criminal ethics violations. A legislative committee is weighing whether Gov. Robert Bentley should be impeached over a scandal involving a top aide.



Note: According to Wikipedia, Moore considered running for president under the Constitution Party in 2012, which is described in Wikipedia as “a paleoconservative” party. See below:

Constitution Party (United States)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Constitution Party is a paleoconservative political party in the United States.[2][3] The party advocates a platform which reflects the party's interpretation of the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Bible.

The party believes that the United States is a Christian state founded on the basis of the Bible and that jurisprudence should be restored to what the party claims is its "Biblical foundations".[17] Its critics have described it—and its predecessor, the U.S. Taxpayers Party—as a theocratic and dominionist party.[18][19] The party does not, however, oppose the constitutional ban on religious tests for holding public office.[20]

As of 2016, the Constitution Party has 15 members elected to city council seats and other municipal offices across the United States. In terms of registered members, the party ranks fifth in the United States.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Moore

Roy Moore
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Roy S. Moore)

Roy Stewart Moore (born February 11, 1947) is an American judge, Republican politician, and the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court from 2001 to his 2003 suspension, and again from 2013 until May 2016 when he was again suspended.

In 2003, during Moore's first term as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, he refused to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments (which he had commissioned) from the Alabama Judicial Building despite orders to do so from a federal judge. On November 13, 2003, the Alabama Court of the Judiciary unanimously removed Moore from his post as Chief Justice.

In the years preceding his first election to the state Supreme Court, Moore successfully resisted attempts to have a display of the Ten Commandments removed from the courtroom. The controversy around Moore generated national attention. Moore's supporters regard his stand as a defense of "judicial rights" and the Constitution of Alabama. Moore contended that federal judges who ruled against his actions consider "obedience of a court order superior to all other concerns, even the suppression of belief in the sovereignty of God."[1]

Moore sought the Republican nomination for the governorship of Alabama in 2006, but lost to incumbent Bob Riley in the June primary by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. On June 1, 2009 he announced his campaign for the 2010 election for governor.[2] Moore placed fourth in the Republican primary held on June 1, 2010, having received only 19 percent of the vote.

On April 18, 2011, Moore announced that he was forming an exploratory committee to run in the Republican presidential primaries in 2012.[3][4] When that campaign failed to gain traction, he began to draw speculation in the media as being a potential Constitution Party* presidential contender.[5][6] In November 2011, Moore withdrew his exploratory committee and ended all speculation of a presidential candidacy when he instead announced that he would in 2012 seek his former post of Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.[7] On November 6, 2012, Moore won election back to the office of Alabama Chief Justice, defeating replacement Democratic candidate Bob Vance.[8][9]

On May 6, 2016, Moore was suspended from the bench and awaits a hearing and trial by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary for multiple ethics code violations, including abuse of authority and interference with federal-level court rulings and injunctions related to same-sex marriage.[10] Following the completion of the investigation, Moore was suspended for the remainder of his term, which runs until 2019, on September 30, 2016. Moore was found guilty of all six charges against him of violation of canon of judicial ethics and his replacement will be named by Governor Robert J. Bentley.[11]

Elections and travels[edit]

Moore soon moved to the district attorney's office, working as the first full-time prosecutor in Etowah County. During his tenure there, Moore was investigated by the state bar for "suspect conduct" after convening a grand jury to discuss what he perceived to have been funding shortages in the sheriff's office. Several weeks after the state bar investigation was dismissed as unfounded, Moore quit his prosecuting position to run as a Democrat for the county's circuit-court judge seat in 1982. The election was bitter, with Moore alleging that cases were being delayed in exchange for payoffs. The allegations were never substantiated, and Moore overwhelmingly lost the Democratic runoff primary to fellow attorney Donald Stewart, whom Moore described as "an honorable man for whom I have much respect, and he eventually became a close friend."[1] A second bar complaint against Moore followed, and though this too was dismissed as unfounded, Moore left Gadsden shortly thereafter in great disappointment.

Moore's travels eventually took him to Texas, where he spent a year training and fighting professionally as a kickboxer. After a brief return to Gadsden, Moore next travelled to the Australian Outback and, after meeting Fundamentalist Christian Colin Rolfe, worked for almost a year as a cowboy on Rolfe's 42,000-acre (170 km2) cattle ranch. He remembered both careers fondly in his autobiography and subsequent interviews and was particularly proud of a kickboxing victory in the Greater Gadsden Tournament of Champions, a triumph he attributed to divine will.

Moore returned to Gadsden again in 1985. He ran in 1986 for Etowah County's district attorney position against fellow Democrat Jimmy Hedgspeth. He lost that election as well, and Moore returned to private practice in the city. During this period, he married his wife Kayla, switched his affiliation to the GOP, and added to his office a wooden Ten Commandments plaque that he had personally carved in 1980.

Early prayer/Ten Commandments controversy[edit]

When Moore's tenure as circuit judge began, he brought his wooden Ten Commandments plaque with him, hanging it on the walls of his courtroom behind his bench. Moore told the Montgomery Advertiser that his intention in hanging the plaque was to fill up the bare space on the courtroom walls and to indicate the importance of the Ten Commandments. He states that it was not his intention to generate controversy; still, as he told the Atlantic, he understood that the potential for controversy was there, but "I wanted to establish the moral foundation of our law."

Soon after his appointment, when Moore presided over a case where two male strippers (known professionally as "Silk" and "Satin") were charged with murdering a drug addict, the attorney for the defendants objected to the display. This drew the attention of critics, who also objected to Moore's practice of opening court sessions with a prayer beseeching Divine Guidance for jurors in their deliberations. In at least one instance, Moore asked a clergyman to lead the court's jury pool in prayer. Though such pre-session prayers were not uncommon in Alabama, having begun many years earlier by George C. Wallace, Jr. when he was a circuit judge, the local branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sent a letter in June 1993 with the threat of a lawsuit if such prayers did not cease.

On June 20, 1994, the ACLU sent a representative to Moore's courtroom to observe and record the pre-session prayer. Though the organization did not immediately file suit, Moore decried the action as an "act of intimidation" in a post-trial press conference. The incident drew additional attention to Moore just as he was campaigning to hold onto his circuit court seat. In that year's election, Moore won the seat in a landslide victory over local attorney Keith Pitts, who had unsuccessfully prosecuted the "Silk and Satin" murder case.

Lawsuit[edit]

In March 1995, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against Moore, stating that the pre-session prayers and the Ten Commandments display were both unconstitutional. This original lawsuit was eventually dismissed for technical reasons, but Governor Fob James instructed state Attorney General Bill Pryor to file suit in Montgomery County in support of Moore. The case ended up before state Circuit Judge Charles Price, who in 1996 declared the prayers unconstitutional but initially allowed the Ten Commandments plaque to remain on the courtroom walls.

Immediately after the ruling, Moore held a press conference vowing to defy the ruling against pre-session prayers and affirming a religious intent in displaying the plaque. Critics responded by asking Price to reconsider his previous ruling, and the judge issued a new ruling requiring the Ten Commandments plaque to be removed in ten days. Moore appealed Price's decision and kept the plaque up; ten days later the Alabama Supreme Court issued a temporary stay against the ruling. The Court never ruled in the case, throwing it out for technical reasons in 1998.

On the day that the circuit court ruling was stayed, Moore appeared on the national morning program Today, praising the ruling and vowing to continue his practices. A poll released soon after found that 88 percent of Alabamians supported Moore. Though Moore was later investigated by the state Judicial Ethics Committee regarding the use of money raised by Coral Ridge Ministries in his defense, the investigation eventually ended with no charges being brought.

Chief Justice, Alabama Supreme Court[edit]

Campaign and election[edit]

In late 1999, the Christian Family Association began working to draft Moore into the race for Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, when incumbent Republican Perry O. Hooper, Sr., of Montgomery announced that he would not seek reelection. Moore said that he was hesitant to make the statewide race because he had "absolutely no funds" and three other candidates, particularly Associate Justice Harold See, were well-financed.[1]

Nevertheless, on December 7, 1999, Moore announced from his Etowah County courtroom that he would enter the race with hope of returning "God to our public life and restore the moral foundation of our law." His campaign, centered on religious issues, arguing that Christianity's declining influence "corresponded directly with school violence, homosexuality, and crime."[12]

Associate Justice Harold See was the heavy favorite to win the Republican nomination because of his support from the state business community and the party hierarchy, including Chief Justice Hooper. However, as Moore made headway in state polls, See elicited the help of Republican strategist Karl Rove, advisor to Texas Governor and future President George W. Bush. Despite Rove's support and significantly more campaign funding, See lost the primary to Moore, who then easily defeated Democratic contender Sharon Yates in November's general election.

Moore was sworn in as Chief Justice on January 15, 2001. Republican former U.S. Representative James D. Martin, who had appointed Moore to West Point years earlier, was among the dignitaries in attendance. On taking the position, Moore said that he had "come to realize the real meaning of the First Amendment and its relationship to the God on whom the oath was based. My mind had been opened to the spiritual war occurring in our state and our nation that was slowly removing the knowledge of that relationship between God and law.

“I pledged to support not only the U.S. Constitution, but the Alabama Constitution as well, which provided in its preamble that the state 'established justice' by 'invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God.' The connection between God and our law could not be more clear ...[1]”

. . . .

Federal lawsuit[edit]

On October 30, 2001, the ACLU of Alabama, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Southern Poverty Law Center were among groups which filed suit in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, asking that the monument be removed because it "sends a message to all who enter the State Judicial Building that the government encourages and endorses the practice of religion in general and Judeo-Christianity in particular."

The trial, titled Glassroth v. Moore, began on October 15, 2002. Evidence for the plaintiffs included testimony that lawyers of different religious beliefs had changed their work practices, including routinely avoiding visiting the court building to avoid passing by the monument, and testimony that the monument created a religious atmosphere, with many people using the area for prayer.

Moore argued that he would not remove the monument, as doing so would violate his oath of office ….

He added that the addition of the monument to the state judiciary building marked "the beginning of the restoration of the moral foundation of law to our people" and "a return to the knowledge of God in our land."[16]

Additionally, Moore acknowledged an explicit religious intent in placing the monument, agreeing that the monument "reflects the sovereignty of God over the affairs of men" and "acknowledge[s] God’s overruling power over the affairs of men."[18] However, in Moore's view this did not violate the doctrine of separation of church and state; as the presiding judge later summarized it, Moore argued that "the Judeo-Christian God reigned over both the church and the state in this country, and that both owed allegiance to that God", although they must keep their affairs separate.[16]

Judgment and appeal[edit]

On November 18, 2002, federal U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson issued his ruling declaring that the monument violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and was thus unconstitutional:

“If all Chief Justice Moore had done were to emphasize the Ten Commandments' historical and educational importance... or their importance as a model code for good citizenship... this court would have a much different case before it. But the Chief Justice did not limit himself to this; he went far, far beyond. He installed a two-and-a-half ton monument in the most prominent place in a government building, managed with dollars from all state taxpayers, with the specific purpose and effect of establishing a permanent recognition of the 'sovereignty of God,' the Judeo-Christian God, over all citizens in this country, regardless of each taxpaying citizen's individual personal beliefs or lack thereof. To this, the Establishment Clause says no."[16]

Judge Thompson's decision mandated that Moore remove the monument from the state judicial building by January 3, 2003, but stayed this order on December 23, 2002, after Moore appealed the decision to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. This appeal was argued on June 4, 2003, before a three-judge panel in Atlanta, Georgia. On July 1, 2003, the panel issued a ruling upholding the lower court's decision, agreeing that "the monument fails two of Lemon's three prongs. It violates the Establishment Clause." Additionally, the court noted that different religious traditions assign different wordings of the Ten Commandments, meaning that "choosing which version of the Ten Commandments to display can have religious endorsement implications."[18]

In response to the appeals court's decision, Judge Thompson lifted his earlier stay on August 5, 2003, requiring Moore to have the monument removed from public areas of the state judicial building by August 20.[19]

Protests and monument removal[edit]

Photograph -- Rally before the Alabama State Capitol, August 16, 2003.

Rally before the Alabama State Capitol, August 16, 2003.
On August 14, Moore announced his intention to disobey Judge Thompson's order to have the monument removed. Two days later, large rallies in support of Moore and the Ten Commandments monument began forming in front of the judicial building, featuring speakers such as Alan Keyes, the Reverend Jerry Falwell, and Moore himself. The crowd peaked at an estimated count of 4,000 that day,[20] and anywhere from several hundred to over a thousand protesters remained through the end of August.

The time limit for removal expired on August 20, with the monument still in place in the building's rotunda. As specified in Judge Thompson's order, the state of Alabama faced fines of $5,000 a day until the monument was removed. In response, the eight other members of the Alabama Supreme Court intervened on August 21, unanimously overruled Moore, and ordered the removal of the monument.[21]

Moore said that Thompson, "fearing that I would not obey his order, decided to threaten other state officials and force them to remove the monument if I did not do so. A threat of heavy fines was his way of coercing obedience to that order," an action that Moore sees as a violation of the Eleventh Amendment to the United States Constitution.[1]

On August 27, the monument was moved to a non-public side room in the judicial building.[22] The monument was not immediately removed from the building for several reasons—pending legal hearings, the monument's weight, worries that the monument could break through the floor if it was taken outside intact, and a desire to avoid confrontation with protesters massed outside the structure. The monument was not actually removed from the state judicial building until July 19, 2004.[23]

Removal from office[edit]

On August 22, 2003, two days after the deadline for the Ten Commandments monument's removal had passed, the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission (JIC) filed a complaint with the Alabama Court of the Judiciary (COJ), a panel of judges, lawyers and others appointed variously by judges, legal leaders, the governor and the lieutenant governor. The complaint effectively suspended Moore from the Chief Justice position pending a hearing by the COJ.[24]

The COJ ethics hearing was held on November 12, 2003. Moore repeated his earlier sentiment that "to acknowledge God cannot be a violation of the Canons of Ethics. Without God there can be no ethics." He also acknowledged that he would repeat his defiance of the court order if given another opportunity to do so, and that if he returned to office, "I certainly wouldn't leave [the monument] in a closet, shrouded from the public." In closing arguments, the Assistant Attorney General said Moore's defiance, left unchecked, "undercuts the entire workings of the judicial system.... What message does that send to the public, to other litigants? The message it sends is: If you don't like a court order, you don't have to follow it."[25] Moore had previously stated his belief that the order was unlawful, and that compliance with such an order was not an enforceable mandate.

The next day, the COJ issued a unanimous opinion ruling that "Chief Justice Moore has violated the Alabama Canons of Judicial Ethics as alleged by the JIC in its complaint." The COJ had several disciplinary options, including censure or suspension without pay, but because Moore's responses had indicated he would defy any similar court orders in the future, the COJ concluded that "under these circumstances, there is no penalty short of removal from office that would resolve this issue."[26] Moore was immediately removed from his post.

Moore appealed the COJ's ruling to the Supreme Court of Alabama on December 10, 2003. A special panel of retired judges and justices was randomly selected to hear the case. Moore argued that the COJ did not consider the underlying legality of the federal courts' order that the monument be removed from the courthouse. The Alabama Supreme Court rejected this argument, saying that the COJ did not have the authority to overrule the federal courts, only to determine whether Moore violated the Canons of Judicial Ethics. Therefore, the Court reasoned, it was enough to show that a procedurally-valid order was in place against Moore. Moore also argued that the COJ had imposed a religious test on him to hold his office, and that the COJ's actions had violated his own rights under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.[27]

The Supreme Court of Alabama rejected each of these arguments as well, and ruled on April 30, 2004 that the COJ had acted properly. The court also upheld the sanction of removal as appropriate.[27]

. . . .



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-woman-united-airlines-changed-seat-because-gender/

Calif. woman: Airline changed my seat to honor Pakistani monks' religious beliefs
CBS NEWS September 30, 2016, 3:12 PM

Photograph -- Mary Campos of Coto de Caza, California, speaks to CBS Los Angeles in an interview broadcast Sept. 29, 2016. CBS LOS ANGELES


COTO DE CAZA, Calif. -- A Southern California woman said she is the victim of discrimination, CBS Los Angeles reports.

Mary Campos said her pre-booked ticket was given away by United Airlines. The reason? She’s a woman, and two men didn’t want to sit next to a female.

A million-mile flier, Campos, a mom who lives in Coto de Caza, said she thought she’d seen it all - until a gate agent handed her a new boarding pass just before she got on a flight to Houston last Monday.

“He said, ‘This is your new seat,’” Campos said, “and I said, ‘Excuse me?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know how to tell you this.’”

She said she continued by saying, “Yes?”

And the agent told her, “The two gentlemen seated next to you have cultural beliefs that prevent them for sitting next to, talking to or communicating with females.”

She was shocked.

“I thought I lived in a culture where females were equal to men,” she said.

Campos is a senior consultant in the oil and gas industry.

She said she had no choice but to take her new seat assignment.

That’s when she said she wrote a letter to the CEO of United Airlines.

The letter said, in part, “What if I were handicapped or transgender? What if your entire flight crew were female? Any belief that prevents individuals from interacting with females should not travel on commercial aircraft.”

She got a reply that said United would look into it. She said she didn’t hear from them again.

A company spokesperson wrote to CBS Los Angeles, in part: “We regret that Ms. Campos was unhappy with the handling of the seat assignments on her flight. United holds our employees to the highest standards of professionalism and has zero tolerance for discrimination.”

Campos was told the men were Pakistani monks who were wearing long orange shirts. She said the female flight crew was not allowed to serve the men.

“We can’t discriminate against half the population,” Campos said, “for a belief from another nation.”

CBS Los Angeles asked Campos if she intended on suing the airline, and she said that was not her intention. But she did want two things from United:

Apologize to every female that was on that plane, including their employees.
Change their policy.
Campos said if she didn’t get those things, she would do whatever she had to do to protect women’s rights.



“United holds our employees to the highest standards of professionalism and has zero tolerance for discrimination.” I’ve seen phraseology that was identical or almost so in a couple of other open and shut discrimination cases, from crying babies to overweight people (need an extra seatbelt). The airlines view their plane as their own country and even world, I think. They don’t have to abide by any other set of rules than their own. I wonder what set of laws govern this.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-finds-out-how-hard-it-is-to-rush-bill-clinton/

Obama finds out how hard it is to rush Bill Clinton
By REENA FLORES CBS NEWS
September 30, 2016, 2:38 PM

Photograph -- politics-obamabillletsgo42-0930.jpg, “Bill!” Mr. Obama said again. “Let’s go! I gotta get home!”


President Obama is not amused.

As America’s commander-in-chief was trying to depart Israel on Air Force One early Friday morning, his predecessor -- former President Bill Clinton -- was taking his time getting on board the plane.

Mr. Obama tried to urge him on, shouting over the loud hum of his plane and gesturing with his tie askew.

“Bill! Let’s go!” he yelled.

Clinton, however, apparently remained undeterred, and continued to tarry on the tarmac. It took another round of shouting from 44 before 42 sauntered up the steps to the door of Air Force One.

Eventually, Clinton -- with no hint of shame -- boarded the plane, greeting the president with a handshake and a pat on the back.

The pair of world leaders were in Tel Aviv Friday to pay their respects at the funeral of Shimon Peres, the former Israeli prime minister and president, who died Wednesday.



“Eventually, Clinton -- with no hint of shame -- boarded the plane, greeting the president with a handshake and a pat on the back.” Is Bill Clinton getting mentally slow, deaf, or just being naughty? I had a dog who would go to the woods with me, and when I was ready to leave she would tarry there sniffing things. Once, after shouting at her several times, I finished off with, “Alright, Butch, I’m leaving,” and I turned on my heel to go back. She immediately stopped her examination of the fascinating scents there and ran after me. She had a look about her mouth and body language that I’ve always taken as indicative of a sense of humor.



http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/analysis-how-trump-s-tweet-storm-alicia-machado-points-deeper-n657466

Analysis: Trump's Alicia Machado Tweet-Storm Points to Deeper Problems
by BENJY SARLIN
SEP 30 2016, 3:07 PM ET

Video -- Trump doubles down on Alicia Machado comments 9:08
Related: Alicia Machado Responds to Trump: 'I Will Continue Standing'
Play -- Two Women Trump Supporters Weigh In on His Machado Twitter Rant 0:42
Play Donald Trump's Long History of Body Shaming Facebook 1:48
Related: Video of Trump Deposition in D.C. Hotel Feud Ordered to be Released


Donald Trump, always at least knee deep in the fever swamps, is now drowning in them.

Still reeling from Monday's widely panned debate performance, the Republican nominee has found refuge in a fringe media environment where his victory is assured, his setbacks are the result of shadowy plots, and his critics are humiliated by sordid revelations.

On Friday, he let loose with an early morning Twitter outburst against former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, escalating a feud with her that began at the debate over his past criticism of her weight — criticism he repeated on Tuesday and Wednesday.

"Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?" Trump tweeted.

Follow
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?
5:30 AM - 30 Sep 2016
10,775 10,775 Retweets 25,099 25,099 likes

Machado responded on social media herself, accusing Trump of "trying to revive defamation and false accusations about my life" and adding that she became a citizen "because my daughter was born here and I wanted to exercise all my rights, among them, voting."

Set aside for a moment the politics of a candidate already losing women and Latino voters by large margins then smearing a Venezuela-born actress over her sexual ethics and questioning her citizenship. (Yes, that again.) Set aside the hypocrisy of Trump — who once called venereal disease "my personal Vietnam" and has a long history of crude rhetoric and adulterous behavior — questioning Machado's personal life. Even set aside the questions Trump's behavior raises about his impulse control, which has become a central line of attack for his opponent Hillary Clinton.

Instead, let's consider the voices to which Trump is listening.

The alleged Machado "sex tape" Trump cited appeared to be a hoax widely promoted in fringe pro-Trump outlets like Infowars. Other sites like Drudge Report have spread grainy stills of a love scene from a reality show Machado starred in. Radio host Rush Limbaugh called Machado "the porn-star Miss Piggy" this week. And Trump, desperate for encouragement after his debate, is huffing these sycophantic fumes like never before.

This is nothing new. Trump has a long history of championing conspiracy theories that target his opponents and turning to wacky supportive sources to confirm them — from birtherism to falsely tying Sen. Ted Cruz's family to the JFK assassination.

Since the debate, though, his tendency to cocoon himself in an alternate reality of fawning commentary has both worsened and infected the rest of his campaign, creating a political crisis less than two weeks from the second presidential debate.

In recent days, Trump has accused plotters of rigging his microphone to undermine his debate performance. He's accused Google of "suppressing the bad news about Hillary Clinton," a debunked story that originated on a Russian propaganda site. And he's obsessively pushed non-scientific fan surveys at sites like Breitbart to prove he won the debate, which his campaign insists are more reliable than rigorously conducted polls showing he lost the debate by a wide margin.

At the same time, Trump stopped doing press conferences two months ago and has largely confined himself to interviews with friendly conservative outlets, which further insulates from outside views. Even then, he seems unable to help himself: His post-debate rants about Machado's weight this week came during easygoing interviews with Fox News hosts.

Meanwhile, campaign aides are left gently pleading with Trump via the press to come in from the cold and begin to acknowledge the damage he's done.

Dr. Ben Carson, a prominent supporter, told MSNBC on Friday Trump was following Clinton down a "rat hole" by attacking Machado over and over again.

"You know it's going to be so much better when he begins to focus on the real issues," he said.

Campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told the hosts of The View on Thursday that she had reprimanded Trump for his language toward women even as she defended his behavior toward Machado. Campaign sources complained to NBC News this week that Trump did not adequately prepare for the first debate and suffered a "disaster" as a result.

Trump, well aware of the campaign within his campaign to force him back to a more conventional message, lashed out against the press on Friday.

"Remember, don't believe 'sources said' by the VERY dishonest media," he tweeted. "If they don't name the sources, the sources don't exist."

There's no small amount of irony here. As mentioned earlier, Trump regularly makes outlandish claims based on unnamed or nonexistent citations — whether it's the "extremely credible source" who told him Obama's birth certificate was forged, or his false claim that TV footage exists showing "thousands and thousands" of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating the 9/11 terror attacks. He even defended tweeting fake crime statistics spread by white supremacists to smear blacks, telling Fox's Bill O'Reilly the source — Twitter user @SeanSean252 — was "supposedly an expert."

In the meantime, while Trump listens to fans tell him his misogynist attacks on Machado are on the verge of breaking through and winning him the election, the Clinton campaign seems all too eager to continue the conversation.

"What kind of man stays up all night to smear a woman with lies and conspiracy theories?" Clinton tweeted on Friday.



http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/video-trump-deposition-d-c-hotel-feud-ordered-be-released-n657456

Video of Trump Deposition in D.C. Hotel Feud Released
by CARRIE DANN
POLITICS
SEP 30 2016, 11:34 AM ET

New video of Donald Trump testifying under oath has been made public after a court ruling Friday unsealed footage of the GOP nominee's deposition in a case involving his new Washington D.C. hotel.

NBC and MSNBC were among the news organizations that sued for access to the videotape, which records Trump's deposition in his legal feud with restaurateur and celebrity chef Geoffrey Zakarian.

Zakarian and another DC-area chef, Jose Andres, pulled out of deals to open restaurants at the hotel last year after Trump derided Mexican immigrants as "rapists" who are "bringing crime" to the United States.

Transcripts of the video have already been made public. In his testimony, which was conducted under oath, Trump complained that the chefs who objected to his rhetoric about undocumented immigrants were being "politically correct" and "grandstanding" when they canceled their plans to operate at Trump's new hotel at the historic Old Post Office on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Trump also explained at the deposition when and why he wrote the "rapists" comment, saying that he did not write the statement in advance of his presidential announcement speech last year but that he did plan it.

"All I'm doing is bringing up a statement that is very real about illegal immigration, and I think most people think I'm right," he said.

The video could become fodder for campaign ads in the final weeks of the general election.

In the decision, Judge Brian Holeman said that concerns about selective editing of the video should not be considered valid grounds for the prevention of its release.

"The public shall not be held captive by the suggested eventuality of partisan editing in a manner unfavorable to Plaintiff or the deponents," he wrote.



“Transcripts of the video have already been made public. In his testimony, which was conducted under oath, Trump complained that the chefs who objected to his rhetoric about undocumented immigrants were being "politically correct" and "grandstanding" when they canceled their plans to operate at Trump's new hotel at the historic Old Post Office on Pennsylvania Avenue.”


I objected to the popular term “politically correct” the first time I heard it. It is always used to describe what in the old days would have been called “politeness.” That perversion of what is good and bad offends me deeply. I’ve always disliked “pop culture,” especially in relation to the demeaning of individuals based on their physical appearance or other unfair matters such as religion or mental abilities. Bullying isn’t a new thing. It’s just extremely popular since the Tea Party and their pals came into power. We all need to go to the elections in November and vote a straight Democratic ticket.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/usa-today-breaks-non-endorsement-tradition-calls-donald-trump-unfit-for-the-presidency/

USA Today breaks non-endorsement tradition
By EMILY SCHULTHEIS CBS NEWS
September 29, 2016, 8:40 PM

Play VIDEO--Trump on the defense over gender equality


National newspaper USA Today broke its decades-long streak of staying out of presidential endorsements with a scathing editorial Thursday night, saying Republican nominee Donald Trump is “unfit for the presidency.”

“This year, the choice isn’t between two capable major party nominees who happen to have significant ideological differences,” the paper’s editorial board wrote, saying that in 34 years it had never felt the need to alter its “no-endorsement policy” until now. “This year, one of the candidates — Republican nominee Donald Trump — is, by unanimous consensus of the Editorial Board, unfit for the presidency.”

The editorial lists eight reasons for its strong rebuke of Trump, including both reasons of temperament and character and some of policy. Among those reasons are the fact that Trump is “erratic,” “traffics in prejudice” and is a “serial liar.” They note that his business record isn’t as sterling as Trump himself suggests, and that the racial tensions he’s stirred—they wrote that he has “coarsened the national dialogue”—will be lasting.

“Trump has demonstrated repeatedly that he lacks the temperament, knowledge, steadiness and honesty that America needs from its presidents,” the editorial board wrote.

Trump tweeted his response to the editorial Friday morning:

Follow
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
The people are really smart in cancelling subscriptions to the Dallas & Arizona papers & now USA Today will lose readers! The people get it!
10:21 AM - 30 Sep 2016
8,366 8,366 Retweets 24,204 24,204 likes

The paper made it clear its editorial should not be taken as “unqualified support” for Clinton, urging voters to either back her, choose a third-party candidate, write in another name or focus their votes solely on down-ballot candidates.

“Whatever you do, however, resist the siren song of a dangerous demagogue,” they write. “By all means vote, just not for Donald Trump.”

USA Today is just the latest in a string of newspapers around the country bucking tradition to make their misgivings about Trump known. Earlier this week, the Arizona Republic—which had never endorsed a Democrat for president in its 120-year history—threw its support behind Clinton.

September 29, 2016


News and Views


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-jersey-train-collides-wall-hoboken/

Hoboken, New Jersey, train crashes into station
CBS/AP
September 29, 2016, 9:10 AM

12 PHOTOS -- Worst U.S. train crashes in recent history
Play VIDEO -- Witness in front car of N.J. train describes "big crash"
Photograph -- Onlookers view a New Jersey Transit train that derailed and crashed through the station in Hoboken, New Jersey, in this picture courtesy of Chris Lantero taken Sept. 29, 2016. COURTESY OF CHRIS LANTERO VIA REUTERS
Play VIDEO -- CBS News' Steve Capus describes the deadly Hoboken train crash
Play VIDEO -- Train passenger describes horrific crash in New Jersey
Play VIDEO -- "The train simply did not stop"
Play VIDEO -- Train passenger describes deadly crash in Hoboken, N.J.
Tweet -- My train just derailed and crashed into the Hoboken train station. Thankfully all I got was a crack to my head, please pray for the rest pic.twitter.com/DEm34qFSFI


HOBOKEN, N.J. -- A crowded commuter train plowed into the bustling Hoboken station during the morning rush hour Thursday, killing at least one person and injuring more than 100 others, some critically, in a tangle of broken concrete, twisted metal and dangling cables, authorities said.

Gov. Chris Christie said a woman was killed by debris while standing on the station platform. Of the 108 others injured, 74 of them were hospitalized, according to Christie and area hospitals.

People pulled concrete off bleeding victims and passengers kicked out windows and crawled out amid crying and screaming after the arriving New Jersey Transit train smashed through a barrier at the end of its track and ground to a halt in a covered waiting area. It apparently knocked out pillars, collapsing a section of the roof onto the first car.

“It just didn’t stop,” Kirby Fisher, a passenger in the first car, told CBS News. “It was like a big crash, and then everything from the ceiling just fell.”

Investigators with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and a senior official with the New York State Police confirmed to CBS News that the train operator survived the crash. Christie said the operator was fully cooperating with law enforcement.

CBS News executive editor Steve Capus described the scene at the station as “devastating.” He saw one person on the ground who appeared to have a broken leg and a number of people holding bandages to their head, bleeding.

Scores of people were in a triage area at the station, many with bloodied shirts and clothing, Capus reports. Some people being taken out of the station appeared to be “severely hurt,” he said.

Ross Bauer, an IT specialist who was heading to his Manhattan job from his home in Hackensack, was sitting in the third or fourth car when the train pulled into the historic 109-year-old station.

“All of a sudden, there was an abrupt stop and a big jolt that threw people out of their seats. The lights went out, and we heard a loud crashing noise - like an explosion - that turned out to be the roof of the terminal,” he said. “I heard panicked screams, and everyone was stunned.”

The cause of the crash wasn’t immediately known. The National Transportation Safety Board said it was sending investigators.

A law enforcement source told CBS News that nothing has been ruled out, CBS News senior investigative producer Pat Milton reports. Preliminarily, it appears to be an accident, that the train derailed, causing it to strike the station, Milton reports.

Investigators will want to know what the operator was doing before the crash and whether the person was distracted, said Bob Chipkevich, who formerly headed the NTSB train crash investigations section.

Hoboken, which is NJ Transit’s fifth-busiest station with 15,000 boardings per weekday, is just across the Hudson River from New York City. It is the final stop for several train lines and a transfer point for many commuters on their way to New York City. Many passengers get off at Hoboken and take ferries or a PATH commuter train to New York.

None of NJ Transit’s trains are fully equipped with positive train control, a safety system designed to prevent accidents by automatically slowing or stopping trains that are going too fast. The industry is under government orders to install PTC, but the deadline has been repeatedly extended by regulators at the request of the railroads. The deadline is now the end of 2018.

Jennifer Nelson, a spokeswoman for NJ Transit, said she didn’t know how fast the train was going when it crashed through the bumper. Rail service was suspended in and out of Hoboken.

Passenger Bhagyesh Shah said the train was crowded, particularly the first two cars, because they make for an easy exit into the Hoboken station. Passengers in the second car broke the emergency windows to get out.

“I saw a woman pinned under concrete,” Shah told WNBC-TV in New York. “A lot of people were bleeding; one guy was crying.”

Brian Klein, whose train arrived at the station after the crash, told The Wall Street Journal that transit police ushered everyone aboard his train into a waiting room, “then quickly started yelling, ‘Just get out! We don’t know if the building is going to hold.’”

The train had left Spring Valley, New York, at 7:23 a.m. and crashed at 8:45 a.m., said NJ Transit spokeswoman Nancy Snyder.

“It simply did not stop,” CBS radio station WFAN anchor John Minko, who witnessed the crash, told CBS station WINS-AM. “It went right through the barriers and into the reception area.”

More than 100,000 people use NJ Transit trains to commute from New Jersey into New York City daily.

A crash at the same station on a different train line injured more than 30 people in 2011. The PATH commuter train crashed into bumpers at the end of the tracks on a Sunday morning.

The Hoboken Terminal, which was built in 1907 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, has undergone waves of restoration, including a major project launched by NJ Transit in April 2004 that largely restored the building to its original condition. The station was extensively damaged during Superstorm Sandy in 2012 and underwent major repairs.


— Laura (@rustysombrero) September 29, 2016
More images of the PV Line train crash in Hoboken. I was on the train but I'm all good #NJT #PATH pic.twitter.com/pIRI4yWB5s

— Corey Futterman (@coreyfuttdesign) September 29, 2016
Hoboken Terminal train accident pic.twitter.com/haGOJ4CHd7

— David Richman (@daverichman) September 29, 2016
Hoboken train crash pic.twitter.com/49H7StwSfF

— Ty (@ScotchWoodTy) September 29, 2016



EXCERPT -- “None of NJ Transit’s trains are fully equipped with positive train control, a safety system designed to prevent accidents by automatically slowing or stopping trains that are going too fast. The industry is under government orders to install PTC, but the deadline has been repeatedly extended by regulators at the request of the railroads. The deadline is now the end of 2018.” …. “It just didn’t stop,” Kirby Fisher, a passenger in the first car, told CBS News. “It was like a big crash, and then everything from the ceiling just fell.” Investigators with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and a senior official with the New York State Police confirmed to CBS News that the train operator survived the crash. Christie said the operator was fully cooperating with law enforcement.”


There was no driver carelessness here, but the station had been the site of another crash, and Hurricane Sandy had damaged the tracks. The big thing here is the lax restriction by government on those who should have installed the PTC system. Sure, it costs money, but so does recovering from these disasters. As for that, the description, “It was like a big crash, and then everything from the ceiling just fell,” this brings home the human side of the problem. People must have been devastated by such a terrible shock, not to mention their broken bones, and the one death. This kind of “graft and greed” around the subject of government actions is like black mold. It grows everywhere when there is moisture and no light.



DEMOCRATS


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/minorities-less-anxious-about-election-outcome-than-whites/

Minorities less anxious about election outcome than whites
AP September 29, 2016, 9:54 AM

Photograph -- FILE - In this Feb. 23, 2016 file photo, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton takes pictures with supporters after a campaign event at the Central Baptist Church in Columbia, S.C. During a primary season that has proved surprisingly competitive, bombarded with persistent critiques about her likeability and trustworthiness, Clinton has maintained a strong bond with one significant block of Democratic Party voters. Black women. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File) AP


KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Consider two women in their 70s, both residents of the Kansas City area. One is white and affluent; the other is black and working class.

Guess which one is more optimistic about the country’s future and that of their grandchildren?

More than likely, you guessed wrong.

This year’s presidential campaign has underscored an economic paradox: Financially, black Americans and Hispanics are far worse off than whites, yet polls show minorities are more likely than whites to believe in the American Dream. And they are less anxious about the outcome of the election.

At 71, Carole Ramsey knows she has long been fortunate. She married a man who became a successful lawyer, raised their children in Kansas City’s affluent western suburbs and now enjoys a comfortable retirement full of international travel.

“We’ve lived a very good life,” Ramsey, who is white, said at an upscale shopping center in Leawood, Kansas. Even so, she says she’ll vote for Donald Trump because she fears economic stagnation and global terrorism. “Our kids will not be able to live the way we did, that’s for sure.”

Ethel Tuggle, 72, backs Hillary Clinton, and a big reason is that her grandchildren’s circumstances show how life has improved for her family. “They’re starting jobs at $15, $20 an hour; I’ve never seen that sort of money,” said Tuggle, who is black and worked construction for Kansas City government until injuries forced her to retire early.

Tuggle says she’s amazed at the progress she’s witnessed since her childhood in rural Missouri, when she was barred from entering shoe stores and had to trace her foot on a sheet of paper so a salesman inside could fit her for shoes. Her grandchildren live under the nation’s first black president.

One factor in the surprising gap between black optimism and white pessimism is simply partisan politics: Blacks and Hispanics are overwhelmingly Democrats and more likely to feel positive about the future when one of their own is in the White House.

“When Bush was in office, Republicans thought the country was headed in the right direction,” while Democrats did not, said Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster. “Once Democrats took over, that flipped.”

Still, there’s evidence that the divide goes beyond party and Obama’s presidency. In great measure, it has to do with the past, not the future: Minorities who have seen great improvements in their lives are more confident, while whites who have seen disintegration in their lives are more pessimistic.

The NORC* at the University of Chicago has for decades asked Americans whether they think their standard of living will improve. Since 2002 - well before Obama’s 2008 election - NORC surveys have found that whites across all parties and income levels have been steadily less likely to think their standard of living would improve. Blacks and Hispanics, meanwhile, have increasingly believed their living standards would rise.

“This is a racial and ethnic thing - not something that’s based on education, income or party,” said Jennifer Benz of NORC. “It’s whites’ huge decline in optimism that makes the gap between whites and minorities the biggest it’s been in a long time.”

In a poll conducted for the Atlantic and Aspen Institute last year, minorities were more likely than whites to agree with the statement, “The American Dream is alive and well.”

A Pew Foundation survey found that Hispanics were the least likely ethnic or racial group to be anxious about the outcome of the current presidential race - even though a centerpiece of Trump’s platform is to deport millions of immigrants living in the country illegally and restrict overall immigration.

In a June AP-NORC poll, 62 percent of blacks said they thought America’s best days were ahead. Only 40 percent of whites thought so. Fifty-three percent of blacks and 48 percent of Hispanics called the economy “good.” Just 37 percent of whites did.

The level of optimism among minorities might seem to defy economic realities. Whites have a median household income of $71,300 compared with blacks’ median of $43,300. A Pew foundation report found that white households’ typical net worth was 13 times that of black households. A separate report from the Institute for Policy Studies has calculated that, at their current rate, it would take blacks 228 years to catch up with the wealth of whites.

Still, minorities have seen progress, while whites have stalled.

According to Census data, white men have increased their income by only 3 percent since 1973, while black men have improved theirs by 12 percent. (Incomes for all women have risen sharply since they entered and rose through the workforce since the early 1970s.)

Many Hispanics have enjoyed solid income gains. The Institute for Policy Studies found that Hispanics’ household wealth has risen 69 percent over the past 30 years, albeit to a still-low $98,000 relative to whites’ $656,000.

“If you’re at the bottom moving up, you feel much better about your prospects than if you’re at the top moving down,” Democratic pollster Mark Mellman said.

There is one area where blacks, especially, register as more pessimistic than whites: Race relations and policing. Blacks particularly have polled as more negative about race relations recently, following a series of high-profile police killings of African-Americans. There is frustration, especially among younger blacks, that the incidents have continued under the nation’s first African-American president.

Yet even the usually peaceful demonstrations against those killings since 2014 could be seen as evidence of optimism, said Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Atlanta’s Emory University.

“You wouldn’t see people taking to the streets and demanding justice if they didn’t think they had a greater chance of being able to change things,” Gillespie said.

Brandon Dixon’s father was asphyxiated by Kansas City police in 2009 during a psychotic episode. The incident shocked Dixon, who gave up his work in construction and decided to plow his family’s life’s savings into opening a restaurant in the impoverished neighborhood where he grew up.

Four years after he bought a former beauty salon to convert into an eatery, Dixon has been unable to open the restaurant because of environmental contamination from a neighboring gas station. He’s struggling financially but hopes his business will finally open in a few weeks, and that it will help turn around his life and his community.

“We’ve always seen adversity,” Dixon said. “You have to not stand still, not be stagnating, keep moving forward.”

Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University, noted that people tend to evaluate their own prospects based on their parents’ experiences.

“When whites look backwards, they compare themselves to a generation that was doing better,” Cherlin said. “Blacks and Hispanics,” who face less overt discrimination today, “compare themselves to a generation that was doing worse.”

As incomes have stagnated for working class whites, their rates of suicide, drug addiction and mortality have surged. Two economists in December 2015 reported that death rates have been rising since 1999 for whites between ages 45 and 54, with the sharpest increase among the least educated.

By contrast, the suicide rate for black men has dropped since 1999. And the gap between black and white life expectancy is now the lowest in more than a century: 3.4 years. More whites have died than were born since 2011, and the Census Bureau projects that whites will be in the minority by 2060.

Doug Haag lives in Milwaukee. One of the city’s dwindling number of working-class white residents, he feels that the social contract between employers and employees has broken down.

Haag, 59, doesn’t see much job security anymore. He works for the state of Wisconsin, where a recent civil service overhaul makes it easier to fire public employees. Even though he’s had a steady job the past 18 years he considers himself “lower-middle class,” unable to afford vacations or nights out with friends. He worries about whether he’ll be able to retire.

“There’s no middle class any more - the true middle class,” Haag said. “There’s no loyalty from companies any more or from the employees.”

A Trump supporter, Haag said he’s hopeful that the reality show star can restore the country’s position of strength in the world and in the economy.

“He’s going to be able to do that as a businessman,” Haag said.

Adrianne Bockhorst lives in a tonier spot than Haag - in the upscale Milwaukee suburb of Whitefish Bay. She’s a Democrat who plans to vote for Hillary Clinton. But she, too, is worried - shaken by the scars of the recession, which tossed her family into bankruptcy, and by the vitriol of the presidential campaign.

Bockhorst, who is white, tries not to even think of the country’s economic future. “I just ignore it because it scares me so much because of the collapse and what it did to us, our dreams,” she said. “I’m in total denial that something bad could happen again. We don’t have a retirement plan, we don’t have a safety net.”

Bockhorst lives worlds away from the Milwaukee streets which erupted in riots last month in the wake of the shooting of a 23-year-old black man by police after a traffic stop. Milwaukee has the fifth-worst poverty rate in the nation, based on the most recent Census data. But even there you’ll find optimism among minorities.

“We used to have slaves, you know?” said Christine Ricks, whose northside neighborhood was at the center of August’s riots. “There have been improvements. My grandfather and your grandfather used to not be able to drink out of the same fountain.”

Ricks grew up next to what Ricks calls “the biggest dope house in the entire city”; she works as a substitute teacher and has almost no money. But she’s still optimistic that her life will improve, and that Clinton will be elected.

“I think it’s going to be all right; I just don’t know how,” Ricks said. “I would describe it as complete faith in God. Literally. From moment to moment.”

Jose Estrada, 71, emigrated from Mexico to California in the 1960s. He moved to Milwaukee in 1967, became a citizen 11 years later, and retired in 2003 after working a variety of manufacturing jobs. Estrada describes himself as middle class.

“I worked very, very hard to get myself to this point,” he said.

While he supports Clinton and fears Trump would damage the country, Estrada is optimistic about America’s future regardless.

“We will be happy with anyone who gets into that position, and I will respect it,” Estrada said. “Whoever it is, I am living in this country, it is a beautiful country and I love it. I’ve got more here than I ever had in Mexico.”



*National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago
Non-Profit Organization
Address: 4350 East-West Hwy, Bethesda, MD 20814
Phone:(301) 634-9300


This concept is interesting, and surprising, except that when I was taking a history course some 60 years ago, the professor said that when a true revolution occurs, it is always at a time of cultural improvement and optimism. Hope, apparently, energizes and brings out our creativity – the ability and desire to fight for what we need, instead of seeking chemical solutions to our depression and angst.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-arizona-republic-backs-hillary-clinton-first-democrat-in-120-year-history/

For the first time 120-year history, Arizona paper backs Democrat
By EMILY SCHULTHEIS CBS NEWS September 28, 2016, 12:37 AM

Play VIDEO -- Clinton in North Carolina following heated presidential debate


In more than 120 years, the Arizona Republic has never endorsed a Democrat for president—but on Tuesday, that changed.

The Arizona newspaper threw its support behind Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the presidential race, snubbing GOP nominee Donald Trump as “not conservative and … not qualified.”

“Since The Arizona Republic began publication in 1890, we have never endorsed a Democrat over a Republican for president. Never,” the editorial board’s endorsement read. “This reflects a deep philosophical appreciation for conservative ideals and Republican principles. This year is different.”

The editorial, coming on the heels of the first debate, in which Trump’s performance was widely panned, lists a series of reasons Trump isn’t qualified to be president, both on issues of policy and character. He lacks the temperament necessary for a commander-in-chief, it said.

“Trump responds to criticism with the petulance of verbal spit wads,” the endorsement said. “That’s beneath our national dignity. When the president of the United States speaks, the world expects substance. Not a blistering tweet.”

The Arizona Republic blasted Trump for his long history of inflammatory statements about women, minorities and the disabled.

“Trump’s long history of objectifying women and his demeaning comments about women during the campaign are not just good-old-boy gaffes,” the endorsement read. “They are evidence of deep character flaws. They are part of a pattern.”

The Arizona Republic ed board endorses Hillary Clinton, first time we've ever backed a Democrat for president. https://t.co/iU5IIQ5zxG pic.twitter.com/1sICVeqnkS

— azcentral (@azcentral) September 28, 2016

The newspaper’s editorial board wrote that they aren’t endorsing Clinton because they think she’s perfect, and they criticized her for several decisions, including her use of a private email server and questions of undue influence at the State Department

“Make no mistake: Hillary Clinton has flaws,” they wrote, mentioning her use of a private email server and the Clinton Foundation’s foreign donors. “She has made serious missteps.”

Still, the endorsement states that Clinton, not Trump, is the only candidate who could heal the country’s divisions as president.

“This is Hillary Clinton’s opportunity. She can reach out to those who feel left behind,” they wrote. “She can make it clear that America sees them and will address their concerns. She can move us beyond rancor and incivility.”



EXCERPTS -- “Make no mistake: Hillary Clinton has flaws,” they wrote, mentioning her use of a private email server and the Clinton Foundation’s foreign donors. “She has made serious missteps.” Still, the endorsement states that Clinton, not Trump, is the only candidate who could heal the country’s divisions as president. “This is Hillary Clinton’s opportunity. She can reach out to those who feel left behind,” they wrote. “She can make it clear that America sees them and will address their concerns. She can move us beyond rancor and incivility.”


This is a great summary of what I think the standard DNC Democrats face now, and if they still lack incentive to improve their plans for the party and country, the specter of Bernie Sanders is still on the scene, if not on the front row.


MENTAL HEALTH AT ISSUE AGAIN


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/shawn-grate-suspected-serial-killers-chilling-text-meet-the-other-me/

Suspected serial killer's chilling text: "Meet the other me"
By CRIMESIDER STAFF CBS/AP
September 29, 2016, 12:08 PM

Photograph -- Shawn Grate appearing via video feed in an Ashland, Ohio court Sept. 16, 2016 WOIO
Play VIDEO -- Chilling 911 call leads police to kidnapping victim -- and 3 dead bodies


ASHLAND, Ohio -- An occasional drifter linked to the slayings of at least four women in just over a decade could always find a place to stay and someone to give him a lift. Even with little money to his name and a string of arrests in his past, Shawn Grate, 40, was magnetic enough to make friends with almost anyone.

Cleveland 19 News Cleveland, OH

“He just had this way about him that he could draw people in,” said Tim Denis, who struck up a friendship with Grate that fell apart nearly two years ago over a loan.

Denis got a string of angry text messages from Grate, ending with a warning that still gives him chills: “Meet the other me.”

Grate, described by those who know him as a charmer with a dark side, has been charged with killing two women whose bodies were found in a vacant home two weeks ago after another woman called 911.

On that call, the woman said that she had been tied up, but managed to partly freed herself to make the call from her captor’s phone while he was asleep. She is heard whispering to a dispatcher, terrified that she will wake him up.

“I’ve been abducted,” the woman said in the call, begging, “Please hurry.”

Grate pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges outlined in a 23-count indictment, including the killings of the two women -- Elizabeth Griffith, 29, and Stacey Stanley, 43 -- and the abduction in Ashland. He showed no emotion, appearing via video feed as a judge read out the counts against him.

Once in custody, authorities say Grate told them he had killed another woman earlier this summer and a fourth woman sometime around 2005. Police now are looking at whether Grate was involved in the disappearance or death of a fifth woman over a year ago.

Investigators also want to know if there could be more victims from his past - a period when Grate piled up a long list of arrests, was married for about a yea,r [sic] and started a business making handcrafted wood signs that he sold at craft fairs.

The indictment says Grate repeatedly raped the woman who called 911. It also alleges Grate kidnapped Griffith and burglarized her home and charges him with abusing her corpse “in a way that would outrage reasonable community sensibilities.” The indictment accuses Grate of kidnapping, raping and robbing Stanley and destroying evidence.

Prosecutors say they’ll seek the death penalty if he’s convicted. Messages seeking comment have been left with his attorneys.

Grate’s legal problems began a year after he graduated high school. He spent four years in prison on a burglary charge from 1996 after violating his probation.

But most of his trouble centered on his treatment of women, with past charges including domestic violence, aggravated menacing and failing to pay child support. He has two children.

His former wife, who he had a daughter with, filed a protection order against Grate after they divorced in 2012.

“I have been estranged from my ex-husband for four years, and he is not a part of our lives,” Amber Grate said in a statement that asked for privacy after his arrest.

After his marriage ended, he moved from place to place in Ashland and Mansfield - two cities that sit between Cleveland and Columbus.

He sometimes lived with women he met or squatted in abandoned homes.

“He was definitely a charmer,” Denis said. “He was able to get people to do what he wanted.”

Grate didn’t have a car, he said, so he rode his bicycle or relied on friends to get around.

He worked a few maintenance jobs, but was determined to make a living selling the wood signs. For a short time, he peddled them at a storefront in Mansfield, but they didn’t bring in much money, said Denis, who still has a “Home Cookin” sign in his kitchen.

“Outside of doing his signs, he didn’t want to do much else,” Denis said. “He didn’t strike me as motivated to get another job.”

The home in Ashland where the two bodies were found was thought to be vacant. Both women were strangled, according to preliminary autopsy reports.

Authorities have not said how he met the women.

Stanley, of Greenwich, was reported missing five days before her body was discovered. Her son, Kurtis Stanley, said his mother had a flat tire late at night and was at gas station a few blocks from the vacant home.

“I think it was just an accidental run in,” he said. “He was out preying on women and he took my mom.”



The ability to exhibit/imitate signs of personal charm is a frequently found characteristic of the serial killer. That’s how they get in the door to make their attack. They are usually classified as “sociopaths,” who lack real warmth and empathy, but are clever and devious enough to fool people into trusting them. I read a biography of Ted Bundy, who was described as such a person. He was finally executed, but did an interview with a journalist beforehand, which was really interesting.

These people need to be in a locked ward at a long-term hospital for the criminally insane. Unfortunately, we don’t have as many of those facilities as we do prisons. Besides it’s easier to simply dismiss them as being sinful instead of sick, sick, sick! We need to go one step beyond catching and confining them, to intervening at the very beginning when they start to prove that they are unstable and dangerous, usually within their family. Domestic violence is like rape. It tends to be ignored until someone is killed. “Not my problem,” or “she asked for it,” etc. We are a very ignorant society in my view.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/before-washington-mall-shooting-courts-ordered-mental-health-treatment/

Before Wash. mall shooting, courts ordered mental health treatment for suspect
By CRIMESIDER STAFF AP
September 28, 2016, 4:18 PM

SEATTLE — Assaults on his parents and inappropriate sexual behavior at school led judges to order mental health treatment for the young man charged with killing five people at a Washington state department store, but weekly counseling sessions failed to help him.

Court records obtained by The Associated Press detail a series of criminal charges and attempts to rehabilitate 20-year-old Arcan Cetin, who was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety disorder and depression. They didn’t detail what caused the PTSD.

A court first ordered Cetin into treatment after he attacked his mother two years ago. He was following a program designed to erase that assault charge when he made unwelcome sexual advances toward two girls in his math class in 2015 and then punched his stepfather soon afterward, the documents say.

Jim Follman, an addiction counselor, wrote in January that there was “a strong likelihood of similar future violations” unless Cetin received treatment for his mental health and substance abuse disorders.

Cetin was involuntarily sent to a hospital for treatment two months earlier because professionals said he was likely to harm himself. He had attempted suicide and overdosed on his prescription drugs several times, records show.

But as recently as Sept. 6, he attended a counseling session and was found to be compliant with his court-ordered treatment.

Cetin’s parents, despite the attacks, helped him pay his rent and frequently visited - his stepfather had dinner with Cetin on Friday before police say he opened fire in the Macy’s cosmetics department at the Cascade Mall in Burlington, north of Seattle.

When officers arrested Cetin near his apartment Saturday night after a nearly 24-hour manhunt, they say he confessed to shooting the victims ranging from a 16-year-old girl to a woman in her 90s. He was charged with five counts of first-degree murder, but prosecutors said they still don’t know what motivated him.

The identities of four of the people killed in the shooting were released Tuesday. They were: Sarai Lara, 16; Shayla Kathleen Martin, 52; Belinda Sue Galde, 64; and Beatrice Dotson, 95. The cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds.

Stepfather David Marshall told reporters as he and Cetin’s mother, Hatice, left a court hearing Monday that they had been working with their son on his “mental health issues” and were devastated by the shooting. They have declined further interviews.

Cetin was arrested on domestic violence charges in October 2014 after arguing with his mother because she wouldn’t let him take his car to see his girlfriend, who had recently moved away. He broke glass in two pieces of furniture, put a hole in a wall and made dents in the refrigerator, she told police.

When Marshall got home and said he couldn’t visit the girl, Cetin exploded again and took his mother’s hand and started smacking himself in the face, she said.

Marshall called 911, and when the dispatcher asked if there were any guns in the home, Marshall said they were under his bed. When Cetin heard the comment, he bolted for the room, with Marshall close behind. Cetin tried to reach the guns, but Marshall pinned him against a wall until officers arrived, the documents say.

He was charged with assault and malicious mischief. In February 2015, the court agreed to dismiss the charges after two years if Cetin complied with the conditions of his probation, including not possessing firearms, drugs or alcohol and attending monthly counseling sessions.

Four months later, two of his classmates at Oak Harbor High School told authorities that he placed his foot between their legs during class and wouldn’t stop. He denied being at school that day when questioned by police but was arrested on two counts of fourth-degree sexual motivation.

Later in June, Cetin had another violent outburst at home, and when his stepfather tried to stop him, he kissed Marshall on the lips. Marshall pushed Cetin away, and Cetin punched his stepfather in the face twice, records say.

He was charged with assault, which included an order not to contact Marshall. But the stepfather asked the court to end the order in December.

“Arcan needs all the support he can get,” Marshall wrote to the judge. “As his father, it is my responsibility to help him as much as possible. With this no-contact order I am unable to help.”

Cetin’s mother told a counselor in November that they rented an apartment for him, but he had not been taking care of himself. He wasn’t taking his medications and may have overdosed as early as September when his mother found an empty vial and she struggled to wake him up, the counselor said in a report.

“I don’t know how to help him,” Hatice Marshall told the counselor.

Cetin was committed to a hospital involuntarily. He told counselors his drugs of choice were alcohol and marijuana.

“He attributes his legal issues to cannabis use,” Follman wrote in January.



Here we are with one of those very naïve reactions on the part of a family member and of the police also. The guy, when his step-father tries to talk to him, “kisses him on the mouth” and then punches him twice. This should be a huge red flag to anybody, but no. They charge him with simple “assault,” rather than dealing with the clear-cut homosexual assault on his step-father. Didn’t that strike the family as well outside the norm? I do wonder if there was a prior history between the two of sexual interactions, of course.

Often kids and parents are sent together by a judge to Family Counselling, which makes lots of sense to me. It addresses the real issues, and probably produces some improvement in the household as a whole. I’m of the opinion that, while some people are really severely and dangerously mentally ill from the earliest times (the “Bad Seed”), many are not and can benefit from knowledgeable and effective intervention, or perhaps from the ABSENCE of mental or physical cruelty.

A couple of the first places the attention to the problem could start are in the school and in the Family Physician’s office. One article said that they haven’t been strongly trained to INTERVENE even when they do see red flags. At any rate we should make a great effort to approach things that way so that our society as a whole can be improved.


ROHYPNOL? POISON? Where is Hercule Poirot?

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/american-sisters-annie-korkki-robin-korkki-found-dead-seychelles-resort/

American sisters found dead in island paradise resort
CBS/AP
September 29, 2016, 8:21 AM

Photograph -- Annie Korkki, 37, and Robin Korkki, 42, are seen in the Seychelles in a photo posted to Annie’s Facebook account on Sept. 19, 2016, three days before sisters were found dead in their resort room by staff. ANNIE KORKKI/FACEBOOK


Members of a bereaved American family are on their way to the tropical island paradise of the Seychelles to try and solve the mystery of what killed two sisters in their shared resort room, and to bring their bodies home.

CBS Denver reports Annie Korkki, 37, and Robin Korkki, 42, were found dead in their villa at the posh Maia Luxury Resort on the Seychelles, a chain of islands in the Indian Ocean about 900 miles from the coast of East Africa.

Local media have reported the sisters were found without any clear signs of physical attack or obvious trauma to their bodies.

The Seychelles Nation newspaper said the women had to be helped to their room by resort staff after drinking the night before they were found, according to CBS Denver. Resort staff found the women in their room and reported it to the police on Sept. 22.

Facebook pictures showed the sisters enjoying their time in the Seychelles for at least a week before they were found dead. According to the Seychelles News Agency’s website, they had been due to depart the island and fly home on Sept. 24.

“They were certified dead by the doctor at the Anse Boileau health centre where they had been transported for examination,” the agency quoted a police spokesman as saying. “Preliminary examination done by the police on the bodies of the two Americans is not showing any signs of violence.”

Officials in the Seychelles, and the Korkki family, were awaiting the results of the autopsies.

The women’s brother, Chris Korkki, of Lakeville, Minnesota, told the Star Tribune his family had learned nothing through official channels about his sisters’ deaths.

Chris Korkki said his mother and brother had traveled to the Seychelles to press officials for answers. He said his mother had also been talking with the U.S. Embassy.

Annie Korkki was a member of a synchronized skating team in Colorado, and CBS Denver said she had taken leave from the team to go on the extended vacation with her sister.

“She talked about it as a trip of a lifetime and I think she and Robin felt like it was a wonderful way to celebrate their relationship, their love of travel, and adventure,” Korkki’s coach Caitlyn Cattelino told the station.



I feel the same way about this case as I did when the JonBenet Ramsay case came out. There is something that is very fishy here. Possibly double suicide, possibly a sexual assault by an outside party who doctored their drinks and then volunteered to “help them” get to their room. That business of both at the same time being, or appearing to be, drunk and having to be helped to their rooms is odd – one, yes, but not both. Of course, there hasn’t apparently been an autopsy yet, just the Police Department’s first judgment. I hope we hear more about this.


EL CAJON YESTERDAY AND TODAY


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/angry-crowd-gathers-at-scene-of-socal-police-shooting/

Angry crowd gathers at scene of SoCal police shooting
CBS/AP
September 28, 2016, 2:29 AM

Rumbie Mubaiwa

EL CAJON, Calif. -- Police shot a man they said was acting erratically in a San Diego suburb Tuesday, drawing an angry cluster of protesters who believed it was another instance of law enforcement shooting an unarmed black man. The man died at a hospital.

Several dozen people, most of them black, gathered and some cursed at officers guarding the scene in El Cajon after the shooting.

Many were chanting “black lives matter!” and “hands up, don’t shoot!”

The protesters later went to police headquarters, reports CBS San Diego affiliate KFMB-TV. The protest was angry but peaceful.

The fatal shooting comes soon after black men were kshot and killed by police in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where peaceful protests developed, and in Charlotte, North Carolina, where violent protests broke out.

A woman who was working the drive-thru window at a restaurant next to the shooting captured it on video. The woman turned her phone over to investigators voluntarily and signed a consent form, police Lt. Rob Ransweiler said.

Police said the man did not have his hands up when he was shot, as some witnesses have said, and police said the cellphone video shows it.

The investigation just started, but based on the video voluntarily provided by a witness, the subject did NOT have his hands up in the air. — El Cajon Police (@elcajonpolice) September 28, 2016

Officers were called to the area of the Broadway Village Shopping Center shortly after 2 p.m. by reports of a man acting erratically, “walking in traffic, that kind of stuff,” Ransweiler said.

A police statement says the man “refused multiple instructions by the first officer on scene to remove his concealed hand from in his pocket. … The subject paced back and forth while officers tried to talk to him. At one point, the subject rapidly drew an object from his front pants pocket, placed both hands together and extended them rapidly toward the officer taking up what appeared to be a shooting stance.”

At that point, the statement said, one officer with a Taser-like device “discharged his weapon” and, at the same time, an officer with a gun fired several shots, hitting the man.

He was taken to a hospital, where he died, police said. He was believed to be in his 30s.

At a news conference, El Cajon Police Chief Jeff Davis appealed for calm and promised a thorough, transparent multi-agency investigation, KFMB reported. He didn’t disclose what the object was that the man had but said no firearm was recovered.

Bystanders reported hearing about five shots, the station said.

Davis said both officers would be put on administrative leave for at least three days, standard procedure for such incidents. Both have more than 20 years on the force, he said.

Michael Ray Rodriguez was among the witnesses who said the man had his hands in the air. He said he was driving out of his apartment complex past the shooting scene and saw a shirtless black man with his hands up and an officer firing seconds later.

The officer “let go of the trigger and shot him again and again,” Rodriguez told the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Several witnesses alleged the officers were unduly quick to open fire and suggested that their actions had been influenced by the fact that they were dealing with a black man, one they described as mentally challenged, KFMB said.

One man angrily told reporters the victim was suffering a seizure prior to the shooting.

One woman who appeared in a video posted by Rumbie Mubaiwa on her Facebook page is heard telling police at the scene that the man was ordered to take his hand out of his pocket.

“I said, ‘Take your hand out your pocket, baby, or they’re going to shoot you.’ He said ‘No, no, no,”’ the woman said. “When he lifted his hand out ... he did have something in his hand but it wasn’t no gun, and that’s when they shot him.”

On Mubaiwa’s tape, a woman wearing hospital-style scrub clothing who said she was the man’s sister appeared distraught, repeatedly shrieking and crying, telling officers she had called them to help her brother.

“I just called for help, and you came and killed him,” she said.

“Don’t you guys have crisis communications teams to talk to somebody mentally sick?” she asks.

A new policy by the San Diego County District Attorney’s office requires release of such officer-involved shooting footage, but it was unclear when that would happen, Ransweiler said.

The police department is working on a program to have officers wear body cameras, but none have been issued, Ransweiler said.

El Cajon is a city 15 miles northeast of San Diego and has a population of about 100,000. It is 69 percent white and 6 percent black, according to 2010 census figures. It has become a common home for refugees fleeing Iraq and, more recently, Syria.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/alfred-olango-shooting-el-cajon-officer-involved-in-deadly-police-shooting-was-sex-suit-target/

El Cajon officer involved in deadly shooting was demoted after sex complaint
By CRIMESIDER STAFF CBS/AP
September 29, 2016, 1:04 PM

Photograph -- Community members protest the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man in El Cajon, Calif. CBS NEWS
Play VIDEO -- El Cajon shooting raises questions about police training


EL CAJON, Calif. -- One of the officers involved in a deadly confrontation with an unarmed black man in a San Diego suburb was demoted last year amid allegations that he sexually harassed a lesbian colleague.

Richard Gonsalves, who has 21 years with the El Cajon Police Department, was identified by the mayor as one of two officers who confronted Alfred Olango on Tuesday. Authorities haven’t said which officer shot and killed Olango.

Gonsalves was a sergeant when Christine Greer sued him and the city last year. She alleged that Gonsalves repeatedly made unwanted sexual advances, which included texting her a photo of his penis and on another occasion texting that he was drunk and wanted to have three-way sex with Greer and her wife.

The lawsuit also contended that Gonsalves harassed other women.

After two investigations, Gonsalves was demoted from sergeant to officer, but he was allowed to remain on the force. That decision angered some citizens who said Gonsalves should have been fired.

But City Manager Douglas Williford stood by the decision. “It’s entirely possible that a judge or a jury at some point in the future may disagree with the city’s decision, and obviously the city will defend its decision with the utmost vigor,” Williford told the City Council at a meeting where speakers called for Gonsalves to be dismissed.

Greer’s lawsuit was settled months later. But she filed a second lawsuit this August.

Greer contends that she faced retaliation from male colleagues and had been forced to work in the presence of Gonsalves.

The lawsuit also alleges that Gonsalves has harassed Greer by spitting on her locker and following her down a hallway, said her attorney, Dan Gilleon.

An email to the president of the El Cajon Police Officers’ Association seeking comment from Gonsalves was not immediately returned.

Police said that on Wednesday, Olango, a refugee from Uganda, pulled out a large electronic cigarette, known as a vape pen, from his pocket and pointed it at the police officer in a “shooting stance” before an officer fired. Police have produced a single frame from a cellphone video to support their account.

A family attorney said Olango was having an emotional breakdown over the recent death of his best friend. His sister is heard on a video taken by an eyewitness that he was “mentally sick.”



EXCERPT – “After two investigations, Gonsalves was demoted from sergeant to officer, but he was allowed to remain on the force. That decision angered some citizens who said Gonsalves should have been fired. But City Manager Douglas Williford stood by the decision. “It’s entirely possible that a judge or a jury at some point in the future may disagree with the city’s decision, and obviously the city will defend its decision with the utmost vigor,” Williford told the City Council at a meeting where speakers called for Gonsalves to be dismissed. …. Greer contends that she faced retaliation from male colleagues and had been forced to work in the presence of Gonsalves. The lawsuit also alleges that Gonsalves has harassed Greer by spitting on her locker and following her down a hallway, said her attorney, Dan Gilleon. …. pulled out a large electronic cigarette, known as a vape pen, from his pocket and pointed it at the police officer in a “shooting stance” …” “I just called for help, and you came and killed him,” she said. “Don’t you guys have crisis communications teams to talk to somebody mentally sick?” she asks.”


Come on, this is old hat after Weiner did his bit. “Texting her a photo of his penis” is becoming boring. And spitting on her locker? The personal behavior of Gonsalves is thoroughly despicable, and he should have been fired immediately, rather than demoted, but that is a common factor in the police misbehavior cases. Cops go along with no restraint until a group like the DOJ or, now BLM, get involved. In this case it went on until he did something deadly, and now they have a new case to give due and probably very slow consideration to! Pardon my cynicism.

But the lack of CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS TEAMS in MOST cities is the worst and most unfair part of this situation in my view. It comes up again and again. Do we have to specifically ASK FOR AN AMBULANCE every time? Doesn’t anybody in the city government have any common sense??These calls about the insane shouldn’t go first to the police, anyway, but to the Fire/Rescue Department instead, and they should always bring a straitjacket and some injectable tranquilizer with them. Patching people’s broken bones isn’t the only reason for a rescue squad (as they used to be called.) They make tranquilizer guns for use on animals, and they could be used on humans also.