[SFGate] A Mexican man who touched off a fierce immigration debate over his role in the shooting death of a woman walking on a San Francisco pier is seeking to overturn his felony gun possession conviction. It was the only charge he was found guilty of after a jury acquitted him of murder.
Jose Inez Garcia-Zarate had been deported five times at the time of the shooting and was wanted for a sixth deportation proceeding.
Lawyers for Garcia-Zarate filed the expected appeal last week in state court. He contends he didn't know a gun was in his hands because it was wrapped in a T-shirt when it fired and he dropped it almost immediately after picking it up. He argues in court papers that he can't be convicted of illegal gun possession.
Garcia-Zarate was charged with murder and illegal gun possession for the fatal shooting of Kate Steinle in July 2015. Steinle was shot in the back was she walked with her father on a city pier crowded with tourists taking in the sights.
Garcia-Zarate had been recently released from jail after prosecutors dropped a 20-year-old marijuana possession charge. He had been transferred to San Francisco's jail after serving nearly four years in federal prison for illegal re-entry into the United States.
#1
Government and its judicial system forgot what justice was all about. Go back to the beginning. Grant citizens the defense of 'right of vendetta' when the state fails. That will remove a lot of crossing t's and dotting i's seeking perfection in process that the systems has wrapped itself up in.
No extraordinary security measures. Please assign within the general population. [NYPOST] A former Boy Scout leader from New Jersey who admitted to sexually abusing at least three kids in his troop was reportedly sentenced on Friday to 10 years in state prison.
Stephen Corcoran, 51, of Morris Plains, is already serving a seven year sentence for child pornography ‐ and will now be tacking on three more, according to NJ.com.
His latest sentence is going to run concurrent with the old one, which was handed down in 2017.
Corcoran pled guilty back in August to four counts of sexual assault after being accused by three of his former scouts. The victims said they were abused between 1997 and 1999.
"Every interaction he had with me and my family was for his ultimate goal of molesting me," explained Christopher Malcolm, speaking to news hounds in August 2017. "He wasn’t there to be my friend. He was there for his own sexual desires."
The victims later sued the Boy Scouts of America organization, saying the abuse had a serious effect on their adult lives.
"The boy scouts basically gave (Corcoran) shelter and cloaked in secrecy the abuse that was occurring," alleged one of their lawyers.
While an amount was never reported, the former scouts were said to have been "very pleased" with what they got.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/20/2019 00:00 ||
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#1
Someone should have pointed out to Corcoran that if he'd become a dem bundler first this never would have happened to him...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/20/2019 9:33 Comments ||
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#2
But never oppose Gay Scout Leaders.
and why is this concurrent with his 7 year child pr0n sentence? Hopefully he won't make it through either
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/20/2019 9:34 Comments ||
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#3
re: the gay part........were his victims male or female?
Things have changed in the 60+ years since I started scouting and I've heard that it's now coed, no?
#4
abused between 1997 and 1999. Back then, all boys.
I coached my daughter's female sports teams, and I made sure there was also a woman around at all times, and told the parents up front of my policy. Most seemed to appreciate it
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/20/2019 10:43 Comments ||
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#5
Frank, me too. Always at least one parent at every practice and game or I was out of there.
Posted by: Tom ||
01/20/2019 13:55 Comments ||
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#7
People used to assure me this would never happen if we allowed homosexuals to be scoutmasters.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/20/2019 16:32 Comments ||
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#8
I didn't believe them.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/20/2019 16:32 Comments ||
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#9
Well, he was already serving time for kiddy-pron, so charges against him for diddling "off the books" is not surprising. The 19-years for them to come forth, however, is disturbing.
I have fond memories of Mr. Beebe, my Scoutmaster, around whom I never felt uncomfortable. He was a great guy and did a wonderful job of herding his charges. Greased Watermelon...good times.
Why so many bad apples these days? Is it that the Scouts are looked upon as a feeding ground for these animals, and they can make it through the vetting process? Is there a vetting process? If so, what is it? Is it reliable? Who conducts it? Etc. Or is it just too invasive to really know who is taking care of your kids?
[NYPOST] Dating El Chapo means always having to say you’re sorry.
Newly released text messages between Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and his mistress offer a look inside the drug lord’s twisted love life, showing he sent her love notes mixed with death threats ‐ and that the two may share a secret lovechild.
"Look, the mafia kills people who don’t pay or people who snitch," Chapo wrote in one 2012 message to Lucero Guadalupe Sanchez Lopez that was released in his Brooklyn federal court trial Thursday, "but not if you’re serious, love."
The message was supposedly a warning to Sanchez ‐ who worked in Chapo’s drug empire while having a years-long affair with him ‐ to keep a low profile because people were talking about her.
"Lies are what cause problems. Don’t lie and people will always see the good, love. Always remember that. I’m telling you this because I love you," he continued.
In response, Sanchez, 29, insisted she was "not doing anything bad" and gushed about how much she loved him ‐ but while testifying Thursday, she said she was "feeling threatened" and was worried "he could actually hurt me."
Sanchez told the court that whenever she went to see her married paramour, Chapo’s cronies would cover her eyes and take away her cellphone.
She also recalled an occasion when Guzman’s secretary walked in as they were eating and told them an associate named Tio Virgo was dead ‐ which she took to mean Chapo had ordered him killed.
"He turned around and looked at me in a slow demeanor and then he said something I did not like," she told jurors.
"He said from that point on, whoever betrayed him, they would die. Whether they were family or women, they were going to die."
Meanwhile, ...back at the palazzo, Count Guido had escaped from his bonds and overwhelmed his guard using the bludgeon the faithful Filomena had smuggled to him in the loaf of bread... other texts shown to jurors appeared to confirm rumors that Guzman and Sanchez had a child together.
"This is your son," she wrote in one 2012 message.
"Hello, my king. I congratulate you because you’re a real man," Chapo replied.
In another message, he said he’s sending "kisses" to her and "Rubencito" ‐ as the lovers also carried on a conversation about weed sales.
"A kiss for each," he messaged her alongside two "wink" and "kiss" emojis. "For you and for Rubencito, two for you."
Posted by: Fred ||
01/20/2019 00:00 ||
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[LA Times] A Bay Area couple who died after falling from a popular overlook at Yosemite National Park were intoxicated at the time, according to autopsy reports.
Vishnu Viswanath, 29, and his wife, Meenakshi Moorthy, 30, died Oct. 25 after plunging about 800 feet from Taft Point, park officials said. The husband and wife were citizens of India who were living in the U.S.
The couple died of "multiple injuries to the head, neck, chest and abdomen, sustained by a fall from a mountain," Dr. Sung-Ook Baik, a forensic pathologist in the Stanislaus County Coroner’s Office, wrote in his Jan. 4 report, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
Viswanath and Moorthy were "intoxicated with ethyl alcohol prior to death," Baik said in the document, which included toxicology reports. Ethyl alcohol is found in beer, wine and hard liquor.
The sheriff’s department is still investigating how the pair fell. At about .5 terminal velocity. Why do you ask ?
Viswanath’s brother, Jishnu Viswanath, told the Associated Press at the time that the couple had set up a tripod-mounted camera near the ledge of Taft Point on the evening of Oct. 23.
Park visitors saw the camera the next morning and alerted rangers, who "used high-powered binoculars to find them and used helicopters to airlift the bodies," he said.
In March, Moorthy posted a photo of herself on Instagram, sitting on a cliff at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in a shirt that said "Sunset Chaser." In the caption, she wrote about the dangers of taking dramatic, high-risk photos for likes on social media.
#2
Abandoned, one camera and Garwin.
A selfie at sunset with Darwin,
A wee little drop,
A quick karmic kerplop,
And, "Time, please," from the heavenly barman.
[CBS] U.S. figure skating champion John Coughlin died by suicide Friday, one day after being suspended from the sport over unspecified allegations.
"We are stunned at the news of the death of two-time U.S. pairs champion John Coughlin," U.S. Figure Skating said in a statement Saturday. "Our heartfelt and deepest sympathies are with his father Mike, sister Angela and the rest of his family. Out of respect to the family, we will have no further comment until a later time."
In a short Facebook post Friday, Coughlin's sister Angela Laune said, "My wonderful, strong, amazingly compassionate brother John Coughlin took his own life earlier today. I have no words. I love you John. Always Always Brother Bear..."
Police in Kansas City, Missouri, where Coughlin lived, confirmed that his death was a suicide. Threw himself under a self-driving Zamboni? That took courage.
[The Hill] A federal judge on Friday reportedly found four women guilty of misdemeanors after they illegally entered a national wildlife refuge along the US-Mexico border to leave water and food for undocumented migrants.
According to The Arizona Republic, the four women were aid volunteers for No More Deaths, an advocacy group dedicated to ending the deaths of undocumented immigrants crossing desert regions near the southern border.
One of the volunteers with the group, Natalie Hoffman, was found guilty of three charges against her, including operating a vehicle inside the Cabeza Prieta national wildlife refuge, entering a federally-protected wilderness area without a permit, and leaving behind gallons on water and bean cans.
The charges reportedly stemmed from an August 2017 encounter with a U.S. Fish and Wildlife officer at the wildlife refuge.
The other three co-defendants ‐ which includes Oona Holcomb, Madeline Huse and Zaachila Orozco-McCormick ‐ were reportedly passengers in Hoffman’s truck at the time and were also charged with entering federally-protected area without a permit in addition to leaving behind personal property.
Each of the women face up to six months in prison for the charges and a $500 fine after being found guilty.
Hundreds of Zimbabweans have been beaten, detained or killed in recent days as the Government cracks down on protesters speaking out against the regime.
Violence has erupted in the country after a huge fuel price hike which saw the cost increase by more than 200 per cent to $3.31 (£2.57) per litre. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
[PULSE.NG] Conservative President Ivan Duque urged Communist-ruled Cuba -- a host and one of the guarantors of the grinding of the peace processor -- to send home National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels who were in Havana.
On Friday, the government blamed the leftist ELN for the bombing of a police academy in Bogota that killed 20 people as well as the attacker, and dealt a body blow to the grinding of the peace processor.
Duque then announced that he was reinstating arrest warrants for 10 ELN members who are part of the group's delegation to the Cuba talks.
The talks -- started with his predecessor -- were aimed at ending more than five decades of insurgency by the Marxist-inspired bad boys.
Duque said that Cuba must not protect the rebels.
The police academy boom-mobileing "was a crime that violated human rights ...which are usually entirely different from personal liberty... . And no such act deserves (Cuba acting) to avoid justice being done," Duque said while giving a speech in Tolima.
Colombia has experienced several years of relative calm since the 2016 peace accord signed by then-president Juan Manuel Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia FARC or FARC-EP, is either a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary guerrilla organization or a drug cartel based in Colombia. It claims to represent the rural poor in a struggle against Colombia's wealthier classes, and opposes United States influence in Colombia, neo-imperialism, monopolization of natural resources by multinational corporations, and the usual raft of complaints. It funds itself principally through ransom kidnappings, taxation of the drug trade, extortion, shakedowns, and donations. It has lately begun calling itself Bolivarian and is greatly admired by Venezuela's President-for-Life Chavez, who seemingly fantasizes about living in the woods and kidnapping people himself. He provides FARC with safe areas along the border. (FARC) guerrillas.
With the landmark agreement turning the former rebels into a political party, the smaller ELN is considered the last active rebel group in the country.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/20/2019 00:00 ||
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[PULSE.NG] After an election victory slammed as fraudulent by the opposition and international community, Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro has begun a new term that will see him in office until 2025, his grip on power seemingly firmer than ever.
So why are analysts talking up a hope for political change?
Step in Juan Guaido, a 35-year-old industrial engineer who took charge of the opposition-dominated National Assembly on January 5, breathing new life into the body that had been rendered virtually impotent by Maduro's constitutional maneuvers.
"It's almost like a rebirth. The opposition has emerged more unified than ever before," says Geoff Ramsey, vice president for Venezuela at WOLA, a research center on Latin America based in Washington.
"For the first time in many months... Maduro is on the defensive," wrote Andres Oppenheimer, a noted journalist on Latin American affairs.
Weeks into his new job, Guaido has managed to get the assembly's opposition majority to officially declare Maduro a usurper and denounce his re-election as a fraud, while promising an "amnesty" for all military and government officials that disavow the president.
That achievement eluded his predecessors, who have been exiled, imprisoned or disqualified.
Pathways to power
Guaido upped the ante in a Washington Post column Tuesday, invoking articles of Venezuela's constitution that call on its people to reject regimes that violate democratic values, adding: "I am fully able and willing to assume the office of the presidency on an interim basis to call for free and fair elections."
Michael Shifter, director of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank, agreed Guaido wresting power from Maduro would be in accordance with the law.
"What is happening in Venezuela is not a coup d'etat," he said. "The National Assembly and its current leader Guaido are totally legitimate, and have the law and Constitution on their side."
But, he added, the limits of the opposition's new-found strength are soon to be tested.
Facing a regime-loyalist-dominated Supreme Court that annuls all its decisions, the opposition has three main pathways, argues veteran diplomat Michael Matera, director of the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"The support of the military, the Venezuelan people and the international community will be essential to allow Guaido to assume (office) officially as president and to step into a role that now Maduro is trying illegitimately to hold to," he said.
To that end, the National Assembly this week boldly extended a hand to the military: it promised to grant amnesty to all those who support a return to constitutional order.
Guaido will also require the support of moderate followers of Maduro's predecessor Hugo Chavez to break for him, added Ramsey.
International Pressure
International pressure on Caracas has been growing since Maduro's reelection last May, but it surged with the arrival in power of the far right in Brazil: new President Jair Bolsonaro agrees with his US counterpart Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... that Maduro is a "dictator."
Bolsonaro, whom Maduro called a modern-day Hitler, Thursday met at Planalto Palace with Miguel Angel Martin, president of the Supreme Court of Justice of Venezuela in exile, appointed by the opposition majority Assembly. A top adviser of Organization of American States chief Luis Almagro also was present.
Meanwhile, ...back at the chili cook-off, Chuck reached for the green sauce... Brazilian Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo met with Venezuelan opposition members and representatives of the United States and the Lima Group, a bloc of countries critical of Maduro. After the meeting, the Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Brazil's willingness to support a Guaido "interim presidency."
Though Maduro has a few allies in Latin America and around the world, most of the international community would welcome a democratic transition in Venezuela, according to Shifter.
"This process needs to be managed skillfully and be very clear-eyed about the obstacles that stand in the way," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/20/2019 00:00 ||
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[SeattleTimes] For most of the past quarter-century, the worldview symbolized by the World Economic Forum -- of ever-freer world trade and closer ties between countries -- had dominated. Then came a backlash from Americans and Europeans whose jobs were threatened by low-wage competition from countries like China and who felt alienated at home by wealth inequality and immigration.
In 2016, U.S. voters elected Trump, who advocated restricting immigration and scaling back free trade, and the British chose to leave the EU.
"The winners from globalization have had the megaphone," said Paul Sheard, a senior fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard University's Kennedy School. "The losers have been somewhat silent, but now are starting to express themselves through the ballot box and through the political process." Indeed.
In a report this month, Sterne noted that most major economies performed dramatically worse than expected after the 2007-2009 Great Recession. He blames many central banks == besides the U.S. Federal Reserve == for not responding to sluggish growth more aggressively with easy money policies. And, Sterne says, politicians should have juiced growth with tax cuts and higher government spending.
"There was genuine underperformance by the big institutions," he said. The result is a populist backlash. "If you don't do anything about your failings, they can come back and bite you."
Sterne worries that the populist response "could trigger radical and ill-conceived" policies that overshoot and drive up inflation and swell government budget deficits.
The ride could get even bumpier. The World Economic Forum is focusing on what it calls the "Fourth Industrial Revolution" -- a series of rapid advances in technology and medicine expected to transform society. Advances in robotics and artificial intelligence could further threaten jobs and feed the populist revolt.
"We seem to be on the cusp of an incredible new era of automation and critical breakthroughs in health sciences," Sheard said. "But how do we manage this process? And how do we manage it in a way that doesn’t leave millions of people behind?" Millions of yellow vesters.
Posted by: Fat Bob Glaise8594 ||
01/20/2019 08:52 ||
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[Ynet] Almost half of the Paleostinians who leave the Strip don't return, with many taking advantage of the permanent opening of the Rafah border crossing to get out via Egypt and search for a better life elsewhere.
The Gazoo Strip has been experiencing mass emigration in recent months, with almost half of those leaving the Paleostinian enclave choosing not to return. Most of the Gazooks who chose to emigrate are young and educated.
Some 36,000 people left Gazoo between May and September of 2018, in the first four months after the permanent opening of the Rafah border crossing between the Strip and the Sinai Peninsula. Of that number, however, just 17,000 returned.
Continued on Page 49
For a specific population of humans, almost any trait you can measure such as height, weight or having a lick of sense follows a Gaussian distribution, that bell curve thingie. Basically, you have a bunch of people in the middle, and a few out at either extreme.
We can argue and snigger over what the mean might be, but given that Gaza is Gaza, it is not surprising that anyone with 3/4 of a brain and better prospects is leaving. Think of it like evaporative cooling - the hot, smart molecules boil off leaving the rest collectively cooler and more Paleostinian.
We should not be surprised at history professor Khalid Khaldi's suggestion that the fix for the brain drain is to keep people from leaving rather than create conditions that make people want to stay. After all, he is one of those who hasn't left.
#6
It’s not just the economic situation, both present and future, it seems to me. It does little good to scrimp and save for a better future when it is obvious that sooner or later — and probably sooner — Hamas will again provoke Israel into bouncing rubble.
But the brain drain has been going on since 1948, when the West Bank and Gaza Strip were ruled by Jordan and Egypt respectively — this isn’t specific to nowadays and Hamas-ruled Gaza. Once the better-paying Jewish employers became unavailable, young and ambitious Palestinians without prospects at home took themselves elsewhere. Lots of educated Palestinians have been running things for the Saudis, for instance, for generations.
[Breitbart] Body parts, foul language, and hate speech took center stage at the third Women’s March in Washington, DC, on Saturday. Women and men clad in pussy hats carried signs cursing President Donald Trump and praising female genitalia and reproductive organs.
Pussy hats and pussy signs were plentiful at the third annual Women’s March on Friday in Washington, DC (Penny Starr/Breitbart News).
The March, which was held on the National Mall in 2017 and 2018, was centered this year at the much smaller Freedom Plaza venue. The move and pared down participation came after months of negative publicity about the Women’s March’s leadership and its ties to anti-Semite Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
Signs denigrating President Donald Trump were displayed at the Women’s March on Saturday in Washington, DC (Penny Starr/Breitbart News).
One of the co-founders of the march, Teresa Shook, called for Tamika Mallory, Linda Sarsour, Carmen Perez, and Bob Bland to step down for promoting discrimination. The charges snowballed to cause numerous "sister marches" to cancel and many prominent sponsors, including the Democratic National Committee (DNC), to pull support.
[DailyWire] This year’s Women’s March has taken a significant hit after reports in 2018 that the founders of the organization were openly anti-Semitic. Many of the founders are supporters of flagrant anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, who routinely calls Jews "termites" and has led a "Death to America, Israel" chant in Iran.
The public gathering permit provided by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s National Park Service shows just how far the march has fallen, stating that the "anticipated number or participants" is roughly 10,000. In 2017, the first Women’s March attracted between 500,000 and 1 million people from around the country, according to official estimates.
The Daily Mail has photos plus a brief video of Occasional Cortex in front of a microphone, but for some reason no crowd estimates.
[Breitbart] Rev. Jacqui Lewis, a senior minister at Middle Collegiate Church in New York, took the stage Saturday at the Women’s March and announced what she believed to be Americans’ greatest enemies.
"I am so glad to be able to follow my indigenous family and share some words of blessing," Lewis said as she opened her speech. "Standing here and looking at you and thinking about this movement makes me want to tell you what it means for me to be a Christian pastor."
"There’s all kinds of Christians, but I’m the kind that believes that there’s more than one path to God, the kind that believes that every single body, no matter who you love and how you look, is created by God exactly as you are."
[Newsweek] Laura Loomer interrupted a speaker during the Women’s March in Washington D.C. on Saturday. In a video shared on Twitter, the right-wing activist appeared onstage attempting to speak over a woman standing at a podium.
Loomer shouted claims about the organizers of the march being anti-Jewish. "The Women’s March does not represent Jewish people," she yelled, adding that the Women’s March was a Nazi organization.
Security escorted Loomer off stage, but she didn’t leave without repeatedly screaming at the crowd: "What about the Jews?"
Thousands arrived at the nation’s capital for the third year of the rally, despite the Women’s March organization spending the majority of last year in utter chaos. Top members within the organization were accused of anti-Semitism after one of the organization's founders, Vanessa Wruble, claimed she was pushed out of the group because of her Jewish heritage.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[SFGate] A Mexican man who touched off a fierce immigration debate over his role in the shooting death of a woman walking on a San Francisco pier is seeking to overturn his felony gun possession conviction. It was the only charge he was found guilty of after a jury acquitted him of murder.
[NYPOST] A former Boy Scout leader from New Jersey who admitted to sexually abusing at least three kids in his troop was reportedly sentenced on Friday to 10 years in state prison.
[NYPOST] Dating El Chapo means always having to say you’re sorry.
[CBS] U.S. figure skating champion John Coughlin died by suicide Friday, one day after being suspended from the sport over unspecified allegations.
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
[DailyMail] 
[SeattleTimes] For most of the past quarter-century, the worldview symbolized by the World Economic Forum -- of ever-freer world trade and closer ties between countries -- had dominated. Then came a backlash from Americans and Europeans whose jobs were threatened by low-wage competition from countries like China and who felt alienated at home by wealth inequality and immigration.
[Ynet] Almost half of the Paleostinians who leave the Strip don't return, with many taking advantage of the permanent opening of the Rafah border crossing to get out via Egypt and search for a better life elsewhere.
[Breitbart] Body parts, foul language, and hate speech took center stage at the third Women’s March in Washington, DC, on Saturday. Women and men clad in pussy hats carried signs cursing President Donald Trump and praising female genitalia and reproductive organs.
