#6
Notice that Dad and the perps were the same age. Bet daughter was being used to extract debt repayment from Dad, or atonement for some other 'sin' against the perps employer.
#7
"McClinton was charged with shooting another man. Charges were eventually dropped due to lack of witness participation."
They'd best stop answering any and all knocks on their front door.
#9
As far as I know, I am neither a threat nor a debtor, but I have stopped answering knocks on my door - unless I am notified ahead of time that someone is paying a visit.
#10
There is an episode of Best Defense very similar to this, except instead of being jumped outside starting the car a toddler unlocks the door after hearing a knock.
Shotguns might be better for home defense. A 9mm might go through your wall and kill a neighbor. Shot gun pellets are less likely to and they spread with distance. The sound of a round being chambered on a pump shotgun is unmistakeable. Any crook with half a brain will run.
According to the Las Vegas review, the Millers toted two hand guns and a shotgun with ammunition to the Cicis restaurant where they shot and killed the two police and then took their guns. According to the news report the couple had 200 rounds of ammunition, which to some folks is a short day at the rifle range.
Jerad Miller has family in Washington state, but lived in Indiana before moving to Nevada. Despite what the media reports or failed to report, he was sent packing from the Bundy camp when they found out he was a convicted felon. He main legal problem was with pot, and is likely one of his biggest problems.
He expressed his support for Tea Party and for the 2nd Amendment, but as far as I can tell he had not meatspace connections to either of those groups. He liked Tool and he liked the Seattle Seahawks football team.
His wife Amanada was similarly disposed as to music tastes and her political beliefs, but there is scant evidence of any personal contact other than a group called the Lafayette Area Activists, whose Facebook page went dark either last year.
#1
I understand a concealed carry permit holder drew down on this pair in Wal-Mart and got killed. Any advice for permit holders so inclined to defend themselves?
#2
..you're not the cops. You don't need a warning or warning shot. If you see an act that requires you to draw, you shoot. If you are not faced with such an act, you keep it holstered.
Before you draw, make sure you have a good vision of the situation, glimpse left, glimpse right. If you tunnel your vision you might miss another threat.
#4
JohnQC, from what I had read the citizen didn't see or disregarded the female. He took a bead on the man and while he was distracted the female shot him in the head from behind or to the side.
My advise is the same as the police get. Don't get tunnel vision, get to cover and aim center mass. And as P2k said, you aren't the police. If that weapon leaves your holster to be pointed at someone it better finish the move smoking.
#6
I don't believe the Millers planned on killing just those two cops and themselves. Though unfortunately it cost him his life, the civilian who intervened probably disrupted their plan and prevented future killings.
#7
The big questions is how a felon got the guns. Although his wife probably bought them for him. After the funerals, Clark County will have to deal with why the police didn't pay him a visit before.
The guy Joe Wilcox was murdered from behind by the female. She was not with the male at the time and Wilcox thought she was an ordinary Walmart type shopper.
Not entirely, I think. A felon so inclined will always have guns. Or cars. Or explosives. Or knives. Or machetes. Or be forced to commit numerous single murders.
As for drawing a weapon, never shoot to kill. Shoot to stop. Make sure you don't spend a lot of time trying to pick between the two or you may get stopped yourself. And if someone gets killed along the way, that's a risk s/he took.
#10
Also, if you do have to shoot in self-defense and you survive, have a tire-biter attorney who can defend you because there will probably be a lawsuit. Consider what happened to Zimmermann in Florida (a firearms relatively friendly state).
#14
Good thing; these two fks would have been the fks to make that a shooting standoff.
Instead they shoot down two LEOs eating pizza buffet, then shoot down a good Samaritan they apparently were fighting to liberate or whatever, then shoot themselves down. Two people brave enough to put on the shield and one citizen brave enough to try and chase down these two fks.
U.S. congressman Eric Cantor will step down as House of Representatives Republican leader effective July 31 following his defeat in a primary on Tuesday, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing three Republicans familiar with his plans.
Cantor, a seven-term congressman from Virginia, was soundly defeated in the Republican primary by an upstart candidate from the Tea Party movement. Unlike Holder.
#1
GOP elites, can you hear us now? The grass roots tried to get the GOP leadership listen, but now I guess they had to make the leadership fear the grass roots.
#2
Niccolo Machiavelli once wrote that changing the order of things is the toughest of all undertakings. The entrenched who benefit from the status quo will fight you with all they have. The average person fears that the change agents may make it personally worse for them i.e. fix the system on their backs.
The GOP leadership benefits from the status quo. They still get campaign donations from business, get to keep their shiny offices and six digit pay.
The GOP needs a governor, i.e. someone with executive experience, to be their presidential candidate in November 2016. This person needs to articulate the basic message that Professor Dave Brat articulated.
"[Congress] just need to assert [its] representative role and to take back this executive presidency and to take their role back from the judiciary who is running the country instead of just interpreting the law," Brat said. "Were lacking true leadership, and we ran on that and we won on that. So the Republican creed is perfectly fine. We just have to follow that Republican creed, and we would do very well. It emphasizes all those American principles we are talking about."
Republican creed:
We Believe:
That the free enterprise system is the most productive supplier of human needs and economic justice,
That all individuals are entitled to equal rights, justice, and opportunities and should assume their responsibilities as citizens in a free society,
That fiscal responsibility and budgetary restraints must be exercised at all levels of government,
That the Federal Government must preserve individual liberty by observing Constitutional limitations,
That peace is best preserved through a strong national defense,
That faith in God, as recognized by our Founding Fathers is essential to the moral fiber of the Nation.
UNESCO exhibition on the history of the Jewish people's ties to the Land of Israel will open Wednesday in Gay Paree, six months after its originally scheduled debut was canceled on short notice due to pressure from Arab member states.!
The exhibit, entitled "People, Book, Land: The 3,500 Year Relationship of the Jewish People to the Holy Land," was authored by Israeli historian Robert Wistrich for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which partnered with UNESCO on the initiative.
On Wednesday afternoon, Wistrich and several representatives of the Wiesenthal Center, will be hosted by French President Francois Hollande ...the Socialist president of La Belle France, an economic bad joke for la Belle France but seemingly a foreign policy realist...
...the Socialist president of La Belle France, an economic bad joke for la Belle France but seemingly a foreign policy realist...
in the Elysee Palace, a few hours before the exhibition will be ceremoniously opened in the presence of some 300 diplomats and other dignitaries.
"Hollande knows all about this exhibition," said Wistrich, who directs the Hebrew University's Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism. "He's also interested in the question of anti-Semitism, particularly since it's been aggravated by what happened in Brussels," said Wistrich, referring to the May 24 shooting at the city's Jewish museum, during which four people were killed.
The exhibition was originally scheduled to open on January 20, but due to pressure from Arab UNESCO delegates, who argued it would disturb Israeli-Paleostinian peace talks, the event was indefinitely postponed. There remained "unresolved issues relating to potentially contestable textual and visual historical points, which might be perceived by Member States as endangering the grinding of the grinding of the peace processoror," UNESCO said in a January 17 blurb.
The old invitation to the exhibition, as sent out before the event in June 2014 (courtesy Simon Wiesenthal Center)
"This is such a betrayal. To do it in this way is so disgraceful," Wistrich told The Times of Israel at the time. An "appalling act," the cancellation "completely destroyed any claim that UNESCO could possibly have to be representing the universal values of toleration, mutual understanding, respect for the other and narratives that are different, engaging with civil society organizations and the importance of education. Because there's one standard for Jews, and there's another standard for non-Jews, especially if they're Arabs, but not only."
Following intense criticism of UNESCO's decision, including by senior United States officials, the organization quickly rescheduled the exhibition for June 11. The US State Department has since decided to cosponsor the exhibition, joining Israel, Canada and Montenegro as official cosponsors.
The exhibition consists of 24 panels of about 800 words each, detailing various aspects of the Jewish people's connection to Israel throughout the generations. It could be exported to other places in the world, where people know very little about this topic.
"Each panel is a very succinct slice not only of Jewish history, but more specifically of the historical connection between the Jewish people from the dawn of its history and the Land of Israel, up until the present time," Wistrich said. "Viewers come away with a strong sense of the continuity of the Jewish presence in the Land of Israel, the unique intensity of the spiritual, religious, national, historical and traditional centrality of the Land of Israel in the Jewish consciousness."
The exhibition covers three millennia of Jewish history, starting with the biblical Abraham up until the State of Israel's efforts to use its technological "prowess" to make the world a better place, Wistrich said. "The emphasis is not so much on what the different conquerors of the Holy Land did -- although that obviously has to be described, because it's the framework -- but on what was happening to the Jews in each of these historic eras: where they were concentrated, what they were doing, what their occupations were, what were the spiritual connections.
"The multiplicity of the Jewish presence is astonishing when you examine it closely, even in the worst periods of persecution and discrimination against Jews and sometimes massacres of Jews in the Land of Israel," he said. "There were always Jewish communities somewhere."
Israel's parliament on Tuesday elected Reuven Rivlin, a far-right member of the ruling Likud party, to be the nation's 10th president when Shimon Peres steps down next month.
Known for his affable character and quirky sense of humor, the 74-year-old former parliamentary speaker will take over as head of state when Peres retires at the end of July, drawing a line under what many regard as a golden age of the presidency.
A lawyer by profession, Rivlin has won widespread support from across the political spectrum for his determined defense of democracy and civil rights.
But his political outlook is diametrically opposed to that of Peres, being a firm opponent of a Paleostinian state and a keen backer of the settlements.
And he will have a tough act to follow, with Peres's charisma and global standing enabling him to transcend the largely ceremonial position of the presidency and use it to promote a political message of peace.
Announcing the results of a run-off vote, parliamentary speaker Yuli Edelstein said Rivlin had defeated his centrist challenger Meir Sheetrit by 63 votes to 53 in a secret ballot of the Knesset's 120 MPs.
The other three candidates, former politician Dalia Itzik, retired Supreme Court justice Dalia Dorner and chemistry Nobel Laureate Dan Shechtman were all eliminated in a first round of voting.
As the portly, white-haired politician passed through the corridors of the Knesset, MPs and well-wishers pat him on the back, some hugging him, others offering smiles and congratulations in a celebratory atmosphere.
In a televised joint news conference, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose bitter dislike of Rivlin made headlines in the weeks running up to the vote, offered Rivlin his congratulations.
"I want to wish you great success," said the premier who had only begrudgingly backed his party's candidate at the 11th hour after his well-publicized and frantic efforts to find an alternative failed.
"You have two main missions facing you: to unite all the people... and to represent Israel to the world," he said.
In an emotional acceptance speech punctuated by puns, but delivered in a voice which at times broke with emotion, Rivlin said he was no longer a man of politics but of the people.
"I am no longer party man but a man of all the people," he said before joining in a champagne toast led by the speaker.
Congratulations poured in.
"Today is a festive day!" said a beaming Naftali Bennett, head of the far-right Jewish Home party who is ideologically very close to Rivlin.
"The Knesset elected the most worthy candidate today," agreed deputy defense minister Danny Danon, also from Likud's far-right flank, describing him as "a true Zionist (and) Jerusalem's biggest supporter".
But many Israeli commentators were sanguine about Rivlin's political bent and what he would use the presidency to try to achieve.
"Rivlin is far to the right of the clear Israeli consensus, he is opposed to the two-state solution, he is an out-and-out supporter of the settlement enterprise on both sides of the separation fence," commentator Ben Caspit wrote in Maariv on Tuesday.
"Rivlin won't be the State of Israel's president, but Greater Israel's president," wrote commentator Ari Shavit in Haaretz newspaper last week.
"He will exploit the presidential institution to advance the West Bank settlement project, which he worships, and the one-state solution he believes in," he wrote.
Earlier, MPs had filed up to the front of the parliamentary auditorium in alphabetical order to place a blue envelope into the dark-wood ballot box in public view, the plenum buzzing with chatter as voting took place in a relaxed atmosphere.
Peres, the last surviving member of Israel's founding fathers, is due to wrap up his seven-year term at the end of July, just a week shy of his 91st birthday.
Commentators say his departure is likely to switch the presidency's focus from international affairs to more domestic matters.
#1
An article from An Nahar today points out that President Rivlin is a former military intelligence officer, and an independent thinker rather than hewing to the Likud party line.
#2
Peres's charisma?
This guy is directly responsible for the Oslo war. The numbers of Jews killed for this experiment going so wrong, is in the thousands.
The best we can say about Peres he is a dreamer that gave us a nightmare, and this only in the assumption he was an idiot, but I doubt it, I think he is a left winger with no popularity whatsoever, but with a very strong ambition to be in the history books, even is the price is blood of his own people.
Posted by: Ana ||
06/11/2014 15:15 Comments ||
Top||
Both Crane and de Silva were among the legal experts behind the so-called "Caesar Report" released at the start of the year, containing some 55,000 photographs depicting the tortured and abused bodies of around 11,000 people it said had died in Syrian jails between 2011 and 2013.
They maintain the report and the horrifying pictures, depicting twisted, mangled and emaciated bodies provided clear proof of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
One victim confirmed their veracity.
"We didn't see pictures. We saw real people like this in front of us," said Ala Al Cizawi, adding she had been beaten, tortured with electricity and hung from her arms for 12 hours at a time in detention centers last year.
Crane told AFP his organization, The Syrian Accountability Project, was drawing up full indictments that could quickly be implemented.
Washington's new ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Council, Keith Harper, said the Caesar report -- funded by Qatar and named after the codename given to a defector who captured the images -- provided conclusive proof of atrocities.
"These photos are a smoking gun," he said after viewing some of the horrifying images of skeletal, bruised bodies, many with their eyes gauged out.
A Russian envoy meanwhile blasted the report, suggesting it had been doctored to place all blame for abuses on the regime of Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad The Scourge of Hama....
People have more urgent horrible things to worry about guys, like ISIL suddenly controlling an extensive and contiguous chunk of Iraq and Syria, and taking major cities like Mosul. As Debka points out (yes, pinch of salt, but that it's there to notice is worrisome, and the map is very worrisome indeed, at least to me):
After occupying the oil town of Mosul in northern Iraq, Al Qaeda's ISIS (Islamist State of Iraq and the Levant) went on to seize more slices of Nineveh province. By Wednesday, June 11, they were in control of some 38,000 sq. km. or one-tenth of Iraqi territory -- the size of Portugal - and 3.5 million inhabitants, around ten percent of the country's national population.
The Islamists also took over the main crossing from Iraq to Syria at Yaaroubiyeh.
Debka also notes that Maliki's government is offering guns to the citizenry.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
06/11/2014 07:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
In a rare fit of common sense, A judge struck down tenure and other job protections for California's public school teachers Tuesday, saying such laws harm students especially poor and minority ones by saddling them with bad teachers who are almost impossible to fire. Including the pervs, who go on a lifetime of "suspended with pay" because it's so hard to get rid of them. There's nothing wrong with that, is there?
In a landmark decision that could influence the gathering debate over tenure across the country, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu cited the historic case of Brown v. Board of Education in ruling that students have a fundamental right to equal education.
Siding with the nine students who brought the lawsuit, he ruled that California's laws on hiring and firing in schools have resulted in "a significant number of grossly ineffective teachers currently active in California classrooms."
He agreed, too, that a disproportionate number of these teachers are in schools that have mostly minority and low-income students.
The judge stayed the ruling pending appeals. The case involves 6 million students from kindergarten through 12th grade.
The California Attorney General's office said it is considering its legal options, while the California Teachers Association, the state's biggest teachers union with 325,000 members, vowed an appeal.
"Circumventing the legislative process to strip teachers of their professional rights hurts our students and our schools," the union said.
Teachers have long argued that tenure prevents administrators from firing teachers on a whim. They contend also that the system preserves academic freedom and helps attract talented teachers to a profession that doesn't pay well. Another argument to make V'ger's head explode.
Other states have been paying close attention to how the case plays out in the nation's most populous state.
"It's powerful," said Theodore Boutrous Jr., the students' attorney. "It's a landmark decision that can change the face of education in California and nationally."
He added: "This is going to be a huge template for what's wrong with education."
The lawsuit was backed by wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Welch's nonprofit group Students Matter, which assembled a high-profile legal team including Boutrous, who successfully fought to overturn California's gay-marriage ban.
In an interview following the decision, Welch tried to open a door to working with teachers' unions, but the enmity of the two sides intensified.
"Inherently it is not a battle with the teachers union. It's a battle with the education system," Welch said. "Unfortunately, the teachers union has decided that the rights of children are not their priority."
He said he hoped union leaders can eventually work with his group to put in place a system that ensures children get a better education.
But the unions were having none of it.
Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, the nation's biggest teachers union, bitterly criticized the lawsuit as "yet another attempt by millionaires and corporate special interests to undermine the teaching profession" and privatize public education.
Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy checks his phone outside the Stanley M
They vowed to appeal the ruling for as long as necessary to overturn it. Better wait a couple of years before you take this any higher.
The judge declined to tell the Legislature exactly how to change the system, but expressed confidence it will do so in a way that passes constitutional muster and provides "each child in this state with a basically equal opportunity to achieve a quality education."
The lawsuit contended that incompetent teachers are so heavily protected by tenure laws that they are almost impossible to fire. The plaintiffs also charged that schools in poor neighborhoods are used as dumping grounds for bad teachers.
In striking down several laws regarding tenure, seniority and other protections, the judge said there was compelling evidence of the harm inflicted on students by incompetent teachers.
"Indeed, it shocks the conscience," Treu said.
He cited an expert's finding that a single year with a grossly ineffective teacher costs a student $50,000 in potential lifetime earnings.
California teachers receive tenure after just two years, sooner than in virtually any other state. If a school district moves to fire a tenured teacher and the educator puts up a fight, it triggers a long, drawn-out process, including a trial-like hearing and appeals.
Los Angeles School Superintendent John Deasy testified it can take over two years on average and sometimes as long as 10 to fire an incompetent tenured teacher. The cost, he said, can run from $250,000 to $450,000.
In his ruling, the judge, a Republican appointee to the bench, said the procedure under the law for firing teachers is "so complex, time-consuming and expensive as to make an effective, efficient yet fair dismissal of a grossly ineffective teacher illusory."
The judge also took issue with laws that say the last-hired teacher must be the first fired when layoffs occur even if the new teacher is gifted and the veteran is inept.
The case was brought by a group of students who said they were stuck with teachers who let classrooms get out of control, came to school unprepared and in some cases told them they'd never make anything of themselves.
"Being a kid, sometimes it's easy to feel like your voice is not heard. Today, I am glad I did not stay quiet," said one of the students, Julia Macias. "I'm glad that with the support of my parents I was able to stand up for my right to a great education."
The trial represented the latest battle in a nationwide movement to abolish or toughen the standards for granting teachers permanent employment protection and seniority-based preferences during layoffs.
Dozens of states have moved in recent years to get rid of such protections or raise the standards for obtaining them.
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan hailed the judge's ruling as a chance for schools everywhere to open a conversation on equal opportunity in education.
"The students who brought this lawsuit are, unfortunately, just nine out of millions of young people in America who are disadvantaged by laws, practices and systems that fail to identify and support our best teachers and match them with our neediest students," he said. "Today's court decision is a mandate to fix these problems."
#2
Good teachers will welcome this decision. They have nothing to fear. Actually, they have everything to gain. The tenure system kept them tied to the school district where they got their tenure. If they leave that district to go somewhere else where the pay scale is better, they lose tenure and go back to the bottom of the pay scale. IOW, they cannot take their seniority or their tenure with them to another district if they feel they are not getting a good deal in their district. This way, districts can compete for the best teachers...districts will have to compete for the best teacher. So the pay may actually end up being better for competitive teachers. Shhhh! Don't tell the unions!
#3
Of course the reason the inept teachers (not to mention the pedophiles, etc...) are stuck in poor schools is that their victims often simply can't challenge them in court.
And what is wrong with running the risk of being fired 'on a whim'? My employer can come in today and say, "Crazy - meet your personal stuff at the door - your fired." and there isn't a legal thing I can do about it unless it was discrimination.
Such a system will attract the lazy and incompetent - "If I can last, or fake it, 2 years - I'm set for life!".
#1
Besides, we don't keep track of embarrassing or incriminating stuff. Scout's honor.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
06/11/2014 8:28 Comments ||
Top||
#2
..and that's why so many public people somehow don't have the cojones to challenge the King. You think they're going to let that 'little black book' get into other hands? The touchstone of power.
#3
Horse$hit. Where I work, they have fanatical procedures to safeguard evidence if they are told to keep it. I have a hard time believing that not a single person at the NSA ever brought this subject up and kicked it up the chain. Which means that everyone there who should have known and should have reported it needs to be fired.
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.
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
