'Murica

[Witness]

Spoiler:

Congresswoman Deb Haaland of New Mexico photographed with traditional wet plate process (2019)

Photo Shane Balkowitsch.

[Witness]

"The New American Gothic" by Criselda Vasquez (her parents, in fact):

[Witness]

Arizona. Sound on.

[Fid]

Cats...jeez

[Witness]

An interesting read for our gun-touting members: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/sp ... nity-guns/

Excerpt:

Police using deadly force against lawfully armed civilians is an inevitable result of having an “armed society” in the United States, said Adam Winkler, a professor at the UCLA School of Law and an expert on gun policy. “When you have a right to have arms, you have a right to carry around something other people would see as a threat,” Winkler said. “Generally, we allow police officers to use force when they feel threatened. And merely possessing a gun raises that threat.”

In an investigation published in May, Reuters revealed that federal appeals courts have in recent years been granting qualified immunity at an increasing rate to cops sued for excessive force — even when courts determine that police actually did use excessive force. The increase largely reflects the impact of a series of Supreme Court interventions that have made it harder for plaintiffs to breach the immunity defense, prompting widespread calls for the doctrine to be reined in or eliminated altogether on the grounds that it denies justice to victims of police brutality.

Hundreds of appellate court cases Reuters analyzed show that judges granted immunity to cops more often when they used force against a person with a gun — in 55% of cases, compared to 45% when the person was unarmed. Of course, the details of those cases vary greatly, some of them involving violent criminals in chaotic and dangerous encounters with police.

Still, Reuters found multiple cases in which courts granted immunity to cops who killed armed civilians who posed a questionable threat, including people who legally possessed guns for self-defense at home. In all the cases, officers said they acted reasonably in what they perceived to be dangerous situations.

Good luck!

[Witness]

[Witness]

https://old.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout ... n_company/

[Witness]

[Rob Lister]

https://old.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout ... n_company/

wow. he's going to literally own that company.

[Witness]

↑ Let's hope so.

---

[Witness]

US lawmakers unveil anti-slavery constitutional amendment

National lawmakers introduced a joint resolution Wednesday aimed at striking language from the U.S. Constitution that enshrines a form of slavery in America’s foundational documents.

The resolution, spearheaded and supported by Democratic members of the House and Senate, would amend the 13th Amendment’s ban on chattel enslavement to expressly prohibit involuntary servitude as a punishment for crime. As ratified, the original amendment has permitted exploitation of labor by convicted felons for over 155 years since the abolition of slavery.

The 13th Amendment “continued the process of a white power class gravely mistreating Black Americans, creating generations of poverty, the breakup of families and this wave of mass incarceration that we still wrestle with today,” Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon told The Associated Press ahead of the resolution’s introduction.

A House version is led by outgoing Rep. William Lacy Clay, of St. Louis, who said the amendment “seeks to finish the job that President (Abraham) Lincoln started.”

It would “eliminate the dehumanizing and discriminatory forced labor of prisoners for profit that has been used to drive the over-incarceration of African Americans since the end of the Civil War,” Clay said.

In the Senate, the resolution has Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland signed on as co-sponsors. “This change to the 13th Amendment will finally, fully rid our nation of a form of legalized slavery,” Van Hollen said in an emailed statement.

Constitutional amendments are rare and require approval by two-thirds of the House and Senate, as well as ratification by three-quarters of state legislatures. Should the proposal fail to move out of committee in the remaining weeks of the current Congress, Merkley said he hoped to revive it next year.

The effort has been endorsed by more than a dozen human rights and social justice organizations, including The Sentencing Project, the Anti-Recidivism Coalition and Color of Change.

https://apnews.com/article/lawmakers-an ... b6762771c3

[Witness]

[Witness]

Undocumented immigrants far less likely to commit crimes in U.S. than citizens

Crime rates among undocumented immigrants are just a fraction of those of their U.S.-born neighbors, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis of Texas arrest and conviction records.

Compared to undocumented immigrants, U.S. citizens were twice as likely to be arrested for violent felonies in Texas from 2012 to 2018, two-and-a-half times more likely to be arrested for felony drug crimes, and over four times more likely to be arrested for felony property crimes, according to a study published by University of Wisconsin–Madison researchers today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

With new access to Texas’ computerized criminal history data for more than 1.8 million arrests over six years, UW–Madison sociology professor Michael Light and co-authors Jingying He and Jason Robey — who were both UW–Madison graduate students — were able to directly calculate the rates at which U.S.-born citizens, legal immigrants and undocumented immigrants were arrested for a range of felony offenses.

Previous studies, including others published by Light, have drawn similar, though less direct, conclusions. These studies were limited to comparing crime rate trends to immigration trends, because records matching crimes to the immigration status of perpetrators weren’t available.

https://news.wisc.edu/undocumented-immi ... -citizens/

[Rob Lister]

Undocumented immigrants far less likely to commit crimes in U.S. than citizens

https://news.wisc.edu/undocumented-immi ... -citizens/

Are those numbers adjusted for % population? If not, it might well demonstrate that illegals are far more likely to commit those crimes.

[Anaxagoras]

I'm pretty sure those are per capita numbers.

[Rob Lister]

I'm pretty sure those are per capita numbers.

Per capita for which population, total population or immigrant population?

Here's the study
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020 ... 2014704117
I'm sure the answer is in there but I can't be bothered further.

[Anaxagoras]

I'm pretty sure those are per capita numbers.

Per capita for which population, total population or immigrant population?

Here's the study
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020 ... 2014704117
I'm sure the answer is in there but I can't be bothered further.

Maybe you're wondering whether this person has a political agenda. Maybe even an unconscious one. It's certainly a possibility that I wouldn't rule out.

If they ran the numbers and it turned out to be the opposite, would they tell us? Would that paper ever see the light of day?

Anyway, let's see what this paper says:

Going beyond existing research, we utilize data from the Texas Department of Public Safety, which checks and records the immigration status of all arrestees throughout the state.

OK, sounds like a good data source, assuming that the data is accurate.

Abstract

We make use of uniquely comprehensive arrest data from the Texas Department of Public Safety to compare the criminality of undocumented immigrants to legal immigrants and native-born US citizens between 2012 and 2018. We find that undocumented immigrants have substantially lower crime rates than native-born citizens and legal immigrants across a range of felony offenses. Relative to undocumented immigrants, US-born citizens are over 2 times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes, and over 4 times more likely to be arrested for property crimes. In addition, the proportion of arrests involving undocumented immigrants in Texas was relatively stable or decreasing over this period. The differences between US-born citizens and undocumented immigrants are robust to using alternative estimates of the broader undocumented population, alternate classifications of those counted as “undocumented” at arrest and substituting misdemeanors or convictions as measures of crime.

So, that's a pretty bold statement. The differences are so large (2 to 4 times) that even if their estimates of the undocumented population have some error to them, the conclusion is "robust".

FWIW, there's a perception in Japan that "foreigners" bring crime with them, but it isn't borne out by crime statistics. But when it does happen, it gets a lot of attention from the media. Especially if it's a member of the US military. I think most people want to be on their best behavior when they're in a foreign country though. At least that's what I try to do. I don't want to be someone who adds to the perception that foreigners cause problems. I want to be a counter-example to that stereotype.

Looking at Table 1, the crime rates are given per 100,000 persons. The populations are based on estimates.

Each of these questions represents remarkable gaps in our scientific and policy understanding of undocumented immigration. This dearth is largely due to data limitations. Calculating group-specific crime rates is straightforward: It is the number of arrests within a particular group divided by its population (expressed per 100,000). In the case of undocumented immigrants, however, for years we lacked reliable estimates for both the numerator and the denominator required for such calculations. Regarding the number of undocumented immigrants (the denominator), data quality has improved in recent years as the Center for Migration Studies and the Pew Research Center now produce annual state- and national-level estimates of the undocumented population, ranging from 10.5 to 10.7 million in 2017 (1, 7).* Data on undocumented criminality (the numerator), however, have actually gotten worse over time. Despite the increasing centrality of local police in immigration enforcement (9), information on immigration status is remarkably scarce in most crime databases. Among the most widely utilized crime data sources, neither the Uniform Crime Reports, the National Crime Victimization Survey, nor the National Incident-Based Reporting System record information about immigration status. In addition, California stopped reporting the number of noncitizens in their custody to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) in 2013 and in 2017 became a “sanctuary state” by limiting information sharing between local criminal justice officials and federal immigration authorities (10). In 2016, they along with Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and Oregon did not report information on citizenship in their prison populations, and the BJS speculates that other states “likely provided undercounts” (11, p. 13).

This article is a notable exception to this trend in that, after review for scientific merit, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) granted our research team access to case processing information for all arrests recorded between 2012 and 2018. The DPS data are unique in that they fully cooperate with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to check and record the immigration status of all arrestees throughout the state, including their legal status (21). Using these data, we address the empirical shortcomings that have hampered prior work in this area by accomplishing three interrelated objectives.

So they couldn't have done this study in California because it's a sanctuary state and the police don't keep those kinds of statistics.

[Witness]

[Witness]

U.S. Schools Are Buying Phone-Hacking Tech That the FBI Uses to Investigate Terrorists

In May 2016, a student enrolled in a high-school in Shelbyville, Texas, consented to having his phone searched by one of the district’s school resource officers. Looking for evidence of a romantic relationship between the student and a teacher, the officer plugged the phone into a Cellebrite UFED to recover deleted messages from the phone. According to the arrest affidavit, investigators discovered the student and teacher frequently messaged each other, “I love you.” Two days later, the teacher was booked into the county jail for sexual assault of a child.

The Cellebrite used to gather evidence in that case was owned and operated by the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office. But these invasive phone-cracking tools are not only being purchased by police departments. Public documents reviewed by Gizmodo indicate that school districts have been quietly purchasing these surveillance tools of their own for years.

In March 2020, the North East Independent School District, a largely Hispanic district north of San Antonio, wrote a check to Cellebrite for $6,695 for “General Supplies.” In May, Cypress-Fairbanks ISD near Houston, Texas, paid Oxygen Forensics Inc., another mobile device forensics firm, $2,899. Not far away, majority-white Conroe ISD wrote a check to Susteen Inc., the manufacturer of the similar Secure View system, for $995 in September 2016.

Gizmodo has reviewed similar accounting documents from eight school districts, seven of which are in Texas, showing that administrators paid as much $11,582 for the controversial surveillance technology. Known as mobile device forensic tools (MDFTs), this type of tech is able to siphon text messages, photos, and application data from student’s devices. Together, the districts encompass hundreds of schools, potentially exposing hundreds of thousands of students to invasive cell phone searches.

While companies like Cellebrite have partnered with federal and local police for years, that the controversial equipment is also available for school district employees to search students’ personal devices has gone relatively unnoticed—and serves as a frightening reminder of how technology originally developed for use by the military or intelligence services, ranging from blast-armored trucks designed for use in war zones to invasive surveillance tools, keeps trickling down to domestic police and even the institutions where our kids go to learn.

https://gizmodo.com/u-s-schools-are-buy ... 1845862393

[Witness]

Justice Department sues Alabama over prison conditions

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit Wednesday against Alabama over conditions in the state prisons, saying the state is failing to protect male inmates from inmate-on-inmate violence and excessive force at the hands of prison staff.

The lawsuit alleges that conditions in the prison system — which the Justice Department called one of the most understaffed and violent in the country — are so poor that they violate the ban on cruel and unusual punishment and that state officials are “deliberately indifferent” to the problems. The lawsuit comes after the Justice Department twice released investigative reports that accused the state of violating prisoner’s rights.

“The Department of Justice conducted a thorough investigation of Alabama’s prisons for men and determined that Alabama violated and is continuing to violate the Constitution because its prisons are riddled with prisoner-on-prisoner and guard-on-prisoner violence. The violations have led to homicides, rapes, and serious injuries,” Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband for the Civil Rights Division, said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.

Alabama had been in negotiations with the Justice Department since the first 2019 report in the hopes of staving off a lawsuit, but federal officials said the state has “failed or refused to correct” the unconstitutional conditions.

The 24-page lawsuit said that conditions in Alabama prisons have gotten worse since the initial findings — with homicides increasing and prisons becoming even more overcrowded than in 2016 when the investigation was initiated.

“The State of Alabama is deliberately indifferent to the serious and systematic constitutional problems present in Alabama’s prisons for men,” the lawsuit states.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said she was disappointed by the Justice Department’s action.

https://apnews.com/article/alabama-cons ... f07822e8ba

[Witness]

The Murican way of solving problems:

'I do not feel safe': Kansas GOP mayor resigns after threats over backing mask mandate

Joyce Warshaw said despite the threats, she doesn’t regret voting in favor of the mask mandate and still loves the city.

A Republican mayor in western Kansas announced in a letter to city officials and on social media Tuesday that she is resigning, effective immediately, because of threats she has received after she publicly supported a mask mandate.

Mayor Joyce Warshaw of Dodge City said she was concerned about her safety after being met with aggression, including threats via phone and email, after she was quoted in a USA Today article on Friday supporting the mandate, The Dodge City Globe reported. The city commission voted 4-1 on Nov. 16 to impose a mask mandate, with several exceptions.

But Warshaw told NBC News on Tuesday that "threats, accusations and actions" toward her and her family from those in the community forced her to step down.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politi ... r-n1251334

Michigan state legislature closes offices due to 'credible threats of violence'

Law enforcement recommended the Michigan legislature close its offices.

Michigan legislature closes offices due to 'credible threats of violence' ahead of Electoral College meeting

Ahead of Monday’s meeting of Michigan’s 16 electors at the state Capitol in Lansing, officials announced the state legislature's office buildings will be closed due to "credible threats of violence."

The decision to close the state House and Senate offices — while the presidential electors convene in the Senate chamber to cast their votes for President-elect Joe Biden, who carried the state by more than 154,000 votes — came from a recommendation from law enforcement, officials said.

But the decision was not motivated by anticipated protests outside the capitol, according to a statement from Amber McCann, a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey.

"The Senate has closed its own workspaces tomorrow based upon recommendations from law enforcement. The decision was not made because of anticipated protests, but was made based on credible threats of violence," McCann said late Sunday night, without adding any details about the threats.

"Senate leadership does not have the authority to close the Capitol. That decision is made by the Capitol Commission," she continued.

A spokesperson for Lee Chatfield, Speaker of the Michigan House, confirmed that the closures apply to the lower chamber as well.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/live-up ... e_hero_hed


Damned leftist goons! .~

[Witness]

2 Ark. paramedics shot on duty, return fire, killing suspect

Officials say after a gunman shot two paramedics in the ambulance after an argument, one of the paramedics returned fire, killing the gunman

PINE BLUFF, Ark. — Two Arkansas paramedics were wounded in a shooting while responding to a medical call on Thursday.

Police say the medics were at a residence in Pine Bluff aiding a woman with knee pain when the patient's boyfriend, identified by authorities as Kevin Curl Jr., 22, approached them and began arguing with them, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Curl was said to have pushed Paramedic John Spriggs Sr. who then reportedly punched Curl before Curl pulled out a firearm and shot both medics approximately three times in the chest, pelvic and abdominal areas, according to a police news release.

Authorities said Spriggs returned fire, striking Curl, who was later found dead inside the residence with a gunshot wound to the chest. Spriggs was found by officers lying on the ground next to the ambulance while Paramedic Joshua Godfrey, 35, was found sitting in the back of the ambulance. The paramedics were transported to the hospital to be treated for gunshot wounds. The female patient was also transported to the hospital.

https://www.ems1.com/ems-assaults/artic ... OqULpxWT5/

[Witness]

DHS Inspectors Found ICE Detainees Who Were Kept In Solitary Confinement For 300 Days

Nearly a dozen immigrants arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement were kept in solitary confinement for more than two months, including two people who were isolated for more than 300 days, according to a draft Department of Homeland Security Inspector General’s report obtained by BuzzFeed News.

The draft, which highlighted a February inspection of the Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Calexico, California, also documented how food at the facility had expired and gone moldy.

ICE has come under fire in recent years for issues related to medical care provided at its detention centers. In some facilities, ICE provides medical care directly; in others, a few employees assist contractors; and in many cases, the agency oversees care provided by a contractor.

In September, the House Oversight Committee found that ICE detainees died after receiving inadequate medical care and that jail workers “falsified records to cover up” issues. That same month, a separate committee report issued by the House Homeland Security Committee found that ICE detainees are often given deficient medical care and that detention centers use segregation as a threat against immigrants.

The draft report obtained by BuzzFeed News documents how officials at the detention facility in Calexico were using solitary confinement as a long term “solution” for immigrants in “protective custody,” or those who need special supervision or housing due to risks to their safety.

Detainees can request protective custody at any time. ICE also allows detainees to be placed in solitary confinement, called “administrative segregation” for those isolated for nonpunitive reasons, if their presence would pose a threat to the lives of other detainees or themselves.

“During our inspection, we identified serious violations regarding the administrative segregation of detainees at [Imperial Regional Detention Facility],” the report states. “Specifically, IRDF was using administrative segregation as a long-term solution for detainees in protective custody and overly restricted detainees by not offering privileges similar to those offered to detainees in general housing units.”

In addition to finding 11 immigrants had been kept in solitary confinement for more than 60 days and two others for more than 300 days, inspectors said there had been no documented review to evaluate the continued solitary confinement and the immigrants were not afforded recreation time for an hour a day, as required. The inspectors also said the detainees received inadequate medical checks.

“Our examination of segregation records showed the facility inaccurately reported to ICE that detainees were receiving recreation time when, in fact, they were not,” the inspectors wrote. “Moreover, detainees in administrative segregation were restricted to their individual cells for approximately 22 to 23 hours a day without access to the same group activities or opportunities as those in the general population.”

ICE officials maintain that there are regular reviews of detainees who are kept in solitary confinement and that they are offered recreational time.

https://www.n8my.com/2020/12/dhs-inspec ... o.html?m=1

[Pyrrho]

Link: https://twitter.com/jwmjournalist/status/1340769869441196038

[Witness]

Murican Christmas tree:

[sparks]

S. E. Alaska?

[Witness]

↑ Dunno.

---

[shuize]

DHS Inspectors Found ICE Detainees Who Were Kept In Solitary Confinement For 300 Days

Nearly a dozen immigrants arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement were kept in solitary confinement for more than two months, including two people who were isolated for more than 300 days, according to a draft Department of Homeland Security Inspector General’s report obtained by BuzzFeed News.

The draft, which highlighted a February inspection of the Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Calexico, California, also documented how food at the facility had expired and gone moldy.

ICE has come under fire in recent years for issues related to medical care provided at its detention centers. In some facilities, ICE provides medical care directly; in others, a few employees assist contractors; and in many cases, the agency oversees care provided by a contractor.

In September, the House Oversight Committee found that ICE detainees died after receiving inadequate medical care and that jail workers “falsified records to cover up” issues. That same month, a separate committee report issued by the House Homeland Security Committee found that ICE detainees are often given deficient medical care and that detention centers use segregation as a threat against immigrants.

The draft report obtained by BuzzFeed News documents how officials at the detention facility in Calexico were using solitary confinement as a long term “solution” for immigrants in “protective custody,” or those who need special supervision or housing due to risks to their safety.

Detainees can request protective custody at any time. ICE also allows detainees to be placed in solitary confinement, called “administrative segregation” for those isolated for nonpunitive reasons, if their presence would pose a threat to the lives of other detainees or themselves.

“During our inspection, we identified serious violations regarding the administrative segregation of detainees at [Imperial Regional Detention Facility],” the report states. “Specifically, IRDF was using administrative segregation as a long-term solution for detainees in protective custody and overly restricted detainees by not offering privileges similar to those offered to detainees in general housing units.”

In addition to finding 11 immigrants had been kept in solitary confinement for more than 60 days and two others for more than 300 days, inspectors said there had been no documented review to evaluate the continued solitary confinement and the immigrants were not afforded recreation time for an hour a day, as required. The inspectors also said the detainees received inadequate medical checks.

“Our examination of segregation records showed the facility inaccurately reported to ICE that detainees were receiving recreation time when, in fact, they were not,” the inspectors wrote. “Moreover, detainees in administrative segregation were restricted to their individual cells for approximately 22 to 23 hours a day without access to the same group activities or opportunities as those in the general population.”

ICE officials maintain that there are regular reviews of detainees who are kept in solitary confinement and that they are offered recreational time.

https://www.n8my.com/2020/12/dhs-inspec ... o.html?m=1

Speaking as a lawyer, the first thing I thought when I read that was "I wonder how many zeros the settlement check will have?"

[Witness]

Speaking as a lawyer, the first thing I thought when I read that was "I wonder how many zeros the settlement check will have?"

Not that much if they get discreetly dumped in some hellhole in Mexico.

---

More than 70 West Point cadets accused of cheating on exam

More than 70 cadets training at the U.S. Military Academy to be Army officers have been accused of cheating on a math exam taken online when they were studying remotely because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Lt. Col. Christopher Ophardt, spokesman for the academy at West Point, said Monday that 73 cadets were accused of cheating on the calculus exam in May after instructors noticed irregularities in answers. All but one were freshmen, or plebes, in a class of 1,200. The other was a sophomore.

“West Point honor code and character development program remains strong despite remote learning and the challenges brought by the pandemic,” Ophardt said. “Cadets are being held accountable for breaking the code.”

After an investigation by an honors committee made up of trained cadets, two cases were dropped for lack of evidence and four were dropped because the cadets resigned, Ophardt said. Of the remaining 67 cases, 55 cadets have admitted cheating and have been enrolled in a six-month rehabilitation program focused on ethics. They will be on probation for the rest of their time at the academy. Three more cadets admitted cheating but weren’t eligible for the rehabilitation program.

The remaining cadets accused of cheating face administrative hearings to determine if they’ve violated the honor code and recommend penalties, which could include expulsion.

The cheating scandal is the biggest at West Point since 1976, when 153 cadets resigned or were expelled for cheating on an electrical engineering exam. The 1976 case is considered more serious, Ophardt said, because it was upperclassmen who planned, collaborated and executed the cheating. “The whole system broke down,” Ophardt said.

In the 1976 cheating scandal, the secretary of the Army appointed a select commission headed by former astronaut Frank Borman to review the case and more than 90 of those caught cheating were reinstated and allowed to graduate, Ophardt said.

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus- ... 5b8309b181

"Plebes"?

[Hotarubi]

plebe
/pliːb/
nounINFORMAL•US
a newly entered cadet or freshman, especially at a military or naval academy.
"my plebe year was the only year in which I did not feel like an unwelcome minority"

[shuize]

Speaking as a lawyer, the first thing I thought when I read that was "I wonder how many zeros the settlement check will have?"

Not that much if they get discreetly dumped in some hellhole in Mexico.

Dumped in a hellhole in Mexico means zero zeros.

---

More than 70 West Point cadets accused of cheating on exam

Spoiler:

More than 70 cadets training at the U.S. Military Academy to be Army officers have been accused of cheating on a math exam taken online when they were studying remotely because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Lt. Col. Christopher Ophardt, spokesman for the academy at West Point, said Monday that 73 cadets were accused of cheating on the calculus exam in May after instructors noticed irregularities in answers. All but one were freshmen, or plebes, in a class of 1,200. The other was a sophomore.

“West Point honor code and character development program remains strong despite remote learning and the challenges brought by the pandemic,” Ophardt said. “Cadets are being held accountable for breaking the code.”

After an investigation by an honors committee made up of trained cadets, two cases were dropped for lack of evidence and four were dropped because the cadets resigned, Ophardt said. Of the remaining 67 cases, 55 cadets have admitted cheating and have been enrolled in a six-month rehabilitation program focused on ethics. They will be on probation for the rest of their time at the academy. Three more cadets admitted cheating but weren’t eligible for the rehabilitation program.

The remaining cadets accused of cheating face administrative hearings to determine if they’ve violated the honor code and recommend penalties, which could include expulsion.

The cheating scandal is the biggest at West Point since 1976, when 153 cadets resigned or were expelled for cheating on an electrical engineering exam. The 1976 case is considered more serious, Ophardt said, because it was upperclassmen who planned, collaborated and executed the cheating. “The whole system broke down,” Ophardt said.

In the 1976 cheating scandal, the secretary of the Army appointed a select commission headed by former astronaut Frank Borman to review the case and more than 90 of those caught cheating were reinstated and allowed to graduate, Ophardt said.

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus- ... 5b8309b181

"Plebes"?

First year students at the military academies.

You know how we make sure there's no cheating in my classes these days?

I don't ask.

They don't tell.

[Witness]

I don't ask.

They don't tell.

[Witness]

Christian prayer group and Native Americans face off at Ohio's Serpent Mound

Deputies were called Sunday when a Christian prayer group and Native Americans faced off Sunday at the Great Serpent Mound, the Native American national historic site in southern Ohio.

The Native American leader who was there says they were trying to protect a sacred site that belonged to their ancestors.

The leader of the prayer group says the mound is a place where dark energy is released into the world.

"I'm not calling the Indians dark," Dave Daubenmire told The Enquirer. "This has nothing to do with the Indians."

Daubenmire leads Pass the Salt Ministries out of Hebron, Ohio, about a two-hour drive from the snake-shaped mound which could have been built as long ago as 320 BC.

Led by Daubenmire, the group was there on the Winter Solstice "praying down (the) Satanic serpent mounds," according to the group's YouTube video recording the event titled "PAGANS TRY TO PREVENT PRAYER."

Members of the American Indian Movement of Ohio, including the group executive director Philip Yenyo, heard about the plans for the event in advance and met the Daubenmire's group in the parking lot.

"You need to leave. You have no right and no business doing this on this sacred site where our ancestors are buried," Yenyo said in the video "You're not going any further."

https://eu.cincinnati.com/story/news/20 ... 992503001/

[Witness]

National Eagle Repository

The National Eagle Repository is operated and managed under the Office of Law Enforcement of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service located at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge outside of Denver, Colorado. It serves as a central location for the receipt, storage, and distribution of bald and golden eagles that have been found dead. Eagles and eagle parts are available only to Native Americans enrolled in federally recognized tribes for use in religious and cultural ceremonies.

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

[Witness]

[Fid]

Captain Puerto Rico, if the field was red and the stripes blue he would be Captain Cuba.

[Fid]

National Eagle Repository

The National Eagle Repository is operated and managed under the Office of Law Enforcement of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service located at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge outside of Denver, Colorado. It serves as a central location for the receipt, storage, and distribution of bald and golden eagles that have been found dead. Eagles and eagle parts are available only to Native Americans enrolled in federally recognized tribes for use in religious and cultural ceremonies.

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

Some years ago there was an AM radio station (WPLO) with its transmitter towers near my house. It was of course on a huge plot of land with maintenance roads and brushy areas and fairly old woods.

It was an absolute heaven for a pair of red-tailed hawks.

Most days I would take my dogs and watch through binocs while they perched on the towers and hunted, mated, fed their brood, stopped feeding their noisy nearly adult brood, and preened and molted.

I was able to collect a lot of hawk feathers.

Comes a day when a fellow licensed to keep a red-tailed takes me to a nearby field to watch him exercise his bird. The words "awe inspiring" do not do it justice. He also informed me that the mere possession of those feathers could get me in a world of trouble. He said I'd best burn them. I've still got them.

Fast forward a few years and that huge tract of land is sold.
The towers are knocked down (I've got one of the lightning dicks).

The huge ass hawk nest where I saw them raise several broods had utterly disappeared from the crotch of the tree as though it had never existed.

We still have hawks and sometimes usually in the late spring I hear the screech of juveniles protesting being weaned and find downy feathers I doubt many people would recognize as being from a red-tailed hawk.

[Witness]

From August:

For the first time in more than 100 years, the extremely rare wolverine has returned to Mount Rainier National Park



A rare family of wolverines has made its home at Mount Rainier National Park for the first time in over a century, park officials announced Thursday.
The first reproductive female wolverine and her two offspring -- called kits -- were discovered by scientist of the Cascades Carnivore Project in collaboration with the National Park Service, officials said.
Sometimes resembling a small bear with a bushy tail, the wolverine is the largest land-dweller of the weasel family. The animal is heavy built with short, rounded ears, small eyes, and large feet that are handy for traveling through snow, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

It is estimated that only 300-1000 wolverines inhabit the lower 48 US states, making the carnivore an exceptionally rare sight, said park officials.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/20/us/w ... index.html for the rest.

[Witness]

Massachusetts Senate Overrides Veto, Passes Law Expanding Abortion Access



The Massachusetts state Senate joined the state House of Representatives Tuesday in passing legislation that enshrines abortion rights in state law and expands access to 16-year-olds. The move by the two chambers overrides Gov. Charlie Baker's veto of the measure last week.

The ROE Act, as it's called, will allow abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy in cases with a fatal fetal anomaly and in instances when a physician deems it necessary "to preserve the patient's physical or mental health."

It also lowers the age at which individuals can seek an abortion without the consent of a parent or a judge from 18 to 16.

Sen. Harriette Chandler, who was behind one of the bills, said she was proud of the legislature's actions to secure "reproductive freedoms" for residents.

"Pregnant people who once faced near-insurmountable barriers accessing abortion care can now seize the right to control their own bodies," Chandler said in a tweet Tuesday.

https://www.npr.org/2020/12/29/95125950 ... 9381506760

[Witness]

More than 73% of American adults are overweight or obese

The latest data from American has revealed that over 73% of US adults are overweight or obese.

Of those, 42% American adults had obesity and 10% were severely obese, while another 30.7% were overweight with a body mass index (BMI) of 25 to 29.9.
...
A new report has also revealed that 19.3% of children and young people, aged between two and 19, had obesity, with 6.1% of kids identified as being severely obesity.

This all comes from the 2017-2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which has just been published, and represents an increase of half since 1999-2000.
...
he results also showed different obesity rates between ethnic groups, with non-Hispanic Asian Americans having the lowest rates of obesity, with only 18% and 17% of Asian men and women having a BMI over 30.

Additionally, Mexican American adults had highest rates – 51% of men and 50% of women having obesity. Results also showed that 41% of non-Hispanic black men had obesity along with 57% of black adult women.

The age group with the highest rates of obesity was those aged between 40 to 59 where 45% of people had a BMI of 30 or higher, with middle-aged men having the greatest obesity prevalence at 46%.

These high rates of obesity contrast to data from the survey period covering 1960-1962 when just 13.4% of adults were obese and less than 1% were severely obese. Approximately 31.5% of American adults were considered overweight during this period.

https://www.diabetes.co.uk/news/2020/de ... obese.html


But wait, there's more:

Only 12 percent of American adults are metabolically healthy, study finds

The prevalence of optimal metabolic health in American adults is ‘alarmingly low,’ even among people who are normal weight, a new study finds.

According to researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health, only 1 in 8 Americans is achieving optimal metabolic health, which carries serious implications for public health. Poor metabolic health leaves people more vulnerable to developing Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and other serious health issues.

The study presents the most updated United States data on metabolic health, which is defined here as having optimal levels of five factors: (1) blood glucose, (2) triglycerides, (3) high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, (4) blood pressure and (5) waist circumference, without the need for medications.

For the study, researchers examined National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data from 8,721 people in the U.S. between 2009 and 2016 to determine how many adults are at low versus high risk for chronic disease. Data revealed that only 12.2 percent of American adults are metabolically healthy, which means that only 27.3 million adults are meeting recommended targets for cardiovascular risk factors management, according to researchers.

https://sph.unc.edu/sph-news/only-12-pe ... dy%20finds