July 21, 2022

A student from China told the University of Utah her boyfriend was threatening her. She was found de

A student from China told the University of Utah her boyfriend was threatening her. She was found dead weeks later.

A trove of documents released by the University of Utah on Tuesday reveals a series of failures leading up to the death of a Chinese student, allegedly at the hands of her ex-boyfriend.

Salt Lake City police found international student Zhifan Dong, 19, dead in an off-campus motel room on Feb. 11, when they responded to reports from the University of Utah police department that a man was threatening to kill his girlfriend, officials said. Dong’s former boyfriend, Haoyu Wang, 26, was also in the room when police arrived and claimed he had killed Dong before trying to take his own life with drugs, according to the report. Wang has been charged with murder and will face a competency hearing on Aug. 8, according to court documents.

For weeks before Dong’s death, the university knew she was in a dangerous intimate partner violence situation, according to a timeline released by the university. On Jan. 14, Dong reported Wang’s suicidal ideations to housing staff and made them aware that her boyfriend had been arrested by police two days earlier after an altercation with her, the timeline notes. She was issued a temporary protective order by police after the incident. The university added in the timeline that there is currently “no process or regulation requiring local police departments to notify colleges or universities of arrests or protective orders involving students.”

Bailey McGartland, Dong’s roommate who is also a student at the school, told the campus newspaper she helped Dong file reports of domestic violence and requests for wellness checks.

“I felt so angry,” McGartland told the Daily Utah Chronicle. “It was absolutely preventable.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/university-utah-student-zhifan-dong-reported-fearing-safety-was-found-rcna39067

Never, ever call the Kampus Kops. They're worse than useless.

July 21, 2022

If limiting LGBTQ talks in schools is meant to 'protect' straight kids, it's backfiring

By Sophia Laurenzi

When children in Florida return to their elementary classrooms at the start of the school year, they will tell stories about going to camp or taking a summer trip with their families. They may not notice whether a rainbow sticker that was on their old teacher’s door is gone or whether their new teacher doesn’t have any family photos on his desk. But some of these children will be quiet. They will not know whether they, too, can talk about the water park they visited with their fathers or show a picture of the sidewalk chalk art they drew of both their moms.

Many of them will be straight children with queer parents. And the ways anti-LGBTQ laws harm these kids specifically are a gaping hole in our national conversation about the impact of legislation like Florida’s recently implemented Parental Rights in Education law — what critics have called the “Don’t Say Gay” law — which limits discussion of LGBTQ issues in kindergarten through the third grade.


POLITICS & POLICY
The gaping hole in how we talk about the harmful effects of anti-LGBTQ laws
Without the necessary resources, straight kids of queer parents face a unique isolation as harmful rhetoric about their families increases.
Students stage a walk-out to protest the so-called "Don't Say Gay" legislation on March 3, 2022 at Hillsborough High School in Tampa, Fla.
Students stage a walk-out to protest what critics call the "Don't Say Gay" bill on March 3 at Hillsborough High School in Tampa, Fla. Arielle Bader / Tampa Bay Times via Alamy file
July 20, 2022, 4:56 PM EDT
By Sophia Laurenzi, writer in Nashville, Tennessee, where she investigated death penalty cases
When children in Florida return to their elementary classrooms at the start of the school year, they will tell stories about going to camp or taking a summer trip with their families. They may not notice whether a rainbow sticker that was on their old teacher’s door is gone or whether their new teacher doesn’t have any family photos on his desk. But some of these children will be quiet. They will not know whether they, too, can talk about the water park they visited with their fathers or show a picture of the sidewalk chalk art they drew of both their moms.

Many of them will be straight children with queer parents. And the ways anti-LGBTQ laws harm these kids specifically are a gaping hole in our national conversation about the impact of legislation like Florida’s recently implemented Parental Rights in Education law — what critics have called the “Don’t Say Gay” law — which limits discussion of LGBTQ issues in kindergarten through the third grade.

As the daughter of a gay man, I am devastated to imagine what it would have been like to keep my father’s identity a secret at school.

Without a doubt, these laws will harm LGBTQ children and LGBTQ parents. And queer children with queer parents will experience a particular type of double burden. But straight children of LGBTQ parents also face their own challenges. Some are born into queer families and will now attend schools where the family they have always known is put under scrutiny. Others have a parent come out as queer later in life, which was my experience with my father. These kids will have to adjust to their new family make-up in an oppressive educational environment.

Within this diversity of experiences, straight children are often forgotten as adjacent members of the LGBTQ community who are also affected by anti-LGBTQ legislation and rhetoric. That harmful impact starts with the dangerously vague language of these laws. In Florida, for example, legislators have claimed that the measure does not prevent children from speaking about their LGBTQ parents. Still, it enables parents to sue the school district if they suspect that there has been “encouraging” classroom discussion around sexual orientation, which leaves a broad umbrella of concern over facing lawsuits by already underfunded school districts.

Out of fear of retaliation, schools have been responding with a conservative interpretation of the law. This attitude will undoubtedly extend to straight children feeling afraid to talk about their queer families.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/straight-kids-lgbtq-parents-face-unique-kind-challenge-right-now-rcna38768

July 21, 2022

Black man beaten, left bloodied after alleged stop sign violation in Tennessee

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has opened a probe into the brutal arrest of a Black man who was chased into a home, where a loved one recorded as he was beaten and shocked with a Taser after alleged traffic violations.

The video begins when officers with the Oakland Police Department follow a man into a home. One officer is swinging a baton, while the other has a gun drawn, the video shows.

A woman inside the home can be heard screaming: "Stop, stop, Brandon, Brandon, stop! Stop hitting him!"

The officers chase the man upstairs into a den and begin to shock him with a Taser.

"Why are you chasing and hitting him?" the woman asks. "He has no weapons." A woman can also be heard saying: "I need to call my mom. I need to call his mom."

After a third law enforcement officer arrives, all three try to detain the man in a room. When he exits the room, his face is bloodied.

Officers tried to pull over Brandon Calloway, 25, after he drove through a stop sign, according to a police affidavit.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/black-man-beaten-left-bloodied-alleged-stop-sign-violation-tennessee-rcna39318

I have been blue-lighted for "failure to stop at a stop sign" when I did. I was let go, probably because I am a white female and at the time had a nurse's parking tag on my rearview

July 21, 2022

The rightwing supreme court has another target: Native American rights

In 1886, the supreme court in United States v Kagama described states as the “deadliest enemies” of Native nations. The case concerned criminal jurisdiction on Indian reservations, but it also recognized the role states, and their citizens, played in fueling Native conflict and dispossession. It was a rare occasion in which the court acknowledged it was making Indian law in the context of great violence and suffering.

Paradoxically, the court found that the very nation that waged wars of extermination and invasion against Native people also declared itself their sole guardian, protecting its “wards” from the “local ill feeling” of land-hungry whites flooding Native lands in the western states. And where the US constitution was lacking in language defining federal authority over Native nations, the court had invented it, for better or for worse.

That’s why the court affirmed in Kagama, like it has for nearly two centuries, that Indian country sat apart from states and was instead subject to congressional and federal authority. Put simply, states had no business in tribal affairs.

That decision and others like it – however imperfect and drenched in conquest they were – supposedly shielded Native people and their reservations from the arbitrary authority of states and hostile white settlers.

Last month, the supreme court tore up that decision and centuries of legal precedent with it. The 5-4 decision in Oklahoma v Castro-Huerta found that state governments have the right to prosecute non-Natives for crimes committed against tribal members on reservation lands. The decision weakens the effects of McGirt v Oklahoma, which found that most of eastern Oklahoma was still legally Indian Country, where many crimes were beyond the grasp of state law. But the court applied Castro-Huerta far beyond Oklahoma.

“A state has jurisdiction over all of its territory, including Indian country,” Brett Kavanaugh wrote, resting his argument on a false 10th amendment claim, which doesn’t authorize states to intervene in tribal affairs.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/21/supreme-court-native-american-rights-target

July 21, 2022

'I'm frustrated' Oak Ridge residents say mail delivery is a mess

People in Oak Ridge said their mail was delayed up to a week, causing concern over bills and important documents.

“I’m frustrated,” Robert Sexton said. “Just makes ya feel insecure.”

Sexton said he received a package on Friday but no letters or bills for a week. He called the United States Postal Service to get help.

“He said the post office was delivering packages because they felt they were more important. I said what about the bills and stuff like that? He said that they were only focusing on delivering packages right now,” Sexton said.

https://www.wvlt.tv/2022/07/21/im-frustrated-oak-ridge-residents-say-mail-delivery-is-mess/

Fire DeJoy! He's responsible for the whole mess, top to bottom.

July 20, 2022

Secret Service was told at least once before Jan. 6 to preserve texts

A senior Secret Service official said agency employees received two emails — at least one prior to Jan. 6, 2021 — reminding them to preserve records on their cellphones, including text messages, before their devices were essentially “restored to factory settings” and texts were lost as part of a planned reset and replacement program across the agency.

The senior official said employees received a third email on Feb. 4, 2021, instructing them to preserve all communications specific to Jan. 6. At that point, several Congressional committees had asked for Secret Service communications from the day of the insurrection on the Capitol.

Last week the special House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot issued a subpoena for text messages by the Secret Service on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021. A source familiar with the matter told NBC News on Tuesday that the Secret Service does not have any additional text messages to hand over.

The first email about preserving records came on Dec. 9, 2020 from the Secret Service’s Office of Strategic Planning and the second was in January 2021 from the agency’s chief information officer, though the source didn't provide an exact date. Both emails included reminders that federal employees have the responsibility to preserve their records and included instructions on how to do so, the senior Secret Service official said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/secret-service-was-told-least-jan-6-2021-preserve-texts-rcna39129

It's pretty obvious the destruction was on purpose

July 20, 2022

'Kafka would blush': artist Peter Max caught in legal guardianship lawsuit

The daughter of a celebrated pop artist who created famous images of the “cosmic sixties” is suing the New York court system over what she claims are secretive communications between her father’s court-appointed guardian and judges that drastically affect his life and violate her basic rights.

Libra Max lodged a federal lawsuit on Wednesday in which she alleges that her father, Peter Max, 84, is being held in virtual isolation by a court-appointed guardian. She claims multiple judges have allowed the guardian to communicate with them behind closed doors, without the family’s knowledge, leading to one-sided decisions that profoundly affect his life and that constitute a gross distortion of justice.

The daughter of a celebrated pop artist who created famous images of the “cosmic sixties” is suing the New York court system over what she claims are secretive communications between her father’s court-appointed guardian and judges that drastically affect his life and violate her basic rights.

Libra Max lodged a federal lawsuit on Wednesday in which she alleges that her father, Peter Max, 84, is being held in virtual isolation by a court-appointed guardian. She claims multiple judges have allowed the guardian to communicate with them behind closed doors, without the family’s knowledge, leading to one-sided decisions that profoundly affect his life and that constitute a gross distortion of justice.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/jul/20/kafka-would-blush-artist-peter-max-caught-in-legal-guardianship-lawsuit

Fcuking appalling

July 20, 2022

'Kafka would blush': artist Peter Max caught in legal guardianship lawsuit

The daughter of a celebrated pop artist who created famous images of the “cosmic sixties” is suing the New York court system over what she claims are secretive communications between her father’s court-appointed guardian and judges that drastically affect his life and violate her basic rights.

Libra Max lodged a federal lawsuit on Wednesday in which she alleges that her father, Peter Max, 84, is being held in virtual isolation by a court-appointed guardian. She claims multiple judges have allowed the guardian to communicate with them behind closed doors, without the family’s knowledge, leading to one-sided decisions that profoundly affect his life and that constitute a gross distortion of justice.

The daughter of a celebrated pop artist who created famous images of the “cosmic sixties” is suing the New York court system over what she claims are secretive communications between her father’s court-appointed guardian and judges that drastically affect his life and violate her basic rights.

Libra Max lodged a federal lawsuit on Wednesday in which she alleges that her father, Peter Max, 84, is being held in virtual isolation by a court-appointed guardian. She claims multiple judges have allowed the guardian to communicate with them behind closed doors, without the family’s knowledge, leading to one-sided decisions that profoundly affect his life and that constitute a gross distortion of justice.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/jul/20/kafka-would-blush-artist-peter-max-caught-in-legal-guardianship-lawsuit

Fcuking appalling

July 20, 2022

One in five US adults condone 'justified' political violence, mega-survey finds

One in five adults in the United States, equivalent to about 50 million people, believe that political violence is justified at least in some circumstances, a new mega-survey has found.

A team of medical and public health scientists at the University of California, Davis enlisted the opinions of almost 9,000 people across the country to explore how far willingness to engage in political violence now goes.

They discovered that mistrust and alienation from democratic institutions have reached such a peak that substantial minorities of the American people now endorse violence as a means towards political ends. “The prospect of large-scale violence in the near future is entirely plausible,” the scientists warn.

A hardcore rump of the US population, the survey recorded – amounting to 3% or by extrapolation 7 million people – believe that political violence is usually or always justified. Almost one in four of the respondents – equivalent to more than 60 million Americans – could conceive of violence being justified “to preserve an American way of life based on western European traditions”.

Most alarmingly, 7.1% said that they would be willing to kill a person to advance an important political goal. The UC Davis team points out that, extrapolated to US society at large, that is the equivalent of 18 million Americans.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/19/one-in-five-us-adults-condone-political-violence-survey

Disturbing

July 20, 2022

'Proud' Gunmaker Figures Out How to Make Massacres Worse

The gun company that made the AR-15-style rifle used to kill 49 people at an Orlando nightclub in 2016 and another four at an Indiana mall this month is now gearing up to mass-produce an even more lethal weapon of war for the civilian market.

SIG Sauer’s new MCX-SPEAR fires bullets with twice the kinetic energy of those from an AR-15. That means double the horrifying force that mangled the victims of the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and left one youngster essentially decapitated.

“It’ll shoot through almost all of the bulletproof vests that are worn by law enforcement in the county right now,” said Ryan Busse, a former firearms company executive who is now a senior policy analyst with the Giffords Law Center and author of Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America.

The MCX-SPEAR is the civilian version of the U.S. Army’s NGSW-R (Next Generation Squad Weapon-Rifle), which was created with the express purpose of tearing through enemy body armor.

“This is a weapon that could defeat any body armor, any planned body armor that we know of in the future,” then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told the Army Times in 2019. “This is a weapon that can go out at ranges that are unknown today.”

Milley had in mind the body armor worn by Russian and Chinese troops. The Army just shrugged when asked this week whether the same could apply to that worn by cops.

“Please, refer your question to Sig Sauer and civilian law enforcement agencies,” a spokesperson for the Army Modernization Team told The Daily Beast.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/sig-sauers-mcx-spear-can-turbocharge-mass-shooters?ref=home

Great. Just great.