February 21, 2015

Prison officials: 2000 inmates involved in prison disturbance (Raymondsville, Texas)

Source: Valley Morning Star

RAYMONDVILLE — Willacy County sheriff’s deputies, Raymondville police, DPS troopers, Border Patrol and every other available law enforcement agency in the region is at the federal prison in Raymondville for what appears to have escalated into a riot.

Willacy County Sheriff Larry Spence said several tents at the facility were set on around 1:30 p.m. The prison compound is made up of massive tents commonly known as a "tent city."

In a news release Management and Training Corporation, which runs the prison, said the problems started this morning when inmates refused to eat breakfast and complained about medical services at the facility.

MTC says several inmates broke out of the housing units and made their way to the recreational yard.

Read more: http://www.valleymorningstar.com/news/local_news/article_b650fb84-b933-11e4-96ba-2b83cc287c42.html

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Prison officials say they used tear gas to try to bring the situation under control. The Dallas Morning News is indicating that it is a privately run immigration detention center.

February 21, 2015

Islamic leaders ask that charge be dropped against accused arsonist in Houston

Leaders of a south Houston Islamic religious complex targeted by an alleged arsonist Friday asked authorities not to pursue prosecution against the 56-year-old homeless man accused of igniting the blaze.

The Harris County District Attorney's office responded that it will consider the request from the Quba Islamic Center, but that, at present, the first-degree felony charge against Darryl Ferguson will remain in place.

"The investigation is ongoing," said DA spokesman Jeff McShan. "No final decisions have been made and will not be made over the weekend."

Ferguson is accused of setting a 3,000-foot building in the religious complex ablaze on Feb. 13. The center is at 730 FM 1959.

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Islamic-leaders-ask-that-charge-be-dropped-6092431.php

February 20, 2015

Man charged after bomb threats made to Muslim center, cafe in Austin on Tuesday

A 53-year-old man has been charged with making a terroristic threat following Tuesday’s bomb threats near the University of Texas campus and a North Austin mosque, according to an arrest affidavit.

Just after 7 a.m. on Tuesday, medics responded to the 11900 N. Lamar Blvd. and found Azzam Ahmed Baytie rolling on the ground in front of the North Austin Muslim Community Center, the affidavit said.

When medics were evaluating Baytie’s condition, he said he had taken five pills of a prescription drug to harm himself, police said.

Police arrived at the scene after Baytie stated there was a white pickup with bombs parked at the mosque and explosive devices stored in a small food trailer called Republic Shawarma next to the West Campus hookah lounge Arab Cowboy, near 24th and Pearl streets, the affidavit said.

Read more: http://www.statesman.com/news/news/crime-law/man-charged-after-bomb-threats-made-to-muslim-cent/nkFwh/

February 20, 2015

Sam Wyly must pay ex-wife $500,000 a year despite bankruptcy

A man in bankruptcy can run from his creditors, but he can’t hide from obligations to his ex-wife, as former billionaire Samuel Wyly learned this week.

Wyly, who helped build companies including arts-and-crafts retailer Michaels Stores Inc., filed for Chapter 11 protection in October to fend off an impending judgment in a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. A Manhattan jury found that Wyly and his deceased brother, Charles, used offshore trust accounts to trade secretly in the stock of four companies on whose boards they sat.

Samuel Wyly’s former wife, Torrie Steele, sued in bankruptcy court in Dallas, claiming that his responsibility to pay her $500,000 a year is a support obligation that’s not wiped out by Chapter 11. On the same evidence, Wyly argued that the payments were a division of marital property, an ordinary unsecured claim.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Barbara J. Houser in Dallas sided with Steele on Thursday. The judge prefaced her 27-page opinion by saying courts view support obligations “more broadly” so that bankruptcy “does not become a tool to allow debtors to escape familial obligations.”

Read more: http://www.dallasnews.com/business/business-headlines/20150220-sam-wyly-must-pay-ex-wife-500000-a-year-despite-bankruptcy.ece

Related thread:
U.S. judge orders Sam Wyly and Charles Wyly's estate to surrender more than $187M in fraud case
http://www.democraticunderground.com/107820993

February 20, 2015

70 years after Iwo Jima, veterans and families honor those who served

Ruth Ann Kepler didn’t know the details of her father’s military service until a couple of years after his death in 1971.

He was in the Navy, that much she knew. But when Kepler or her three sisters would ask him about his service, Robert William ­Strecker kept his answers short.

“He’d say, ‘Oh yeah, I was in the Navy. It was a good time,’ and left it at that,” Kepler said.

She would learn later that her father served with the Navy’s Pacific Fleet from 1942 to 1946. That he was stationed on a submarine chaser during World War II. And that he served at the Battle of Iwo Jima, which began 70 years ago Thursday.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/70-years-after-iwo-jima-veterans-families-to-honor-lives-lost/2015/02/18/96b57c74-b6d5-11e4-9423-f3d0a1ec335c_story.html

[font color=green]My father was in the Navy at the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa.[/font]

February 20, 2015

Time Magazine Affirms - Rush Limbaugh Is In Trouble

It seems the larger mainstream media outlets like Time Magazine are starting to realize that 'small-fry' social media outlets have become a force to be reckoned with.

Last week, I published a Daily Kos diary about Wall Street Journal radio statistics. The industry numbers confirmed social media campaigns are winning the fight against hate radio, namely Rush Limbaugh. And now, Time Magazine is jumping in. Both are seeing social media groups like StopRush, BoycottRush, and FlushRush cause Rush Limbaugh to lose sponsors, radio stations, and market standings. And these groups are supported by larger social media news organization/blogs like Daily Kos, Media Matters, Liberals Unite, Addicting Info, Politico, and PoliticusUSA, who continue to cover stories about the Limbaugh protest. Despite all of Limbaugh's money and best efforts to squelch the protest, it just keeps growing.

Time Magazine writer, Brian Rosenwald, chimed in on Wednesday. Rosenwald is completing his doctoral dissertation. In this article he discusses how talk radio has changed politics/public policy, and how now, the internet is changing talk radio. For decades, Limbaugh could get away with atrocities like making up sick songs about AIDS victims and getting away with it. Rosenwald goes on to say it's very different now:

Most folks following the protest know that current campaigns not only pressured advertisers in 2012, they have continued to do so for three years.

Read more: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/02/19/1365415/-Time-Magazine-Joins-WSJ-To-Claim-Social-Media-Groups-Are-Pushing-Rush-Limbaugh-Off-Public-Radio?detail=facebook

February 20, 2015

Not all atheists are alike

[font size=4]Not all atheists use their disbelief to excuse imperialism and oppression, writes veteran socialist Eamonn McCann, in an article for the Irish Times.[/font]

It's as wrong to lump all atheists together as it is to associate all Muslims with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria or all Jews with Zionism. There are 50 shades of godlessness. The community includes dour and humorless dogmatists such as Richard Dawkins and genial chaps like Stephen Fry. True, there are some who will have been hurt by Fry's recent description of God as a maniacal monster. But he'd been sorely provoked by Gay Byrne.

Another thing in Fry's favor is that he gives the lie to the rote-learned answer once expected of us, at risk of a rap on the knuckles from a ruler, when Sister Xavier paused in her patrolling of the passage between the desks and snapped, "Where is God?"

"As he is God, he is everywhere," we'd chorus. Fry may not be literally everywhere, but he is everywhere on television, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, which these days amounts to much the same thing. Which, in turn, reminds me of the wider role of the Derry Diocesan Catechism in propelling me on to the atheist path.

Read more: http://socialistworker.org/2015/02/19/not-all-atheists-are-alike

February 20, 2015

Another dictatorship joins the war on ISIS

A dangerous new phase in the metastasizing war on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) began this month after the release of a video showing the grisly beheading of 21 Egyptian Christians in Libya on February 15.

Egypt's military regime responded with air strikes on the city of Derna in eastern Libya, where an Islamist militia announced last fall that it had joined ISIS. The air assault is the most dramatic sign yet of Egypt's growing involvement in the civil war that has engulfed Libya since 2011, when a NATO bombing campaign backed rebel forces that ousted the regime of Muammar el-Qaddafi.

The instability that followed the NATO intervention in Libya created the conditions for armed militias--Islamist extremist ones, in particular--to flourish, just as they have in the aftermath of the years of U.S. war and occupation in Iraq.

Last year, Barack Obama returned to the scene of multiple U.S. war crimes in Iraq when he ordered a new military intervention against ISIS forces. The U.S.-led bombing campaign--which also involves such democracy-loving Arab regimes as Jordan and Saudi Arabia--soon spread to Syria. Now, it threatens to jump to a new continent.

Read more: http://socialistworker.org/2015/02/19/a-new-dictator-in-the-war-on-isis

February 20, 2015

Can Mark Kirk Fight Off A Primary From Far Right Lunatic Joe Walsh?

Of all the Senate seats the Republicans have to defend in 2016, Illinois is probably the one they dread most. Mark Kirk is a weak candidate with an undistinguished, uninspiring record in a blue-leaning state. Although there are no party registration statistics available, recent elections gave the Democrats 40 seats in the Illinois state Senate to the GOP's 19 and 71 in the state House to the GOP's 47. Even after the Republican wave election last year, lllinois's congressional delegation consisted of 10 Democrats and 7 Republicans (of which 3 of the latter are considered extremely vulnerable in a presidential election year). In 2010, when Kirk won the seat, he beat a very weak Democrat, Alexi Giannoulias, 1,778,698 (48%) to 1,719,478 (46%). Obama beat McCain 3,419,348 (62%) to 2,031,179 (37%) and beat Romney 3,019,512 (58%) to 2,135,216 (41%). Illinois is expected to go very strongly for native daughter Hillary Clinton.

But things could get even worse for Illinois Republicans. Kirk is, essentially, a wishy-washy moderate. People don't hate him. And the Republican base doesn't love him. And he could lose a primary battle to one of Illinois's most extreme right, crazy politicians, former Congressman Joe Walsh. Walsh, now a WIND Hate Talk Radio host, served for one tumultuous term, amassed a bizarre extremist record and was maneuvered out of his seat by the GOP in favor of Randy Hultgren and forced to run against Tammy Duckworth, who beat him decisively in the open seat 54.7- 45.3%. He can't win a statewide general election in Illinois, but he could possibly beat a mainstream conservative like Kirk in a GOP primary, which, he says, is what he plans to do. He says he'll decide by early April. He's already insinuating Kirk isn't physically up to the job because he had a stroke in 2012 and now uses a wheelchair and a cane.



Read more: http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2015/02/can-mark-kirk-fight-off-primary-from.html

February 20, 2015

Family awarded $16 million in wrongful-death suit against Southlake nursing home company

FORT WORTH

A Hamilton family has been awarded more than $16 million in a lawsuit against a Southlake nursing home company accused of allowing a worker to drive home drunk, causing a wreck that killed a father and injured three family members in Coryell County in 2013.

A Tarrant County jury gave $16.7 million to the family of Sam Graham, including $5 million in punitive damages, in a wrongful-death lawsuit against Southlake-based Senior Living Properties and employee Alisa Prueitt.

Graham, 37, was killed in the crash on Aug. 24, 2013, on Texas 36 between Hamilton and Gatesville. Prueitt, 43, of Gatesville, the driver of the other vehicle, had been sent home from her job at Hamilton Healthcare Center, which is owned by Senior Living Properties. Hamilton is about 100 miles southwest of Fort Worth.

The case was tried in Fort Worth because the company is based in Tarrant County.

Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/crime/article10676168.html