TWIN FALLS – A 19-year-old charged with kicking a coat hanger into the rectum of a mentally disabled teenager in the Dietrich High School locker room will not spend any time behind bars, a judge ruled Friday.

Instead, John R.K Howard of Keller, Texas, was ordered to spend three years on probation and complete 300 hours of community service. Because the judge handed down a withheld judgment, he will be allowed to petition to have the felony conviction scrubbed from his record.

“His punishment is the slap on the hand for him, a slap in the face for [victim] and to our family,” Shelly McDaniel said. “(Victim) had the courage to come forward thinking that if he did, something good would come from this ugly thing, that someone else wouldn’t have to suffer the same humiliation and pain that he has suffered and continues to suffer. Every time a verdict comes down for one of these men or boys, he becomes more and more disappointed that the legal system failed him.”

The lawyer described the assault with the hanger as the result of locker room roughhousing, not a hate-driven sexual attack. The victim’s family got up and left the courtroom a few minutes after Calbo began to speak.

http://www.wcnc.com/news/crime/no-prison-time-for-man-convicted-of-assaulting-mentally-disabled-teen/414803899

Mike Pence horrified to discover unisex toilet in own house
http://chaser.com.au/world/mike-pence-horrified-to-discover-unisex-toilet-in-own-house/



Vice President and conservative campaigner Mike Pence has today used the power vested to him as Vice President of the United States to issue a proclamation that nobody in his house is allowed to use the unisex toilet adjoining the spare bedroom. Calling the Caroma Uniset liberal propaganda, Mr Pence warned that anyone caught within five metres of the guest room en-suite would be damned to the fires of an eternal hell.

“It’s just not natural” Pence explained to his wife as she urgently hopped back and forth on the balls of her feet. “I’m afraid from now on you’re just going to have to use the women’s bathroom at the park down the road, or hold it in until we visit the mall on Sundays.”

Pence however was quick to clarify that his stance was in no way related to bigotry against women nor was it linked to his deep-seated hatred of trans people. “I’m simply following the teachings of the Bible, and helping others see exactly how Jesus felt about the designation of public bathrooms at schools and local shopping malls,” said Pence. “When God created Adam and Eve he did so with the explicit instruction that they not use the same porcelain lavatories to dispose of their bodily waste. The supreme being is very concerned with these things you know. That’s why he never gets around to solving the whole starving children thing.”

Nigel Farage dined out with Donald Trump on Saturday night after managing to secure a last-minute invitation to join the US president for an evening meal.

The former Ukip leader was photographed sitting opposite Trump and alongside his daughter Ivanka, her husband and senior White House adviser, Jared Kushner, and the Florida governor, Rick Scott, at the president’s luxury hotel in Washington DC.

Posting the photograph on Twitter, Farage wrote “Dinner with The Donald”. However, onlookers revealed that a place had only been made for him at the table at short notice.

Earlier in the day Farage had backed Trump’s treatment of the mainstream media, heaping praise on his political ally in a television interview. He told Fox News: “They [the media] are simply not prepared to accept that Brexit happened, that Trump happened, they kind of want to turn the clock back. And what they don’t realise is they are losing viewers, they are losing listeners, they are losing this battle big time and I’m pleased the president is not afraid to stand up to them.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/nigel-farage-dinner-with-the-donald-joins-trumps-table-at-washington-hotel

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/melania-could-have-been-a-deportation-priority-under-trumps-new-immigration-rules/

Going by President Donald Trump's new immigration rules, Melania Trump would have been a priority for deportation for accepting paid modeling jobs while on a tourist visa in the 1990s, immigration attorneys said Friday. Hasan Shafiqullah, deputy attorney in charge of the immigration law unit at the Legal Aid Society, said in an interview with Slate that Melania Trump could have been at serious risk of being deported had her husband's order been imposed that time.

"If the current executive order on interior enforcement and the related Homeland Security memoranda on interior enforcement had been in effect at that time [1996], then she would have certainly been an enforcement priority," he said.

Cheryl David, a New York City immigration specialist, also told Slate that if the first lady did in fact work in the U.S. while using a tourist visa, she "definitely violated her status, and if it came to immigration's attention, yeah, they certainly could put her into removal proceedings."

Melania Trump, then Knauss, was born in 1970 and traveled to the U.S. as a visitor. She received $20,056 for 10 modeling jobs, and it was only seven weeks after her arrival that she managed to acquire legal permission to work in the U.S., according to detailed contracts, accounting ledgers and other related documents from 20 years ago,

France's Hollande fires back at Trump over Paris comments



http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-usa-paris-idUSKBN1640CD

French President Francois Hollande fired back at Donald Trump on Saturday after the U.S. president remarked in a speech that a friend thought "Paris is no longer Paris" after attacks by Islamist militants.

Hollande said Trump should show support for U.S. allies.

"There is terrorism and we must fight it together. I think that it is never good to show the smallest defiance toward an allied country. I wouldn't do it with the United States and I'm urging the U.S. president not to do it with France," Hollande said.

"I won't make comparisons but here, people don't have access to guns. Here, you don't have people with guns opening fire on the crowd simply for the satisfaction of causing drama and tragedy," Hollande said, responding to questions during a visit at the Paris Agric fair.

An Arizona Republican congressman has defended the notion of building a border wall by claiming it could prevent a nuclear weapon being smuggled into the United States concealed in a bale of marijuana.

Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) made the comments Wednesday in a discussion with CNN's Brianna Keilar about President Trump's proposed $21 billion border barrier.

"The reality, Brianna, is that we have to measure all of the costs, ancillary and otherwise, and make the best decision that we can. But I can suggest to you that there are national security implications here for a porous border. We sometimes used to make the point that if someone wanted to smuggle in a dangerous weapon, even a nuclear weapon, into America, how would they do it? And the suggestion was made, ‘Well, we'll simply hide it in a bale of marijuana,’" Franks said.

"So the implications of a porous border have national security dimensions that are very significant and that bear a lot of conversation when we talk about costs," he said.

http://www.alternet.org/drugs/gop-congressman-warns-mexican-marijuana-nukes