Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalTexas jury convicts Catholic priest of sexual assault after Guardian reporting
A jury in Texas has convicted a Roman Catholic priest charged with illegally exploiting his status as a clergyman to pursue sex with women to whom he was providing spiritual direction.
Eight women and four men found Anthony Odiong, 57, guilty as charged of one charge of sexual assault in the first degree and two such counts in the second degree involving two women, each of whom testified during a trial that began with jury selection on Tuesday in Waco.
He could face life imprisonment on the first-degree charge after a sentencing phase involving the same jury that is scheduled to begin Monday. The second-degree charges could carry from two to 20 years in prison.
The jury deliberated for about two hours before coming to the verdict.
Odiong, who pleaded not guilty, had initially been charged with first-degree sexual assault of a third woman. But prosecutors Ryan Calvert and Liz Buice dismissed that aspect of the case after the woman – said to be in an “extremely emotionally fragile” state – failed to show up to her expected appearance on the witness stand. The prosecution opted against essentially tracking her down and arresting her to ensure she appeared in court, citing her “extremely tenuous” emotional condition.
The case against Odiong came after a Guardian article in February 2024 reported on a group of women who had accused the priest of sexual coercion, unwanted touching and abusive financial control in his capacity as a Catholic clergyman, including in and around Waco as well as a later assignment in the New Orleans suburb of Luling, Louisiana.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/29/texas-trial-catholic-priest-sexual-assault
So a Baptist minister, Robert Morris, got 6 months, IIRC, bbut they're talking about life for this guy?
Possibly weird question
I have a deck garden (we're afflicted with black walnuts, so limited in what we can grow in the rund) and last year I had, as usual, sonm hanging baskets of calibrachoa (million bells). Since it's a microclima, these sometimes reseed and sprout new ones, as do petunias when I have those, but this year I got a surprise, In the basket where my million bells had been, I got not one, but several johnny jump-ups! What the heck? Are they related, or did these just blow in from somewhere? I transp;anted them, because I wanted the pot for more million bells, but good grief! If it had been one, that would have been one thing, but five of the darn things.....?!
How an actual doctor with a broken ankle created the Doc Martens boot
One of the more serious honorifics is the word "Doctor." In the marketing world, it's usually reserved for a brand named after a founder.
Back in 1945, Klaus Maertens was a 25-year-old German army doctor. He was recuperating after breaking his ankle in a skiing accident. The standard-issue boots he was given with their hard leather soles were not only uncomfortable, they hindered his recovery. He wondered why you could enjoy a smooth ride in a car with air-filled tires, but you couldn't enjoy the same principle with boots. So, he decided to design a boot with a softer sole.
Doctor Maertens cut up pieces of an automobile tire and slipped them into his shoes. While it lessened the impact on his ankle, it didn't lessen the pain.
He showed his prototype to a friend who was a mechanical engineer, who then suggested using two rubber insoles. One stitched to the leather, the other heat-sealed to the first – creating a soft air pocket. The pair filed a patent and went into business. Using old military supplies and tire rubber, they began producing comfortable, durable boots.
80 per cent of their sales were to German women over 40.
They advertised their boots in magazines, and one ad caught the attention of a shoe manufacturer in England. That company acquired the exclusive rights to manufacture the boot.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/undertheinfluence/there-s-a-real-doc-marten-and-he-wasn-t-a-shoe-designer-1.7143667
How many of of us wear Doc Martens? (I don't, but I've worn knockoffs)
SpaceX's Starship rockets are grounded pending investigation after test flight
SpaceX Starship launches are on hold pending an investigation into last week’s test flight.
The Federal Aviation Administration announced Wednesday that the hourlong spaceflight resulted in a mishap based on the performance of the mega rocket’s first-stage booster.
Minutes after Starship blasted off from Texas on Friday, the booster separated as normal but engines conked out as it made its way back to Earth. Instead of a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, the booster came in hard. There were no reports of injury or property damage, according to the FAA, which will oversee the company’s investigation.
The spacecraft continued around the world, releasing 20 mock satellites before ending the mission as planned with a fiery splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
The 407-foot (124-meter) rocket is SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s biggest and most powerful Starship yet, designed to carry crews to Mars. NASA is looking for it to land astronauts on the moon as soon as 2028 and help build a lunar base.
https://apnews.com/article/spacex-starship-faa-investigation-7bc8ecccd1f32fa2b1d2ea204f2b785b
Not so fast, Eloon!
How the Trump administration uses the Bible to justify military invasions and immigration raids
As massive immigration enforcement actions were underway in Minnesota this January, the Department of Homeland Security released a video that, at first glance, appeared to resemble a cinematic trailer.
Set to the singer Lorde's haunting cover of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," the footage unfolds in a sequence of eerie juxtapositions: a helicopter hovering in green night-vision haze, armed agents battering doors and bodies moving with choreographed urgency. Across the screen a quote from the Gospel of Matthew: "Blessed are the peacemakers."
Moments later, after more imagery of military-style immigration enforcement actions, the rest of the biblical passage materializes: "for they shall be called the sons of God."
"My first thought was, there is a gun called the Peacemaker," said Dyron Daughrity, a minister in the evangelical Church of Christ and dean of religion and philosophy at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif. "It's sort of this idea of peace through strength."
https://www.npr.org/2026/05/26/nx-s1-5698511/how-the-trump-administration-uses-the-bible-to-justify-military-invasions-and-immigration-raids
Sorta skipped right over one of the most important verses in the OT:The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God. Leviticus 19:34. Besides which, the Beatitudes, which they scammed their phrase from, is NOT talking about this AT ALL!
Graduation speech rant
Friday I attended the last high school graduation I'm likely to go to, that of my youngest grandson (I have one more granddaughter, but she's just a rising third-grader and I'm almost 83). It was nice and relatively short, except for one thing which kind of annoyed me. The first student speaker (I assume valedictorian, although they did not so designate him) was the son of someone my daughter had gone to preschool with. The dad is now pastor of a rather large non-denominational church. Well, this kid got up and basically preached a 5-minute sermon! His speech was laced with Bible quotes, mostly New Testament although he did throw in one from Jeremiah, from one end to another! Now this may be okay for a private (read: Christian) school graduation, but I really question its appropriateness for public school. Bearing in mind, of course, that this is ruby-red east Tennessee where some may have thought this was okay, still, I have questions and comments.
When I was in high school, the speakers had to submit the text of their speech to the administration the week before graduation. After I graduated, which was 1961, things got really tense, and during the protest days of the Vietnam War, at least one kid deviated from his submitted speech and they turned off his mic. I'm wondering if this is still the case, and how this speech got by if it is, because none of the other speakers, including the school board chairman, the superintendent of schools, the principal, the senior class president, or the other student speaker, so much as mentioned God, let alone the New Testament evangelical version! So how is this okay? Had I been a Buddhist or Jewish or Muslim student, I'd have been more than a little offended. After it was all over, my daughter, who went to Catholic high school, said, "Good grief! We didn't even have that at my graduation! Catholics don't proselytize like that!" I was generally appalled, wondering how it had gotten by, but all I said was, "I guess it's obvious who his dad is." And then I wondered exactly who wrote the speech....
ICE violently arrested a US citizen and filmed it 'like a documentary', videos reveal
Christian Cerna, 28, was driving with his partner and their two young children through Los Angeles, when two vehicles rammed his car and a group of men jumped out and trained their guns on them.
It was 11 June 2025, and as Cerna exited his vehicle with his hands raised, he realized the masked men weren’t street criminals as he initially feared. They were Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
Cerna, a carpenter, is a US citizen and southern California native. But ICE was targeting him after a border agent reported that Cerna had “assaulted” him during a rowdy anti-ICE protest days earlier. The officers arresting Cerna detonated flash-bang grenades and pointed assault rifles at his car, with his infant and toddler inside.
The agents, court records show, were also filming high-quality footage of the arrest operation, which they would later post to social media.
The tactics, a federal judge later said, were part of ICE’s “vindictive effort” to “impose extrajudicial punishment”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/15/ice-us-citizen-violent-arrest-documentary
Typical.
Why I'm giving up on the BBC
Apparently now you have to subscribe to it to read most articles. I'm sorry, but I'll go broke subscribing to everything! So, regretfully, it's bye-bye to the BBC. I already subscribe to the Guardian, among others.
Israeli nationalists chant 'death to Arabs' in violent Jerusalem Day march
Israeli nationalists chanted “death to the Arabs”, “may your villages burn” and “Gaza is a graveyard” in a state-sponsored march through Jerusalem to mark the anniversary of the city’s capture and annexation.
The annual assertion of Jewish control over Palestinian East Jerusalem has grown more extreme in recent years, and Thursday’s event culminated with the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, unfurling an Israeli flag in front of the al-Aqsa mosque, the holiest Islamic site in the city.
Most Palestinians in the Muslim quarter of the Old City had shuttered their shops and gone home before the march began, but members of far-right radical Jewish groups who had entered scuffled with Palestinian residents still there, with both sides throwing chairs at each other, until separated by police who entered the city that afternoon in force.
“I’ve come to show all the world that this is our city. This is the Holy Land. God gave us this country and this city,” a 19-year-old marcher, Ariel Amichai, said.
Asked what the intended message of the march was to Palestinians in Jerusalem, he replied: “That they must leave. This is our country. And they can’t just be here and try to stab us or kill us.”
Amichai, who is from Modi’in, 43km from Jerusalem, said he believed that Jerusalem Day, marking the capture of the east side of the city in 1967, was the only day when Jews could enter the Muslim quarter through the Damascus Gate, though Israeli Jews and Palestinians use the gate on a daily basis.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/14/israel-nationalists-jerusalem-day-march-anniversary-protest
Some of them appear to be about as ignorant as MAGAts
US Border Patrol chief announces his resignation in a Fox News interview
The head of U.S. Border Patrol, the agency tasked with securing the nation’s frontiers and increasingly tapped by the Trump administration for immigration operations in American cities, announced his resignation Thursday.
Michael Banks’ decision, announced in a Fox News interview and later confirmed by the Department of Homeland Security, is the latest leadership shake-up of officials implementing President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and comes as the Republican administration appears to be recalibrating its approach.
“It’s just time,” Banks was quoted as saying in a report on the Fox News website. “I feel like I got the ship back on course from the least secure disastrous chaotic border to the most secure border this country has ever seen,” he said.
In a statement, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection commissioner, Rodney Scott, thanked Banks for his service “during one of the most challenging periods for border security.”
https://apnews.com/article/border-patrol-chief-michael-banks-immigration-846fb883c40bb4643a81e73139249482
Had enough, or potential corruption charges waiting?
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Gender: Do not displayHome country: USA currently
Current location: Virginia
Member since: Wed Jun 1, 2011, 07:34 PM
Number of posts: 14,644