Thursday
Wednesday
Transgender Woman Claims Former Male Self a Murderer
Authorities in Washington State believe that a series of murders of prostitutes in 1990 were committed by Washington resident Douglas Perry. Now Perry has been captured and charged with the murders, but Douglas has become "Donna," a transgender woman who claims that she is not responsible for the murders because Douglas no longer exists.
Donna's novel defense is that as a male she was prone to violence so she had gender reassignment surgery in Thailand a few years ago in order to purge herself of those violent tendencies. Further, since she is now a woman, she is a wholly different person and therefore she isn't responsible for what her former male self did.
Donna was arrested for the murders in 2012 after being apprehended on an unrelated weapons charge. Police found that her fingerprints matched what had become a cold case in the murders of the three prostitutes decades ago.
If Donna’s defense were to be accepted by the courts, it could lead to unintended consequences for the transgender community as their former selves could possibly be universally considered mentally ill. This is a diagnosis that people with alternate lifestyles have been working hard to defeat for decades.
LGBT spokesmen warn against accepting Perry's claims at face value.
"It's wrong to generalize from this person's life--it's not typical of the transgender experience," New York City psychiatrist Dr. Jack Drescher told ABC News.
In interviews, Perry told police that Douglas never stopped killing, but "Donna stopped it."
Donna further told authorities that she would not confess to murder because she didn't do it. Donna also claimed not to know if Douglas killed the prostitutes in 1993. "I don't know if Doug did or not, it was 20 years ago and I have no idea whether he did or did not," she said.
Police cite testimony from Donna's cellmate who said that the transgendered woman made all sorts of admissions in prison, even once saying she was a "sociopath."
Donna's central defense, the claim that becoming a woman helped stem her violent tendencies, is disputed by Jack Halberstam, a transgender professor of American and gender studies at University of Southern California.
Halberstam called the defense a "very sketchy and a desperate defense ploy."
"Even if we as a person are less aggressive once we resolved a gender disorder, it does not absolve the responsibility of killing three women," the professor said. "As a legal defense, putting away the science, it's absolute nonsense."
GENESIS 13:13 But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the LORD exceedingly.
GENESIS 19:7 And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly.
8 Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof.
9 And they said, Stand back. And they said again, This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge: now will we deal worse with thee, than with them. And they pressed sore upon the man, even Lot, and came near to break the door.
Arizona Republican: Slavery Was Good For Black People Because ‘Slave Owners Took Care Of Their Livestock’
Once again, Republicans have failed to even pretend that they want people of color to vote for them. In yet another instance of being stupid on Facebook, a GOP candidate in Arizona wrote that black people had the good life as slaves because “slave owners took care of their livestock.”
Arizona GOP candidate Jim Brown thinks black people lived the good life under slavery.
Jim Brown is running for a House seat in the 2nd Congressional District of Arizona. The seat is currently held by Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick and had been considered one of the easier races for the GOP to win in 2014. That is, until Brown posted a diatribe about slavery on his Facebook page. In what is sure to become part of a devastating campaign ad, Brown attempted to compare federal programs that help the poor to the institution of slavery.
“I want folks to think about something,” Brown began. “I want folks to think about how slavery really works. Back in the day of slavery, slaves were kept in slavery by denying them education and opportunity while providing them with their basic needs .. Not by beating them and starving them. (Although there were isolated cases if course) Basically slave owners took pretty good care of their slaves and livestock and this kept business rolling along.”
Welfare is NOT the same as slavery.
Brown believes that the government is treating people who need aid like slaves. And just as African-Americans made up the slave population, Brown seems to think they make up the entirety of those who get federal aid. You know, the old “all black people suck on the government tit” line that Republicans can’t stop using? Brown says slavery was awesome for black people, seems to think only black people are on welfare, and thinks getting aid is akin to being a slave. Instead of condemning slavery as vile, Brown also seems to think it was a good business model. After all, “slave owners took pretty good care of their slaves and livestock and this kept business rolling along.” Such a statement is not only an insult to black people, it contradicts the GOP claim that the Civil War was unnecessary because slavery was allegedly dying out.
As it turns out, most welfare recipients are actually white and happen to live in red states. Therefore, if anyone is turning into government “slaves,” it’s the GOP base. But comparing welfare to slavery is total nonsense. Receiving federal aid to keep from starving to death or becoming homeless is not the same as slavery. Slaves were often brutally beaten, starved, banned from owning firearms, and couldn’t exactly leave the plantation at will. Welfare recipients don’t give up any of their freedoms or rights by getting aid. Slaves had NO freedom and NO rights. Slaves also could not get an education, whereas the government often helps to pay education costs for people, even if they are on welfare. Furthermore, the government doesn’t sell welfare recipients to other people like slave owners sold their slaves. Also, unlike slave owners, federal aid isn’t breaking up families nor is it killing or raping people they find inferior. Welfare is colorblind because the only thing that really matters is income. Clearly, getting federal aid is nothing like slavery. In fact, federal aid actually lifts people out of poverty. It’s also temporary assistance that ends once your income level rises above the threshold. Slave owners kept slaves in chains for life.
Praising slavery seems to be a requirement to be in the Republican Party.
Jim Brown is only the most recent Republican to sing the praises of slavery. In 2012, an Arkansas Republican called slavery “a blessing in disguise.” At the same time, another Republican went even further than that. Even CPAC got into the act of defending slavery in 2013. Not long after that, a Nevada Republican told a crowd that he would vote to bring back slavery if they wanted him to do so. Of course, Brown isn’t exactly helping to improve the bigoted reputation of Arizona. The state once refused to honor Martin Luther King Day and has been in hot water for trying to discriminate against gay people.
The party that ended slavery is now controlled by those who want to reinstate it.
Republicans hate welfare programs even as their own states are the real welfare states. They hate these programs so much that they love falsely comparing them to slavery. But over the years, the GOP has made it clear that they actually love slavery and long to bring it back. The GOP hates welfare and wrongly compares it to slavery, but doesn’t think slavery was so bad for black people and wishes it was still around. This is NOT the same Republican Party that worked to abolish slavery and fought a war to end it. This is NOT the same party that fought for the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. This new Republican Party has fallen far from its roots and is now controlled by the very bigots it once battled against. And that is truly sad.
Deuteronomy 17:
15 Thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee, whom the Lord thy God shall choose: one from among thy brethren shalt thou set king over thee: thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brother.
Psalm 83:
4 They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance.
Federal Judge Says You Can Abort Babies With A Heartbeat
An Arkansas law deemed to be one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country had been declared unconstitutional by a federal judge appointed by then-President George H.W. Bush.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright issued her opinion that the standard for abortion restrictions is not a heartbeat, but as established by Roe V. Wade, depends on viability outside the womb.
“The Court notes that the [state] conveys that viability ‘begins’ with a heartbeat; it does not declare that viability is fully achieved with the adept of a heartbeat,” she wrote. “Such a declaration would undoubtedly contravene the Supreme Court’s determination that viability in a particular case is a matter for medical judgment, and it is attained when, in the judgment of the attending physician on the particular facts of the case at hand, that there is a reasonable likelihood of sustained survival outside the womb.”
Arkansas legislators voted a year ago to pass the Human Heartbeat Protection Act law, overriding the veto of Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe.
“The Act required that women obtain an ultrasound prior to having an abortion, and if a heartbeat is detected past twelve weeks, the abortion may not proceed. Abortionists who violate the law would have their license revoked,” Christiannews.net reported.
The bill’s sponsor Sen. Jason Rapert said that his Act represented a “more humane policey on abortion” for a country with “55 million human beings that have been taken.”
The American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas filed suit after the Act was passed. It’s lawsuit against the state medical board asked the court to prevent “irreparable harm” to mothers who desire a safe abortion, a theme Wright tapped into in her written opinion.
“I believe that there is a threat of irreprebale harm, because these doctors.. could face loss of their licenses,” she wrote. “They also have established that their patients could suffer harm by not being able to have abortions post 12-weeks but during that pre-viability period.”
A spokesperson for the state’s Attorney General Office said the ruling did not come as a surprise but the state would consider its next move.
Psalm 127:
3 Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.
4 As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth.
5 Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.
Isaiah 49:
15 Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.
NYC inmate 'baked to death' in jail cell, city officials say
Jerome Murdough was just looking for a warm place to sleep on a chilly night last month when he curled up in an enclosed stairwell on the roof of a Harlem public housing project where he was arrested for trespassing.
A week later, the mentally ill homeless man was found dead in a Rikers Island jail cell that four city officials say had overheated to at least 100 degrees, apparently because of malfunctioning equipment.
The officials told The Associated Press that the 56-year-old former Marine was on anti-psychotic and anti-seizure medication, which may have made him more vulnerable to heat. He also apparently did not open a small vent in his cell, as other inmates did, to let in cool air.
"He basically baked to death," said one of the officials, who all spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to discuss specifics of the case.
The medical examiner's office said an autopsy was inconclusive and that more tests were needed to determine Murdough's exact cause of death. But the officials, all with detailed knowledge of the case, say initial indications from the autopsy and investigation point to extreme dehydration or heat stroke.
Advocates for mentally ill inmates in New York say the death represents the failure of the city's justice system on almost every level: by arresting Murdough instead of finding him help, by setting bail at a prohibitive $2,500 and by not supervising him closely in what is supposed to be a special observation unit for inmates with mental illnesses.
Department of Correction spokesman Robin Campbell said in a statement that an internal investigation will look into all circumstances of Murdough's death, "including issues of staff performance and the adequacy of procedures."
Campbell acknowledged that the temperature in Murdough's cell was "unusually high" and that action has been taken to fix mechanical problems to ensure safe temperatures, "particularly in areas housing vulnerable inmates."
Murdough's 75-year-old mother, Alma Murdough, said she did not learn of her son's death until the AP contacted her last week, nearly a month after he died. His public defender was told of the death three days after the inmate was found, the DOC said.
"He was a very lovely, caring guy," said Murdough, adding that her son had bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and that she had not seen him in about three years.
"He had beer problems. Drinking beer. That was his downfall. Other than that, he was a very nice guy. He'd give you the shirt off his back."
Family members say Murdough grew up in Queens and joined the Marine Corps right out of high school, doing at least one stint in Okinawa, Japan.
When he returned from the service, his family said, both his mental illness and thirst for alcohol became more pronounced, and he would often disappear for months at a time, finding warmth in hospitals, shelters and the streets.
"When he wanted to venture off, we let him, we allowed him to come and go," recalled his sister, Cheryl Warner. "He always came back."
Murdough's criminal record included 11 misdemeanor convictions for trespassing, drinking in public and minor drug charges, said Ivan Vogel, a public defender who represented him at his arraignment on the trespassing charge.
According to the city officials, Murdough was locked alone into his 6-by-10 cinderblock cell at about 10:30 p.m. on Feb. 14, a week after his arrest. Because he was in the mental-observation unit, he was supposed to be checked every 15 minutes as part of suicide watch, they said. But Murdough was not discovered until four hours later, at about 2:30 a.m. on Feb. 15. He was slumped over in his bed and already dead.
When Murdough was found and his cell opened, his internal body temperature and the temperature in the cell were at least 100 degrees. Those temperatures could have been higher before he was discovered because the cell had been closed for several hours, the officials said.
Dr. Susi Vassallo, an associate professor at New York University School of Medicine and a national expert on heat-related deaths who monitors heat conditions at Rikers Island, said psychotropic medications can impair the body's ability to cool itself by sweating, making it retain more heat than it should.
Exposure to intense heat for a couple of hours by someone on such medications could be fatal, she said.
Last year, only three Rikers inmates died from non-natural causes, according to Department of Correction statistics.
Of the 12,000 inmates who make up the nation's second-largest jail system, about 40 percent are mentally ill, and a third of them suffer from serious mental problems the department said. Advocates and others have long argued that correction officers are not sufficiently trained to deal with mentally ill inmates whose needs are complex.
Catherine Abate, a member of the New York City Board of Correction, an agency charged with overseeing the city's jails, suggested at a recent public meeting that Murdough should have been referred him to psychiatric care, not to Rikers Island.
Jennifer J. Parish, an attorney at the New York-based Urban Justice Center's Mental Health Project, said Murdough appeared to be a man in need of care.
"So Mr. Murdough violated the trespass law. So he suffered the consequences by going to jail," Parish said. "But the jail system committed more serious harm to him. And the question is, 'Will they ever be held responsible?'"
Wanda Mehala, another of Murdough's sisters, said the family wants an explanation.
"We want justice for what was done," she said. "He wasn't just some old homeless person on the street. He was loved. He had a life. He had a family. He had feelings."
Proverbs 14:
20 The poor is hated even of his own neighbour: but the rich hath many friends.
Micah 2:
10 Arise ye, and depart; for this is not your rest: because it is polluted, it shall destroy you, even with a sore destruction.
Michelle Alexander: White Men Get Rich from Legal Pot, Black Men Stay in Prison
For 40 years, poor communities of color have experienced the wrath of the war on drugs.
Ever since Colorado and Washington made the unprecedented move to legalize recreational pot last year, excitement and stories of unfettered success have billowed into the air. Colorado's marijuana tax revenue far exceeded expectations, bringing a whopping $185 million to the state and tourists are lining up to taste the budding culture (pun intended). Several other states are now looking to follow suit and legalize.
But the ramifications of this momentous shift are left unaddressed. When you flick on the TV to a segment about the flowering pot market in Colorado, you'll find that the faces of the movement are primarily white and male. Meanwhile, many of the more than 210,000 people who were arrested for marijuana possession in Colorado between 1986 and 2010 according to a report from the Marijuana Arrest Research Project, remain behind bars. Thousands of black men and boys still sit in prisons for possession of the very plant that's making those white guys on TV rich.
“In many ways the imagery doesn't sit right,” said Michelle Alexander, associate professor of law at Ohio State University and author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness in a public conversation on March 6 with Asha Bandele of the Drug Policy Alliance. “Here are white men poised to run big marijuana businesses, dreaming of cashing in big—big money, big businesses selling weed—after 40 years of impoverished black kids getting prison time for selling weed, and their families and futures destroyed. Now, white men are planning to get rich doing precisely the same thing?”
Alexander said she is “thrilled” that Colorado and Washington have legalized pot and that Washington D.C. decriminalized possession of small amounts earlier this month. But she said she’s noticed "warning signs" of a troubling trend emerging in the pot legalization movement: Whites—men in particular—are the face of the movement, and the emerging pot industry. (A recent In These Times article titled “ The Unbearable Whiteness of Marijuana Legalization,” summarize this trend.)
Alexander said for 40 years poor communities of color have experienced the wrath of the war on drugs.
“Black men and boys” have been the target of the war on drugs’ racist policies—stopped, frisked and disturbed—“often before they’re old enough to vote,” she said. Those youths are arrested most often for nonviolent first offenses that would go ignored in middle-class white neighborhoods.
“We arrest these kids at young ages, saddle them with criminal records, throw them in cages, and then release them into a parallel social universe in which the very civil and human rights supposedly won in the Civil Rights movement no longer apply to them for the rest of their lives,” she said. “They can be discriminated against [when it comes to] employment, housing, access to education, public benefits. They're locked into a permanent second-class status for life. And we’ve done this in precisely the communities that were most in need of our support.”
As Asha Bandele of DPA pointed out during the conversation, the U.S. has 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prisoners. Today, 2.2 million people are in prison or jail and 7.7 million are under the control of the criminal justice system, with African American boys and men—and now women—making up a disproportionate number of those imprisoned.
Alexander’s book was published four years ago and spent 75 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, helping to bring mass incarceration to the forefront of the national discussion.
Alexander said over the last four years, as she’s been traveling from state to state speaking to audiences from prisons to universities about her book, she’s witnessed an “awakening.” More and more people are talking about mass incarceration, racism and the war on drugs.
Deuteronomy 28:
43 The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low.
Zechariah 11:
5 Whose possessors slay them, and hold themselves not guilty: and they that sell them say, Blessed be the Lord; for I am rich: and their own shepherds pity them not.
Starbucks CEO Doubles Down on Gay-Marriage Support, Telling Shareholder to Sell Stake if He Doesn’t Like Views
Howard Schultz, the outspoken CEO of global coffee chain Starbucks, calmly but firmly defended his company’s support of same-sex marriage last week at a shareholder meeting.
In response to a challenge from a shareholder that the company’s support of same-sex marriage was hurting the company’s stock price, Schultz explained that it’s not about the bottom line but about “respecting diversity,” according to KPLU-FM, a local affiliate of NPR.
Last year, the Seattle-based company openly supported Washington state’s referendum that legalized same-sex marriage. As a result, the National Organization for Marriage launched a boycott of the coffee giant. During the company’s annual meeting in Seattle last week, shareholder Tom Strobhar spoke up, suggesting that the boycott was affecting the company’s stock value: “In the first full quarter after this boycott was announced, our sales and our earnings — shall we say politely — were a little disappointing,” he said.
Schultz shot back that Starbucks’ endorsement of marriage equality wasn’t bad for business:
“If you feel, respectfully, that you can get a higher return than the 38% you got last year, it’s a free country. You can sell your shares of Starbucks and buy shares in another company. Thank you very much,” Schultz said, to applause from the audience.
But Schultz was quick to underscore that it wasn’t even an economic decision to support gay rights. It was simply right for its people. “The lens in which we are making that decision is through the lens of our people. We employ over 200,000 people in this company, and we want to embrace diversity,” he retorted.
The heated exchange between Schultz and Strobhar came shortly after shareholders voted for the company’s board to make political contributions. Board members said they wanted the flexibility to promote the company’s policy agenda, the Daily Mail noted.
Starbucks, which last year boasted nearly 18,000 retail stores in 60 countries with plans to continue growing, endorsed the Washington state bill to legalize gay marriage, and released a statement at the time saying it was “deeply dedicated to embracing diversity,” the Huffington Post reported. The bill later became law.
In his five years as CEO, Schultz has taken on a unique role as a political activist, launching campaigns calling for political finance reform and corporate social responsibility. In December, amid the “fiscal cliff” squabbling on Capitol Hill, Schultz asked all D.C.-area Starbucks locations to write “Come Together” on coffee cups in hopes of percolating an agreement.
Revelation 12:
12 Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.
Leviticus 18:
22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.
108 people may be missing in Washington state mudslide, authorities said
Authorities are searching for more bodies after a massive mudslide in a rural part of Washington state killed at least eight and possibly left more than 100 missing, while crews battle uneven ground and rising waters.
A 1-square-mile mudslide struck Saturday morning in Snohomish County, critically injuring several people and destroying about 30 several homes. Eight bodies have been pulled from the scene and authorities described the search for additional survivors to be "grim."
John Pennington, emergency response managing director, said there are reports of up to 108 people missing in the mudslide but noted that number is unconfirmed.
"This is a large scale disaster event," Pennington said. "We have 108 individual names, or likeness ... It’s a soft 108."
"It was Saturday and probably a higher number than what you would see on a week day," he said of the victims during a press conference Monday. Pennington said it remains unclear how many structures were impacted at the time.
Crews were able to get to the muddy, tree-strewn area after geologists flew over in a helicopter and determined it was safe enough for emergency responders and technical rescue personnel to search for possible survivors, Snohomish County Fire District 21 Chief Travis Hots said Sunday evening.
"We didn't see or hear any signs of life out there today," he said, adding that they did not search the entire debris field, only drier areas safe to traverse. "It's very disappointing to all emergency responders on scene."
Snohomish County Fire Chief Travis Hots said the search under way is technically still a "rescue" operation but added that no survivors have been found since Saturday.
Before crews could get onto the debris field late Sunday morning, they looked for signs of life by helicopter. Authorities initially said it was too dangerous to send rescuers out on foot.
Rescuers' hopes of finding more survivors were buoyed late Saturday when they heard people yelling for help, but they were unable to reach anyone. The soupy mud was so thick and deep that searchers had to turn back.
The slide wiped through what neighbors described as a former fishing village of small homes -- some nearly 100 years old.
Psalm 18:7
Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth.
Job 9:6
Which shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble.
Psalm 60:2
Thou hast made the earth to tremble; thou hast broken it: heal the breaches thereof; for it shaketh.
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