 15 November 19 It's Live on the HomePage Now: Reader Supported News Sure, I'll make a donation!
FOCUS: Michael Moore | America's Adults Have Failed Our School Children
 Michael Moore, Michael Moore's Facebook Page Moore writes: "One day soon, when students are forced to leave their school because their fellow students have been shot, instead of being marched out at gunpoint with their hands over their innocent heads, they will instead rush toward the gathered adults and scream at them for doing NOTHING about guns."  Roger Stone leaves court during a lunch break in his trial in Washington on Nov. 13, 2019. (photo: Mark Makela/Getty)
Roger Stone Convicted in Federal Case Over Statements to Congress Related to WikiLeaks
Rachel Weiner, Spencer S. Hsu and Matt Zapotosky, The Washington Post Excerpt: "A federal jury has convicted longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone of lying to Congress and tampering with a witness about his efforts to learn about the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks release of hacked Democratic emails in the 2016 U.S. presidential election." READ MORE Update My Monthly Donation |
Showing posts with label sensible gun control. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sensible gun control. Show all posts
Saturday, November 16, 2019
FOCUS: Michael Moore | America's Adults Have Failed Our School Children
Saturday, September 14, 2019
MASS SHOOTINGS
I can no longer remember which mass shooting happened where. There have been so many.
Sunday, September 1, 2019
FOCUS: Beto O'Rourke on Texas Shooting: 'This Is F*cked Up'
YOUR VOTE CAN CHANGE THIS!
01 September 19
It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News
FOCUS: Beto O'Rourke on Texas Shooting: 'This Is F*cked Up'
Anna Kaplan, The Daily Beast
Kaplan writes: "Former Texas representative and 2020 hopeful Beto O’Rourke railed against Congress late Saturday for not doing enough to stop gun violence after yet another mass shooting."
Anna Kaplan, The Daily Beast
Kaplan writes: "Former Texas representative and 2020 hopeful Beto O’Rourke railed against Congress late Saturday for not doing enough to stop gun violence after yet another mass shooting."
Friday, August 30, 2019
DUMP MOSCOW MITCH!
We MUST defeat Mitch McConnell, Trump’s Enabler-in-Chief, and Kentucky MoveOn members stepped up the fight by commissioning these billboards in the state, highlighting how awful McConnell is for Americans.
Take, for instance, his response to the deadly mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton. McConnell won’t allow a vote on a Senate bill for background checks on gun sales, even though it’s supported by a majority of voters, Republicans and Democrats.
He’s known as “Moscow Mitch” for his obstruction of election-security legislation. And he leads and enables a GOP that turns a blind eye (at the very least!) to white supremacy.
We have an important chance to defeat McConnell. More than 60% of voters in Kentucky say "it's time for someone new" in his Senate seat, and his opponent raised a stunning $2.5 million on her first day as a candidate. We need your help so MoveOn can fund what's needed to beat McConnell—without taking away from our efforts to defeat Trump. So help us keep these McConnell billboards up and fuel the full range of our work to win in 2020. Will you upgrade to a $10 monthly donation to help take on McConnell AND Trump?
Monday, August 5, 2019
FOCUS: Mehdi Hasan | After El Paso, We Can No Longer Ignore Trump's Role in Inspiring Mass Shootings
05 August 19
I don't like getting solicitations for donations any more than anybody else does. Except that for RSN, this seems to be a very "necessary evil" for funding and continuing quality reading. BUT, RSN is one thing I am TOTALLY WILLING to contribute to! ...BTW, I'm retired and on a fixed income - and not all that much $$ income at that!
So howzabout all you "readers" (but non-donors) becoming REAL SUPPORTERS - send RSN some $$$, PLEASE!! (I, for one, do NOT want to lose RSN at this crucial time!!) Thanx, RSN!
Will, RSN Reader-Supporter
If you would prefer to send a check:
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04 August 19
FOCUS: Mehdi Hasan | After El Paso, We Can No Longer Ignore Trump's Role in Inspiring Mass Shootings
Mehdi Hasan, The Intercept
Hasan writes: "On Saturday morning, a gunman at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, shot and killed at least 20 people before surrendering to the police. By all accounts, Patrick Crusius, the 21-year-old alleged shooter, is a fan of President Donald Trump and his policies."
READ MORE
Mehdi Hasan, The Intercept
Hasan writes: "On Saturday morning, a gunman at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, shot and killed at least 20 people before surrendering to the police. By all accounts, Patrick Crusius, the 21-year-old alleged shooter, is a fan of President Donald Trump and his policies."
READ MORE
Sunday, June 9, 2019
MASS SHOOTINGS, SOUTH CAROLINA RACISM: GEORGE STINNEY, JR., REPUBLICANS ARE THE PROBLEM
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In March 1944, deep in the Jim Crow South, police came for 14-year-old George Stinney Jr. His parents weren’t at home. His little sister was hiding in the family’s chicken coop behind the house in Alcolu, a segregated mill town in South Carolina, while officers handcuffed George and his older brother, Johnnie, and took them away.
Two young white girls had been found brutally murdered, beaten over the head with a railroad spike and dumped in a water-logged ditch. He and his little sister, who were black, were said to be last ones to see them alive. Authorities later released the older Stinney – and directed their attention toward George.
“[The police] were looking for someone to blame it on, so they used my brother as a scapegoat,” his sister Amie Ruffner told WLTX-TV earlier this year.
On June 16, 1944, he was executed, becoming the youngest person in modern times to be put to death. On Wednesday, 70 years later, he was exonerated.
Stinney’s case has tormented civil rights advocates for years.
He was questioned in a small room, alone – without his parents, without an attorney. (Gideon v. Wainwright, the landmark Supreme Court case guaranteeing the right to counsel, wouldn’t be decided until 1963.) Police claimed the boy confessed to killing Betty June Binnicker, 11, and Mary Emma Thames, 8, admitting he wanted to have sex with Betty. They rushed him to trial.
After a two-hour trial and a 10-minute jury deliberation, Stinney was convicted of murder on April 24 and sentenced to die by electrocution, according to a book by Mark R. Jones. At the time, 14 was the age of criminal responsibility. His lawyer, a local political figure, chose not to appeal.
Stinney’s initial trial, the evidence – or lack of it – and the speed with which he was convicted seemed to illustrate how a young black boy was railroaded by an all-white justice system. During the one-day trial, the defense called few or no witnesses. There was no written record of a confession. Today, most people who could testify are dead and most evidence is long gone.
New facts in the case prompted Circuit Judge Carmen Mullen to vacate his conviction on Wednesday – 70 years after Stinney’s execution.
“I can think of no greater injustice than the violation of one’s Constitutional rights which has been proven to me in this case,” Mullen wrote.
The case has haunted the town since it happened, but garnered new attention when historian George Frierson, a local school board member raised in Stinney’s hometown, started studying it some years ago. Since then, Stinney’s former cellmate issued a statement saying the boy denied the charges. “I didn’t, didn’t do it,’ ” Wilford Hunter said Stinney told him. “He said, ‘Why would they kill me for something I didn’t do?’ ”
In 2009, an attorney planned to file statements from Stinney’s family members, but waited because he heard a man in Tennessee, who was not related to Stinney, could offer an alibi for the youth. The man never came forward. It reportedly delayed the new trial, but didn’t stop it.
“South Carolina still recognizes George Stinney as a murderer,” defense attorney Matt Burgess told CNN earlier this year. “We felt that something needed to be done about that.”
New details started to emerge. Stinney’s family claimed his confession was coerced, and that he had an alibi that was never heard. That alibi was his sister, now Amie Ruffner, 77. She said she was with him at the alleged time of the crime, watching their family’s cow graze near some railroad tracks by their house when the two girls rode over on their bicycles.
“They said, ‘Could you tell us where we could find some maypops?’ ” Ruffner remembered them saying, according to WLTX-TV. “We said, ‘No,’ and they went on about their business.”
Stinney was accused of murdering the girls while they picked wildflowers.
Stinney’s family fled their home. His brother, Charles, who is now in his 80s, said in a statement they never came forward because they were terrified.
“George’s conviction and execution was something my family believed could happen to any of us in the family. Therefore, we made a decision for the safety of the family to leave it be,” Charles Stinney wrote in his sworn statement.
Aime Ruffner after testifying at a hearing to reopen the case for her brother George Stinney Jr. in Sumter, S.C. (Reuters)
Earlier this year, the case picked up speed. At a hearing in January, Stinney’s family demanded a new trial. Mullen heard testimony from Stinney’s brothers and sisters, a witness from the search party that discovered the bodies and experts who challenged Stinney’s confession. A child forensic psychiatrist testified this week that Stinney’s confession should have never been trusted.
“It is my professional opinion, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, that the confession given by George Stinney Jr. on or about March 24, 1944, is best characterized as a coerced, compliant, false confession,” Amanda Sales told the court, according to NBC News. “It is not reliable.”
Still, some argued Stinney’s admission of guilt was clear.
At the time a law enforcement officer named H.S. Newman wrote in a handwritten statement: “I arrested a boy by the name of George Stinney. He then made a confession and told me where to find a piece of iron about 15 inches long. He said he put it in a ditch about six feet from the bicycle.” Few other documents from that time exist.
James Gamble, whose father was the sheriff at the time, told the Herald in 2003 he was in the back seat with Stinney when his father drove the boy to prison.
“There wasn’t ever any doubt about him being guilty,” he said. “He was real talkative about it. He said, ‘I’m real sorry. I didn’t want to kill them girls.’ “
Indeed, just 84 days after the girls’ deaths, Stinney was sent to the electric chair. Today, an appeal from a death sentence is all but automatic, and years, even decades, pass before an execution, which provides at least some time for new evidence to emerge.
Stinney was barely 5 feet tall and not yet 100 pounds. The electric chair’s straps were too big for his frail body. Newspapers at the time reported he had to sit on books to reach the headpiece. And when the switch was flipped, the convulsions knocked down the large mask, exposing his tearful face to the crowd.
Frierson and Stinney’s family maintained that they never wanted a pardon.
“There’s a difference: A pardon is forgiving someone for something they did,” Norma Robinson, George Stinney’s niece, told the Manning Times.“That wasn’t an option for my mother, my aunt or my uncle. We weren’t asking forgiveness.”
Instead, they sought what’s called a “writ of coram nobis.” It means, in essence, mistakes were made.
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