The College Hills Seventh Day Adventist Church in Knoxville was attacked Monday, God’s Power Church of Christ Georgia on Tuesday, the Briar Creek Road Baptist Church in North Carolina, the Fruitland Presbyterian Church in Gibson County, Tennessee on Wednesday. On Friday, the Glover Grove Missionary Baptist Church in Warrenville, South Carolina also caught fire. The College Heights Baptist Church in Elyria, Ohio, caught fire on Saturday.
Three of the fires were confirmed as having been intentionally set.
As New York Magazine noted in a recent article, “In the past 25 years, dozens of black churches have been burnt down, firebombed, or otherwise vandalized by racists.”
Here’s a partial list of the most recent church arsons prior to last week:
March 26, 1997 — A 23-year-old man is the nation’s first arsonist prosecuted under the federal Church Arson Prevention Act after he burnt down a black church in Henderson, Nevada.
June 30, 1997 — Five white men and women between the ages of 18 and 21 burn down a 21-member church in Little River, Alabama.
January 12, 2004 — Two white men break into a black church in Roanoke, Virginia, and cause $77,000 in damage.
July 11, 2006 — A cross is burnt outside a black church in Richmond, Virginia.
November 4, 2008 — Hours after President Obama’s first inauguration, three white men in Springfield, Massachusetts, doused the partially constructed Macedonia Church of God in Christ in gas and set it ablaze.
December 28, 2010 — A white man attempting to “gain status” with a white-supremacist gang firebombs a black church in Crane, Texas.
Based upon the most recent inflow projections, along with the lack of forecasted precipitation events, the existing water supply in the Upper San Joaquin River watershed is insufficient to meet the needs of pre-1914 claims of right. With this notice, the State Water Board is notifying pre-1914 appropriative claims of right within the Upper San Joaquin River watershed of the need to immediately stop diverting water with the exceptions discussed below. The Upper San Joaquin River runs from upstream of Friant Dam to the confluence with the Merced River.
On January 23, 2015 and again on April 2, 2015, the State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board) issued a Notice of Surface Water Shortage and Potential for Curtailment due to dry conditions throughout the State. On April 1, 2015, the Governor issued an executive order, order B-29-15, continuing the state of emergency, initially enacted on January 17, 2014, due to drinking water shortages, diminished water for agriculture production, degraded habitat for fish and wildlife, increased wildfire risk and the threat of saltwater contamination to fresh water supplies in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (Delta).
On April 23, 2015 and May 1, 2015, the State Water Board issued curtailment notices to all post-1914 appropriative water rights in the Sacramento and San Joaquin River watersheds, inclusive of the Delta, due to insufficient projected water supplies. On June 12, 2015, the State Water Board issued a curtailment notice to all pre-1914 San Joaquin watershed diverters with a priority date of 1903 or later. Based on updated water supply projections provided by the Department of Water Resources, the State Water Board is now notifying pre-1914 claims of right within the Upper San Joaquin River watershed that, due to ongoing drought conditions, there is insufficient water in the system to service their claims of right.
Dr. Jeff Bradstreet, who helped families whose children were believed to have been damaged by immunizations, was found dead last week under what many are calling ‘suspicious circumstances’.
He was found dead floating in a North Carolina river with a gunshot would to the chest.
The body of Dr. James Jeffery Bradstreet was found by a fisherman in the Rocky Broad River in Chimney Rock on Friday June 19th
Dr Bradstreet, a medical doctor, prominent autism researcher and vaccine opponent,was also parent of a child who developed autism after vaccination. His account of his son’s vaccine injury is posted on his online blog.
Robert Kennedy Jr. seeks The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan's counsel in exposing the pharmaceutical machine's genetically coded vaccine that targeting Black males!
“Bradstreet had a gunshot wound to the chest, which appeared to be self inflicted, according to deputies,” reported WHNS.
In a press release, the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office announced, “Divers from the Henderson County Rescue Squad responded to the scene and recovered a handgun from the river.”
An investigation into the death is ongoing, and the results of an autopsy are also reportedly forthcoming.
Dr. Bradstreet ran a private practice in Buford, Georgia, which focused on “treating children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, PPD, and related neurological and developmental disorders.”
Among various remedies, Dr. Bradstreet’s Wellness Center reportedly carried out “mercury toxicity” treatments, believing the heavy metal to be a leading factor in the development of childhood autism.
Dr. Bradstreet undertook the effort to pinpoint the cause of the disease after his own child developed the ailment following routine vaccination.
“Autism taught me more about medicine than medical school did,” the doctor once stated at a conference, according to the Epoch Times’ Jake Crosby.
In addition to treating patients, Bradstreet has also offered expert testimony in federal court on behalf of vaccine-injured families and was founder and president of the International Child Development Resource Center, which at one time employed the much-scorned autism expert Dr. Andrew Wakefield as “research director.”
Robert Kennedy, Jr: CDC Scientist Still Maintains Agency Forced Researchers To Lie About Safety Of Mercury Based Vaccines
The circumstances surrounding Bradstreet’s death are made all the more curious by a recent multi-agency raid led by the FDA on his offices.
“The FDA has yet to reveal why agents searched the office of the doctor, reportedly a former pastor who has been controversial for well over a decade,” reported theGwinnett Daily Post.
Social media pages dedicated to Bradstreet’s memory are filled with comments from families who say the deceased doctor impacted their lives for the better.
“Dr. Bradstreet was my son’s doctor after my son was diagnosed with autism. He worked miracles,” one Facebook user states. “At 16, my son is now looking at a normal life thanks to him. I thank him every day.”
“I will forever be grateful and thankful for Dr. Bradstreet recovering my son… from autism,” another person writes. “Treatments have changed my son’s life so that he can grow up and live a normal healthy life. Dr. Bradstreet will be missed greatly!”
A GoFundMe page has also been set up by one of Bradstreet’s family members seeking “To find the answers to the many questions leading up to the death of Dr Bradstreet, including an exhaustive investigation into the possibility of foul play.”
Despite his family requesting the public refrain from speculation, many are nevertheless concluding the doctor’s death to be part of a conspiracy.
“Self-inflicted? In the chest? I’m not buying this,” one person in the WHNS comments thread states. “This was a doctor who had access to pharmaceuticals of all kinds. This was a religious man with a thriving medical practice. Sorry, but this stinks of murder and cover-up.”
Another commentor had a more definitive conjecture:
“He did NOT kill himself! He was murdered for who he was speaking against, what he knew, and what he was doing about it. He was brilliant kind compassionate doctor with amazing abilities to heal. He was taken. Stopped. Silenced. Why would a doctor who had access to pharmaceuticals and could die peacefully shoot himself in the chest???? And throw himself in a river?? THIS IS OBVIOUS! MURDER!!”
June 29, 2015 - In 2006, Pluto lost its status as a planet. It was downgraded to a “dwarf planet,” in fact, a decision that rankled many who had grown accustomed to the solar system containing nine celestial bodies—including Sheldon Cooper from the Big Bang Theory:
There may be a chance to revisit the controversial move again this year. Pluto, the last unexplored planet of any kind in our system, will be reached by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on July 15. The information the spacecraft provides will tell us if Pluto is a legitimate planet or merely a very large floating rock in the Kuiper Belt, a row of icy objects found beyond Neptune.
The downgrading of Pluto, discovered in 1930, came via a decision made by a very slim margin by the International Astronomical Union, spearheaded by what Discover magazine calls “Pluto haters.” Only 237 out of 10,000 members of the IAU voted in favor of downgrading Pluto—157 voted against, and the rest were not present.
Another NASA vessel, Dawn spacecraft, is due to arrive at Ceres—the largest asteroid in the belt between Mars and Jupiter—next week, which could result in Ceres being added to our list of planets. Some think Ceres has as much freshwater as Earth. As Dawn approaches Ceres’ orbit on March 6, this is a picture it captured:
Ceres was discovered in 1801 and immediately named a planet before being downgraded the next year. That could change this year—if astronomers can agree on what a planet is.
June 28, 2015 - Here's a nice little weekend gift for all of you X-Files fan: Fox has released the first preview pics of the long awaited TV six-part series revival, along with a few teasing details about the first episode, titled "My Struggle," in which Annet Mahendru (The Americans) is Sveta, a woman "who believes she’s regularly abducted by aliens."
Another new character is Joel McHale, who will play Tad O’Malley, "the anchor of a popular conservative Internet news network who becomes an unlikely ally for Mulder" --Conservative, huh? Biting already at the hand who feeds you, Mr. Carter?
As for the old characters we all loved, Mitch Pileggi and William B. Davis are returning as Walter Skinner and The Smoking Man, respectively. Which is a bit odd considering how he's supposed to have been killed in the last episode of the old series; so either the shadowy villain managed to escape, he'll be shown on playback scenes, or Chris Carter will once again play around with the concept of spirits appearing to the characters.
IMO it would've been nice to see Nicholas Lea return as Alex Krycek, too. Maybe on the next season --if there is one?
The X-Files’ new season premieres in January 26th, 2016.
The Bible calls us to hope. To persevere, and have faith in things not seen.
“They were still living by faith when they died,” Scripture tells us. “They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on Earth.”
We are here today to remember a man of God who lived by faith. A man who believed in things not seen. A man who believed there were better days ahead, off in the distance. A man of service who persevered, knowing full well he would not receive all those things he was promised, because he believed his efforts would deliver a better life for those who followed.
To Jennifer, his beloved wife; to Eliana and Malana, his beautiful, wonderful daughters; to the Mother Emanuel family and the people of Charleston, the people of South Carolina.
I cannot claim to have the good fortune to know Reverend Pinckney well. But I did have the pleasure of knowing him and meeting him here in South Carolina, back when we were both a little bit younger. (Laughter.) Back when I didn’t have visible grey hair. (Laughter.) The first thing I noticed was his graciousness, his smile, his reassuring baritone, his deceptive sense of humor -- all qualities that helped him wear so effortlessly a heavy burden of expectation.
Friends of his remarked this week that when Clementa Pinckney entered a room, it was like the future arrived; that even from a young age, folks knew he was special. Anointed. He was the progeny of a long line of the faithful -- a family of preachers who spread God’s word, a family of protesters who sowed change to expand voting rights and desegregate the South. Clem heard their instruction, and he did not forsake their teaching.
He was in the pulpit by 13, pastor by 18, public servant by 23. He did not exhibit any of the cockiness of youth, nor youth’s insecurities; instead, he set an example worthy of his position, wise beyond his years, in his speech, in his conduct, in his love, faith, and purity.
As a senator, he represented a sprawling swath of the Lowcountry, a place that has long been one of the most neglected in America. A place still wracked by poverty and inadequate schools; a place where children can still go hungry and the sick can go without treatment. A place that needed somebody like Clem. (Applause.)
His position in the minority party meant the odds of winning more resources for his constituents were often long. His calls for greater equity were too often unheeded, the votes he cast were sometimes lonely. But he never gave up. He stayed true to his convictions. He would not grow discouraged. After a full day at the capitol, he’d climb into his car and head to the church to draw sustenance from his family, from his ministry, from the community that loved and needed him. There he would fortify his faith, and imagine what might be.
Reverend Pinckney embodied a politics that was neither mean, nor small. He conducted himself quietly, and kindly, and diligently. He encouraged progress not by pushing his ideas alone, but by seeking out your ideas, partnering with you to make things happen. He was full of empathy and fellow feeling, able to walk in somebody else’s shoes and see through their eyes. No wonder one of his senate colleagues remembered Senator Pinckney as “the most gentle of the 46 of us -- the best of the 46 of us.”
Clem was often asked why he chose to be a pastor and a public servant. But the person who asked probably didn’t know the history of the AME church. (Applause.) As our brothers and sisters in the AME church know, we don't make those distinctions. “Our calling,” Clem once said, “is not just within the walls of the congregation, but…the life and community in which our congregation resides.” (Applause.)
He embodied the idea that our Christian faith demands deeds and not just words; that the “sweet hour of prayer” actually lasts the whole week long -- (applause) -- that to put our faith in action is more than individual salvation, it's about our collective salvation; that to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and house the homeless is not just a call for isolated charity but the imperative of a just society.
What a good man. Sometimes I think that's the best thing to hope for when you're eulogized -- after all the words and recitations and resumes are read, to just say someone was a good man. (Applause.)
You don’t have to be of high station to be a good man. Preacher by 13. Pastor by 18. Public servant by 23. What a life Clementa Pinckney lived. What an example he set. What a model for his faith. And then to lose him at 41 -- slain in his sanctuary with eight wonderful members of his flock, each at different stages in life but bound together by a common commitment to God.
Cynthia Hurd. Susie Jackson. Ethel Lance. DePayne Middleton-Doctor. Tywanza Sanders. Daniel L. Simmons. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton. Myra Thompson. Good people. Decent people. God-fearing people. (Applause.) People so full of life and so full of kindness. People who ran the race, who persevered. People of great faith.
To the families of the fallen, the nation shares in your grief. Our pain cuts that much deeper because it happened in a church. The church is and always has been the center of African-American life -- (applause) -- a place to call our own in a too often hostile world, a sanctuary from so many hardships.
Over the course of centuries, black churches served as “hush harbors” where slaves could worship in safety; praise houses where their free descendants could gather and shout hallelujah -- (applause) -- rest stops for the weary along the Underground Railroad; bunkers for the foot soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement. They have been, and continue to be, community centers where we organize for jobs and justice; places of scholarship and network; places where children are loved and fed and kept out of harm’s way, and told that they are beautiful and smart -- (applause) -- and taught that they matter. (Applause.) That’s what happens in church.
That’s what the black church means. Our beating heart. The place where our dignity as a people is inviolate. When there’s no better example of this tradition than Mother Emanuel -- (applause) -- a church built by blacks seeking liberty, burned to the ground because its founder sought to end slavery, only to rise up again, a Phoenix from these ashes. (Applause.)
When there were laws banning all-black church gatherings, services happened here anyway, in defiance of unjust laws. When there was a righteous movement to dismantle Jim Crow, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached from its pulpit, and marches began from its steps. A sacred place, this church. Not just for blacks, not just for Christians, but for every American who cares about the steady expansion -- (applause) -- of human rights and human dignity in this country; a foundation stone for liberty and justice for all. That’s what the church meant. (Applause.)
We do not know whether the killer of Reverend Pinckney and eight others knew all of this history. But he surely sensed the meaning of his violent act. It was an act that drew on a long history of bombs and arson and shots fired at churches, not random, but as a means of control, a way to terrorize and oppress. (Applause.) An act that he imagined would incite fear and recrimination; violence and suspicion. An act that he presumed would deepen divisions that trace back to our nation’s original sin.
Oh, but God works in mysterious ways. (Applause.) God has different ideas. (Applause.)
He didn’t know he was being used by God. (Applause.) Blinded by hatred, the alleged killer could not see the grace surrounding Reverend Pinckney and that Bible study group -- the light of love that shone as they opened the church doors and invited a stranger to join in their prayer circle. The alleged killer could have never anticipated the way the families of the fallen would respond when they saw him in court -- in the midst of unspeakable grief, with words of forgiveness. He couldn’t imagine that. (Applause.)
The alleged killer could not imagine how the city of Charleston, under the good and wise leadership of Mayor Riley -- (applause) -- how the state of South Carolina, how the United States of America would respond -- not merely with revulsion at his evil act, but with big-hearted generosity and, more importantly, with a thoughtful introspection and self-examination that we so rarely see in public life.
Blinded by hatred, he failed to comprehend what Reverend Pinckney so well understood -- the power of God’s grace. (Applause.)
This whole week, I’ve been reflecting on this idea of grace. (Applause.) The grace of the families who lost loved ones. The grace that Reverend Pinckney would preach about in his sermons. The grace described in one of my favorite hymnals -- the one we all know: Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. (Applause.) I once was lost, but now I’m found; was blind but now I see. (Applause.)
According to the Christian tradition, grace is not earned. Grace is not merited. It’s not something we deserve. Rather, grace is the free and benevolent favor of God -- (applause) -- as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings. Grace.
As a nation, out of this terrible tragedy, God has visited grace upon us, for he has allowed us to see where we’ve been blind. (Applause.) He has given us the chance, where we’ve been lost, to find our best selves. (Applause.) We may not have earned it, this grace, with our rancor and complacency, and short-sightedness and fear of each other -- but we got it all the same. He gave it to us anyway. He’s once more given us grace. But it is up to us now to make the most of it, to receive it with gratitude, and to prove ourselves worthy of this gift.
For too long, we were blind to the pain that the Confederate flag stirred in too many of our citizens. (Applause.) It’s true, a flag did not cause these murders. But as people from all walks of life, Republicans and Democrats, now acknowledge -- including Governor Haley, whose recent eloquence on the subject is worthy of praise -- (applause) -- as we all have to acknowledge, the flag has always represented more than just ancestral pride. (Applause.) For many, black and white, that flag was a reminder of systemic oppression and racial subjugation. We see that now.
Removing the flag from this state’s capitol would not be an act of political correctness; it would not be an insult to the valor of Confederate soldiers. It would simply be an acknowledgment that the cause for which they fought -- the cause of slavery -- was wrong -- (applause) -- the imposition of Jim Crow after the Civil War, the resistance to civil rights for all people was wrong. (Applause.) It would be one step in an honest accounting of America’s history; a modest but meaningful balm for so many unhealed wounds. It would be an expression of the amazing changes that have transformed this state and this country for the better, because of the work of so many people of goodwill, people of all races striving to form a more perfect union. By taking down that flag, we express God’s grace. (Applause.)
But I don't think God wants us to stop there. (Applause.) For too long, we’ve been blind to the way past injustices continue to shape the present. Perhaps we see that now. Perhaps this tragedy causes us to ask some tough questions about how we can permit so many of our children to languish in poverty, or attend dilapidated schools, or grow up without prospects for a job or for a career. (Applause.)
Perhaps it causes us to examine what we’re doing to cause some of our children to hate. (Applause.) Perhaps it softens hearts towards those lost young men, tens and tens of thousands caught up in the criminal justice system -- (applause) -- and leads us to make sure that that system is not infected with bias; that we embrace changes in how we train and equip our police so that the bonds of trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve make us all safer and more secure. (Applause.)
Maybe we now realize the way racial bias can infect us even when we don't realize it, so that we're guarding against not just racial slurs, but we're also guarding against the subtle impulse to call Johnny back for a job interview but not Jamal. (Applause.) So that we search our hearts when we consider laws to make it harder for some of our fellow citizens to vote. (Applause.) By recognizing our common humanity by treating every child as important, regardless of the color of their skin or the station into which they were born, and to do what’s necessary to make opportunity real for every American -- by doing that, we express God’s grace. (Applause.)
For too long --
AUDIENCE: For too long!
THE PRESIDENT: For too long, we’ve been blind to the unique mayhem that gun violence inflicts upon this nation. (Applause.) Sporadically, our eyes are open: When eight of our brothers and sisters are cut down in a church basement, 12 in a movie theater, 26 in an elementary school. But I hope we also see the 30 precious lives cut short by gun violence in this country every single day; the countless more whose lives are forever changed -- the survivors crippled, the children traumatized and fearful every day as they walk to school, the husband who will never feel his wife’s warm touch, the entire communities whose grief overflows every time they have to watch what happened to them happen to some other place.
The vast majority of Americans -- the majority of gun owners -- want to do something about this. We see that now. (Applause.) And I'm convinced that by acknowledging the pain and loss of others, even as we respect the traditions and ways of life that make up this beloved country -- by making the moral choice to change, we express God’s grace. (Applause.)
We don’t earn grace. We're all sinners. We don't deserve it. (Applause.) But God gives it to us anyway. (Applause.) And we choose how to receive it. It's our decision how to honor it.
None of us can or should expect a transformation in race relations overnight. Every time something like this happens, somebody says we have to have a conversation about race. We talk a lot about race. There’s no shortcut. And we don’t need more talk. (Applause.) None of us should believe that a handful of gun safety measures will prevent every tragedy. It will not. People of goodwill will continue to debate the merits of various policies, as our democracy requires -- this is a big, raucous place, America is. And there are good people on both sides of these debates. Whatever solutions we find will necessarily be incomplete.
But it would be a betrayal of everything Reverend Pinckney stood for, I believe, if we allowed ourselves to slip into a comfortable silence again. (Applause.) Once the eulogies have been delivered, once the TV cameras move on, to go back to business as usual -- that’s what we so often do to avoid uncomfortable truths about the prejudice that still infects our society. (Applause.) To settle for symbolic gestures without following up with the hard work of more lasting change -- that’s how we lose our way again.
It would be a refutation of the forgiveness expressed by those families if we merely slipped into old habits, whereby those who disagree with us are not merely wrong but bad; where we shout instead of listen; where we barricade ourselves behind preconceived notions or well-practiced cynicism.
Reverend Pinckney once said, “Across the South, we have a deep appreciation of history -- we haven’t always had a deep appreciation of each other’s history.” (Applause.) What is true in the South is true for America. Clem understood that justice grows out of recognition of ourselves in each other. That my liberty depends on you being free, too. (Applause.) That history can’t be a sword to justify injustice, or a shield against progress, but must be a manual for how to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past -- how to break the cycle. A roadway toward a better world. He knew that the path of grace involves an open mind -- but, more importantly, an open heart.
That’s what I’ve felt this week -- an open heart. That, more than any particular policy or analysis, is what’s called upon right now, I think -- what a friend of mine, the writer Marilyn Robinson, calls “that reservoir of goodness, beyond, and of another kind, that we are able to do each other in the ordinary cause of things.”
That reservoir of goodness. If we can find that grace, anything is possible. (Applause.) If we can tap that grace, everything can change. (Applause.)
Amazing grace. Amazing grace.
(Begins to sing) -- Amazing grace -- (applause) -- how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me; I once was lost, but now I’m found; was blind but now I see. (Applause.)
Clementa Pinckney found that grace.
Cynthia Hurd found that grace.
Susie Jackson found that grace.
Ethel Lance found that grace.
DePayne Middleton-Doctor found that grace.
Tywanza Sanders found that grace.
Daniel L. Simmons, Sr. found that grace.
Sharonda Coleman-Singleton found that grace.
Myra Thompson found that grace.
Through the example of their lives, they’ve now passed it on to us. May we find ourselves worthy of that precious and extraordinary gift, as long as our lives endure. May grace now lead them home. May God continue to shed His grace on the United States of America. (Applause.)
(IVN) – Level the Playing Field (LPF), the group that is trying to improve the health of American democracy by opening up the fall 2016 presidential debates, filed a lawsuit this on Monday in federal district court against the Federal Election Commission. LPF was joined in the historic lawsuit by the Green Party and the Libertarian Party.
The plaintiffs are represented by Alexandra Shapiro, who was Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s law clerk and is now with the Shapiro Arato firm. Ms. Shapiro has won several high-profile cases lately, including an appeals court ruling in April that overturned two insider-trading convictions.
“The CPD is not nonpartisan and instead promotes the candidates of the Democratic and Republican parties while excluding all others from the debates.”
The LPF lawsuit charges that the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) and certain of its directors have violated federal election law, including a Federal Election Commission (FEC) regulation requiring organizations like the CPD to be “nonpartisan” and to use “objective criteria” to determine who can be in their debates.
The federal court complaint cites extensive evidence showing that the CPD is not nonpartisan and instead promotes the candidates of the Democratic and Republican parties while excluding all others from the debates. And since 2000, it has used a criterion that only the Democratic and Republican nominees could reasonably achieve, in order to illegally exclude third-party and independent candidates from the debates.
According to the lawsuit, the failure of the FEC — whose commissioners are members of the Democratic and Republican parties — to act on an administrative complaint against the CPD and a petition for rulemaking was arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and otherwise contrary to law.
We are asking the court to either direct the FEC to find that the CPD and certain of its directors have violated the law, or to permit us to bring a civil action directly against the CPD and those directors. The suit also asks the court to direct the FEC to open a rulemaking proceeding to revise its rules governing presidential debates.
OWINGS MILLS, Md. (AP) — An unarmed black man killed by Baltimore County police told his girlfriend's mother that he was going to commit suicide as officers were on their way to his home after reports of domestic violence, the mother said Thursday.
Officers shot Spencer L. McCain, 41, about 1 a.m. at a condominium in Owings Mills. Also in the home at the time were two of his young daughters and their mother, Shannon Sulton, who told police McCain beat and threatened her, Baltimore County Police Chief Jim Johnson said at a news conference.
Three officers were on the scene, and all fired as McCain was in a "defensive position," holding his arms and body in a manner that suggested he was armed, Johnson said. He said the officers thought he had a weapon, but none was found. Two of the officers are white, and one is black, police said. All are on administrative leave.
The oldest child present, a 10-year-old girl, called her grandmother, Rochelle Byrd, who is Sulton's mother, early Thursday because she heard fighting in a bedroom and was scared, Byrd said. Byrd called 911.
"I called (the child) back to tell her to open the door for the police, and he took the phone. He said, 'I'm going to have to commit suicide,'" Byrd said. "I called back the police and told them he was going to commit suicide."
Byrd said she thought at that point that McCain could kill his family and then himself.
Johnson said an officer who responded to Byrd's calls heard screams coming from inside the second-floor condo and called for backup, Johnson said. The officers forced their way into the home, where McCain was shot. Johnson said 19 casings were found at the scene, but it wasn't clear how many times McCain was hit.
Sulton had bruises, cuts and a head injury, Johnson said. The girls and the officers weren't hurt.
Race has not been raised as a factor in McCain's death, but it comes amid a national debate about the deaths of black men at the hands of police.
According to 2013 census figures, 27.5 percent of Baltimore County's population is black and 64.1 percent is white. The police chief and county executive are white. As of February, black people made up less than 13 percent of the county's 1,868-member police force.
Byrd said McCain received treatment last year after another incident involving law enforcement.
"He was ranting and raving about the president," Byrd said. "They took him to Northwest Hospital and they put him on medication." Byrd said McCain was "like a different person" on the medication, but he recently decided to stop taking it, and Sulton told her last week that "things were starting to get bad."
Byrd said she and her family are distraught over McCain's death; that the man "was having issues" but "throughout it all, he was a very good father."
The couple had a history of problems, according to police and a neighbor. Since January 2012, police responded to 17 domestic violence calls at the home in a quiet suburban community outside Baltimore, said Cpl. John Wachter, a police spokesman. Johnson said there was a protective order barring McCain from contact with Sulton, and ordering him to stay away from the home and the children's schools.
Keith Lewis, who has lived next door for five years, said he would often hear the couple fight through the walls. But Thursday was particularly raucous, Lewis said — loud enough to wake him.
"They woke me up at about 12:45. Something hit the wall. I woke up. I heard yelling," Lewis said. "The babies were crying. It sounded like begging and pleading, 'Don't do this. Why are you doing this? Stop.'"
Johnson said Sulton told detectives McCain threatened to give her "the beating you deserve" and attacked her.
Lewis said he spotted a pair of police cruisers from his window shortly after 1 a.m., and things seemed to calm down briefly.
"I drifted back to sleep," Lewis said. "Then I heard her yelling again. I heard the door get booted, and then all hell broke loose."
The American hip hop industry is huge. Millions of fans and supporters across the world. And it sends a strong message. Women, money, and brands top the charts. But there's another kind of beat that doesn't make it on corporate labels - just as talented but not the right message. Political and social issues in rap music won't sell. One rapper who know's what a challenge it is to sell records if you say what you believe in is Jasiri-X who joined us In the Now along with Solomon Comission author of the book, "A Hip Hop Activist Speaks Out on Social Issues".
If you’re wondering how a man who stood up for a child molester can sink any lower, Mike Huckabee is trying his hardest.
Fresh off his latest scandal (if you lost count, that would be the one where he said as a teen he wished he could dress up like a girl towatch girls shower in the locker room) the former governor marched onto the set of Fox News to insist racism wouldn’t be an issue if only people would be more religious.
It was just the latest in Fox’s on-going effort to somehow, some way frame the Charleston church shooting perpetuated by an avowed white supremacist as a religious, not a racial issue. As was clear almost immediately, the strategy isn’t working. And if they are resorting to booking Huckabee, they must truly be getting desperate.
The interview opened up with a rare show of contention between a Fox host and a Republican guest. Fox’s Ed Henry noted that unlike many of his counterparts, Huckabee is still refusing to call for the Confederate flag to be taken down from South Carolina’s state Capitol. The flag had been used as a symbol of white supremacy by the Charleston shooter, as well as many racists for many generations. But don’t tell that to Huckabee. He’s pretty sure there is no racism left in South Carolina.
“And so what I said was, Ed, as a frequent visitor to South Carolina, I look at this objectively. You’ve got a female governor who is of Indian descent, you have the only elected African-American U.S. senator in the South from a state of 4.8 million people, elected largely by people who are mostly white. That’s not racism.
“I don’t think the president of the United States need to be picking the symbols that fly on state capitol grounds. I didn’t punt, I didn’t squirm, I didn’t vacillate on it.”
So we know that Huckabee falls firmly into the “racism doesn’t exist” camp, an idea so preposterous that it should serve as a disqualifier for any presidential nominee. However, he manages to go further:
“I keep hearing people saying we need more conversations about race. Actually we don’t need more conversations. What we need is conversions because the reconciliations that changes people is not a racial reconciliation, it’s a spiritual reconciliation when people are reconciled to God.”
According to Huckabee, people who love God cannot possibly be racist and therefore the best way to combat racism (which he doesn’t think exists in America) is to double down on God.
“When I love God and I know that God created other people regardless of their color as much as he made me, I don’t have a problem with racism,” Huckabee said, before concluding: “It’s solved!”
Huckabee must not be aware of his nation’s troubling relationship between religion and race, or he might be wary of concluding that religion would stop racism. For much of America’s history, religion was used to justify slavery, and later segregation. The most famous hate group in the country, the Ku Klux Klan, is steeped in Christian beliefs and iconography. They had no trouble using that ideology to justify using an organized reign of terror on their black victims for generations.
As Slate columnist Jamelle Bouie vividly described recently, lynchings and KKK rallies were often little more than thinly-veiled religious rituals:
“[L]ynchings weren’t just vigilante punishments or, as the Equal Justice Initiative notes, ‘celebratory acts of racial control and domination.’ They were rituals. And specifically, they were rituals of Southern evangelicalism and its then-dogma of purity, literalism, and white supremacy. ‘Christianity was the primary lens through which most southerners conceptualized and made sense of suffering and death of any sort,’ writes historian Amy Louise Wood in Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890–1940. ‘It would be inconceivable that they could inflict pain and torment on the bodies of black men without imagining that violence as a religious act, laden with Christian symbolism and significance.’”
Huckabee’s motives to talk about God and not racism are less about reality and more about the self-serving need for Huckabee and his peers to avoid confronting the ugly rot at the base of the right-wing ideology.
Watch Huckabee’s sad attempt at derailing the discussion on racism below, via Raw Story:
Last night, as I watched CNN Tonight with Don Lemon I was startled to see NY Times columnist Timothy Egan making the case that president Obama had a unique and important opportunity to apologize for Slavery on behalf of the United States. That Obama should apologize for "The land of the Free being the largest Slave holding country in the world." He referred to slavery as America's"Original Sin". He went on to say that with all of the division in the country over the Charleston shooting and Confederate Flag that the time was right for the jesture and that Obama being a black man would be the perfect candidate. Don Lemon ate it up. He thought it was a great idea but the other guy on the panel, Joe Madison, an African American said, "That is the most absurd thing I have ever heard."
I know that Don likes to stir the pot and interject his opinions but this was a time where he should've stayed nuetral. Don argued that if Obama didn't do it then who would because to date no one has. Sorry Don, that's not the point. There is absolutely no way the first Black President of the United States can be the one to apologize to black people for slavery. Call it ironic, call it what you want but I call it ridiculous. If Obama does this he will lose all credibility. I'd rather have no apology than to have the first black president do it and I can't believe that even Don Lemon thinks that this is a good idea. Get in the comment box and let me know what you think about this proposal.
Members of Columbia Prison Divest hold protest signs at a University Senate meeting on April 2, 2015.
(CNN)Columbia University has become the first college in the United States to divest from private prison companies, following a student activist campaign.
The decision means the Ivy League school -- with boasts a roughly $9 billion endowment -- will sell its roughly 220,000 shares in G4S, the world's largest private security firm, as well its shares in the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private prison company in the United states.
The campaign began in early 2014 when a small group of Columbia students discovered tuition money was being invested in the two firms, which run prisons and detention centers and militarized borders.
The group, called Columbia Prison Divest, launched protests and meetings with administrators where they argued it was wrong for the elite school to invest in a "racist, violent system."
'Orange is the New Black' actress fights for prison reform02:38
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"The private prison model is hinged on maximizing incarceration to generate profit -- they're incentivized by convicting, sentencing, and keeping people in prison for longer and longer times," Dunni Oduyemi, a 20-year-old organizer, told CNN.
"We don't think about how the privileges and resources students get access to are premised upon violence done to people by virtue of their race, class, or citizenship status."
In an emailed statement, a Columbia spokesperson said the university's trustees had decided to divest from private prison companies and would refrain from investing in such companies again.
"This action occurs within the larger, ongoing discussion of the issue of mass incarceration that concerns citizens from across the ideological spectrum," the statement said. "The decision follows ... thoughtful analysis and deliberation by our faculty, students, and alumni."
The spokesperson would not confirm how much Columbia had invested in the two companies.
In 2007, Farallon, a company managing part of Yale University's endowment, also divested from CCA after a student campaign, though it did not rule out future investment in prison stock.
History of controversy
Oduyemi said activists targeted CCA for its "horrific" human rights record. A 2014 ACLU investigation found abuse and neglect in CCA-run prisons where guards used "extreme isolation arbitrarily and abusively," exposed prisoners to contaminated water, and delayed medical care of inmates, causing "needless suffering."
Student activists also targeted G4S, a British firm, which has supplied a prison in the West Bank and checkpoints in Palestinian territories. Until last year, the firm also had a contract to provideservices at U.S. detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay, according to the Financial Times. The firm still maintains patrols along the U.S.-Mexico border.
South African prisoners have sued the company over claims they were tortured, according to the Guardian.
Nigel Fairbrass, a G4S spokesman, defended the company's conduct.
"We actively followed up with the South African government and have been presented with no evidence to substantiate the allegations," Fairbrass wrote in an email to CNN. "The prison was also returned to our operational control last year."
He added that a 17-month investigation by the OECD's United Kingdom contact point had not found any human rights violations in G4S's operations in Israel -- and said the company would also not renew its contracts in Israel once contracts there expired over the next two years.
CCA did not immediately respond to CNN's calls and emailed requests for comment. CCA's website includes a statement committing to "respecting human rights."
Will divestment have an impact?
Oduyemi said G4S had been responsive to past divestment campaigns, and "that has been the only effective way of getting them to change the contracts they write."
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But Fairbrass said Columbia's holdings of G4S stock, around 220,000 shares, comprised just 0.015% of G4S' market cap, valued today at $4.35 billion.
Similarly, CCA has a market cap of $4.01 billion. Both firms are highly profitable and continue to grow.
Alex Friedmann, the managing editor of Prison Legal News, a project of the nonprofit Human Rights Defense Center, predicted the divestment would have little to no effect on companies' stock price or operations.
"I don't see divestment campaigns making a big dent," he told CNN. "They serve more as public education on private prisons, organizing tools, or as social commentary on what people believe is acceptable to be investing in."
"As long as prison companies have the bed space the government needs and wants, they will most likely stay in business."
Although Columbia is the first U.S. university to announce divestment from private prisons, similar campaigns are ongoing at other institutions, including Cornell, Brown, U.C. Berkeley, and UCLA.
"It seems to be a moment where people are making the connection between all the kinds of uprisings we're seeing right now — #BlackLivesMatter, mass incarceration, and university movements," said Oduyemi. "We all recognize how much work has to be done in the future."
