It turns out that Assistant State Attorney Tammy Glotfelty does not prosecute juveniles equally. Read More
Kiera Wilmot, alleged felon. (Credit: WTSP-TV Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)
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Kiera Roslyn Wilmot, a 16-year-old Florida high school student, had everything going for her as a top-notch student at Bartow High School. But all that changed on Monday, April 23, when Wilmot was arrested and charged with two felonies for “possession/discharge of a weapon on school grounds and discharging a destructive device.” She has been expelled and will be tried as an adult.
It all sounds pretty scary until you get to the description of this so-called “device”: two household chemicals mixed into an eight-ounce plastic water bottle, which caused the top to pop off and created some smoke. That’s it. No one was hurt, no property was damaged.
Wilmot insisted she was just conducting a science experiment to determine how the two chemicals would react. After the pop, she didn’t run or hide. Her friends and even the principle of her school agree that it was simply a “science project gone bad.” Read More
A 5-year-old boy in Kentucky accidentally shot his 2-year-old sister yesterday afternoon with a .22-caliber rifle he received as a gift last year. Their mother, who was home at the time, told police she stepped away for just three minutes when the shooting occurred. The family was reportedly unaware that the gun, which they stowed in a corner of the home rather than locked away, still had a shell inside. The toddler was later pronounced dead at the hospital. Read More
A 5-year-old boy in Kentucky accidentally shot his 2-year-old sister yesterday afternoon with a .22-caliber rifle he received as a gift last year. Their mother, who was home at the time, told police she stepped away for just three minutes when the shooting occurred. The family was reportedly unaware that the gun, which they stowed in a corner of the home rather than locked away, still had a shell inside. The toddler was later pronounced dead at the hospital. Read More
In 2008, President Obama ran on a promise to close Guantanamo within the first year of his presidency. Five years and a second term later, our modern-day gulag is still open and operating under a policy of indefinite detention solidified by none other than Obama himself. But the detainees have had enough.
The military admitted on Saturday that at least 100 Guantanamo detainees are engaged in a hunger strike, adding that more than a fifth of the strikers are being force fed. Lawyers for the detainees say over 130 prisoners are on strike. Given the US military’s pattern of denying and underreporting the number of strikers since the strike began in February, I’m inclined to believe the lawyers over the military. Either way, over half of the facility’s 166 inmates are refusing to eat.
People rescue garment workers trapped at an eight-story building outside Dhaka, Bangladesh, on Thursday, April 25.
The death toll from the collapse of an eight-story building housing five garment factories in Bangladesh has surpassed 300 with an estimated 40 people still trapped beneath the rubble. Read More
How racist is the “war on drugs”? Very. And if the nation’s capital is any indication, it’s actually getting worse.
The Washington City Paper reports that from 2005 to 2011, 91 percent of DC marijuana charges were filed against African Americans. Meanwhile, just six percent were filed against the city’s white residents. And it’s not like black people smoke pot more than their white counterparts. Study after study has shown that whites and blacks use marijuana at relatively equal rights. Some studies have even found that whites smoke pot at significantly higher rates than blacks. Read More
Hundreds of immigrants have been deported not by the federal government but by hospitals looking to cut costs by getting rid of undocumented patients in need of long-term care. Read More
Muslims, Arabs and more recently Chechens aren’t the only ones bearing the brunt of collective blame following the Boston Marathon bombing last week.
Since learning that bombing suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev immigrated to the United States as children, anti-immigrant zealots have capitilized on the moment to argue against immigration reform.
Right-wing talk radio host and frequent Fox News contributer Laura Ingraham insisted that the US block Muslim immigrants from entering the country, particularly from the ex-Soviet region of the world where the bombing suspects were born.
“I would submit that people shouldn’t be coming here as tourists from Chechnya after 9/11,” Ingraham said. “Dagistan, Checnya, Kergystan, uh-uh. As George Bush would say, ‘None of them stans.’”
You might be thinking: Who cares what Ingraham says? She’s nothing more than an inflammatory radio host with no power over actual public policy. But Ingraham isn’t alone. Read More
Americans (myself included) are understandably desperate to know what motivated suspects Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and Dzhokar Tsarnaev, 19, to engage in mass murder at Monday’s Boston Marathon. But this desire for answers is no excuse for the blatant bigotry espoused by reporters, pundits and so-called “terrorism experts” who wasted no time linking “Islamic extremists” and Chechen rebels to the attacks based not on evidence but pure speculation and ignorance.
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