Blue_Tires
Blue_Tires's JournalJian Ghomeshi charged with four counts of sexual assault
Source: Yahoo
TORONTO - Former CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi has been charged with four counts of sexual assault.
Toronto police say he also faces another charge, which they called "overcome resistance - choking." Police say Ghomeshi, 47, has surrendered and is scheduled to appear in court early this afternoon.
Ghomeshi was fired by the CBC on Oct. 26. The public broadcaster said it decided to terminate his employment after seeing "graphic evidence'' that he had physically injured a woman. Ghomeshi admitted in a lengthy Facebook post, published on the day he was fired, that he engaged in "rough sex" but insisted his encounters with women were consensual.
Since his dismissal, nine women have come forward with allegations, some dating back a decade, that Ghomeshi sexually or physically assaulted them. Toronto police began an investigation into several allegations of sexual assault relating to Ghomeshi on Oct. 31.
The charges against Ghomeshi were announced a day after it came to light that he had reached an agreement with the CBC to withdraw his $55 million lawsuit against the public broadcaster.
Read more: https://ca.news.yahoo.com/newsalert-ghomeshi-charged-four-counts-sexual-assault-toronto-154607981.html
The one thing that disturbs me more than anything else
is to see how many prominent conservatives celebrated the decision like it was the Super Bowl or something...Yeah, they celebrated Zimmerman too, but they weren't as all-out flagrant with it like this time...The hatred of PBO is reaching pathological levels...
Right or wrong has no meaning for the GOP; they see any political defeat of Black Americans as a defeat for President Obama, and vice-versa...It's all a game...
:large
The Meaning of the Ferguson Riots
The St. Louis County grand jury’s decision not to indict the white police officer who in August shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, would have generated widespread anger and disappointment in any case. But the county prosecutor, Robert McCulloch, who is widely viewed in the minority community as being in the pockets of the police, made matters infinitely worse by handling this sensitive investigation in the worst possible way.
First, he refused to step aside in favor of a special prosecutor who could have been appointed by Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri. He further undermined public confidence by taking a highly unorthodox approach to the grand jury proceeding. Instead of conducting an investigation and then presenting the case and a recommendation of charges to the grand jury, his office shifted its job to the grand jury. It made no recommendation on whether to indict the officer, Darren Wilson, but left it to the jurors to wade through masses of evidence to determine whether there was probable cause to file charges against Officer Wilson for Mr. Brown’s killing.
Under ordinary circumstances, grand jury hearings can be concluded within days. The proceeding in this case lasted an astonishing three months. And since grand jury proceedings are held in secret, the drawn-out process fanned suspicions that Mr. McCulloch was deliberately carrying on a trial out of public view, for the express purpose of exonerating Officer Wilson.
If all this weren’t bad enough, Mr. McCulloch took a reckless approach to announcing the grand jury’s finding. After delaying the announcement all day, he finally made it late in the evening, when darkness had placed law enforcement agencies at a serious disadvantage as they tried to control the angry crowds that had been drawn into the streets by news that the verdict was coming. Mr. McCulloch’s announcement sounded more like a defense of Officer Wilson than a neutral summary of the facts that had led the grand jury to its conclusion.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/26/opinion/the-meaning-of-the-ferguson-riots.html?smid=tw-nytimes&_r=2
The Meaning of the Ferguson Riots
The St. Louis County grand jury’s decision not to indict the white police officer who in August shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, would have generated widespread anger and disappointment in any case. But the county prosecutor, Robert McCulloch, who is widely viewed in the minority community as being in the pockets of the police, made matters infinitely worse by handling this sensitive investigation in the worst possible way.
First, he refused to step aside in favor of a special prosecutor who could have been appointed by Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri. He further undermined public confidence by taking a highly unorthodox approach to the grand jury proceeding. Instead of conducting an investigation and then presenting the case and a recommendation of charges to the grand jury, his office shifted its job to the grand jury. It made no recommendation on whether to indict the officer, Darren Wilson, but left it to the jurors to wade through masses of evidence to determine whether there was probable cause to file charges against Officer Wilson for Mr. Brown’s killing.
Under ordinary circumstances, grand jury hearings can be concluded within days. The proceeding in this case lasted an astonishing three months. And since grand jury proceedings are held in secret, the drawn-out process fanned suspicions that Mr. McCulloch was deliberately carrying on a trial out of public view, for the express purpose of exonerating Officer Wilson.
If all this weren’t bad enough, Mr. McCulloch took a reckless approach to announcing the grand jury’s finding. After delaying the announcement all day, he finally made it late in the evening, when darkness had placed law enforcement agencies at a serious disadvantage as they tried to control the angry crowds that had been drawn into the streets by news that the verdict was coming. Mr. McCulloch’s announcement sounded more like a defense of Officer Wilson than a neutral summary of the facts that had led the grand jury to its conclusion.
For the black community of Ferguson, the killing of Michael Brown was the last straw in a long train of abuses that they have suffered daily at the hands of the local police. News accounts have strongly suggested, for example, that the police in St. Louis County’s many municipalities systematically target poor and minority citizens for street and traffic stops — partly to generate fines — which has the effect of both bankrupting and criminalizing whole communities.
In this context, the police are justifiably seen as an alien, occupying force that is synonymous with state-sponsored abuse.
The case resonated across the country — in New York City, Chicago and Oakland — because the killing of young black men by police is a common feature of African-American life and a source of dread for black parents from coast to coast. This point was underscored last month in a grim report by ProPublica, showing that young black males in recent years were at a far greater risk — 21 times greater — of being shot dead by police than young white men. These statistics reflect the fact that many police officers see black men as expendable figures on the urban landscape, not quite human beings.
We get a flavor of this in Officer Wilson’s grand jury testimony, when he describes Michael Brown, as he was being shot, as a soulless behemoth who was “almost bulking up to run through the shots, like it was making him mad that I’m shooting at him.”
President Barack Obama was on the mark last night when he said, “We need to recognize that this is not just an issue for Ferguson, this is an issue for America.” The rioting that scarred the streets of St. Louis County — and the outrage that continues to reverberate across the country — underlines this inescapable point. It shows once again that distrust of law enforcement presents a grave danger to the civic fabric of the United States.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/26/opinion/the-meaning-of-the-ferguson-riots.html?smid=tw-nytimes&_r=2
CNN International versus CNN Domestic
I've been begging for years for some kind of movement to just eliminate the domestic and make the international the "New" CNN
Bob McCulloch: Prosecutor or defense attorney for Darren Wilson?
There are plenty of questions swirling around St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch in the wake of the grand jury's decision not to indict officer Darren Wilson for killing unarmed black teenager Michael Brown. McCulloch's performance last night in announcing the decision prompted some great ones from Mark Sumner, but let's back up a few months to the basic decision by McCulloch in taking this to the grand jury, and how he presented the case there. As more information comes out, it looks more and more like the very unusual process McCulloch kicked off was intended to get the result he wanted—no indictment.
Let's start with McCulloch's refusal to step aside in this case. The people in and around Ferguson gave a vote of no confidence, in effect, to McCulloch when 70,000 of them signed a petition demanding that he recuse himself. McCulloch's history is problematic, at best, and his alignment with the cops unquestioned. His father was a cop, who was killed in the line of duty by an African-American person. When the county police clearly were overreacting in handling the protests immediately following the killing, and Gov. Jay Nixon called in the state highway patrol to try to calm the situation down, McCulloch loudly and publicly criticized him for "denigrat[ing] the men and women of the county police." McCulloch's bias going into this grand jury proceeding was unquestioned, certainly in the community, and his refusal to step aside guaranteed that there would be a high level of distrust in the proceedings.
As for the proceedings, they were highly unusual and in the view of at least these two legal experts, deeply flawed. The lawyers, St. Louis University law professor Susan McGraugh and Jerryl T. Christmas, a defense attorney and former prosecutor in St. Louis lay out their problems in interviews with Phillip Johnson, a "filmmaker, writer [and] community engager." First and foremost, McCulloch's decision to present every bit of evidence he had—with no culling and no presentation—to the grand jury was a strong signal he was trying to avoid a prosecution. A prosecutor normally gives the grand jury only the evidence necessary to establish probable cause. Then McCulloch allowed Wilson four full hours to present his testimony, an opportunity McGraugh says is never allowed her criminal suspects. In summary:
In October, the Washington Post reported a number of leaks in the case, nearly all in support of Wilson's story. The leaks seemed like such a transparent attempt to influence public opinion that the Justice Department said, "There seems to be an inappropriate effort to influence public opinion about this case." The DOJ itself has also had leaks indicating that Wilson would not face civil rights charges.
Then there's Wilson's testimony. Missouri law gives deference to police when they say that they were in fear for their lives in a police-involved killing. Wilson had four hours to present his case—his unbelievable and hyperbolic case—that the unarmed teenager turned into some sort of monster before his very eyes. Four hours.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/11/25/1347403/-Bob-McCulloch-Prosecutor-or-defense-attorney-for-Darren-Wilson?detail=twitter
So riddle me this...
Every cop in the city mobilized, almost every national guardsman in the state, over 100 imported FBI agents, etc. and Ferguson STILL imploded last night??
Of course what the media will never mention is that keeping order, and protecting lives/property was never their true objective; it was just to make sure the chaos was controlled and contained without spreading to the so-called "decent" neighborhoods...
So what message is sent here? "We're more than happy to sit and watch you burn your own neighborhood to the ground in front of a national TV audience, but once you break the boundary all bets are off!"
Stephanopoulos won the lottery...
ABC's George Stephanopoulos first-in-line for Darren Wilson interview
ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos is currently poised to land the first interview with Darren Wilson, the Missouri police officer whose fate will be decided following the announcement of a grand jury ruling on Monday night, industry sources told POLITICO.
Members of the media who were jockeying for the first sit-down with Wilson were recently told that Stephanopoulos, the chief anchor and chief political correspondent for ABC, had won rights to the interview. That agreement is subject to change: Wilson could decide to forego interviews altogether and, if he is indicted, will not be able to give an interview. Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in August, and has not been seen in public since the shooting.
As Brian Stelter reported over the weekend, Stephanopoulos, NBC’s Matt Lauer, CBS’ Scott Pelley and CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon all held off-the-record meetings with Wilson in an effort to land the first interview. CBS' “60 Minutes” had been in “especially hot pursuit” of locking down the interview, according to Stelter's report. Off-the-record introductions are a routine part of the television booking process.
ABC News spokesperson Julie Townsend did not respond to a request for comment regarding the interview.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/11/abcs-george-stephanopoulos-firstinline-for-darren-199213.html
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