National, Regional and Local News

[Suliso]

Off screen Tucker Carlson didn't believe most of the crap he was peddling. Could easily be the same with the next guy. Some people are easily swayed by large amounts of money.

[ponchi101]

Off screen Tucker Carlson didn't believe most of the crap he was peddling. Could easily be the same with the next guy. Some people are easily swayed by large amounts of money.

It is unusual for you to go for understatements...

[ti-amie]

Off screen Tucker Carlson didn't believe most of the crap he was peddling. Could easily be the same with the next guy. Some people are easily swayed by large amounts of money.

To quote that famous sage and intellect Madonna:
"We are living in a material world and I am a material girl"

Adjust the pronouns as you will.

[skatingfan]

To quote that famous sage and intellect Madonna:
"We are living in a material world and I am a material girl"

Adjust the pronouns as you will.

The pronouns are fine - it's the gender identity that would change depending on the individual in question.

[skatingfan]

Off screen Tucker Carlson didn't believe most of the crap he was peddling. Could easily be the same with the next guy. Some people are easily swayed by large amounts of money.

I wouldn't be so sure about that.

Private messages sent by Tucker Carlson that had been redacted in legal filings showed him making highly offensive remarks that went beyond the comments of his prime-time show.

Private messages sent by Mr. Carlson that had been redacted in legal filings showed him making highly offensive and crude remarks that went beyond the inflammatory, often racist comments of his prime-time show and anything disclosed in the lead-up to the trial.

Despite the fact that Fox’s trial lawyers had these messages for months, the board and some senior executives were now learning about their details for the first time, setting off a crisis at the highest level of the company, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions.

The discovery added pressure on the Fox leadership as it sought to find a way to avoid a trial where Mr. Carlson — not to mention so many others at the network — would be questioned about the contents of the private messages they exchanged in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.

Two days after the board’s discovery, Fox settled that case for $787.5 million, believed to be the highest for a defamation trial.

The settlement of the Dominion case, however, has not ended the threat posed by the messages. The New York Times, The Associated Press and National Public Radio have challenged the redactions, meaning they could still become public.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/26/busi ... -news.html

[ti-amie]

[ti-amie]

Accused Texas shooter’s partner and others who helped him are arrested, authorities say
By Justine McDaniel and Marisa Iati
Updated May 3, 2023 at 1:04 p.m. EDT|Published May 3, 2023 at 10:20 a.m. EDT

Multiple people have been arrested and accused of aiding the Texas man charged with fatally shooting five neighbors Friday, authorities said Wednesday, a day after an extensive manhunt for the suspect concluded with his arrest.

The man’s romantic partner, Divimara Lamar Nava, was among those taken into custody, San Jacinto County First Assistant District Attorney Rob Freyer said. She was charged with hindering apprehension of the suspect, identified as Francisco Oropesa. The two were a longtime couple, Freyer said, though jail records showed they were not legally married.

San Jacinto County Sheriff Chief Deputy Tim Kean would not provide an exact number of additional people arrested, saying only that it was no more than five. He also did not answer questions from reporters outside the county jail Wednesday about how the other people may have been linked to Oropesa, 38.

Authorities said they anticipated making more arrests.

“Others are hinging on what’s going on right now,” Kean said. “It’s fluid.”

News of the additional arrests followed the capture of Oropesa at a home in Cut and Shoot, Tex., four days after he allegedly killed four adults and a 9-year-old child with an AR-15-style weapon near Cleveland, Tex. He is charged with five counts of murder.

A judge is scheduled to set Oropesa’s bail Wednesday. Prosecutors are also “exploring” additional charges for him, Freyer said.

U.S. Marshals, U.S. Border Patrol’s tactical unit and the Texas Department of Public Safety arrested Oropesa about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, about an hour after an anonymous caller sent a tip to an FBI hotline, officials said. San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said the suspect was found “hiding in a closet underneath some laundry” but did not provide details of whose home he was at.

Authorities took “multiple pieces of evidence” from that home using a search warrant, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday.

Officials believe they have the weapon used in the shooting but are awaiting testing to confirm a link, Kean said. He added that they found Oropesa with a cellphone that he had used to contact people in the area while on the run.

Oropesa was spotted on foot Monday, causing several elementary schools to be locked down, but officials lost track of him, Kean said. Authorities are unsure exactly when Oropesa arrived at the house where he was later found.

“We don’t know his path between the time that he fled the scene and the time he was picked up yesterday afternoon,” Freyer said. “We are not sure as to where he went in that intervening four days.”

The tip that Oropesa was at the house, where other people were present, was among “hundreds” authorities said they received. He was found unarmed, Freyer said.

The person who tipped off law enforcement to Oropesa’s whereabouts was not among those arrested, Kean said.

“The people arrested are not telling us very much,” he said, adding: “Anybody that helped this maniac has definitely got some kind of issues, as far as I’m concerned.”

Texas DPS arrested Nava, Oropesa’s partner, at a home in Conroe, Tex., and booked her into jail in Montgomery County, Tex., early Wednesday, jail records show. She is charged with hindering the apprehension and prosecution of a known felon, which is a third-degree felony that can carry two to 10 years in prison. Conroe is just east of Cut and Shoot, where Oropesa was arrested. Cut and Shoot is about 20 miles from where the shooting occurred.

Nava’s bond was set at $250,000. The address listed for her in jail records matches an address that public records show she and Oropesa have shared.

On Wednesday, Kean also addressed claims by the victims’ family that they called 911 multiple times Friday, including before the shooting began, before officers came to the scene. The county has only three deputies on patrol for an area that can take an hour to traverse, Kean said. One deputy was responding to a report of an aggravated robbery when the first call came in about Oropesa firing his gun in the yard — a lesser concern than the robbery, Kean said.

“Then that other call escalated,” he said.

Neighbors have raised concerns about how the sheriff’s office had responded to previous reports about Oropesa. People shooting guns aimlessly in their yards is commonplace in the area, and Kean said it can be difficult to police.

“If a neighbor calls, by the time we get there, they know how long it takes, the guns are put up, everybody’s in the house, and now we see no violation,” Kean said.

Oropesa allegedly began the fatal shooting rampage Friday about 11 p.m., after his neighbors asked him not to shoot his weapon close to their adjoining front yard while a baby in their home was trying to sleep. Rather than stop, Oropesa allegedly entered the neighbors’ house and shot five people in the head.

Those killed were members of an extended family: Sonia Argentina Guzmán, 25; Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18; and Daniel Enrique Laso, 9.

Oropesa’s arrest brought little consolation for the family of the victims, all of whom were from Honduras.

“He took everything from us, and now we’re living a nightmare from which we’ll never wake up,” said Lucía Guzmán, the aunt of one of the victims. “The arrest will never erase what he did to my family, but at least now we can hope for some justice.”

Monika Mathur and María Luisa Paúl contributed to this report.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2 ... a-arrests/

[ti-amie]

There is a town in Texas called "Cut and Shoot".

I...

[JazzNU]

My aunt had a doctor's appointment in that exact building at Northside Hospital three weeks ago. So this is not at all concerning./s

[ti-amie]

https://twitter.com/HexdlineNews/status ... 4436851712

[ti-amie]

[ti-amie]

There's a huge debate going on as to whether the graphic photos of the people murdered should be published for the general public to see and understand what these military weapons do to the human body. I saw one and I haven't been able to get it out of my mind. I understand that there was video of the gunman's body circulating as well.

The picture I posted here of sheet covered bodies does nothing to convey the horror of the picture I saw.

I think that the graphic pictures of a mass shooting aftermath need to be shown. I think that every GQP'er who spouts the meaningless "thoughts and prayers" nonsense should at every one of their public appearances be confronted with the pictures of the deceased and asked to defend their position re guns. Several of the Sandy Hook and Parkland families have agreed with this. Not all of course but some. Does showing the pictures disrespect the deceased? Going to the Mall and being gunned down by some lunatic with a grudge against society is disrespectful.

I never thought that I'd come to this decision.

[ti-amie]

Gunman in Texas mall shooting may have had neo-Nazi beliefs
By Jack Douglas, Marisa Iati, Brittany Shammas, Devlin Barrett, Justin Wm. Moyer, Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Perry Stein
Updated May 7, 2023 at 12:35 p.m. EDT|Published May 7, 2023 at 12:23 a.m. EDT

ALLEN, Tex. — The gunman who opened fire on an outlet mall in a Dallas suburb Saturday, killing at least eight people, was a man in his early 30s who may have had white supremacist or neo-Nazi beliefs, people familiar with the investigation said Sunday.

Mauricio Garcia, a local resident, had multiple weapons on him and in his nearby car, said people familiar with the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing probe.

Authorities have not released a motive, but a patch on his chest said “RWDS,” an acronym that stands for Right Wing Death Squad, according to people familiar with the investigation. The phrase is popular among right wing extremists, neo-Nazis and white supremacists, they said. In addition to the weapons found on his body, investigators found another five guns inside his car nearby, these people said.

The shooter also injured at least seven people before a police officer who was at the Allen, Tex., mall on an unrelated call fatally shot him at about 3:30 p.m., Allen Police Chief Brian Harvey said Saturday. Authorities believe that the gunman acted alone and that there were no further threats, Harvey said.

The assailant used an AR-15-style weapon and was wearing tactical gear, President Biden said Sunday. He was living in a Dallas-area hotel at the time of the shooting, according to the people familiar with the investigation. Since the gunman is dead, a major focus of investigators is whether anyone knew what he planned to do or helped him do it.

(...)

The mass killing at the mall, which was crowded with shoppers on a Saturday afternoon, was the 22nd instance in the United States this year in which four or more people died by gunfire, according to a database of mass killings maintained by the Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University. At this time last year, there had been eight.

At least 115 people across the country have died in mass killings in 2023. That count does not include the shooters. Last year, there were 36 mass killings by gunfire — a record since 2006.

At the Allen outlet mall, all the stores were closed Sunday, and police blocked entrances to the center of the complex. The parking lot in the center of the mall was packed with cars, which shoppers and employees had not been allowed to retrieve by mid-Sunday.

In a statement, Allen Premium Outlets said it was “outraged by the violence that continues to plague our country,” and thanked the police response.

“We are thankful for the police officer’s heroic actions and for the support of all the first responders,” the statement read.

(...)

Aerial footage of the scene, about 25 miles northeast of Dallas, showed what appeared to be bodies underneath white sheets on the ground outside an H&M outlet. Other videos posted on social media showed people fleeing through the mall’s parking lot and corridors.

A video that could not immediately be verified by The Washington Post showed what appeared to be the gunman after he was fatally shot outside a burger restaurant, wearing tactical gear with several magazines of ammunition on his chest. What appeared to be an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle lay beside him.

(...)

Last year, Texas had the most mass killings by gun of any state, with six. This year it has had three.

Two of the state’s mass killings in the past year have been high-profile: A gunman was arrested Tuesday after he killed five of his neighbors after they asked him to stop shooting his AR-15-style firearm near their home in Cleveland, Tex., north of Houston. And last May, the killing of 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., put the state at the center of the debate about gun control.

In 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 4,613 firearms-related deaths in Texas. The state’s annual death toll from guns has increased steadily since 2014.

Led by Abbott, Texas has moved in recent years to loosen restrictions on firearms. In 2021, the state began allowing permitless carry so residents can carry handguns in public without a license. The state “does not specifically put restrictions on who can carry a long gun such as a rifle or shotgun,” according to a Texas government website.

(...)

Self, the congressman, rebuked criticism of officials offering “thoughts and prayers” after shootings while opposing gun control legislation, saying on CNN that “people want to make this political, but prayers are important.”

“The immediate aftermath is not the time for politics,” he told The Washington Post. “We have long ago traded faith in God, which means civic action based on that faith, for faith in government.”

Instead of limiting gun rights, Self said local governments need to be free to better defend public spaces from armed criminals. He called proposals to restrict gun rights, such as raising the age at which people can purchase AR-15-style weapons, “a knee-jerk reaction that does not stop criminals.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2 ... ng-dallas/

Barrett, Stein, Iati, Moyer and Shammas reported from Washington, and Hennessy-Fiske from Houston. John D. Harden in Oakland, Alex Horton and Andrea Salcedo in Washington, and Bryan Pietsch and Niha Masih in Seoul contributed to this report.

[ti-amie]

[ti-amie]

Texas again. Maybe there should be a travel advisory?