National, Regional and Local News

[Owendonovan]

A little prayer should take of that, right? Besides there's more pressing issues with the groomers.

[ponchi101]

U.S. Politics in Real Time
@uspolitics@mastodon.sdf.org
Florida bill would require bloggers who write about governor to register with the state

https://www.wfla.com/news/politics/flor ... the-state/

#florida

https://mastodon.sdf.org/@uspolitics/109956901459710219

Oooh, straight out of the DICTATOR'S HANDBOOK. You want to write about the BIG MAN? You need to register. And, BTW, we need you address and want to see your smartphone for just a little while.
Man, Maduro would be proud.

[JazzNU]

[Deuce]

I heard that 38 states have some sort of severe weather alert right now.
Mother Nature is obviously quite upset with our abuse of her - as she should be.
There are consequences to the way that humans are treating Nature - and, more and more, we are seeing those consequences. They will get worse if we don't begin to respect the environment a lot more...

Severe Weather Warnings Affecting More Than 60 Million People in the U.S.

.

[ti-amie]

[ponchi101]

One step back. And an important one.

[ti-amie]

[ti-amie]

Child marriage ban bill defeated in West Virginia House
By JOHN RABY
today

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A bill that would have prohibited minors from getting married in West Virginia was defeated Wednesday night in a legislative committee.

The Republican-dominated Senate Judiciary Committee rejected the bill on a 9-8 vote, a week after it passed the House of Delegates.

The vote came shortly after the bill’s main sponsor, Democratic Del. Kayla Young of Kanawha County, testified briefly before the committee. She said that since 2000 there have been more than 3,600 marriages in the state involving one or more children.

Currently, children can marry as young as 16 in West Virginia with parental consent. Anyone younger than that also must get a judge’s waiver.

“For now, there will be no floor for the age of marriage in WV, endangering our kids,” Young wrote on Twitter after the vote.

In a rebuke, Cabell County Democratic Sen. Mike Woelfel reminded the committee after the vote that Wednesday was International Women’s Day.

Some of the bill’s opponents have argued that teenage marriages are a part of life in West Virginia.

Kanawha County Republican Sen. Mike Stuart, a former federal prosecutor who sided with the majority, said his vote “wasn’t a vote against women.” He said his mother was married when she was 16, and “six months later, I came along. I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”

https://apnews.com/article/child-marria ... 6cc914cfb0

[ponchi101]

Kanawha County Republican Sen. Mike Stuart, a former federal prosecutor who sided with the majority, said his vote “wasn’t a vote against women.” He said his mother was married when she was 16, and “six months later, I came along. I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”

Second luckiest man in the world was his dad, who was lucky that his grand-dad agreed to not pull that trigger on that shotgun.
I keep saying. "Ponchi is king for a day? Marriage age is 25. Too complicated for people below that age"

[ti-amie]

These "men" want young girls because they're easy to control. They also don't expect more of them in any shape, form or fashion (interpret that as you will). Age appropriate women wouldn't put up with them for more than five minutes.

[ponchi101]

I hope my silly comment is taken as "there is really nothing to say about this". Anybody that believes young women can get married at age 16 on her own will simply is living in the 14th century.
Or Afghanistan.

[ti-amie]

Oh I totally understood your comment. I can't say more than I said because you'd have to ban me. I believe the age for marriage should be just what you said, 25. You're almost totally sane by then and your brain is capable of making adult decisions.

[ti-amie]

Ghost Gun Investigation Leads to Raid in Upper East Side Luxury Building
The police said they seized gun parts, drugmaking supplies and possible materials for explosives, and arrested Christopher Fox, a brother of the actress and model Julia Fox.


The luxury apartment building in Yorkville, in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where police raided a co-op on Wednesday, finding weapons and drug manufacturing supplies.

By Christine Chung
March 9, 2023, 4:15 p.m. ET
A “ghost gun” team of the New York Police Department raided a luxury co-op on the Upper East Side on Wednesday, seizing gun parts, drug-related materials and pressure cookers and chemicals that could be used to make explosives, the authorities said.

They also arrested an occupant of the apartment, Christopher Fox, 30, on a litany of drug and weapons charges, including the manufacture of a machine gun, the police said.

The details of the haul would alarm any neighborhood, and Yorkville is one of the more desirable ones in Manhattan. But the story was amped up in the city tabloids by the news that Mr. Fox was a younger brother of the actress and model Julia Fox. She once described her brother in an interview as a “mad scientist recluse” who built 3-D printers “for fun,” a description highlighted in a Daily News headline.

(...)

The police said Mr. Fox’s arrest was related to a “long-term investigation” into narcotics and ghost guns, adding that while a full investigation was ongoing, they believed the matter has “no apparent nexus to terrorism.”

Ghost guns, which can be assembled piecemeal with a drill from parts purchased online or made with a 3-D printer, are homemade, unregistered firearms that lack serial numbers and do not require background checks to build.

Police officers executed a search warrant for an apartment at 200 East 84th Street on Wednesday morning. The co-op building in the heart of Yorkville, east of Park Avenue, advertises a roof terrace with panoramic views. Two-bedroom apartments there have sold for around $1.8 million, according to real estate records.

The police declined to comment on whether Mr. Fox was still in custody. A spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office would not give details about the schedule for his arraignment.

Mr. Fox faces multiple charges, including criminal possession of a firearm. A second individual was taken into custody on Wednesday but was not arrested, the police said. Multiple news outlets have reported that was the Foxes’ father, but the police would not confirm this.

New York Police Department data shows a steady rise in the number of ghost guns seized by officers in recent years: 263 in 2021 and 463 last year, an increase of more than 76 percent. A police spokesperson said that the department has already recovered 36 ghost guns in the first two months of this year.

In a news release, the department emphasized that it would “continue to fight relentlessly” against illegal guns, including “increasingly prevalent” ghost guns, which it described as “illegal, untraceable but fully functioning weapons.”

In June 2022, state and city officials filed two lawsuits seeking to halt the proliferation of ghost guns under a state law intended to hold the gun industry accountable for shootings. The suits said that the unchecked illegal sales of gun parts contributed to a troubling gun violence crisis across the state.

On Thursday, Attorney General Letitia James announced she had secured a court order immediately halting 10 national gun distributors from selling and shipping “key components” of ghost guns to buyers in New York.

One of the named defendants, Brownells Inc., sells a build kit for an AR-15, the powerful military-style rifle used in multiple mass shootings in the United States, including attacks on schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn., and Parkland, Fla.

According to Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun-violence prevention organization, such guns can be built in under an hour with just a few tools.

“Ghost guns and easy-to-assemble ghost gun kits have caused violence and devastation throughout our state,” Ms. James said, pledging that her office would continue to enforce “our common sense gun laws.”

Kirsten Noyes contributed research.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/nyre ... &smtyp=cur

[JazzNU]

Some of the bill’s opponents have argued that teenage marriages are a part of life in West Virginia.

Kanawha County Republican Sen. Mike Stuart, a former federal prosecutor who sided with the majority, said his vote “wasn’t a vote against women.” He said his mother was married when she was 16, and “six months later, I came along. I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”

A good deal of Republicans' world view seems to come down to exactly their own circumstances and how dare anyone attempt to evolve into a healthier society. There is a RWNJ that ran for governor here. She's the product of rape. Her mother was 11 when she was raped by a twentysomething. ELEVEN. Instead of being enraged on her mother's behalf, she objects to any form of abortion in every circumstance because that's how she got here and her life has value and that's the end of the discussion for her. No one claimed her life didn't have value of course or was passing judgment on the innocent children who are the product of rape, but her cracked brain can't seem to see past that and realize there is no circumstance whatsoever where that should be something we as a society are okay with.

[ponchi101]

The "logic" of anti-abortion people is flawed to degrees that you really wonder where to start arguing.