All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

Greta Thunberg hits back at Andrew Bolt for ‘deeply disturbing’ column | Environment | The Guardian

“I have never seen a girl so young and with so many mental disorders treated by so many adults as a guru,” Bolt wrote. “Far more interesting is why so many adults – including elected politicians, top business leaders, the Pope and journalists – treat a young and strange girl with such awe and even rapture. “Her intense fear of the climate is not surprising from someone with disorders which intensify fears.” Bolt even described Greta’s younger sister as having “a spectacular range of mental issues”.

Source: Greta Thunberg hits back at Andrew Bolt for ‘deeply disturbing’ column | Environment | The Guardian

Joe Biden Op-Ed Referenced by Kirsten Gillibrand During Debate: Read

On Wednesday night, Kirsten Gillibrand got into it with Joe Biden, whose decades-long record is basically a menu of terrible shit that is very worth getting into it over. The topic was Biden’s lone opposition to expanding a childcare tax credit while in the Senate in 1981, and a companion op-ed he wrote that argued day care centers and nursing homes were somehow emblematic of people’s “desire to avoid individual responsibility.”

Source: Joe Biden Op-Ed Referenced by Kirsten Gillibrand During Debate: Read

Injecting yourself with dog insulin? Just a normal day in America | Alan MacLeod

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The media invites us to be inspired by wholly unnecessary crises like UFC hopeful Jordan Williams, who uses dog insulin because he doesn’t have insurance

Sports media giant ESPN recently published an in-depth and supposedly inspirational feature on Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) hopeful Jordan Williams, who fought for a lucrative UFC pro contract, on 23 July. It described how the true fighter has persevered through difficulties, training hard and smart to rise to the top despite many setbacks, including his type 1 diabetes.

“I’ve been an athlete my whole life, even before I was diagnosed as a diabetic and now long after. I always try to go my hardest and always try to train and push myself to the limit,” Williams explains.

Continue reading…

Federal Appeals Court Overturns Mother’s Conviction in Texas Child Murder Case That May Have Been an Accidental Death

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Citing trial court interference in her right to present a defense, a federal appeals court has overturned the conviction of a Texas mother who was sentenced to death on charges that she had murdered her two-year-old daughter. In an unpublished, unsigned opinion issued on July 29, 2019, a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said that trial court rulings that blocked Melissa Elizabeth Lucio (pictured) from calling an expert witness to challenge the reliability of statements she gave to police violated Lucio’s right to present a “complete defense.” The appeals court reversed a federal district court decision that had upheld Lucio’s conviction and death sentence and returned the case to the lower court to grant Lucio a new trial.

The prosecution alleged that Lucia had physically abused her daughter, Mariah, over a period of time and that the child had been beaten to death by her mother. Lucia’s lawyers contested the cause of death, presenting expert testimony from a neurosurgeon that Mariah may instead have died from head trauma caused by falling down a flight of stairs. The primary evidence implicating Lucio was a recording of statements she made to police during lengthy interrogation the night her daughter died. During that interrogation, Lucio admitted to spanking Mariah, but denied ever having abused her. Late into the night, after hours of continuous interrogation, Texas Ranger Victor Escalon pressured Lucio to say more. She responded with: “I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m responsible for it.” When Escalon later asked her about specific bruises on her daughter’s body, Lucio said, “I guess I did it. I guess I did it.”

The prosecution characterized Lucio’s interrogation as evidence that she had abused her daughter, and therefore must have killed her. Lucio’s lawyers sought to present testimony from a psychologist to explain the coercive effect of the police interrogation on Lucio, whom Dr. John Pinkerman described as a “battered woman” who “takes blame for everything that goes on in the family.” The trial court barred Pinkerman from testifying, asserting that his testimony was irrelevant because Lucio had “denied ever having anything to do with the killing of the child.”

The Fifth Circuit rejected the factual and legal basis for the trial court’s finding, holding that the exclusion of the evidence was “of such a magnitude or so egregious that [it] render[ed] the trial fundamentally unfair.”

As the Trump Administration Seeks to Remove Families, Due-Process Questions over Rocket Dockets Abound

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The U.S. government is operating accelerated dockets to handle the rising number of cases of families in immigration court. While it is essential to have timely, fair case processing and removal of those who have truly had their day in court and been found to be removable, using “rocket” dockets to speed up proceedings only heightens the breakdowns that are a recurring feature of the court system on its best day, as this commentary explains.