New York Times | April 16, 2014
A Star Player Accused, and a Flawed Rape Investigation -- "Early on the morning of Dec. 7, 2012, a freshman at Florida State University reported that she had been raped by a stranger somewhere off campus after a night of drinking at a popular Tallahassee bar called Potbelly's. As she gave her account to the police, several bruises began to appear, indicating recent trauma. Tests would later find semen on her underwear. For nearly a year, the events of that evening remained a well-kept secret until the woman's allegations burst into the open, roiling the university and threatening a prized asset: Jameis Winston, one of the marquee names of college football. Three weeks after Mr. Winston was publicly identified as the suspect, the storm had passed. The local prosecutor announced that he lacked the evidence to charge Mr. Winston with rape. The quarterback would go on to win the Heisman Trophy and lead Florida State to the national championship. In his announcement, the prosecutor, William N. Meggs, acknowledged a number of shortcomings in the police investigation. In fact, an examination by The New York Times has found that there was virtually no investigation at all, either by the police or the university." (Emphasis is mine.)

Strictly my opinion, but since this story has been resurrected, I think that it's now fair to ask publicly whether either or both the university and the local police placed the interests of the Seminole football program ahead of the well being of the 19-year-old woman who claimed to have been sexually assaulted by one of the team's then-top recruits.

FSU officials have vigorously denied the Times' charges, and this afternoon issued a public statement:

"The university expresses its deep disappointment in today's New York Times story alleging FSU officials did not properly investigate a rape allegation against Winston `in apparent violation of federal law.' It also vigorously objects to the newspaper's characterization of the university as being uncooperative in explaining its actions." (There's more, so click on the above link.)

As of tonight, a spokesperson for the Tallahassee police has declined comment on the New York Times' bombshell story, other than to say that the department "takes seriously the obligation to respond to any citizen who wants to report a crime, regardless of who they are accusing."

All huffing and puffing by university officials aside, it still remains to be determined if the university violated provisions of Title IX by not aggressively following up on the female student's charges and immediately opening an investigation into her claims.

Because in fact, it wasn't until January of this year, a full 13 months after the alleged incident was first reported, before FSU officials ever convened a hearing to look into it. Compounding that is the revelation that one of Seminole Coach Jimbo Fisher's own assistants inquired of Tallahassee PD as to the status of the department's own investigation -- such as it was, given the Times' account -- fully one year earlier, in January 2013. So FSU football coaches were certainly fully aware of the incident involving their star recruit, at least. Did they bother to inform their superiors in the athletic department and university administration?

Further, the U.S. Dept. of Education's Office for Civil Rights announced on April 4 that it has opened its own inquiry into the matter. This could potentially lead to a significant loss of federal funding for university programs, should that office find that FSU for whatever reason breached Title IX protocols and violated federal law.

And should it be further shown that FSU and TPD either deliberately slow-walked or actively stonewalled their respective investigations into the young woman's charges, the NCAA might well feel compelled to open its own official investigation into the matter, given how severely that organization dropped the hammer on Penn State in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal.

A federal judge in Bismarck, North Dakota, on Wednesday struck down the strictest anti-abortion law in the nation, a ban on ending pregnancy after a fetal heartbeat is detected -- that is, at about six weeks.  Separately, U.S. District Judge Daniel L. Hovland rejected a legal maneuver by lawyers for the state seeking to prohibit all abortions in North Dakota, at any point in pregnancy.

SNIP

The North Dakota law (H.B. 1456), passed by its legislature last year, did not set a specific number of weeks during pregnancy at which an abortion could no longer be performed.  But it did specify that no abortion could be performed after a doctor detected a heartbeat -- except in a medical emergency threatening the woman's life or threatening grave medical harm to her.  All sides involved in the case agreed that a heartbeat usually can be detected about six weeks into a pregnancy.

The law was challenged by the operators of the Red River Women's Clinic in Fargo, the only facility in the state that performs abortions at any point. At that clinic, doctors will not perform an abortion until the fifth week of pregnancy.  Thus, the practical effect of the new North Dakota law was to ban almost all abortions --that is, except for a brief interval in the fifth week.

v. 331
v. 330
v. 329

Is he going to be able to say "See that right there, that proves it was someone else's bomb, not ours."?

Is he going to be able to prove the deaths were faked?

Why would his attorneys expend time and energy pursing this?

Unless it's about keeping the prosecution from showing the photos to the jury.

Why are other ranchers supporting Bundy? They paid and he has not. It is a reasonable question. Are they all just nuts or what??

This answers that question.

Every rancher must sign this "contract" agreeing to abide by the TERMS AND CONDITIONS before he or she can make payment. In the early 90s, the BLM went on a frenzy and drastically cut almost every rancher's permit because of this desert tortoise issue, even though all of us ranchers knew that cow and desert tortoise had co-existed for a hundred+ years. As an example, a family friend had his permit cut by 90%. For those of you who are non ranchers, that would be equated to getting your paycheck cut 90%. In 1976 there were approximately 52 ranching permittees in this area of Nevada. Presently, there are 3. Most of these people lost their livelihoods because of the actions of the BLM. Clive Bundy was one of these people who received extremely unfair and unreasonable TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Link

Gosh, Jim, you figured us all out. (none / 0) (#196)
by Donald from Hawaii on Wed Apr 16, 2014 at 12:19:18 AM CST
You're just too smart for us.

President Vladimir Putin has told the National Security Agency whistleblower, Edward Snowden, that Russia is not carrying out mass surveillance programmes of the kind Snowden exposed in the US.

Snowden made a video-link appearance during Putin's marathon televised question and answer session to ask the president about Russia's attitude to mass surveillance.

Snowden asked: "Does Russia intercept or store or analyse the communication of millions of individuals?" He went on to ask whether increasing the effectiveness of internal security systems could ever justify such actions.

To applause from the studio audience, Putin responded: "Mr Snowden you are a former agent, a spy, I used to work for a intelligence service, we are going to talk the same language."

Norway celebrates the 200th anniversary of its constitution this year, and, the artists Mohamed Ali Fadlabi and Lars Cuzner plan to re-enact one of the main attractions from the centenary in 1914: "The Congo Village", in which 80 Africans were put on display, living in cabins with palm roofs surrounded by African artefacts. A total of 1.5 million visitors came to see the human zoo, more than half of Norway's population at that time. Their proposal has unsurprisingly met with criticism from anti-racist organizations in Norway, but the artists say their work is meant "to highlight a forgotten event in Norwegian history".

Also if we did we also probably caught a promo for another current FX series The Americans.  You should consider this one to.  I would think this community would find it particularly interesting because it is intensely political.  It is about Russian spy's in the US currently in the latter part of the last century.

Bob Ross was a consummate teacher. He guided fans along as he painted "happy trees," "almighty mountains" and "fluffy clouds" over the course of his 11-year television career on his PBS show, "The Joy of Painting." In total, Ross painted 381 works on the show, relying on a distinct set of elements, scenes and themes, and thereby providing thousands of data points. I decided to use that data to teach something myself: the important statistical concepts of conditional probability and clustering, as well as a lesson on the limitations of data.

Antonio Banderas [and Gwyneth Paltrow] has signed up to play Pablo Picasso in Carlos Saura's 33 Dias, a drama about the creation of the painter's great anti-war masterpiece Guernica, according to Variety.

The SUV driver is facing all of the criminal charges relating to the death of the child. I understand the standard leaving the scene of an accident charges...but the rest of it is a gray area, at least to me. If I rear-end someone and it freakishly results in the death of someone 100 ft away...it is my fault? I might stop driving altogether.

LINK

LINK

LINK

LINK

LINK

The question is going forward how does the ACA make or influence doctors to see patients.  

Either they require them to (otherwise known as price controls) or they raise pricing.

It is about a young woman that goes to work for a company that is kind of unholy alliance of Google, Apple, and Facebook, where the motto is 'Everything Must Be Known'. She slowly gets seduced into the loss of privacy - her bosses are so slick at making it perfectly reasonable and even the only altruistic alternative. Everyone's existence is mined for data - they are well paid, many perks, etc but basically used to harvest data.