Women With Troubles - May 2015

Here is a compilation of women with troubles reported in news stories during May 2015. Each name is linked to an Interested-Participant blog entry displaying details.

For a more comprehensive listing, check the Women With Troubles category link.

(AL) Ashley Hall, 33,
teacher - Arrested for sex with two students,

(AZ) Anna Areola-Hernandez, 24,
neighbor - Sentenced to 10 years in prison for child molestation,

(CA) Sheila Heacock, 45,
teacher - Pleads guilty to sex with minor,

(CO) Forsythia Owen, 32,
neighbor - Gets 38 years prison for murder,

(FL) Elissa Alvarez, 20, with Jose Caballero, 40,
neighbor - Accused of sex in public,

(FL) Melissa Jean Bennett, 34,
neighbor - Accused of sex with boy, 14,

(FL) Tarakiki Dozier, 39,
teacher - Charged with drug offenses,

(FL) Irene Kahn, 34,
teacher - Gets no jail for sex with boy, 15,

(FL) Krista Morton, 45,
school principal - Arrested on marijuana charges,

(FL) Jennifer Yi, 31,
neighbor - Arrested for DUI three times in six days,

(IA) Tori Kaiser, 21,
neighbor - Accused of sex with boy, 14,

(ID) Joy Phillips-Heinbach, 33,
neighbor - Accused of sex with underage male,

(IL) Lindsay P. Anderson, 26,
teacher - Accused of sex contact with minor,

(IL) Lisa Tate, 35,
teacher - Accused of sex with two 17-year-olds,

(LA) Camille Brennan, 29,
teacher - Accused of giving pot brownies to students,

(LA) Ashley Elizabeth Dowden, 42,
teacher - Gets probation for sex with two male students,

(MA) Larissa Araba, 21,
neighbor - Accused of sex with boy, 14,

(MD) Kelly Michelle Riddle, 32,
teacher - Accused of sex abuse of student,

(MD) Sarah P. Schrock, 56,
neighbor - Arrested for serving milk contaminated with dead skin shavings from her feet,

(MI) Lauren Hill, 26,
teacher - Guilty of sex with student, 16. Sentencing in July,

(MI) Amy Sawulski, 30,
entrepreneur - Accused of running prostitution ring,

(MO) Jessica Low, 33,
teacher - Guilty of rape of student. Sentencing on July 20,

(ND) Amanda Kolosky, 35,
teacher - Accused of sex with male student, 17,

(NJ) Melissa Bradley, 28,
teacher's aide - Get three years prison for sex with male students,

(NJ) Kelly Bryan,
neighbor - Arrested for selling tickets to fake concert,

(NJ) Elyse Cromwell, 29,
teacher - Gets five years prison for sex with boy, 14,

(NM) Mandi-Ann Casados, 25,
PE teacher/coach - Accused of inappropriate relationship with female student, 14,

(OH) Amanda Basile, 31,
teacher - Indicted for sex with student, 18,

(OH) Brandy Bean,
neighbor - Arrested for burglary, forgery and theft,

(OH) Peggy Horstman, 27,
neighbor - Accused of raping toddler, 1,

(OH) Stacy McConoughey, 36,
teacher - Accused of inappropriate relationship with student, 18,

(OR) Melissa Chacon, 22,
neighbor - Charged with raping boy, 7,

(PA) Lianne Danko, 33,
guidance counselor - Accused of sex with student,

(PA) Sherry Lee, 41,
neighbor - Accused of sex with son's male friend, 15,

(PA) Jacquelyn Nuccetelli, 24,
neighbor - Faces charges of homicide, robbery and conspiracy,

(SC) Jessica Rae Long, 36,
neighbor - Accused of sex with boy, 15,

(SD) Tonya Drueppel, 33,
teacher - Gets 15 years prison for sex with student, 14,

(TN) Victoria Varela,
neighbor - Arrested for prostitution,

(TX) Karina Gallegos, 26,
social service worker - Accused of sex assault of child,

(TX) Lacy McCauley, 29,
neighbor - Gets 20 years prison for sex abuse of boy, 14,

(TX) Johanna Vickers, 36,
teacher - Arrested for sex assault of a child,

(VA) Erica Lynne Mesa, 28,
teacher - Gets three years prison for sex with student,

(WA) Jessica Fuchs, 26,
teacher - Accused of sex with male student, 16,

(WV) Michelle Elaine Ball, 31,
Spanish teacher - Accused of sex with male student.

Thanks to the tipsters.

More Wikipedia arrogance -- and Anja Katharina Wigger

As if their political imbalance were not enough, they also seem to have some stuffed-shirt editors.  But let me begin at the beginning:

Frequent readers of this blog will have gathered along the way that I have a lifelong devotion to classical music.  And two thirds of the classical repertoire emanates from the German  lands, mostly Austria.  So the fact that I have some command of German comes in handy. Translations are never as good as the original -- and I have done many translations -- so where dialogue is featured I do have a useful advantage,

In recent times I have been taking a particular interest in Austro-Hungarian operetta.  It was very popular in English-speaking lands around a century ago and still has a substantial following in the German lands. And when I am looking for more information about the singers, I have found Wikipedia to be a generally useful resource.

One singer I particularly like, however, is Anja Katharina Wigger, a most feminine person.  So I was a little peeved that Wikipedia had no entry for her -- despite the fact that she has had a substantial career as a soprano in Germany.



So I resolved to put that right.  I found a site with substantial information about her in German and did an English summary of it.  I put the summary up as Wikipedia article.  But some Wikipedia "editor" named "Jimfbleak", who seems to spend most of his day  deleting Wikipedia contributions, deleted my entry. So there is no Wikipedia entry about Wigger now and no reference-style information about her available to the many people who speak only English.  Quite stupid, I think. The information I  provided would have been helpful to fans of the lady who wished to locate recordings of further performances by her.

I am in a position to make a number of useful contributions to Wikipedia but I will not waste my time doing so whiie the pompopus and hypercritical "Jimfbleak" is around.

Anyway, in the days of the internet nobody has a monopoly on information so I am putting my "Wikipedia" entry up below.  Let anybody interested judge whether it is a good basic reference entry for a singer or not:

Anja-Katharina Wigger - Soprano

Born in Hamburg, Wigger first came to widespread attention for her role as Ottilie in the 2008 Moerbisch performance of  "Im Weißen Rössl", with notable performances of  "Die ganze Welt ist himmelblau"  and "Mein Liebeslied muss ein Walzer sein".  She portrayed there an ultra-feminine lady.

She did her initial singing studies in Hamburg but later moved to Munich to study under KS Ingeborg Hallstein.

Some other roles she has played include  Konstanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Königin der Nacht in "Die Zauberflöte", Micaela in "Carmen", Baronin Freimann inDer Wildschütz", Rosalinde in "Die Fledermaus", Sylva Varescu in "Die Csárdásfürstin", Hanna Glawariin "Die lustige Witwe", Laura in"Der Bettelstudent", Evelyne Valera in "Maske in Blau", Julia in "Vetter aus Dingsda",  Regine in "Hochzeitsnacht im Paradies" und die Kurfürstin Marie in "Der Vogelhändler".

She has had other stage appearances at: Mainfranken Theater Würzburg,   Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern,  Theater Görlitz,  Stadttheater Passau,  Operetten-Theater Hannover,  Kornmarkttheater Bregenz,   Schlossgartenfestspiele Neustrelitz and  Freilichtspiele Tecklenburg and Prager Staatsoper.

She is also an active concert singer.

Acknowledgement:  http://www.agentur-wiemer.de/wigger.html

A video excerpt of her here.  Watch and I suspect that you will agree that she is gorgeous.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). 

NJ Teacher Gets Prison in Sex Case - Update

Elyse Cromwell
(Jersey City, New Jersey) Former teacher Elyse Cromwell, 29, has been sentenced to five years in prison by Hudson County Superior Court Judge Joseph Isabella for engaging in sex with a 14-year-old boy.

* * * * *
NJ Teacher and Student, 14
[Previous 2/1/13 post]
(Newark, New Jersey) A 27-year-old English teacher at Early College High School, Elyse Cromwell, has been accused of engaging in sex on multiple occasions with a 14-year-old student.

Cromwell faces charges of aggravated sexual assault on the boy, endangering the welfare of a child and child abuse.

Cromwell allegedly had sex with the boy on multiple occasions "while acting in the position of said victim’s homeroom and English teacher," the complaint says.

The complaint says she "performed prohibited sexual acts on upon" the boy, who is now 15 years old.

Cromwell, who was arrested yesterday, appeared this afternoon in Central Judicial Processing court in Jersey City via video link from Hudson County jail in Kearny. She wore the green garb of the jail and her brown hair was in a long braid draped over her right shoulder.

Cromwell was booked into custody with bond set at $300,000.

Ann Coulter "gets" radiation hormesis



Greenies love to pump up the radiation scare as a lever to attack nuclear power and nuclear deterrence but it's been known since before WWII that ionizing radiation can have health benefits

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Religion and morality

As regular readers here will probably be aware, I am an atheist who is sympathetic to Christianity.  I regard the Bible as a great source of wisdom and I endeavour to apply its precepts in my life.  I do that because every time I do the Christian thing I get a reward.  Christian teachings work for me even though I don't accept the metaphysical attachments of such teaching.  Christians would probably say that Christian teachings work for me because God is looking after me but in my view Christian teachings simply embody correct assumptions about human nature and how to behave socially in a constructive way.

So I happily read a lot that is written by Christians.  Not being a Leftist, the happiness of others does not diminish my happiness.  The happiness of others makes me happy and I rejoice in the inspiration and comfort that Christianity and prayer gives to its adherents. I am moved by faith even though I have none.  It helps people.

So I am well aware of the common Christian claim that Christianity is what keeps America civilized:  Without Christianity, behaviour would deteriorate and become "red in tooth and claw".  I don't think that claim is wholly true though anybody who has attended an evangelical church will be aware that some people who have lived a foolish and destructive life testify that Christian conversion has turned their life around.  I do think that happens.

But I don't think there is a NEED for Christianity for a society to be civilized.  Razib Khan looks at the evidence for that claim below but I would like to add something to what he says.  I would like to point to the evidence from Australia.  Australia's church attendance rates are among the lowest in the world and in continuing decline. And most of those who do go to church are elderly.  So is life in Australia nasty brutish and short?

Far from it.  Australia seems to me more civilized than the USA.  The constant American scrabble for money, for a start, has only the faintest echo here.  Some decades back, when a million dollars really bought you something, Australia had, proportionately, the world's highest number of half-millionaires.  Once they got to have half a million dollars, many Australians gave up work and just went golfing.  Leisure has a much higher priority in Australia.  And I don't need to mention that gun deaths in Australia are the tiniest fraction of the American figure. Life in Australia is much safer than in the USA.

So Australia is a very relaxed place where most people are pleasant and friendly to one another.  American visitors often remark on how friendly Australians are. And you don't have to press "1" for English, either.

I could go on to analyse why Australia is better off than the USA but that is a big essay in itself so let me simply point out that standards of behaviour are at least no worse than in the USA despite our negligible rate of churchgoing.

 Most Australians do believe in the existence of a creator but they are very doubtful about whether the churches know anything about him. For historical reasons many Australians do have a nominal religious identity.  In the days when you had to put down your religion on forms, my late father would always put himself down as "C of E" (to my mother's amusement), but in all the time I knew him he never once set foot in a church.  And he was a real gentleman too, despite his lowly occupation (lumberjack).

So most Australians are aware of the Ten Commandments and have some respect for them, but they don't regard them as binding. Far more influential are Australia's own five secular commandments. I discuss them here

I reproduce Razib's comments on religion and morality below"


Probably the biggest blind spot on the cultural Right in the United States is the "family values" Uber Alles stance. As documented over 15 years ago in The Nurture Assumption shared family environment, basically your parents' non-genetic influence, is relatively minor in affecting behavioral life outcomes (this is not to say that the issues aren't subtle, but a simple projection from family home to individual outcomes is not viable).

But there's another major confusion when it comes to the religious Right in particular, and that concerns the origins of morality and ethics. Most people are probably aware of the Josh Duggar fiasco at this point. If you aren't, Google it. There isn't much to say that hasn't been said, but this post from his father-in-law has been raising eyebrows:

".It is a mercy of God that he restrains the evil of mankind otherwise we would have destroyed ourselves long ago. Many times it is simply lack of opportunity or fear of consequences that keep us from falling into grievous sin even though our fallen hearts would love to indulge the flesh. We should not be shocked that this occurred in the Duggar's home, we should rather be thankful to God if we have been spared such, and pray that he would keep us and our children from falling."

This attitude is entirely unsurprising to me, I've heard it many times from evangelical Christians. The theory is that without religion, and particularly their religion, they would be "a rapin' and murderin'". Why? Because that's what people do without God. Believe it or not, I have never believed in God, nor have I raped and murdered (or molested). Nor do I think that raping and murdering would be enjoyable. Nor do I think that the evangelical Christians who proudly declaim that without their savior they would rape or murder with abandon would actually rape or murder.

This idea that without religion there is no morality is very widespread in the subculture, to the point of being an implicit background assumption that informs reactions to many events in concert with the idea of original sin and fundamental human depravity (thank you St. Augustine and John Calvin!). I have a socially liberal friend from an evangelical background, who is still somewhat associated with that movement, who confided in me that to did look forward to debauchery in a post-Christian life on some occasions. I had to convince him that even if he was not religious life was not likely to change much for him in the sex department unless he shifted his standards somewhat. Without God all things are not possible, believe it or not.

The fundamental misunderstanding here is actually one of intellectual history. Many evangelical Protestants in particular envisage the world before the revelation of God to Abraham, but sometime after the Fall, as a Hobbesian one of "all-against-all." This is not limited to evangelical Christians. Many Muslims also conceive of the pre-Islamic jahiliyya in Arabia as one of pagan darkness and debauchery. The root misunderstanding is conceiving of morality and ethics as a historical human invention, as opposed to formalizations of deep cognitive intuitions and social-cultural adaptations.

Broadly, I agree with Peter Turchin that the origin of modern organized religions has its ultimate roots in the social and institutional needs of pan-ethnic imperial systems during the Axial Age. The synthesis of a supernatural Weltanschauung with the nascent enterprise of philosophy and the older intuitions of tribalism allowed for the emergence of the multi-textured phenomenon which we now term organized religion. Religion co-opted and promoted morality, but it did not invent it. The Israelites put in their Lord God's mouth their own morality that was existent before his invention! Prior to the development of organized religion it seems likely that the connection between supernatural agency and morality was more tenuous and conditional (and even then, the angry and jealous petulant Yahweh of the Hebrew Bible has plenty of glimmers of the amoral gods of yore).



That is why even with the diminishing of organized religion in the modern West there has not been a correlated rise in crimes such as murder. The connection between ethical monotheism and ethics is not nearly as necessary as the religious would have you believe. The chart at the top does not prove at all that irreligion leads to decrease in crime (on the contrary, there is modest evidence that religious involvement results in mild prosocial tendencies when you control for confounds). But, it does show starkly that over the last 25 years in the United States there has been a simultaneous decrease in violent crime, and, a massive wave of secularization. This contradicts a model which proposes that religion and ethical behavior are necessarily and deterministically associated.

So no, in the case of Josh Duggar it isn't a matter of "there, but for the grace of God, go I." I'll let others psychoanalyze his behavior, but it isn't a normal human impulse which has to be constrained by the teachings of religion. If religion has to teach you not to molest your sisters you've got a problem, son! And it has nothing to do with your soul.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Woman Laced Sausages with Needles

(Lübeck, Germany)

A German animal rights activist who hid sewing needles inside sausages at supermarkets has been convicted of causing grievous bodily harm. The 60-year-old said she only wanted to stop people eating factory-farmed meat.

A court in the northern German city of Lübeck on Thursday sentenced the woman to serve a suspended two years in prison for tampering with food and causing grievous bodily harm.

The animal rights activist wanted people to stop eating meat.

Michigan Football Coach Accused in Sex Case

Robert Lesnau
(Pontiac, Michigan) A football coach formerly at Notre Dame Marist Academy, Robert Lesnau, has been accused of attempting to have sex with a six-year-old girl.

The FBI builds its case in federal court records, showing how it traced the phone number to Lesnau and the IP address to his printing business in Sterling Heights. The FBI then recorded him on the phone and has texts messages from him.

In the text messages, Lesnau tells the woman (who was an informant for the FBI at this point), "I'm not doing it unless I see you and her topless so I know you are for real." Then he texts, "I'll give you $200." He also asks, "Has she ever touched (male genitalia)?"

Lesnau was arrested for soliciting sex with a minor.

Pennsylvania Woman Accused of Homicide

Jacquelyn Nuccetelli
(Allegheny County, Pennsylvania)

Jacquelyn Nuccetelli hatched a plot with two others to rob Andrew McMunn, 23, of Blawnox, whom Nuccetelli had known since high school and had kept in touch with on Facebook, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Wednesday.

The three believed McMunn had a key to a work safe that “had a lot of money inside,” she told police, and her co-conspirators — police call them “CJ” and “Calvin” — promised to give her $1,200 if she helped get the key.

Less than a week later, McMunn's bright red sneakers led to the discovery of his body over a bank behind an Oakland personal fitness center.

He died of head injuries, according to an autopsy performed by the Allegheny County Medical Examiner's Office.

Nuccetelli, 24, faces counts of homicide, robbery and conspiracy.

Ohio Woman Arrested on Felony Charges

Brandy Bean
(Bellevue, Ohio) A local woman, Brandy Bean, was arrested this week for burglary, forgery and theft.

Reportedly, Bean would knock on doors and ask to use the telephone and the restroom. While inside, she would steal items from the house.

Texas Woman Accused of Sex with Boy

Karina Gallegos
(San Antonio, Texas) Local police have issued a warrant for the arrest of social service worker Karina Gallegos on a charge of sexual assault of a child.

Gallegos, 26, worked in a facility where she had access to children, said Sgt. Javier Salazar, the department spokesman.

The San Benito woman used her position to gain access to a 14-year-old boy, police said.

“It’s quite possible that she’s going to get a job in that same line of work,” Salazar said.

The alleged crime happened back in 2013 at a facility where she worked with children, including those who were previous victims of crimes.

Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Gallegos is encouraged to report it to the San Antonio Police Department.

Wake up! Mr Obama.   81% Of Al Jazeera Arabic Poll Respondents Support Islamic State

Where is the black jellyfish's claim that ISIS is not Islamic now?

In a recent survey conducted by AlJazeera.net, the website for the Al Jazeera Arabic television channel, respondents overwhelmingly support the Islamic State terrorist group, with 81% voting “YES” on whether they approved of ISIS’s conquests in the region.

The poll, which asked in Arabic, “Do you support the organizing victories of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)?” has generated over 38,000 responses thus far, with only 19% of respondents voting “NO” to supporting ISIS.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Texas Woman Gets Prison in Sex Case

Lacy McCauley
(Lubbock, Texas) A 29-year-old woman, Lacy McCauley, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy.

Prosecutor Jaret Greaser said the plea deal stems from the “age of the victim and the circumstances surrounding her case.”

McCauley was one of three people convicted in connection with a complex case of sexual abuse.

She admitted she sexually assaulted her co-defendant’s son, who was also convicted of sexually abusing two family members.

Upon release, McCauley will have to register as a sex offender.

"Women's spaces"

If you Google "women's space" you will find examples from all sorts of times and places of feminists demanding such spaces.  They want man-free zones, where they can escape from the "patriarchy"

Such demands are more evidence of how egocentric radical feminists and Leftists generally are.  If any other demographic category made such demands, that would be roundly condemned as segregation, apartheid, discrimination etc.  "Segregation is good if we do it but bad if anybody else does it" is the implicit message.

It is not however an explicit message. My son reports that when he was recently on the campus of the University of Queensland -- of which he and I are both graduates -- he was approached by some young women who were handing out small gifts to anyone who signed a petition demanding a women's space on that campus.

He agreed to sign their petition, saying, "I think any group should have the right to exclude people they don't like".  This utterance was greeted with horror, his signature was rejected and he did not get his gift.  He was describing plainly what they wanted but they could not admit that -- in the best traditions of Leftist denialism.  They no doubt thought of themselves as enemies of "discrimination".

And we can see how deeply entrenched the hypocrisy and dishonesty is when we reflect that feminists have a long history of opposing men's spaces.  For over a hundred years all Australian towns had a men's space -- the public bar of a local hotel.  Women were not allowed there.  There was a separate "Ladies' lounge" where women drank.

Feminists have completely destroyed that.  Women are now allowed in all bars, sometimes by force of law.  I remember the process  well. The big watering hole for UQ students was always "The Regatta", a large and imposing hotel on the way back into town from the university.  And it too once denied women admittance to its public bar.  So what did feminists do?  They barged in anyway and chained themselves to various objects to make it difficult to remove them. They did so until the rule excluding them was abandoned.

And the efforts of women to have the membership of various gentlemen's clubs "opened up" are well known. Most such clubs have succumbed.  That men might enjoy a place where they are free from women is not considered. But a place where women are free from men is just fine, righteous even.

So how does this ethical black hole arise?  It arises from the general lack of principles among Leftists.  Leftists are sub-clinical psychopaths.  In pursuit of their hates, Leftists can turn around and march in opposite directions at the drop of a hat.

The classic example of that was the wharfies (dockers,  longshoremen) during WWII.  Nazism and Communism were always sibling rivals and outside Germany, dock workers were systematically Communist sympathizers.  Not a few were actual members of the local Communist party.  So when Hitler and Stalin jointly invaded the long-suffering Poles, dock workers did all they could to hinder the war effort against the Nazi/Soviet alliance.  But when Hitler turned on his ally and invaded Russia, the dock workers, particularly in America, suddenly ceased their obstruction of the war effort. It was their hate that guided them, not any high principle.  Stalin hated "the rich" and so did they -- so they were consistent only in supporting him.

But be that as it may, what is clearly going on among the radical feminists is an inability to empathize -- an ability to see everything only in the light of what they want.  They have no principles and no honour or ethics of any kind.  What they want defines righteous and nothing else matters.  They are moral imbeciles.  Their hate and anger is so strong that it blinds them to all else, even to basic decency and fairness.

Why do some women get that way?  In the universities these days they are taught that.  Barely articulate cries of feminist rage pass as education these days.  In the society at large, however, feminism can be a temporary refuge from a bad experiece -- a relationship breakup usually.  Such a refuge is usually abandoned after a time -- for a man.  Lifelong feminism however can result from some physical difference -- abnormal hormone levels usually -- but it is more likely to be a convenient way to express the woman's Leftism, her hatred of the society about her generally.

It is sick

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Massachusetts Woman Accused of Rape

Larissa Araba
(Framingham, Massachusetts) A 21-year-old local woman, Larissa Araba, has been accused of engaging in sex with a 14-year-old boy.

Araba has been charged with rape of a child.

Officers got a call about a suspicious vehicle parked on Wadsworth Road.

When they arrived, they found Araba and the boy in the backseat of the car having sex.

A pretrial conference is scheduled for June 9.

West Virginia Teacher Accused of Sex Abuse

Michelle Elaine Ball
(Charleston, West Virginia) A 31-year-old Spanish teacher formerly at Capital High School, Michelle Elaine Ball, has been accused of sex with a male student.

Ball faces a sexual abuse charge related to an alleged relationship with an underage student.

Prosecutors say Ball began smoking marijuana with the teenager and would take him to the movies and on trips. The relationship eventually turned sexual, prosecutors allege.

A bond amount of $10,000 has been established.

THE AGE OF COMMUNISM LIVES ON

What is described below is reprehensible but it is not mysterious.  It is understandable if you realize that the only things important to Leftists are their hates.  Hitler's prime hate (the Jews) is not their hate. Stalin's prime hate (rich people) is  their hate.  So Stalin is to them a good guy, even if they are cautious about saying so

It was twenty-five years ago, but it feels like yesterday. When seeing the images of the fall of the Berlin Wall, I cried with joy, took out my best bottle of French wine, left the television on, and listened to Beethoven’s Ninth over and over and over. If you didn’t live through it, know that there was nothing like it. What we need to be reminded of, however, are the stakes and what didn’t happen in the wake of the fall.

In addition to the tyranny, the torture, and the assault upon the human spirit, the slaughtered victims of communism were not the thousands of the Inquisition, not the thousands of Americans lynched, not even the six million dead from Nazi extermination. The best scholarship yields numbers that the soul must try to comprehend: scores and scores and scores of millions of individual human bodies, which is what makes the work of Lee Edwards in keeping alive in our minds the victims of communism so morally essential, so morally vital.

Alexander Yakovlev, Gorbachev’s right hand man, who examined the archives for the last Soviet leader and who came away a deeply changed and heroic man, let us know that 60 million were slain in the Soviet Union alone. The Chinese author Jung Chang, who had access to scores of Mao Zedong’s collaborators and to the detailed Russian and local archives, reached the figure of 70 million Chinese lives snuffed out by Mao’s deliberate choices. If we count those dead of starvation from the communist ability and desire to experiment with human interaction in agriculture—20 million to 40 million in three years—we may add scores of millions more.

The communist Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot, who was educated in France and taught his politics by French communist intellectuals, butchered one-fifth to one-fourth of the entire Cambodian population. That would be as if an American regime had murdered some 50 to 70 million of its people. In each and every communist regime, countless people were shot and died by deliberate exposure, starved and murdered in work camps and prisons meant to extract every last fiber of labor before they die. No cause ever in the history of all mankind has produced more slaughtered innocents and more orphans than communism. It was a system of production that surpassed all others in turning out the dead.

What should one have expected after the fall of the Berlin wall? What didn’t occur? Where were the celebrations and the accountings? Where was the recognition of the ineffable value of a truly limited government? Our schools, universities and media do not teach our children any differently now about the human consequences of liberty, of voluntary economic societies, and of limited government in the real world. Our children do not know in any domain what happened under communism. Those who depend on our media and our films do not know. We live without self-belief and without any moral understanding of the extraordinary place of America, of its values, of its liberty, and of those leaders who won the Cold War for the dignity and the benefit of humankind.

Imagine if World War II had ended in a stalemate with a European Nazi empire from the Urals to the English Channel soon to be armed with nuclear weapons and in mortal contest with the United States in a peace kept only by deterrence. Would progressive children have sung, “All we are saying is give peace a chance” beneath symbols of unilateral disarmament? Would our intellectuals have mocked the phrase “evil empire”? What were the differences? Deaths? Camps? The desolation of the flesh and of the spirit? Solzhenitsyn had it exactly right about the Soviets, “No other regime on earth could compare with it either in the number of those it had done to death, in heartiness, in the range of its ambitions, in its thoroughgoing and unmitigated totalitarianism—no, not even the regime of its pupil, Hitler” (from the Gulag Archipelago). What would the celebration have been like if after two generations the swastika at last had fallen in place of the hammer and the sickle?

The communist holocaust, like the Nazi, should have brought forth a flowering of Western art, witness, sympathy, and an ocean of tears, and then a celebration at its downfall. Instead, it has called forth a glacier of indifference. Kids who in the 1960s hung portraits of Lenin, Mao, and Che on their college walls—the moral equivalent of having hung portraits of Hitler, Goebbels, or Horst Wessel in one’s dorm—came to teach our children about the moral superiority of their generation. Every historical textbook lingers on the crimes of Nazism—rightly so—seeks their root causes, draws a lesson from them, and everybody knows the number six million. By contrast, the same textbooks remain silent about the catastrophe of communism, everywhere it held or holds power. Ask any college freshman—try it if you don’t believe me— how many died under Stalin’s regime and they will answer even now, “Thousands? Tens of thousands?” It is the equivalent of believing that Hitler killed hundreds of Jews.

The scandal of such ignorance derives from an intellectual culture’s willful blindness to the catastrophe of its relative sympathies. Most of Europe has outlawed the neo-Nazis, but the French Communist Party from 1999 to 2002 was part of a ruling government. One may not fly the swastika, but one may hoist the hammer and sickle at official events. The denial of Hitler’s dead or the minimization of the Jewish Holocaust is literally a crime in most of Europe. The denial or minimization of communist crimes is an intellectual and political art form, and the fast track to a successful academic career. “Anti-fascist” is a term of honor; “anti-communist” is a term of ridicule and abuse.

More HERE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Issues


According to a recent news poll, Americans rank the importance of issues as follows:

1,021 registered voters were polled by Fox News April 19-21, 2014. Even using the 3% margin of error, the economy appears to be a much greater concern to most Americans than any other.

Posted by Note Taker

Threat to Global Security — Climate Change

(New London, CT) President Obama spoke at the US Coast Guard Academy Commencement ceremonies and, while most Americans see the economy and terrorism as major concerns, he tried to elevate "climate change" to "security threat" status.

Climate change will impact every country on the planet. No nation is immune. So I’m here today to say that climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security. And make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country. And so we need to act -- and we need to act now.

The President then tried to explain how climate change is related to "the instability in Nigeria, unrest in Syria, and civil war in the Middle East."

Why is this President so out of touch with what is important?

Posted by Note Taker

Deaths from Flakka

Flakka
(Miami, Florida)

A hazardous new synthetic originating in China is being blamed for 18 recent deaths in a single South Florida county, as police grapple with an inexpensive narcotic that causes exaggerated strength and dangerous paranoid hallucinations.

On Thursday, the Fort Lauderdale police killed a man, reportedly high on the man-made street drug, alpha-PVP, known more commonly as flakka, who had held a woman hostage with a knife to her throat.

Flakka is cheap, $5 a dose, and users reportedly act violently.

Dogs and humans as symbionts -- and the inestimable Razib Khan

I will say something about dogs in a moment but I want to start out saying something about the excellent Razib.  I have been reading his writings off and on for around a decade.  He seems to know all that there is to know about genetics in general and evolutionary genetics in particular.  And if you are as interested in onomastics as I am, you may have been able to infer from his name that Razib is a brown man, a non-Muslim Bangladeshi -- though he comes from a Muslim family.

And that is important.  There are lots of minefields and "no-go" areas in genetics which most researchers sedulously avoid for the sake of a quiet life.  And those roadblocks are entirely the work of Leftists.  Leftists are much more concerned with the political implications of a statement than they are with its truth  They have to be.  Their theories are so shallow and silly that they can all be blown away in short order by the truth.

But Leftists are racists.  They think any non-white race is better than "dead white men" and their living successors.  So non-whites are indulged and allowed to say things which would be forbidden to a white.  The most glaring example of that is the way blacks can use the word "nigger" with impunity but it is a firing offence if a white uses it.  Could there be anything more racist than that?

So Razib is a very valuable person both because of his knowledge and because of his skin color.  Being a "minority" means that he can, with some safety, venture into "sensitive" areas of discussion.  And all that lies behind why I find his writings so interesting.  I think I am getting an account of Razib's field from a largely uncensored source, though I do note that Razib is a bit cautious when writing about IQ.  So you see that I have to be a racist in order to counter racism.  I have to look at race in  order to get behind racist censorship.  So that is why I trust Razib's judgement in areas where he knows a lot more than I do.

Mind you, "minorities" can sometimes get into trouble if they challenge Leftism too frontally.  The work of Bruce Lahn is a prize example.  Lahn is not actually a minority at all.  He is Chinese.  He is really therefore a member of the world's biggest majority.  But he does come from a different culture so would normally be granted some leeway.

But what he discovered was ideologically thermonuclear.  He discovered that there was a brain mutation in central Eurasia about 5,000 years ago which seems to have increased brain efficiency.  It most probably led to an upwards spurt in average IQ.  Evidence in support of that interpretation is that civilization also first arose at around that time and that the genetic feature concerned is very rare in a notoriously low intelligence population: Sub-Saharan Africans, possibly being found in most of Africa at all only as a result of incidental  contacts between Eurasia and Africa.

So the bomb went off.  The evidence for the strikingly low average IQ of Africans has been abundant for decades so Lahn's confirmation of that was really no news at all. But it was UNSPEAKABLE to Leftists.  You can mention it in academic circles among colleagues -- and indeed the American Psychological Association has done just that  -- confirming the big gap between black/white averages.

But such facts must not LEAK OUT to the general public! Leftist myths must be maintained.  And, sadly for Lahn, his work DID attract a lot of interest from a wider public. So Lahn got such a hard time over it all that he has now abandoned that area of research.  Appalling --  but that is what happens in a Left-dominated culture

But on to the topic of dogs:  I will first re-run something I wrote in 2009:

I am rather bemused about how accounts of human evolution leave out dogs. We hear lots about cranial size etc. but such discussions normally leave out our symbionts: dogs.

The relationship between dogs and humans is both ancient and amazingly powerful. How many human households to this day do not include a dog? Not many.

And yet there is a perfectly clear evolutionary reason why that is so. Dogs and humans complement one another. Dogs have the big and sensitive nose, big and sensitive ears and weaponized jaws that we lack. And we have the big brain that can give dogs good direction in the hunting life that comprises most of our evolutionary past. Without dogs we would probably still be tree-dwelling vegetarians. I wonder if modern-day vegetarians are averse to dogs? I wouldn't be surprised. There's a research paper in that.

These days we are long past the stage where we need dogs -- but we still love them. They are our "other half". They made us possible. I believe stories I have heard about a man being upset when his wife left him but being REALLY upset when his dog died. I have shed tears over a dog myself.



So what is wrong with that theory?  Razib told me that it had to be wrong because the fossil record showed the domestication of dogs to be relatively recent.  But when people tell me I am wrong, I don't burst into an infantile rage the way Leftists do.  I regard the disagreement as interesting and a warrant for further study. But in this case, my unspoken answer to Razib was that the fossil record is notoriously incomplete so was probably not to be much relied on in this instance. So I simply decided to wait and see what further developments there might be.

And it seems that I was at least partly right.  Six years later we find Razib giving an account of the most recent find of a fossilized canid. And he includes the sentence: "the true story is one of co-evolution between dogs and humans".

So am I crowing?  Not at all.  I suspect that my theory is still more sweeping than Razib would allow.  What I think IS confirmed is that the fossil record is a weak reed to lean on.  We have to look at other evidence as well.  And that is what I think my theory does

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Death from Hash Oil Explosion

(Portland, Oregon)

A medical marijuana patient sued Shell Oil, claiming it sold him butane that exploded, burning him and killing a friend as they tried to make hash oil.

Kevin Tveisme, who has a medical marijuana card, sued PacWest Energy, Shell Oil, Hai's Shell Station and 10 others on Wednesday in Multnomah County Court, blaming them for the explosion of the odorless butane.

Tveisme says he bought four packages of Power 5X butane at the Shell gas station on SE 121st and Foster Road in Portland on May 27, 2013.

He claims defendants marketed the butane as "an acceptable 'solvent' for the residential preparation of butane hash oil."

However, "Unbeknownst to plaintiff, during the extraction process, butane can fill the vapor space, and can quickly fill and enclosed area," Tveisme says.

He blames the defendants for failing to odorize their butane, or warn him about it.

Tveisme is suing for $11,000,000.

"Openness" and Facebook as a personality diagnostic

An academic report has just come out about who posts what on Facebook. The sample is, regrettably, a Mechanical Turk one, so the findings are of unknown generalizability to any population. They may however represent brighter people fairly well.

The finding that caught my eye was "Openness is positively associated with updating about intellectual topics".  We also read that "people who are high in openness tend to be creative, intellectual, and curious".

I should mention at this point that there is a large psychological literature dating back to at least 1950 in which Leftists congratulate themselves for having just such traits.  And, conversely, they claim, but never clearly prove, that conservatives are the opposite of that.  According to conventional wisdom in political psychology, we conservatives are closed-minded and rigid.  From their behavior, I would have thought that that cap fitted Leftists a lot better but I will leave that aside for the moment.  They are certainly not open to evidence and argument on things like global warming.

I have written a great deal on why the conventional psychological  characterization is false, with my most recent shot in that direction here.

The basic fault in the Leftist research on the topic is that there is a great deal of "spin" in how they refer to things.  To take the simplest example, you would think that a desire for order would be a generally good thing.  What scientists do, after all, is search for order in the phenomena of nature.  So what do you do when you find that conservatives are high on a desire for order?  You relabel it as "intolerance of ambiguity".  I kid you not.  Something good instantly becomes something bad. It's typical Leftist "proof" -- proof that proves nothing.  Anyway, my various academic papers shooting down the nonsense are accessible here

So what pleased me was purely something personal.  What I put up on Facebook is precisely what "open" people put up -- posts on scientific and political matters.  I come out as the opposite of what Leftists think a conservative is.

Whether conservatives generally post mostly that way is of course unknown but could be of interest to study.  When personality scores (based on how people describe themselves) correlate with actual behaviour (as in what you use Facebook for) that does add some confidence that one is studying something real.

Journal abstract below but the whole article is publicly accessible at the same link


The Big Five, self-esteem, and narcissism as predictors of the topics people write about in Facebook status updates

Tara C. Marshall et al.

Abstract

Status updates are one of the most popular features of Facebook, but few studies have examined the traits and motives that influence the topics that people choose to update about. In this study, 555 Facebook users completed measures of the Big Five, self-esteem, narcissism, motives for using Facebook, and frequency of updating about a range of topics.

Results revealed that extraverts more frequently updated about their social activities and everyday life, which was motivated by their use of Facebook to communicate and connect with others.

People high in openness were more likely to update about intellectual topics, consistent with their use of Facebook for sharing information.

Participants who were low in self-esteem were more likely to update about romantic partners, whereas those who were high in conscientiousness were more likely to update about their children.

Narcissists’ use of Facebook for attention-seeking and validation explained their greater likelihood of updating about their accomplishments and their diet and exercise routine. Furthermore, narcissists’ tendency to update about their accomplishments explained the greater number of likes and comments that they reported receiving to their updates.

Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 85, October 2015, Pages 35–40

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Louisiana Teacher Gave Pot Brownies to Students

Camille Brennan
(Covington, Louisiana) A 29-year-old teacher formerly at Archbishop Hannan High School, Camille Brennan, has been accused of giving pot brownies to two students.

Brennan faces counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and distribution of marijuana.

In a letter to parents last month, Father Charles Latour, the Covington school's principal, said he asked the Sheriff's Office to investigate Brennan after one of the student's parents contacted school officials.

Brennan resigned soon after.

Reportedly, more charges could be forthcoming.

Dakota Teacher Gets 15 Years Prison in Sex Case

Tonya Drueppel
(Sioux Falls, South Dakota) A teacher formerly at Axtell Park Middle School, Tonya Drueppel, 33, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for having a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old student.

Fine to be a Muslim in Britain but not a Jehovah's Witness?

Jehovah's Witnessses are strict Bible Christians much like the Puritans of old. They are however so strict about what the Bible says that they are one of the few Christian religions to acknowledge that the cross is an old pagan sex symbol.  It symbolizes a penis entering spread legs.

The words in the original Greek of the Bible which are translated as cross are stauros and xylon, which mean "stake" and "wood" respectively.  No word meaning "cross" is used. Jesus was executed with his hands nailed together over his head. So the cross story is just another pagan accretion like Christmas, Easter and observing the sabbath on a Sunday.

The little boy in the story below was therefore simply reflecting what the Bible says.  It's a sad and strange day in a country formed by strict Bible Christians when the Koran is more acceptable than the Bible.  No criticism of Islam is of course acceptable in Britain




A Jehovah's Witness' seven-year-old son has been taken into care because she damaged him with her 'religious beliefs and practices', a family court judge has ruled.

Judge Clifford Bellamy concluded that the boy had suffered 'emotional harm' from his mother and decided he would be better off with foster parents.

The young boy had been disruptive in school during lessons touching on Christianity, destroying projects and calling bible stories lies, a court heard.

Social services also believed the unnamed little boy was also at the centre of a rift between his parents so will no longer be living with either of them.

Detail of the case has emerged in a written ruling by the judge following a family court hearing in Leicester but Judge Bellamy said no-one involved could be identified.

A member of staff at the youngster's school had told how the boy had said he 'could not be with people who didn't believe in Jehovah', said the judge.

The little boy had cut up materials his class was using in an exercise about the 'Crucifixion story' and had said, 'nobody's telling the true stories about Jehovah', the judge heard.

He had also 'presented as contemptuous, grimacing somewhat theatrically' when speaking about the 'non-Jehovah's Witness Bible'.

'I am satisfied that the fact that (he) has been immersed by his mother in her religious beliefs and practices has been a significant factor in causing that emotional harm.'

The judge said there were also concerns about the boy's relationship with his father.  He said the youngster had spoken of his father being 'really mean to me' and had said: 'I don't love daddy at all.'

Social services staff had also thought the boy was being harmed by 'conflict' between his parents.

Judge Bellamy said he was satisfied that 'change' was required and that the youngster should be placed with experienced foster carers.  He indicated that he would review the case later in the summer.

The boy's mother had not accepted that he had been harmed by 'immersion' in her religion and had denied introducing him to her religion in a bid to alienate him from his father

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

European Gas

Norway has overtaken Russia as the leading supplier of gas to western Europe, according to data collected by Reuters from Norway’s state gas network operator Gassco and Russian state company Gazprom.

According to the figures, the trend began when Norway overtook Russia in the last three months of last year, with western Europe buying 29.5 billion cubic metres (bcm) from Norway and 19.8 bcm from Russia.

OK

Michigan Woman Accused of Running Hooker Ring

Amy Sawulski
(Washtenaw County, Michigan) A 30-year-old local woman, Amy Sawulski, has been accused of running a prostitution ring out of Ann Arbor motels.

Sawulski faces prostitution-related felonies.

Two women testified at a preliminary examination in April that they worked under Sawulski as prostitutes in 2010-2011, mostly at the Motel 6 on South State Street in Ann Arbor. The women testified they also went to people's homes for more money. The official complaint lists both the city of Ann Arbor and Ann Arbor Township as locations Sawulski operated.

Sawulski was the one who put the postings on the website and provided the women with rides, motel rooms and cellphones, they testified. The women also testified Sawulski took half of their earnings, which averaged to about $1,400 per day.

Sawulski is free on $25,000 bond.

Pennsylvania Educator Accused of Sex with Student

Lianne Danko
(Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)

A former Ringgold High School guidance counselor today was charged with having a sexual relationship with a high school football player.

Rostraver police said Lianne Danko, 33, of Rostraver, was charged with three counts of institutional sexual assault.

According to a criminal complaint, Ms. Danko engaged in an inappropriate relationship beginning in October with an 18-year-old male student who was seeing her to discuss his relationship problems. The two began a sexual relationship sometime in November, police said.

Danko was booked and released on $50,000 bond.

Virginia Teacher Gets Prison for Sex with Students - Update

Erica Lynne Mesa
(Stafford, Virginia)

Erica Lynne Mesa was a teacher and coach at Colonial Forge High School in Stafford County.

A judge sentenced her to 22 years Thursday, with all but three years suspended.

OK

* * * * *
Virginia Teacher Admits to Sex with Students - Update
{Previous 3/20/15 post]
(Stafford, Virginia) Former math teacher at Colonial Forge High School Erica Lynn Mesa pleaded guilty to electronic solicitation of a minor and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

She admitted to having sex with four students.

Mesa faces a possible 22 years in prison when sentenced in May.

* * * * *
Virginia Teacher Indicted for Sex with Student - Update
[Previous 12/4/14 post]
(Stafford, Virginia) Arrested last September, 27-year-old Erica Lynn Mesa has been indicted on felony charges for allegedly engaging in sexual relations with two students.

According to court records, Mesa later admitted to police of having sexual relations with at least four students starting in 2012 and continuing until about a week before her arrest.

Most of the encounters took place in her home, while at least one occurred in her vehicle, court records state.

Court records list the students’ ages as ranging from 16 to 18; some of them were in her classes.

A trial date hasn't been reported.

* * * * *
Virginia Teacher Accused of Sex with Student
[Previous 10/1/14 post]
(Stafford, Virginia) A 27-year-old teacher at Colonial Forge High School, Erica Lynn Mesa, has been accused of engaging in a sexual relationship with a student.

Mesa faces counts of custodial indecent liberties and solicitation of a minor using a computer device.

Stafford County police say that Mesa, a teacher and coach at Colonial Forge High School, had a sexual relationship with a male student aged 16-17 in February, May and September of this year.

Mesa also allegedly sent nude photos of herself to the male student.

Mesa was booked into custody at the Rappahannock Regional Jail without bond.

Ohio Woman Accused of Raping Toddler

Peggy Horstman
(Belmont County, Ohio) A 27-year-old local woman, Peggy Horstman, has been accused of raping a one-year-old toddler.

Horstman faces counts of rape and gross sexual imposition.

Arizona Woman Sentenced for Sex with Boy, 13 - Update

Anna Areola-Hernandez
(Maricopa County, Arizona) A 24-year-old local woman, Anna Areola-Hernandez, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to child molestation of a 13-year-old boy.

* * * * *
Arizona Woman Accused of Sex with Minor
[Previous 3/27/14 post]
(Phoenix, Arizona) A 23-year-old local woman, Anna Areola-Hernandez, has been accused of engaging in sex with minors and infecting at least one with an STD.

Areola-Hernandez faces three counts each of suspicion of sexual conduct with a minor, child molestation, unlawful age misrepresentation, and adult posing as a minor for a sexual conduct act.

Sgt. Jay O’Neill, a spokesman for the Glendale Police Department, said detectives had been alerted to an inappropriate and potentially sexual relationship between a 23-year-old woman and an underage boy. The underage boy later turned out to be a 13 year old. Areola-Hernandez met the minor at a Phoenix mall and engaged in sex several times.

Detectives learned through investigation that Areola-Hernandez, who used the screen names “Tiny Hernandez” or “Ana Hernandez,” communicated with minors through texts and social media sites including Facebook, Kik, Snapchat, and Tango. Her profile pics were styled to make herself look younger.

Areola-Hernandez was booked without bail since she is considered a flight risk.

The wide-ranging influence of genetics

The Left long denied the influence of genetics but now simply ignore it.  The study below is therefore powerful evidence of just how wrong they are.  Hans Eysenck, a considerable student of genetics, once said to me, "It's ALL genetic".  He was of course making a conversational statement to a colleague rather than a precise scientific one but the present study does confirm one sense of what he said:  ALL traits have a substantial genetic component. And the writer below makes the correct and important point that the 50/50 split observed is only an average and that the genetic contribution varies from trait to trait.  So the findings do not overturn the usual finding that IQ is about two thirds genetic


It's a question that dogged scientists for close to a century and Queensland researchers say they have the answer.  When it comes to health, in the age-old battle of nature versus nurture… It's a draw.

University of Queensland research fellow Dr Beben Benyamin worked with scholars at the VU University of Amsterdam to review almost every twin study completed globally in the past 50 years.

After analysing studies of more than 14.5 million twin pairs across 17,804 traits from 2748 publications, they found variation for human traits and diseases was 49 per cent genetic (nature), and 51 per cent due to environmental factors (nurture).

The Queensland Brain Institute researcher said the draw was expected but he was pleased to be able to put a number on the variation and surprised by how similar an influence each aspect had.

"Most of the reviews have been for specific traits, like people are interested in studying one particular disease and review all the twin studies for one disease," he said.  "But this is I think is the first one to review everything about all disease and all twin studies that are available at the moment."

The influence of nature and nurture is actually a complex interplay rather than a simple either/or and is far from equal across all traits and diseases.

The risk for bipolar disorder was about 70 per cent due to genetics and 30 per cent due to environmental factors, Dr Benyamin found.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). 

Hawaii Obamacare Enrolls Zero People

(Honolulu, Hawaii)

The numbers are in: Hawaii’s Obamacare Exchange enrolled a grand total of ZERO — yes, zero people during its special enrollment period.

The Obama administration had implemented the special enrollment period from March 15 - April 30 to assist individuals who were unaware they would face a tax penalty for not having “qualifying” health insurance. In all, less than 250,000 individuals decided to enroll nationwide meaning that millions of Americans would rather pay the tax than enroll in Obamacare.

While Hawaii enrolled zero individuals and is the worst performing state, it is not alone. Vermont signed up only 97 households, while Rhode Island enrolled just 25 households.

That's a shame.

New Mexico Teacher Accused of Relations with Girl

Mandi-Ann Casados
(Albuquerque, New Mexico) A 25-year-old physical education teacher and coach with Mora County Schools, Mandi-Ann Casados, has been accused of an inappropriate relationship with a 14-year-old female student.

According to a criminal complaint the 14-year-old player’s mom contacted police after she found more than 500 text messages on her daughters cell phone between her and Casados.

Police say one of the texts Casados sent to the girl was a picture of her with a hickey on her neck. Others messages talked about the two being in love, kissing and almost getting caught.

Casados has been charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Buchanan strikes back

I like a lot of what Pat Buchanan says  -- his knowledge of history is exceptional -- but I disagree with his views below.  He clearly has no background in economics.  His major point below is that largely bipartisan measures fostering free trade have led to a large loss of American factory jobs -- with most consumer products now being made in China.  What he refuses to look at is the great enrichment of Americans that freeish trade has brought about.  You now get far more for your dollar by buying Chinese. It's much the same in Australia.  I have seen the price of some electrical goods plummet from around $100 to $10.  That's phenomenal.

Buchanan notes that America is now much less self-sufficient than it was but America is not at war with the rest of the world and the huge trade relationship with China is surely a strong force for peace.  America would not want to cut itself off from its major supplier and China would not want to cut itself off from its major customer.

And the situation in fact gives America a lot of leverage.  If China became particularly annoying, America could without great bother embargo the import of all Chinese products.  Suppliers in Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam and elsewhere could readily take up the slack and replace China as suppliers.  China, on the other hand, could not at all replace America as a customer.  So China has now to a substantial extent put itself in America's power.  Not that the black jellyfish in the White House at present would ever exercise such power.

And moving Americans out of assembly line jobs surely has a lot to be said for it also


As Middle America rises in rage against "fast track" and the mammoth Obamatrade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, The Wall Street Journal has located the source of the malady.

Last Monday's lead editorial began:

"Here we go again. In the 1990s Pat Buchanan launched a civil war within the Republican Party on a platform targeting immigration and trade. Some claimed Pitchfork Pat was the future of the GOP, though in the end he mainly contributed to its presidential defeats."

But, woe is us, "the GOP's Buchanan wing is making a comeback."

Now it is true that, while Nixon and Reagan won 49-state landslides and gave the GOP five victories in six presidential contests, the party has fallen upon hard times. Only once since 1988 has a Republican presidential nominee won the popular vote.

But was this caused by following this writer's counsel? Or by the GOP listening to the deceptions of its Davos-Doha-Journal wing?

In the 1990s, this writer and allies in both parties fought NAFTA, GATT and MFN for China. The Journal and GOP establishment ran with Bill and Hillary and globalization. And the fruits of their victory?

Between 2000 and 2010, 55,000 U.S. factories closed and 5 million to 6 million manufacturing jobs disappeared. Columnist Terry Jeffrey writes that, since 1979, the year of maximum U.S. manufacturing employment, "The number of jobs in manufacturing has declined by 7,231,000 — or 37 percent."

Does the Journal regard this gutting of the greatest industrial base the world had ever seen, which gave America an independence no republic had ever known, an acceptable price of its New World Order?

Beginning in 1991, traveling the country and visiting plant after plant that was shutting down or moving to Asia or Mexico, some of us warned that this economic treason against America's workers would bring about political retribution. And so it came to pass.

Since 1988, a free-trade Republican Party has not once won Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois or Wisconsin in a presidential election. Ohio, the other great Midwest industrial state, is tipping. The Reagan Democrats are gone. Who cast them aside? You or us?

Since the early 1990s, we have run $3 billion to $4 billion in trade deficits with China. Last year's was $325 billion, or twice China's defense budget. Are not all those factories, jobs, investment capital and consumer dollars pouring into China a reason why Beijing has been able to build mighty air and naval fleets, claim sovereignty over the South and East China seas, fortify reefs 1,000 miles south of Hainan Island, and tell the U.S. Navy to back off?

The Journal accuses us of being anti-growth. But as trade surpluses add to a nation's GDP, trade deficits subtract from it. Does the Journal think our $11 trillion in trade deficits since 1992 represents a pro-growth policy?

On immigration, this writer did campaign on securing the border in 1991-92, when there were 3 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

But the Bush Republicans refused to seal the border.

Now there are 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants and the issue is tearing the party apart. Now everybody is for "secure borders."

We did urge a "moratorium" on legal immigration, such as America had from 1924 to 1965, to assimilate and Americanize the millions who had come. The Journal Republicans called that xenophobia.

Since then, tens of millions of immigrants, here legally and illegally, mostly from the Third World, have arrived. Economically, they consume more in tax dollars than they contribute.

Politically, most belong to ethnic groups that vote between 70 and 90 percent Democratic. Their children will bury the GOP.

Consider California, which voted for Nixon all five times he was on a national ticket and for Reagan in landslides all four times he ran.

Since 1988, California has not gone Republican in a single presidential election. No Republican holds statewide office. Both U.S. Senators are Democrats. Democrats have 39 of 53 U.S. House seats. Republican state legislators are outnumbered 2-to-1.

Americans of European descent, who provide the GOP with 90 percent of its presidential vote, are down to 63 percent of the nation and falling.  By 2042, they will be a minority. And there goes the GOP.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). 

Louisiana Teacher Gets Plea Deal in Sex Case - Update

Ashley Elizabeth Dowden
(Baton Rouge, Louisiana)

Ashley Dowden, the former Baton Rouge teacher who was found guilty of having sexual relationships with two male students, has received a plea deal that will keep her out of prison, according to East Baton Rouge Parish court documents.

Instead of prison time, she received seven years of probation and was ordered to register as a sex offender.

Dowden, 42 and a former English teacher at Riverdale Christian Academy, confessed to having a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old boy in August 2014.

OK

* * * * *
Louisiana Teacher, 41, and Boy, 16
[Previous 8/23/14 post]
(Baton Rouge, Louisiana) A 41-year-old local woman, Ashley Elizabeth Dowden, has been arrested for engaging in sex with a 16-year-old boy.

Dowden faces counts of computer aided solicitation of a juvenile, indecent behavior with juveniles, and carnal knowledge of juveniles.

The teen, who does not attend the school where the woman is employed, was questioned by deputies on Aug. 16.

"…He admitted that he had sexual intercourse with [his teacher] at [the] school…," the deputy noted.

Deputies recovered nude photographs of the woman, Ashley Elizabeth Dowden, as well as sexually explicit text messages. Deputies interviewed Dowden on Thursday, Aug. 21.

"Initially, [Dowden] made the post Miranda statements that the allegations were not true," the deputy noted. "However, the accused admitted that she had sex with the victim and she exchanged nude photographs and sexually explicit messages with him, after she was confronted with the images that were recovered from his phone."

Dowden was booked into custody at the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison and released on $15,000 bond.