Report typos and corrections to: corrections@rawstory.com.
Stories Chosen For You
On Nov. 30, 2021, a suicidal teenager killed seven fellow students at Oxford High School in Michigan. The family of one teen is joining a lawsuit that attacks the failures of the school to follow warning signs about the mass shooter, reported Click Detroit.
Justin Shilling was trying to protect younger student Keegan Gregory, while the two were hiding in a bathroom stall.
After shooting Justin, the shooter ordered Keegan against the wall. Justin had a plan that Keegan said gave him the confidence to run. “The minute the shooter took his gun off Keegan and pointed at the wall where he was going to kill him, he ran." Keegan is now facing serious trauma and his family believes it will be a long road.
“Justin’s final moments were spent protecting Keegan,” said Justin's mom, Jill Soave. “No 17-year-old should be put in that position.”
Soave joined a new lawsuit against the Oxford Community Schools and Oxford High School for reckless action.
“We are beyond heartbroken, we’re traumatized, we’re devastated and we are not ok,” Soave said. “It’s been 174 days since he was murdered and it feels like it was just last week. For me, there will never be healing, there will only be coping.”
“You only wish that they will have what you had when they graduated,” Shilling’s father, Craig, said. “The fun times with your friends and the parties.”
Attorney Ven Johnson said that the school's procedures should have protected the students first and the families want to know what went wrong to ensure it'll never happen again.
“Understanding what happened, full transparency, exposing that, calling attention to it coming up with better processes, so no one ever has to go through this again," said Johnson.
Justin's death not only saved Keegan but he also saved six others by giving his organs to save their lives.
CONTINUE READING
Show less
On Monday, The Daily Beast reported that Trump-backed West Virginia Congressman Alex Mooney faces a litany of ethics complaints from his former staffers, from improper use of government resources to the illegal acceptance of gifts.
"On Monday, the Office of Congressional Ethics released a lengthy report that found 'substantial reason' to believe Mooney had committed a number of ethical violations while in office — potentially even violations of federal law," reported Sam Brodey. "Among other things, Mooney may have 'accepted a free or below-market-value trip to Aruba,' used taxpayer dollars for non-approved purposes, and used staff for campaign work and 'personal errands,' according to OCE. On top of that, he may have 'withheld, concealed, or falsified' information provided to ethics officials in the course of the investigation."
"Several Mooney staffers said they were required to do a variety of basic and complicated tasks for the family instead of — or in addition to — their official duties, including babysitting Mooney’s children, driving them to and from school, taking care of their dog, and chauffeuring the congressman long distances for personal reasons," said the report. "One former staffer said they drove Mooney over 250 miles in one afternoon, taking him from Washington to Richmond, Virginia, for his son’s basketball game, then back to West Virginia. Another staffer drove from their home in northern Virginia to Charles Town, West Virginia, to walk the Mooneys’ dog, Skipper, while the family was away."
All of this would be against ethics laws, which requires staffers only be used for "legitimate, official activity" and that any personal activity they do should be reimbursed to the U.S. Treasury.
READ: GOP Senate candidate sues to count more mail ballots as Dr Oz's lead continues to slip: report
"The OCE even managed to take a passing shot at Mooney, who's long faced accusations that he's not a true West Virginian. The OCE noted that Mooney's staff worked to have his wife's inactive medical license in Maryland activated in West Virginia," said the report. "'Because Rep. Mooney was not from West Virginia and had not lived in the state prior to his 2014 bid for his congressional seat,' the OCE report said, 'Dr. Mooney was not licensed to practice medicine in the state.'"
Mooney won a bitterly contested primary for a West Virginia congressional district earlier this year against fellow sitting Congressman David McKinley, after the Census eliminated a seat from the state and drew them into the same district. He was carried to victory in part by an endorsement from the former president.
CONTINUE READING
Show less
Critic slams Mike Pence's 'delusions of grandeur': He's might be turning on Trump — but he's no GOP savior
May 23, 2022
Esquire columnist Charlie Pierce is reminding voters that former Vice President Mike Pence is no savior for the mainstream GOP, even if he's going up against Trump in Georgia with a battle of endorsements.
Pence, he explained "is such a political maladroit that he makes Willard Romney look like Pericles." Pence tens to "yammer" about Jesus a lot, wrote Pierce, but other than that he's generally doing the worst possible things at the worst possible time.
Pierce remembered the time Pence signed the anti-LGBTQ bill on the same weekend as the Final Four basketball tournament. There was no game that day, Pierce recalled. But there were about 9,000 reporters sitting around doing nothing and waiting for news when Pence signing the bill fell in their laps. The story exploded. Companies with conferences and events scheduled for Indiana moved them to other states.
"Pence’s discriminatory bill had enormous consequences for Indiana’s economy and reputation," wrote the Human Rights Campaign in 2017. "Indianapolis’ non-profit tourism agency estimated that in their city alone, Pence’s anti-LGBTQ bill cost up to 12 conventions and $60 million in lost revenue. And polling conducted by HRC after the 2015 fight found that 75 percent of Hoosiers said the law was bad for the state’s economy, and 70 percent of those surveyed said they opposed it."
READ: GOP Senate candidate sues to count more mail ballots as Dr Oz's lead continues to slip: report
Pence ultimately walked back his comments.
In an interview with the New York Times, Pence was "overwhelmed by delusions of grandeur," wrote Pierce. While he aims at the Oval Office, he is promoting the four years he stood nodding behind Donald Trump's shoulder. Prior to that, Pence was racking up a list of failures that hurt his state. Raw Story crafted an extensive list of all of them from his policy mistake that led to an HIV outbreak to his mishandling of the Indiana economy.
Trump essentially saved Pence's career in 2016 when he was picked for the VP spot, said Pierce.
"Pence never has evinced the political skill to navigate these kind of lunatic circumstances, and being oblivious is not a strategy," wrote Pierce. "Pence’s most fundamental problem is that, except for that part at the end about saving America, everything the Trump flack said is true. Pence was firmly atop the scrap heap when he took the job of running with El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago. He may have thought the notion of Trump’s actually being elected was as far-fetched as everybody else did throughout. Once it happened, even his wife reportedly was ambivalent about the black hole to which Pence had hitched his wagon."
Trying for Pence to pivot away from it isn't going to be possible, concluded Pierce. After all, more than of the party doesn't trust him because of Jan. 6, he closed.
CONTINUE READING
Show less
Copyright © 2022 Raw Story Media, Inc. PO Box 21050, Washington, D.C. 20009 | Masthead | Privacy Policy | For corrections or concerns, please email corrections@rawstory.com.
{{ post.roar_specific_data.api_data.analytics }}