The Columbus Police Department this week denied that its officers ripped the prosthetic legs off a double amputee.
However, video released by the police to prove their case was far from conclusive.
The Columbus Dispatch reports that the Columbus Police Department on Monday night gave their own explanation for an incident that left a double amputee protester lying on the ground without his prosthetic legs and writhing after being hit with pepper spray.
"In the police version, captured Sunday afternoon by the body cameras of three officers and a pole-mounted video camera at the southeast corner of Broad and High streets, the unidentified man is seen standing and throwing water bottles, then two large plywood signs at officers," the Dispatch writes. "Video shows the shirtless man with prosthetic legs hurl a 4-foot tall sign, grazing the head and neck of an officer, who was not seriously hurt. At least one officer who saw the attack ran to the man and tackled him, trying to make an arrest. Pepper spray was used on nearby protesters."
However, no video released by police shows how the man's prosthetic limbs were actually pulled off, even though the officers involved have categorically denied having done so.
Columbus Police Sgt. Charles Fuqua said that officers "likely didn’t know the man was a double amputee and that it wasn’t relevant" to how they handled him, the Dispatch reports.
Watch the full police presentation on the incident below.
On Tuesday, the Lincoln Project released a new ad raking President Donald Trump over the coals for his admission at Saturday's rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma that he asked administration officials to "slow down the one thing that could keep us safe: testing."
"Slow the testing down?" said the narrator. "Slow down our chance to save tens of thousands of lives. Slow down our understanding of where COVID is and how it's spreading. Slow down the steps to re-open the economy."
"Every single expert told him to test more and test faster," said the ad. "And now, we know his response ... the choice is clear: it's America or Trump."
Some Texas students are refusing to compete in sports unless their high school drops Robert E. Lee from its name.
Trude Lamb, a sophomore cross country runner from Tyler, wrote a letter to school board members asking to change the name honoring the Confederate general, as an online petition has reached nearly 10,000 signatures, reported KENS-TV.
"He owned slaves and didn’t believe people like me were 100% human let alone ever go to my very high school," Lamb wrote. "I don’t see a future of remembering a person who did nothing for our country and who didn’t care for me or my people. He continues to bring our city down."
Lamb emigrated to the U.S. from Ghana in 2014, and she has seen historic evidence of the slave trade.
“I have stood in the dungeons of the slave castle and see the three foot urine and feces stains on the walls," she wrote. "I have worked the very fields and fetched water for my family from the very places my people were kidnapped.”
She has been joined by other student athletes who say they won't compete under Lee's name, and they're asking the school board to remove his name and the name of John Tyler -- a slave owner who supported slavery's expansion as president -- from the district's two high schools.
"We as a board are well aware of the issues surrounding the names of both of our flagship high schools," said board president Wade Washmon. "We have heard from, and anticipate hearing more, from the community on the subject. This time in between school years will hopefully be used to discuss, and find both consensus and meaningful resolution in a unified manner."
Lamb has asked the board to rename the school for "someone who we can all be proud of.”
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump tweeted a rant against "washed up Creepster" John Bolton, calling him a "lowlife" and saying he should be in jail for leaking classified information in his tell-all book.
The president was promptly dogpiled by commenters on social media, many of them asking why Trump had hired Bolton as National Security Adviser if he was such a lowlife.
The Stonewall riots were a six-night series of protests that began in the early morning of June 28, 1969, and centered around the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City.
Four days earlier, on June 24, 1969, the police, led by Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine, raided the Stonewall Inn and began arresting bar employees and confiscating liquor. But when Pine led a second raid on the 28th, patrons fought back. Approximately 150 people fled, regrouped on the street and stormed the bar, trapping the police inside. The protesters began throwing bricks, bottles and garbage, and attempted to set the bar on fire.
For six nights, protesters clashed off and on with police, while chanting and marching in and around Christopher Street.
Today, many credit the protests with sparking the LGBTQ rights movement. But at the time, if you were a New Yorker reading the local, mainstream papers, you wouldn’t know that a new civil rights movement was unfolding in the city.
In the days after the Stonewall riots, depending on which paper you read, you would have been exposed to a vastly different version of events. The major dailies gave a megaphone to the police, while alternative outlets embedded themselves among the protesters.
When the press inadvertently outed people
To understand the differences in media coverage, it’s important to recall the relationship between gay people, the press and the police prior to Stonewall.
If arrested, a person’s name, age, address and crime would be published as part of the police blotter in most local newspapers across the U.S. For example, if a man was arrested for committing a “homosexual” act in Dayton, Ohio, his information would be published in the Dayton Daily News. Such publication often had disastrous consequences for the person “outed” in print.
Gay men, therefore, were forced underground. Christopher Street in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village became a fairly safe locale with bars and coffee shops that surreptitiously catered to a LGBTQ clientele. These bars often were run by the Mafia, which owned the cigarette machines and jukeboxes, and sold watered-down liquor.
Unlike many clubs, the Stonewall Inn, which opened in March 1967, was on a main thoroughfare instead of a side street. The clientele was mostly men, though even marginalized segments of the LGBTQ community frequented the bar because of its two dance floors.
On average, police raided bars once a month, though they typically would warn the bar that a raid was coming and time the raid to minimize disrupting the bar’s business. Police raids usually were accepted by bar employees and clientele.
However, this time was different. Stonewall’s patrons already were upset about the June 24 raid, so when one person resisted arrest, others joined in. The situation quickly escalated.
The big dailies give the police a platform
The scene was tense and chaotic.
Inside Stonewall, Pine gave his officers the order not to shoot, fearing that any additional escalation could lead to a full-scale massacre. Outside, hundreds of protesters were throwing almost anything they could get their hands on, while others were trying to find a way to set Stonewall on fire with the cops inside.
Yet the mainstream media largely failed to adequately cover the protests.
The first article on Stonewall to appear in The New York Times relied solely on interviews with the police.
The three city dailies – The New York Times, The New York Daily News and New York Post – wrote a smattering of stories in which they quoted exclusively police sources and offered little context. The story was framed as an instance of lawless youth run amok – an almost unprovoked riot.
For example, the Times’ first Stonewall article, “4 policemen hurt in ‘Village’ raid” began “Hundreds of young men went on a rampage in Greenwich Village shortly after 3 a.m. yesterday after a force of plainclothes men raided a bar that the police said was wellknown for its homosexual clientele.”
The mainstream papers at least covered Stonewall. Local TV stations failed to even report on the riots happening in the heart of Manhattan.
In contrast, the most popular local alternative paper, The Village Voice, gave the riots front-page coverage. It included interviews and quotes from the protesters, as well as two first-person accounts by Voice reporters Howard Smith, who was trapped inside the bar with police officers, and Lucian Truscott IV, who was outside with protesters.
Both reporters initially witnessed the riot from the Voice offices, which were a few doors down Christopher Street from Stonewall.
The alternative press rises to the occasion
The Voice’s coverage featured many hallmarks of alternative publications.
By incorporating the views of both protesters and police, they created a more complex, nuanced story. And the paper framed the Stonewall riots as an expression of liberation instead of rebellion, with Smith writing that the protesters were simply “objecting to how they were being treated.”
‘Gay Power Comes to Sheridan Square’ – The Village Voice gave the riots front-page treatment.
However, the Voice coverage was far from perfect. The anti-gay tone in Truscott’s piece angered protesters, as did some of the paper’s long-held editorial policies against same-sex personal ads.
While the Voice often was left-of-center politically, it wasn’t as radical as some of its more underground counterparts – the Rat, the East Village Other and the Berkeley Barb, all of which also covered the Stonewall riots.
Still, the Voice served as an important platform for the otherwise voiceless left out of the mainstream discussion during both Stonewall and the paper’s 60-year run. The Voice closed in 2018, following the shuttering of similar publications in Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia and San Francisco.
An alternative press has existed alongside the mainstream since the earliest days of the nation. These papers play an important role in the U.S. media landscape by covering stories and topics that go unreported by their mainstream counterparts. They often forego the pretense of objectivity for activism; rather than quote government officials and business leaders, they’ll quote people on the ground.
Fifty years after Stonewall, it’s important to reflect on the gains of the LGBTQ movement. But it’s equally important to think about what’s lost when alternative newspapers stop publishing – and thus stop covering unreported, underreported or misreported stories.
Jenna Ellis, Senior Legal Adviser to the Trump 2020 campaign and personal attorney to President Donald Trump, is being mocked on social media after posting a tweet suggesting Christianity is under attack and might be canceled. Few seem to know that her tweet follows her diatribe posted at the far right Breitbart website falsely claiming "The Left Will Cancel the Constitution."
"I’m going on record now," Ellis dramatically declared in a tweet (which automatically is on the record,) Monday night. "If they try to cancel Christianity, if they try to force me to apologize or recant my Faith, I will not bend, I will not waver, I will not break. On Christ the solid Rock I stand. And I’m proud to be an American."
Ellis, a constitutional law attorney, did not say who "they" are, but presumably is aware of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Despite claiming "the left" is going to "cancel" the Constitution, there is no evidence that Christianity or the nation's founding document are in danger of being deleted.
An American soldier has been arrested for plotting with what prosecutors describe as a "neo-Nazi cult" to attack his own Army unit.
The Washington Post reports that 22-year-old Ethan Melzer gave intelligence about his unit to a racist U.K.-based group called the Order of Nine Angles so they could help launch an attack against it.
“Melzer allegedly provided this potentially deadly information intending that it be conveyed to jihadist terrorists,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss of the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.
Strauss described the planned attack as a "murderous ambush" and said Melzer was "motivated by racism and hatred as he attempted to carry out this ultimate act of betrayal."
Melzer was arrested earlier this month and charged with conspiring and attempting to murder U.S. nationals, conspiring and attempting to murder military service members, providing and attempting to provide material support to terrorists, and conspiring to murder and maim in a foreign country.
In 1871, six years after the end of the Civil War, the state of race relations was awful in the United States. Yes, the Union had defeated the Confederacy and forced the end of slavery. Yet in Northern as well as Southern states, official and unofficial racist policies were everywhere, and segregation in housing and schools was common across the nation.Nevertheless, the viciousness of many in former Confederate states toward Blacks was so extreme that Congress responded to what was called this “reign of terror” by enacting what was known as both the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 and the Civil Right...
CNN medical analyst Dr. Sanjay Gupta on Tuesday slammed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for prematurely declaring victory over the novel coronavirus weeks ago just before cases in his state started to surge.
During a panel discussion about COVID-19, Gupta outlined all the reasons why Florida is particularly vulnerable to the virus, and he expressed dismay that DeSantis still doesn't seem to be taking it seriously.
"So you know, I do remember Governor DeSantis not being too concerned about this virus early on, even sort of taking a victory lap at the White House with President Trump in the Oval Office," he said. "And the reality is that the virus hasn't changed. The virus is still out there. It's very contagious."
Florida for the last week has been recording record numbers of new COVID-19 cases, and the state has now blown past 100,000 confirmed infections.
Jeanne Marrazzo, the director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, chimed in to similarly warn about Florida's vulnerability to a COVID-19 spike.
"What people keep forgetting is that there are time lags between the peak numbers we're seeing reported and the consequences that get people into the ICU," she said. "So you're looking at this two-to-three-week period. so what makes me very concerned is that we are already seeing a spike in ICU admissions in a place like Florida, which, as Sanjay said, is relatively ready for a very scary outcome, especially with older people."
The White House is looking to scapegoat the Centers for Disease Control over the coronavirus pandemic, and then reshuffle leadership at the public health agency.
President Donald Trump's aides have been looking for someone to blame outside of China and the World Healthy Organization, and they've settled on the CDC -- although their attacks may not land with the public, reported Politico.
“WHO is an easy one,” said a former administration official. “It is foreign body in Switzerland. CDC will be tough to create a bogeyman around for the average voter.”
The administration is looking to launch an in-depth evaluation of the agency's early failures to distribute working tests, according to four senior administration officials, and closely examine state-by-state death totals to exclude COVID-19 patients who may have died from other factors.
Aides have also considered shrinking the agency's mission or trying to place more political appointees in leadership roles, according to 10 current and former senior administration officials and Republicans close to the White House.
“The thing to do is take a hard look at the CDC and say, what are the five things that they really need to do, and do it to the exclusion of everything else,” said a former official who was involved in the discussions. “People have been talking about back to basics, core mission.”
A Democratic Congressman tried to educate the heads of a Phoenix megachurch where President Donald Trump will be appearing Tuesday after they announced they installed new technology created by some of their congregants that supposedly kills “99.9%” of the novel coronavirus within 10 minutes by ionizing the air.
“We’ve installed Clean Air EXP,” Dream City Church’s Chief Operations Officer Brendon Zastrow says in the video below. “We have a local Arizona company. It was a technology developed by some members of our church. And we’ve installed these units. And it kills 99.9% of COVID within 10 minutes.”
“So when you come into our auditorium, 99% of COVID is gone,” Senior Pastor Luke Barnett adds. “So you can know when you come down here, you’ll be safe and protected. Thank God for great technology.”
President Donald Trump is appearing at the Dream City Church for an event Tuesday hosted by Students for Trump, which is a project of Turning Point Action, the activist arm of Charlie Kirk’s far right wing group Turning Point USA.
Phoenix New Times reports the company that makes the device “has a blurb” on its website “about COVID stating: ‘COVID-19 REPORT: Lab tests confirm that CleanAir EXP eliminates 99.9% of coronavirus from the air in less than 10 minutes.*'”
The footnote states, “* Biosafety lab analysis performed on active coronavirus 229E test surrogate.”
Coronavirus 229E is one of the viruses responsible for the common cold that’s often used in virus studies.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) took to Twitter asking the megachurch, “Did you clear your statement with your lawyers?”
The footnote states, “* Biosafety lab analysis performed on active coronavirus 229E test surrogate.”
Coronavirus 229E is one of the viruses responsible for the common cold that’s often used in virus studies.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) took to Twitter asking the megachurch, “Did you clear your statement with your lawyers?”
Phoenix New Times reached out to Dr. Philip Tierno, a clinical professor of pathology at New York University, who informed the paper via email: “The short answer to your question is NO, you will ABSOLUTELY NOT BE SAFE AND PROTECTED. When you are dealing with hundreds or thousands of people in an AUDITORIUM, some of whom will carry the virus you WILL NOT BE absolutely PROTECTED.”
In a column for the Daily Beast, conservative Matt Lewis said that Donald Trump's attacks on Joe Biden are falling flat and that the president is flailing and headed for a loss in November.
According to Lewis -- who left the Republican Party due to the president's antics -- the former vice president isn't giving Trump an easy target to hit as evidenced by his speech at the disastrous rally in Tulsa before a small crowd over the weekend.
Noting that president seems unable -- or unwilling -- to reach out to voters who aren't already in his column, "the only tool left in Trump’s toolbox involves dragging down his opponent."
"In 2016, Hillary Clinton was the perfect foil, and Trump won big among people who disliked them both. This time around, Biden is winning with people who don’t like either candidate," he wrote. "Like Trump, Biden is an established brand with near 100 percent name recognition. We have lived with Biden for decades, and not just as a reality TV star. If he were going to do something either crazily radical or insanely corrupt, we figure, he would have done it already. They’ve thrown everything but the kitchen sink at him, but it has proven almost impossible to begrime the Biden brand. "
As Lewis points out, Trump all but admitted in his Tulsa speech that he doesn't have a handle on how to go after Biden and so he is going with guilt by association.
"As Trump admitted Saturday night in Oklahoma, Biden is also 'not radical left,'" Lewis wrote before quoting Trump from Saturday night admitting, “I don’t think he knows what he is anymore, but he was never radical left, but he’s controlled by the radical left…”
"This was an admission from Trump that could prove costly. One imagines this will make a pretty effective pro-Biden ad, come October—one that could be precisely targeted toward potential Trump-to-Biden vote switchers who might not be down with the cultural revolution that the left seems hell-bent on delivering," the conservative suggested.
Lacking an angle to paint the genial Biden into a villain, Lewis predicted Trump will go down in defeat in November.
"Batman needs the Joker, GI-Joe needs COBRA, the Yankees need the Red Sox, and Donald Trump desperately needs another Hillary Clinton. But Joe Biden, for a variety of aforementioned reasons, is immune to Trump’s weapons," he wrote before predicting, "And that’s why he has a very good chance of being the next President of the United States, come November."
MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski blasted President Donald Trump for acting like an "idiot" and setting a horrible example during the coronavirus pandemic.
The "Morning Joe" co-host said the president had neglected his duties throughout the public health crisis and needlessly politicized safety measures that can be easily taken by anyone to help prevent the virus from spreading.
"Since this president didn't respond to this pandemic and that is clearly logged in the history books for all Americans to see and hear and read for years to come," Brzezinski said, "now you have a president who is actively working against the health of the American people in his words and in his actions. He won't wear a mask, he makes fun of people who wear masks, he makes sure his staff makes fun of people who wear masks. Masks can keep this virus from spreading. The president won't wear one and makes fun of people who wear them, and actually sets an example that you actually should not wear a mask, when it's the one thing that could actually keep this from spreading because we are so unprepared for this."
"Same with testing," she added. "He keeps saying if we test more, we'll have more cases. Yes, idiot, we want to know where the virus is and where it isn't so we can protect people. Had we had testing in place, maybe at this point we'd be at mass testing. Maybe there'd be testing before people go into concerts and rallies so that we could make sure that these arenas and these public venues are safe, so that we could make sure that this economy could reopen."
Brzezinski said the evidence was clear, and the president had bungled the response over and over, costing thousands of lives and causing economic devastation.
"Again and again and again the president works against himself and the health of the American people and continues to botch this," she said. "That's what we're seeing happening. This is not me, you know, having a slant on it -- this is the reality. Look at the science, talk to your doctor, talk to scientists you trust and tell me that what I've said isn't exactly the case in terms of the example he's setting as a leader to try and keep this country safe."
