The Ledes

Thursday, September 19, 2024

New York Times: “A body believed to be of the suspect in a Kentucky highway shooting that left five people seriously injured this month was found on Wednesday, the authorities said, ending a manhunt that stretched into a second week and set the local community on edge. The Kentucky State Police commissioner, Phillip Burnett Jr., said in a Wednesday night news conference that at approximately 3:30 p.m., two troopers and two civilians found an unidentified body in the brush behind the highway exit where the shooting occurred.... The police have identified the suspect of the shooting as Joseph A. Couch, 32. They said that on Sept. 7, Mr. Couch perched on a cliff overlooking Interstate 75 about eight miles north of London, Ky., and opened fire. One of the wounded was shot in the face, and another was shot in the chest. A dozen vehicles were riddled with gunfire.”

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The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

Washington Post: “An early Titian masterpiece — once looted by Napolean’s troops and a part of royal collections for centuries — caused a stir when it was stolen from the home of a British marquess in 1995. Seven years later, it was found inside an unassuming white and blue plastic bag at a bus stop in southwest London by an art detective, and returned. This week, the oil painting 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' sold for more than $22 million at Christie’s. It was a record for the Renaissance artist, whom museums describe as the greatest painter of 16th-century Venice. Ahead of the sale in April, the auction house billed it as 'the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation.'”

Washington Post: The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which houses the world's largest collection of Shakespeare material, has undergone a major renovation. "The change to the building is pervasive, both subtle and transformational."

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The Commentariat -- April 4, 2015

Internal links removed.

White House: "In this week's address, the President described the historic understanding the United States -- with our allies and partners -- reached with Iran, which, if fully implemented, will prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and will make our country, our allies, and our world safer":

... "The Mullahs in the Mirror." digby: "Am I the only one who finds it just a little bit odd that the American officials loudly claiming Iran cannot be trusted to fulfill any deal are simultaneously pledging that they will not fulfill any deal? Is it possible they have such little self-awareness?"

Liam Stack of the New York Times: "Sarah Brady, who became a tireless gun control activist after her husband, the White House press secretary James S. Brady, was shot and left partly paralyzed in the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan in 1981, died on Friday in Alexandria, Va. She was 73." ...

... The Washington Post's obituary, by Jon Thurber, is here. It is excellent.

The President of All of Us. Peter Baker of the New York Times: President Obama ventures into the reddest of states. ...

... ** BUT Colbert King of the Washington Post notes a number of GOP nullification efforts that suggest a pre-Civil War frame of mind. "This country has drifted far beyond the rough-and-tumble give-and-take that historically occurs between the parties." ...

... CW: Is civil war unthinkable? I think it's highly unlikely, but not out of the question. After all, Americans have elected people like Rick Perry, Mitich McConnell, Tom Cotton, the son of secessionist Ron Paul & untold numbers of bellicose bozos to hold state & local offices. Don't blame the bozos. There will always be bozos. The problem is that the people picked the bozos to represent them.

American "Justice," Ctd. Abby Phillip of the Washington Post on the release of longtime Alabama death-row inmate Anthony Ray Hinton, who was wrongfully convicted & who has been on death row since 1985 for murders he in all likelihood did not commit. "... there were no eyewitnesses linking Hinton to the crimes, no fingerprints linking him to the scene, and no other physical evidence except for the questionable link between a set of bullets and a gun found in Hinton's home.... And time and time again, despite witnesses testifying that they couldn't link the bullets to Hinton, Alabama refused to re-consider his case." (See also yesterday's Ledes.)

Elizabeth Taylor & Jane Perkins in Think Progress: "... a case decided this week, Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Center, Inc., has raised significant concerns for the availability of quality health care for those who need it most. In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court turned against decades of legal precedent and ruled that Medicaid providers cannot use the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution to stop state provider payment policies that are inconsistent with the federal Medicaid Act's requirement for adequate reimbursement rates. That may sound like a bunch of legalese, but the outcome has a real impact on the 68 million-plus people relying on Medicaid.... The Supreme Court has turned its back on more than 40 years of legal precedent."

CW: Finally, someone stands up for women in response to this "religious freedom" charade. Gail Collins: "The nation is becoming more rational about gay sex and more irrational about heterosexual sex.... The business community certainly didn't rise up when Indiana became one of the first states to enact a ban on abortions after 20 weeks. Nobody called for a boycott when the State Legislature required that women seeking to end their pregnancies be informed that life begins at conception."

Tim Mak of the Daily Beast: "House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, who oversees the Secret Service, never disclosed that he had applied for and was rejected from the agency in the early 2000s.... Chaffetz, who was elected to Congress in 2008 and has chaired the Oversight Committee since January, has been on a mission to root out the causes of the Secret Service's dysfunction." ...

... The Follow-Up. Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post: "Senior staffers for a House committee overseeing the Secret Service have asked the Obama administration to investigate complaints that agency employees circulated private personnel information revealing that the panel's chairman [Jason Chaffetz] was once rejected for a job as an agent, according to people familiar with the discussions."

Beyond the Beltway

** Cole Stangler of International Business Times: Most of the companies that have faulted or threatened Indiana Gov. Mike Pence for signing anti-gay legislation supported his gubernatorial campaign with piles of cash "even as he outspokenly opposed efforts to legalize same-sex marriage and to outlaw employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation....

In the early stages of his congressional career, Pence emerged as a leading voice against a federal proposal to extend civil rights protections to LGBT people, saying they are not 'entitled to the protection of anti-discrimination laws similar to those extended to women and ethnic minorities.' In Congress, he backed proposals to ban same-sex marriage, voted against the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell and argued that legislation to prevent companies from discriminating against gay and lesbian employees would 'wage war on the free exercise of religion in the workplace.' Despite those declarations, Pence raised large sums of money from political action committees and employees of at least 30 companies that publicly support equal rights. Via Charles Pierce.

... CW: So much for the "souls" of the corporate persons. Their purported souls are conveniently attached to their bottom lines. Mike Pence doesn't give a whit about the Indiana economy; his itty-bitty pirouette on the state law was just a modest dance step to entertain his masters -- & to make sure they backed his future political career. The whole show is an exemplar of how we really live here in the Land of the Oligarchs. Is Bob Menendez -- who did favors for a personal friend who also make a big ole contribution to Harry Reid's PAC -- more corrupt than Mike Pence? Is the friend Salomon Melgen more corrupt than Pence's big backers? Looks like the same game to me. The essential difference is that Pence's masters wrapped their ruling in a popular measure -- this time. Should equal rights become a burden upon his corporate masters, Mike Pence will no longer have to pretend he opposes discrimination & can dance to a tune he prefers. ...

... Sandhya Somashekhar of the Washington Post: "Amid the backlash over Indiana's controversial religious liberties law, Gov. Mike Pence (R) and other state officials insisted the measure was never intended to permit business owners to deny service to gays and lesbians. But that is not entirely true. For the socially conservative organizations that proposed the measure, protecting the right of Christians to opt out of any involvement in gay marriage ceremonies was a primary goal. And they underscored that fact two weeks ago, immediately after Pence signed the measure into law." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... MEANWHILE, in the Bucks for Bigotry Sweepstakes. Eric Dolan of the Raw Story: "At the current pace of donations, the owners of a small pizza parlor in Indiana who stated they wouldn't cater same-sex functions will be millionaires by Easter. A fundraising page set up by a conservative news website on Wednesday has already raised more than $725,000 for Memories Pizza in the small town of Walkerton -- home to little over 2,000 people." Thank you, Jesus.

Greg Blustein of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "Georgia's 'religious liberty' legislation succumbed to a quiet death on Thursday, but it will surely return in January just in time for election-year politicking. Gov. Nathan Deal offered some timely advice for lawmakers who seek to revive the legislation for a third try. First, stick to the language of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act. And secondly, make sure to include an anti-discrimination clause." ...

... CW: It is encouraging to see reporters routinely put "religious liberty" or "religious freedom" is scare-quotes, just as many do with "right-to-work" laws. ...

... CW: The New Deal? Nathan Deal, BTW, is evolving into a different kind of Southern Republican. Earlier this week, Ed Kilgore pointed to Deal's leadership on criminal justice reform.

Mike Nowatzki of Inforum: "For the third time in six years, North Dakota lawmakers have killed legislation that would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, despite warnings from some Democrats and Republicans that it could tarnish the growing state's image and attract backlash similar to what Indiana and Arkansas have faced in recent days.... Gov. Jack Dalrymple, a Republican, said the state should have at least established protections in the areas of housing and employment.... Senate Bill 2279, which passed the Senate 25-22 in February and would have added sexual orientation to state law" that protects other groups. The House soundly defeated the bill.

Wesley Lowery & Kimberly Kindy of the Washington Post: "City officials in Ferguson, Mo., on Thursday evening released the full, unredacted content of racially charged and religiously insensitive e-mails sent by the city's former court clerk as well as two former supervisors in the police department. The e-mails, released to The Washington Post in response to a public-records request, were sent and received by Mary Ann Twitty, who was Ferguson's court clerk, as well as former Ferguson police captain Rick Henke and former police sergeant William Mudd. All three were removed from their jobs...." ...

... CW: Henke's e-mail confuses me. He seems to be condemning a racist remark about Obama -- made by another person -- not condoning it. Absent other evidence, I surely don't see the e-mail presented in the story as a firing offense. See what you think.

Bob Salsberg of the AP: "Some police officers involved in tracking down the Boston Marathon bombers days after the attacks showed a lack of 'weapons discipline' during a firefight with the brothers and in the eventual capture of one of them, resulting in dangerous crossfire, according to a report released Friday.... A transit police officer, Richard Donohue, was critically wounded in the initial confrontation with Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev.... The report doesn't say whether Donohue was shot by fellow officers. The report also reveals that shortly after the shootout, which led to Tamerlan Tsarnaev's death, an officer near the scene fired on an unmarked state police vehicle after it was mistakenly reported as stolen.... Later in the day, when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was discovered wounded and hiding in a boat, a police officer 'fired his weapon without appropriate authority,' causing many other officers to believe the bomber was firing at them and leading them to open fire on the boat, according to the report."

Comments Off

Reader Comments (7)

Henke was not fired, he resigned. The email in question looks as though he was defending Obama, but given the circumstances, that may have been a tongue in cheek response.

"Henke, 59, was said to have been associated with an email sent in May 2011 that stated: “An African American woman in New Orleans was admitted into the hospital for a pregnancy termination. Two weeks later she received a check for $5,000. She phoned the hospital to ask who it was from. The hospital said, ‘Crimestoppers’.”
The Guardian

April 4, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterPD Pepe

On the wellsprings of nullification and possible civil war:

On my recent sojourn that took me away from RC for far too long, I did have a chance to read some books I'd been meaning to get to. One of them, "American Nations" by Colin Woodward traces American sectionalism along the lines of immigration and inherited cultural patterns from the sixteen hundreds to the present, suggesting the US, (and parts of Mexico and Canada) are really composed of at least ten "nations," not all of whom are and have always been natural and easy partners.

Most intriguing to me was the section on how the post WWII development of the Rocky Mountain States whose great dependence on the federal government has bred the libertarian resistance to federal authority (think Cliven), which along with the persistent racist pretense to white aristocracy in the Old South, has given us our present dominant Red State coalition.

The argument is worth a look. Woodward also offers some intriguing, if disturbing, looks at possible futures for our not so US.

April 4, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes

it is interesting to see many of the 'conservative' reports that the Iranian deal on the table does not meet the original goals that the President articulated at the beginning of the process. It seems to me you do not start a negotiation at your final position and insist your opposite number accept your final position as the only way forward! Of course if you are a Republican that does appear to be the way things happen.

April 4, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterPaul Browne

Does anyone else think it's odd that a guy who was turned down for a job with an agency is then considered the perfect choice to investigate that same group?

That doesn't excuse the Secret Service source who leaked that information but it also doesn't give Jason Chafetz' pursuit of the Secret Service any additional credibility.

Would you think it was just grand that someone found to be unqualified for a job in civil engineering be put in charge of overseeing other engineers?

But this is the same guy who served as Darrell Issa's wingman during the 67,568 hours of Benghazi, Benghazi, BENGHAZI hearings which yielded fewer scandalous revelations than might be found at a fifth grade spelling bee. Oh, unless you want to count the time Chafetz himself stupidly revealed that one of the two US compounds in Libya was a CIA base of operations. Issa, realizing that his fellow wingnut had just outed an entire building full of CIA operatives on live TV, rushed to try to cover up the maps and photos of the place that had just been shown in close up on CSPAN, but, oops! Too late!. Idiots.

And last year Chafetz, responding to reports of a mentally disturbed man who scaled the fence around the White House, demanded, in a hearing that the Secret Service use lethal force against anyone who comes near the White House. Maybe one reason he didn't get the job.

One other way to look at it is that Chafetz (a dyed in the wool marriage equality hater as well) was considered unqualified to join a Keystone Kops operation populated by drunks and incompetents who party like frat boys while on assignment and frequent prostitutes while on the job, but voters in the state of Utah thought he'd make a fine congressman.

One more angry, egotistical, incompetent "victim" to run things in Washington.

Great.

Sorry for the lack of links. Sending this from my phone.

April 4, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

More American justice: On the same dayw

April 4, 2015 | Unregistered Commentercowichan's opinion

Apologies.More American justice: On the same day in Idaho police shot and killed a dog and a disturbed,100lb woman armed with a knife. The woman was shot by 2 officers after 15 seconds of reflection. The dog owner received demonstrations, an investigation, an apology, and $80,000. The woman's family received nothing.

April 4, 2015 | Unregistered Commentercowichan's opinion

Your read it here first:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/us/politics/gops-israel-support-deepens-as-political-contributions-shift.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

April 4, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterDavid Feldman
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