People supporting and opposing abortion demonstrate outside of the Alabama Women's Center for Reproductive Alternatives in Huntsville, Ala., in February. (Sarah Cole/AL.com/AP/File)
Alabama joins new antiabortion drive, legal challenge may be next
Alabama lawmakers approved a bill late Tuesday night to tighten requirements on abortion clinics in the state, joining a group of Southern and Western states that have already passed similar regulatory legislation this year.
After sailing through the Senate earlier in the evening, the Women’s Health and Safety Act passed the House along largely partisan lines just before midnight. The law includes a provision requiring all doctors performing abortions in the state have admitting privileges at a local hospital, and it adds new building requirements for facilities that host the procedure.
Supporters say the bill is not designed to restrict abortions, but rather to make them safer.
“If an abortion clinic is truly dedicated to providing adequate care, ensuring dependable safeguards, and putting patients’ needs before profits, it will embrace this legislation rather than oppose it,” said the bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Mary Sue McClurkin (R), in a statement. “I am proud that the state of Alabama is daring to defend the right to life.”
But opponents say that the bill is a backdoor attempt to run Alabama’s four abortion clinics out of business. Most rely on out-of-state doctors to perform abortions, which would run afoul of the new admitting-privileges provision. And the majority of the clinics are not in line with the new building codes – requiring, among other things, doors and hallways wide enough to transport patients on gurneys – according to the state Department of Public Health, the Associated Press reports.
“You are not telling your constituents the real truth – that you are trying to close these clinics so there will be no abortions in Alabama,” said Sen. Harri Anne Smith, an independent, during debate of the bill, according to the AP.
The Alabama legislation, which is expected to be signed into law by Republican Gov. Robert Bentley, mirrors a 2012 Mississippi law that threatens to shutter that state’s only abortion clinic. That law is currently being challenged in court.
Meanwhile, the Kansas Senate approved a law Monday that defines human life as beginning at conception and prohibits any direct or indirect state support for abortions. The law would also prohibit any employees or volunteers of organizations that provide abortions – including Planned Parenthood – “from providing any information on human sexuality to students in public schools,” reports the Kansas City Star.
Alabama and Kansas join Arkansas and North Dakota among states that have already tried to dial back abortion access in 2013. In early March, Arkansas passed what was described as America’s toughest restrictions on abortion, a law making almost all abortions after 12 weeks illegal.
But the state didn’t hold that title for long. Later that month, North Dakota’s lawmakers approved a ban on most abortions after six weeks – the point at which a fetal heartbeat can be detected.
North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple (R) said that the law may not be constitutional, but called it a legitimate attempt by the state government to probe the boundaries of Roe v. Wade, Reuters reports.
North Dakota’s law also has a provision requiring a local doctor. And as in Mississippi, it threatens the existence of the single operational abortion facility in the state. The Red River Women’s Clinic in Fargo, N.D., has promised to challenge the law in court, according to Reuters.
Legal challenges are also expected to the Arkansas legislation.
Alabama’s new bill passed over the chorus of 200 protesters who gathered outside the statehouse Tuesday. Planned Parenthood executive Nikema Williams told Alabama.com that if the governor signed the bill, she expected one of the state’s clinics would proceed with a legal challenge.
The number of abortion providers in Alabama has dwindled in recent years, falling from 13 in 2005 to eight in 2008 and four in 2012, according to Reuters.
Trainers check on Louisville guard Kevin Ware (5) after Ware injured his lower right leg during the first half of the Midwest Regional final against Duke in the NCAA college basketball tournament, Sunday, in Indianapolis. (Michael Conroy/AP)
CBS broken leg replay: Did the network handle it right?
When Louisville basketball player Kevin Ware crumpled to the ground during the first half of his team’s Elite Eight game against Duke Sunday, many viewers hardly saw him fall.
But as play came to a halt, it became clear Ware had suffered an ugly leg break, with bone visible.
That left CBS, the network broadcasting the game, to make a rapid decision about what to do with the graphic scene that had just unfolded.
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It’s the kind of choice that falls into a moral gray area for sports broadcasters: Is replaying brutal injury footage exploiting a traumatic situation for shock value? Or is keeping it off the air a paternalistic way of shielding viewers from what’s happening in the arena?
"We did not zoom in on the injury when he was taken off,'' CBS Sports head Sean McManus told the Associated Press just after the game. "We did not try to highlight it. I think we did the right thing.''
Just after Ware fell, CBS showed two quick replays of the injury – and then banished the footage. The network instead focused on the reactions of Ware’s teammates and coaches, and it showed close-ups of his face and upper body. At half time, CBS sportscaster Greg Gumbel said the network wouldn’t show the injury footage again.
As the incident became national news, other media outlets followed suit.
The unedited video was hard to find on national news outlets within 24 hours, when it was still a fresh news story. CNN aired the sequence, but blurred out Ware's leg so the break was not visible. Fox News Channel and MSNBC did not show the video, representatives said.
ABC's "Good Morning America" showed footage, again with the leg blurred. NBC's "Today" show and the CBS morning news program did not show it.
At ESPN, executives set specific guidelines: Producers had discretion to use it on their own programs but they were to only show it once, not air it in slow motion and warn viewers in advance. Through Monday afternoon, spokesman Josh Krulewitz said he did not believe the network had shown it.
Some commentators, however, noted that it wasn’t difficult for CBS to take the “high road” and stop airing the footage because Internet-savvy viewers knew they could find the replay elsewhere if they wanted to see it.
"If people want to go watch the footage for whatever reason, they have a right to do so," Mr. McManus told the AP. "I just didn't think we had any obligation to be the facilitator of putting that footage back on the screen. We documented it, we described it, and we showed it, and I think that was enough."
As debate over how the network handled the injury rippled outward on the Internet, a loose consensus seemed to emerge.
“CBS handled things on the fly about as delicately as anyone could have managed,” wrote Barry Petchesky on Deadspin. “When offering something as discomfiting as the Kevin Ware replay, viewers deserve as much of a choice as possible.”
“[T]he video is news, and despite its warts,... sports news station ESPN should show it,” wrote Connor Simpson on The Atlantic Wire. “They should issue a warning before showing it, and exercise some discretion when calculating the number of [times] it's played in a broadcast.”
As Mr. Petchesky notes, CBS had sports broadcast history as a guide when deciding how to handle the Ware footage.
In 1985, Washington Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann suffered a similarly brutal broken leg during a "Monday Night Football" broadcast. In that incident, ABC also chose to show two replays of the event.
But as Petchesky points out, the network's initial discretion did little to stop the footage from becoming the most replayed sports injury ever.
By Tuesday morning, copies of CBS’s footage of the Ware injury had more than 1 million views on YouTube.
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David Stockman warns of economic collapse, critics cry 'cranky old man'
David Stockman, who served as President Reagan’s budget director, has liberal economists like Paul Krugman and Jared Bernstein in an uproar over his new book, “The Great Deformation,” that will be released Tuesday.
Mr. Stockman, who left government for a lucrative tour on Wall Street, has done what every author wants: get people talking about a forthcoming book. He summarized his grim diagnosis of the US economy in an essay which covered three quarters of the front page of The New York Times’s Sunday Review section. The piece is likely to have a much wider audience than the relative handful who plow through a 768 page book weighing in at more than two pounds.
“We should be very afraid,” the first paragraph of Stockman’s essay concludes. Don’t be misled by the stock market’s recent record high, Stockman argues. The recovery has been fueled by “an egregious flood of phony money from the Federal Reserve” and the bubble will burst leading to “an era of zero sum austerity and virulent political conflict.”
Bottom line, Stockman contends: “When the latest bubble pops, there will be nothing to stop the collapse. If this sounds like advice to get out of the market and hide out in case, it is.”
Princeton economics professor Paul Krugman, who won the 2008 Nobel Prize in economics, was dismissive. On his Conscience of a Liberal blog Mr. Krugman wrote: “I was disappointed in Stockman’s piece. I thought there would be some kind of real argument, some presentation, however tendentious, of evidence. Instead it’s just a series of gee-whiz, context- and model-free numbers embedded in a rant – and not even an interesting rant. It’s cranky old man stuff…”
Krugman, a New York Times op-ed columnist, found himself implicitly criticizing his journalistic home, noting “the verdict among everyone who knows anything is that Stockman’s piece, mysteriously given star treatment, was pathetic and embarrassing.” Krugman said he was "especially annoyed" by Stockman's argument that there has been bipartisan runaway spending since the 1950s. Significant debt problems started after 1980 under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush, Krugman says, and fell under President Clinton. And deficits were an appropriate reaction to the recent financial crisis, he says.
Others offered somewhat less passionate criticism. Jared Bernstein, who served as Vice President Joe Biden’s economic adviser, wrote on his On the Economy blog: "There’s no question that the American economy is seriously underperforming and that bad policy is implicated. It’s just that the culprits aren’t the ones he thinks they are.”
Mr. Bernstein especially took exception to Stockman’s criticism of “eight decades of increasingly frenetic fiscal and monetary policy activism intended to counter the cyclical bumps and grinds of the free market.”
Stockman fails to differentiate “smart borrowing from wasteful borrowing,” Bernstein argues. “His blanket condemnation is nonsensical – I suspect most readers will react the way I did: it’s like hearing a crazy person on a street corner ranting against whatever: they invariably stumble on some profound and piercing insights, but it’s mostly nonsense, and instinctually, we keep our heads down and move on.”
The Econlog blog observes that Stockman has a reputation as a pessimist. It quotes Reagan economic policy adviser Martin Anderson in his book "Revolution” as saying: “David Stockman was profoundly pessimistic by nature. If he were ever to write a history of American baseball, he would probably describe Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox, one of the greatest players of all time, this way: Even at the height of his career, Williams managed to get base hits only 40 percent of the time and struck out repeatedly.”
A more even-handed view of Stockman’s arguments comes from Marcus Brauchli, the former top editor at both The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. Writing in the Post, Mr. Brauchli notes that Stockman “has cast his acid eye on the country’s entire economic edifice. What the former divinity student sees doesn’t merely dismay, it outrages him morally, page after page, chapter after chapter."
Still, Brauchli observes, "Even as he indulges his spleen, Stockman produces a persuasive and deeply relevant indictment of a system dangerously akilter."
A Kaufman County Sheriff's deputy walks near the taped-off property of Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland, near Forney, Texas, on Sunday. On Saturday, McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, were murdered in their home. (Mike Fuentes/AP)
Texas DA killed: Link to slaying of deputy two months ago?
A Texas district attorney who vowed to hunt down the “scum” responsible for the killing of one of his assistant DAs in January was shot dead in his home Saturday, along with his wife.
Mike and Cynthia McLelland were found by a friend inside their house in Forney, about 20 miles east of Dallas, nearly two months to the day since the killing of assistant district attorney Mark Hasse.
No definitive link has been established between the two cases, but Chris Aulbaugh, the police chief for Kaufman, the seat of the county (also named Kaufman) where Forney is located, said the authorities would “assume until it's proven otherwise” that the two shootings are connected, writes The Dallas Morning News.
According to The New York Times,
A law enforcement official said investigators believed that the shootings of the two prosecutors were related, but appeared to have been carried out by different people, perhaps from the same group or with the same affiliation. Shell casings were recovered in the shootings of the McLellands, but not in the shooting of Mr. Hasse, indicating that his killer or killers had more experience, the official said.
The shooting of Hasse – in broad daylight on his way to the Kaufman County courthouse – remains unsolved, and Mr. McLelland had been an outspoken advocate of bringing the perpetrators to justice.
“I hope that the people that did this are watching, because we’re very confident that we’re going to find you,” he said at a news conference Jan. 31, the day Hasse was killed. “We’re going to pull you out of whatever hole you’re in. We’re going to bring you back and let the people of Kaufman County prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law.”
McLelland was the 13th prosecutor to be killed in the United States since the National District Attorneys Association began keeping count in the 1960s. But the number of attacks on prosecutors, judges, and law-enforcement officials has risen precipitously in the past three years, said Glenn McGovern, who follows these cases, in an interview with the Associated Press. Mr. McGovern is an investigator with the Santa Clara County, Calif., District Attorney’s Office.
Most recently, former Los Angeles police officer Christopher Dorner launched a self-described campaign of “unconventional and asymmetric warfare” against the LAPD for what he said was his unfair firing from the police force in 2008. He is suspected to have killed four people before taking his own life during a standoff with the police inside a San Bernardino, Calif., mountain cabin Feb. 12.
Authorities are also looking into potential connections between the killings in Kaufman County and the March 19 slaying of Colorado corrections director Tom Clements, who was shot at his home near Colorado Springs.
The primary suspect in that case, former Colorado inmate and white supremacist prison gang member Evan Spencer Ebel, died in a shootout with police about 100 miles from Kaufman County two days after the Colorado killing.
Since July 2012, McLelland’s office had been involved in several high-profile cases involving prosecutions of members of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, another white supremacist group with links to prisons. McLelland had suggested that Hasse's death might have been connected to the cases.
As the AP reports,
McLelland, in an Associated Press interview shortly after the Colorado slaying, raised the possibility that Hasse was gunned down by a white supremacist gang.
McLelland, elected DA in 2010, said that Hasse hadn’t prosecuted any cases against white supremacists but that his office had handled several, and those gangs had a strong presence around Kaufman County, a mostly rural area dotted with subdivisions, with a population of about 104,000.
“We put some real dents in the Aryan Brotherhood around here in the past year,” McLelland said.
McLelland, an Operation Desert Storm veteran and former psychologist for the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation, told reporters he had taken personal precautions in the wake of Hasse’s death and had begun to carry a gun with him at all times.
“I’m ahead of everybody else because, basically, I’m a soldier,” he told the AP.
University of Washington geologist Terry Swanson surveys the damage from a landslide on Whidbey Island, Wash. The slide severely damaged one home and isolated or threatened more than 30 on the island, about 50 miles north of Seattle in Puget Sound. (Mike Siegel/The Seattle Times/AP)
Landslide on Puget Sound part of a geological pattern. Is it over?
The massive landslide on Whidbey Island about 50 miles north of Seattle may have happened in seconds, but its history is measured in geological time, so it may not be over yet.
It’s a small portion of a much larger landslide complex about a mile and a half long that may date back as far as 11,000 years, according to Washington State geologists, and it’s still moving, however slightly.
For now, the evaluation and recovery effort is focusing on assessing damages – particularly to the homes that residents have not been allowed to return to.
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No one was killed or injured in the slide, which occurred at about 4:00 a.m. Wednesday morning.
But it did move one beachside home – now deemed uninhabitable – some 200 feet off its foundation, Eric Brooks, deputy director for emergency management at Island County (which includes nine islands in Puget Sound), told the Seattle Times. It also took out 300 to 400 feet of a road leading to the beach, leaving 17 homes unreachable and without power because the slide also took out the utility poles.
The slide displaced some 200,000 cubic yards of earth, or approximately 40,000 dump truck loads, state officials said. Twenty properties on a scenic island hillside were damaged by the slide, with some suffering structural damage and others losing portions of their yards, reports the Associated Press.
The landslide into Puget Sound lifted the beach as much as 30 feet above the previous shoreline, state geologists said in a preliminary report Thursday.
"It looks like a giant shovel pulled the hill down to the water," Central Whidbey Fire Chief Ed Hartin told Reuters. "We heard a lot of rumbling and snapping of trees."
The homes in the Ledgewood Beach area are a mix of year-round and vacation properties that sit high on a bluff overlooking the waters of Puget Sound.
A local home owned by Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer did not appear to be immediately threatened, Chief Hartin said.
At a community meeting Thursday evening in Coupeville, Whidbey Island’s country seat, residents wanted to know when they can get back into their homes. They're also worried about looters. The sheriff's office plans extra patrols.
While the ground continued to move Thursday, the geologists said the land will slowly try to stabilize itself.
"The chance of another catastrophic movement is low, but possible," their report said.
The area "still has a bit of slippage here and there," Terry Clark of the county’s emergency management department told the AP. "It can be a handful of dirt to a barrel-full. It's still an active event."
"It's probably one of the largest ones we've seen in Washington State, much less along the coast," Mr. Clark said of the landslide. "We're used to little slides here and there, but this happens to be way beyond what our expectations were."
As usual with such natural disasters, the Whidbey Island landslide may raise questions about where residential and commercial structures and facilities should be built.
“It’s taken a while to soak it in to realize that life changes in five minutes,” Whidbey resident Nancy Skullerud told KING5 News in Seattle. “Mother Nature always wins.”
The Pacific Northwest can be soggy, but rainfall appears not to have been a cause of the Whidbey Island slide.
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A grow house in Denver shows a marijuana plant ready to be harvested, in January. Rep. Jared Polis (D) of Colorado, who introduced the Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act last month, told Politico Thursday that his state could see as much as $100 million a year from a federal marijuana tax. (Ed Andrieski/AP)
Marijuana tax touted as budgetary benefit to US and states. Really?
A federal marijuana tax could potentially pump millions of dollars into struggling state economies, say two US congressmen who have introduced legislation that would create such a tax and also protect state regulation policies.
Rep. Jared Polis (D) of Colorado, who introduced the Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act last month, told Politico Thursday that his state could see as much as $100 million a year from a federal marijuana tax, which could make a “substantial dent in needed school improvements, particularly in poorer districts.“
Representative Polis joins fellow Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, who has introduced the Marijuana Tax Equity Act, which would create a $50 excise tax on each ounce of marijuana sold.
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The two bills would help balance the federal and state budgets, the congressmen say, by reducing how much the Drug Enforcement Agency spends on fighting the war on drugs and also adding revenue that would help reduce the budget deficit.
“It is billions of dollars we spend to arrest [660,000] people a year for something that half of Americans think should be legal,” Representative Blumenauer told Fox News last month. He said the legislation would result in about $100 billion in savings and new revenue over the next decade.
But there's disagreement among policymakers and economists about just how much revenue a federal marijuana tax would raise.
If marijuana were taxed in the same way as alcohol and tobacco, estimates for new tax revenue would be closer to $6.4 billion – $4.3 billion for federal coffers and $2.1 billion for the states – not the hundreds of millions others have estimated, Harvard economics professor Jeffrey Miron, a scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute, told Politico Thursday.
“This is not a cash cow that can solve anyone’s fiscal problems,” Mr. Miron said. “There is a lot of exaggeration about how big the revenue can be.”
Another factor is that nationwide legalization would reduce the cost of marijuana, noted Rosalie Liccardo Pacula of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center, according to the Politico report. She expects prices in Colorado and Washington, where voters last fall opted to legalize possession, to drop by 70 to 85 percent – and thus the value of any taxes levied on marijuana consumption would also drop.
Claims that legalizing marijuana would benefit states and the US economy are not new.
In 1994, Dale Gieringer, then coordinator of California’s chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, produced a study looking at the economic impact of a marijuana tax on California. He estimated that a $50 tax per ounce of marijuana, which then cost between $280 and $420, would raise $1.2 billion a year for the state. Plus, legalization would generate $12 billion to $18 billion in other economic activity, his study said.
The inherent problem in calculating how much revenue a tax would raise is that it is all conjecture, Ms. Liccardo Pacula told Politico. “You have to know more about the structure of the demand curve, which we don’t have any data on because this is black-market,” she said.
Polis said he understood the potential risk of taxing marijuana too much: It could drive buyers to the illegal market if the legal price is too expensive.
“You want to make sure the black market doesn’t have an advantage over the regulated market because if it does, then the whole concept fails and people will continue to buy marijuana illegally – so there has to be a price advance for the legal market,” Polis told Politico.
The marijuana tax legislation is unlikely to get far in Congress, but out in the states interest is keener. Colorado and Washington are now debating how to structure their regulatory and tax systems, and other states appear poised to join the discussion. On Thursday, Maine legislators announced details for a bill that would legalize and tax marijuana. According to the Marijuana Policy Project, a legalization advocacy group, similar bills have been introduced in Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. Pennsylvania and Vermont are expected to consider similar legislation this year.
Ultimately, Polis said, states should be able to choose how they will regulate the murky system of marijuana production and sales – particularly without fear that the federal government will come in and shut down the new distribution businesses.
“Congress should simply allow states to regulate marijuana as they see fit and stop wasting federal tax dollars on the failed drug war,” he said in a statement last month when introducing his bill.
Both Polis and Blumenauer see this as an “inevitable transition of marijuana policy,” according to a report they co-authored, “The Path Forward: Rethinking Federal Marijuana Policy.”
“Public attitude, state law, and established practices are all creating irreconcilable difficulties for public officials at every level of government,” Blumenauer said in a statement last month. “We want the federal government to be a responsible partner with the rest of the universe of marijuana interests while we address what federal policy should be regarding drug taxation, classification, and legality.”
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James Holmes sits with defense attorney Tamara Brady during his arraignment in district court in Centennial, Colo., on March 12. On Wednesday, Holmes's defense attorneys revealed that the Colorado theater shooting suspect has offered to plead guilty and serve out his life in prison if prosecutors agree to not pursue the death penalty. (RJ Sangost/Denver Post/AP)
Will James Holmes avoid death penalty for Colorado theater shooting? (+video)
James Holmes, the suspect in last summer's movie theater shooting in Colorado, has offered to plead guilty and serve life without parole but only if prosecutors do not seek the death penalty.
Mr. Holmes's defense lawyers said their client is “willing to resolve the case to bring the proceedings to a speedy and definite conclusion for all involved,” in a routine scheduling document filed with the Arapahoe County District Court Wednesday.
The defendant faces 166 counts of murder, attempted murder, and other offenses. He is accused of killing 12 people and wounding 58 others when he opened fire in during a midnight showing of “The Dark Knight Rises” in Aurora, Colo., on July 20.
The court document said Holmes made his plea offer to the prosecution before his March 12 arraignment, but prosecutors have not responded to the offer because they may still opt to pursue the death penalty. By making Holmes’s plea public, his defense attorneys are increasing the pressure on the prosecutors to make a decision. Currently, the prosecution is set to announce a decision Monday.
“If the prosecution elects not to pursue the death penalty, then it is Mr. Holmes’ position that this case could be resolved on April 1,” the lawyers said in the document.
By accepting the plea agreement, the prosecution could avoid years of drawn-out court battles that could be emotionally stressful for victims. The trial is currently set for Aug. 5 and is scheduled to last four weeks, but the defense said in the filing that the trial would actually last much longer because of the large number of charges.
“Holmes can’t offer any more than he is offering,” Dan Recht, a Denver defense attorney who has been following the case, told the Denver Post. “The choice for the prosecution could not be clearer.”
Prosecutors will talk to victims’ families and survivors before announcing whether they will accept the plea. So far, members of that group appear to be divided about what should be done in the case.
“I don’t see his death bringing me peace,” Pierce O’Farrill, who was shot three times during the attack, told the Associated Press. “To me, my prayer for him was that he would spend the rest of his life in prison and hopefully, in all those years he has left, he could find God and ask for forgiveness himself.”
Dave Hoover, whose nephew A.J. Boik was killed in the theater attack, has mixed feelings about any potential plea deal, he said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times Wednesday.
“I loved my nephew dearly and we miss him every single day. I’m in favor of the death penalty and I’d like to see it in this case, but I’m not in favor of dragging this thing out. If it was over today, it would alleviate a lot of the pain and suffering,” Mr. Hoover said.
Other families are resolute in seeking the death penalty.
“He didn’t give 12 people the chance to plea bargain and say, ‘Let’s see if you’re going to shoot me or not,’ “ said Melisa Cowden, whose ex-husband was killed in the theater. “No. No plea bargain,” she said to the AP.
If the prosecution decides to pursue the death penalty, Holmes’s defense lawyer said in the document that he would likely pursue an insanity defense. “As previously stated in court, counsel for Mr. Holmes are still exploring a mental health defense, and counsel will vigorously present and argue any and all appropriate defenses at a trial or sentencing proceeding, as necessary,” the defense team said in the filing.
If Holmes is found to be insane, he could not be executed. The death penalty is uncommon in Colorado – currently, three men are on death row.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband Mark Kelly leave after the sentencing of Jared Loughner in Tucson, Ariz., in November 2012. US District Judge Larry Burns sentenced Loughner to life in prison for the January 2011 attack that left six people dead and Ms. Giffords and others wounded. (Ross D. Franklin/AP/File)
Gabrielle Giffords shooting: newly released records portray killer as 'lost'
In the two years and two months since Jared Lee Loughner shot former US Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, killing six other people and wounding 13 more in a 30-second burst of 32 rounds from his 9-millimeter pistol, much has been written – and speculated – about the young man now serving multiple life sentences for his admitted massacre.
That violent episode on a sunny street in a supermarket parking lot in Casas Adobes, Ariz., near Tucson, where a crowd of her constituents had come to meet Representative Giffords, also helped spur a new burst of political agitation for strengthening gun control measures.
On Wednesday morning, nearly 3,000 pages of new information about the shooting were released by the Pima County Sheriff’s Office. They are sure to color the debate over guns as well how mentally ill persons with a tendency to disruptive behavior if not violence are treated – including whether they should have access to firearms.
The documents include everything from interviews with survivors and victims to police reports filed from the scene of the crime, providing new insight into how the shooting occurred and Mr. Loughner’s motives, the Associated Press reports.
Journalists are now poring over the documents, including reporters at the Arizona Republic newspaper who are live-blogging the information as they read through it. One example:
“Jared Loughner’s behavior was disturbing and erratic enough that his father began disabling his car at night to keep him at home in the months leading up to the January 2011 shooting at a supermarket near Tucson, according to the investigative documents released Wednesday.”
Other reports detail his parents concern as their son became increasingly erratic and non-communicative.
Loughner's mother, Amy, described his run-ins with authorities, his use of marijuana and cocaine, his journals, and his increasingly erratic behavior, the AP reports. She also says the parents took a shotgun away from Loughner after he was kicked out of a community college and tested him for drugs because his behavior was so strange.
Randy Loughner said his son became increasingly difficult, and it was a challenge to have a rational conversation with him. "I tried to talk to him. But you can't, he wouldn't let you," he said "Lost, lost, and just didn't want to communicate with me no more."
The documents released Wednesday also detail the scene immediately after the shooting stopped as bystanders (and some of the victims) wrestled Loughner to the ground while others tended to Giffords and the others who had been shot. These are based on official statements from victims and other public witnesses, Giffords’s aides (one of whom had trained as a nurse assistant), law enforcement officials, and other first responders, as well as former friends of the shooter.
The Arizona Republic live-bloggers write that according to the documents, “Jared Loughner went to an old friend’s apartment on Christmas Eve in 2010 to show off a gun he had just purchased.”
Loughner told his friend and another young man that the weapon was for “home self defense,” according to statements the friends gave to investigators.
“When investigators met up with one of the young men at a Tucson Mexican restaurant, they learned that Loughner had tried to phone his old friend the night before the shooting and left a message that his friend had deleted,” the newspaper blog states. “The encounter on Christmas Eve at the Tucson apartment had left Loughner’s friend shaken, according to the reports.”
The crime reports released Wednesday had been withheld for two years under a court order by US District Judge Larry Burns on grounds that they might jeopardize Loughner’s right to a fair trial.
Judge Burns lifted his order sealing the documents at the request of The Arizona Republic; KPNX-TV, Phoenix; and other media.
If Loughner’s attack had not been stopped by members of the public, he might have been able to do considerably more damage. Among his possessions were two more fully-loaded magazines for his Glock 9-millimeter pistol.
Among these killed were a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl.
Loughner was charged with 49 felony counts, but prosecution was delayed while he was treated for schizophrenia, which the court found made him incompetent to stand trial.
That treatment – which included involuntary medication – led to resumption of legal prosecution, but a trial was averted when Loughner pleaded guilty in an agreement that included life in prison without parole instead of the death penalty.
The agreement was accepted by prosecutors in the case after consultations with Giffords; her husband, retired US Navy captain and astronaut Mark Kelly; US Attorney General Eric Holder; as well as with the families of the other victims.
Giffords and Mr. Kelly – both gun owners and supporters of the Second Amendment – have since formed a new gun control group, Americans for Responsible Solutions.
President Obama is accompanied by members of his Secret Service detail as he walks from the Marine One helicopter as he arrives at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to visit with wounded military personnel in Bethesda, Md., March 5. (Charles Dharapak/AP)
Obama appoints first female director of Secret Service. Why Julia Pierson? (+video)
President Obama announced his appointment of the first female director of the US Secret Service on Tuesday, a milestone for the agency tasked with protecting political leaders and investigating currency fraud.
Law enforcement experts and political officials say that Ms. Pierson’s appointment comes at a crucial time in the agency’s history as it continues to recover from a scandal in April 2012, when agents in Colombia were disciplined for soliciting prostitutes. Pierson’s main tasks include reforming a male-dominated culture within the agency and reestablishing its credibility.
“During the Colombia prostitution scandal, the Secret Service lost the trust of many Americans, and failed to live up to the high expectations placed on it," Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) of Iowa told Reuters on Tuesday. “Ms. Pierson has a lot of work ahead of her to create a culture that respects the important job the agency is tasked with. I hope she succeeds in restoring lost credibility in the Secret Service.”
RECOMMENDED: Secret Service chief denies 'culture' of impropriety
Barbara Riggs, a mentor to Pierson and the agency’s first female deputy director, said that the scandal was not representative of the level of professionalism at the Secret Service and that Pierson will play a role in restoring its public image.
“She has a challenge in front of her because unfortunately in the public eye that’s what’s branding the Secret Service,” Riggs told The New York Times. “She has a challenge to move the agency beyond that.”
Pierson joined the Secret Service in 1983, working in the Miami and Orlando, Fla., field offices. She served as special agent in charge of the office of protective services from 2000 to 2001. She was on presidential protective detail on 9/11 in charge of making sure former President Clinton and President George W. Bush were accounted for, not knowing if there would be more attacks. From 2006 to 2008, she was the assistant director of Human Resources and Training, during which she oversaw the agency’s technology upgrade.
She became the chief of staff in 2008, the same year she received the Presidential Meritorious Award for superior performance in management throughout her career.
In an interview with Smithsonian Magazine in 2007, Pierson said she knew she wanted a career in law enforcement, starting with the Orlando Police Department while still in college. The Secret Service gave her the chance be an investigator and also travel, but it also has its challenges.
“We're a small agency with a large mission. Our size gives us the ability to have more personal knowledge of each other as employees,” she said in the interview. “Some people call it a cult, other people call it a family, but I do think it's unique.”
Pierson joins two other female directors of law enforcement agencies: Michele Leonhart is administrator of the Drug Enforcement Agency and Stacia Hylton is director of the US Marshals Service. Both were appointed in 2010.
“It’s about time the Secret Service finally did get a female director,” especially since it started accepting female agents in 1975, said Ron Kessler, author of "In the President’s Secret Service," in an interview with ABC News.
The agency currently has 3,200 special agents, 1,300 uniformed division officers, and more than 2,000 other technical, professional, and administrative support personnel, according to the Secret Service website. Women are estimated to make up between 10 and 20 percent of the force.
Janet Napolitano, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service, said in a statement that she is “proud of the historic decision” by Obama to appoint the agency's first female director. Pierson, she said, is “exceptionally well-qualified, and well-equipped” to lead the agency after 30 years of Secret Service experience.
“I am confident that Julia's background and capabilities will enable her to effectively lead the Secret Service as it continues to protect the safety of our First Families, our nation’s leaders, and the public at large,” Secretary Napolitano said.
Sen. Tom Carper (D) of Delaware, chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, echoed that sentiment and called Pierson’s appointment “welcome news and a proud milestone.”
“Ms. Pierson’s vast experience has prepared her to lead this agency with its critical protective, investigative and cybersecurity missions.... I look forward to working with Ms. Pierson as she helps usher in a new chapter for the U.S. Secret Service,” Senator Carper said in a statement.
Julia Pierson, the highest-ranking female agent in the Secret Service, will replace outgoing director Mark Sullivan who announced his retirement in February.
Mr. Obama cited Pierson’s “exemplary career” and said her experience with the agency will guide her through its current challenges.
“Over her 30 years of experience with the Secret Service, Julia has consistently exemplified the spirit and dedication the men and women of the service demonstrate every day,” Obama said in a statement. He added, “Julia is eminently qualified to lead the agency that not only safeguards Americans at major events and secures our financial system, but also protects our leaders and our first families, including my own.”
RECOMMENDED: Secret Service chief denies 'culture' of impropriety
Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (with flowers) and her husband, Mark Kelly, as well as other shooting victims of the Tucson mass shooting and family members, earlier this March return to the site of the shooting that left her critically wounded in Tucson, Ariz. (Ross D. Franklin/AP/File)
Mark Kelly, husband of Gabby Giffords, tussles with gun store, sea lion
Mark Kelly, the husband of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her partner in launching a gun control group, has had a busy couple of days.
On Monday, the owner of the Diamondback Police Supply gun store in Tucson, Ariz., said he was canceling Mr. Kelly’s purchase of an assault-style rifle. Earlier this month, Kelly wrote on Facebook that he purchased the weapon to make the point that gun control laws were too lenient, The Hill newspaper reported.
“Scary to think of people buying guns like these without a background check at a gun show or the Internet. We really need to close the gun show and private seller loop hole,” Kelly wrote.
Kelly’s wife was among 13 people wounded in a January 2011 shooting in a Tuscon supermarket parking lot that left six dead.
When he and his wife started their gun control organization, Americans for Responsible Solutions, they wrote an opinion article for USA Today saying, “Americans for Responsible Solutions, which we are launching today, will invite people from around the country to join a national conversation about gun violence prevention, will raise the funds necessary to balance the influence of the gun lobby, and will line up squarely behind leaders who will stand up for what's right.”
According to the Arizona Daily Star, Diamondback owner Doug MacKinlay posted a notice on his Facebook page Monday saying he had canceled the gun purchase March 21 and sent a full refund to Kelly before he could take possession of the rifle.
The Hill quotes a post from Mr. MacKinlay's Facebook page explaining that, “While I support and respect Mark Kelly’s 2nd Amendment rights to purchase, possess, and use firearms in a safe and responsible manner, his recent statements to the media made it clear that his intent in purchasing the Sig Sauer M400 5.56mm rifle from us was for reasons other then [sic] for his personal use.”
MacKinlay continued: "In light of this fact, I determined that it was in my company’s best interest to terminate this transaction prior to his returning to my store to complete the Federal From [sic] 4473 and NICS background check required of Mr. Kelly before he could take possession this firearm."
Kelly is a retired astronaut and US Navy captain with 6,000 flight hours in more than 50 different aircraft and more than 50 days in space. According to his biography on the Americans for Responsible Solutions website, Kelly is the son of two police officers. He graduated from the United States Merchant Marine Academy and has a masters degree from the US Naval Postgraduate School.
The Associated Press reports that on Saturday Kelly and his wife were in Laguna Beach, Calif., vacationing and visiting Kelly’s daughter from a previous marriage. GlobalPost has YouTube video of Kelly helping his distraught daughter pull her large dog away from a baby sea lion that the dog had attacked. The AP quotes Los Angeles police as telling the Los Angeles Times that the attack happened near an exclusive resort.
Kelly eventually succeeded in freeing the sea lion but the animal later died. A spokesperson for Americans for Responsible Solutions told the AP that Kelly crated the dog and then reported the incident to police. Police said the dog broke from its leash and that no laws were broken.
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