Tag Archives: National

Congressman in Drug Case Resigns Seat in Florida

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28RADEL-master180WASHINGTON — Representative Trey Radel, Republican of Florida, who pleaded guilty in November to a misdemeanor charge of buying 3.5 grams of cocaine and was sentenced to a year of probation, resigned from Congress effective Monday evening.

Mr. Radel, 37, a freshman legislator, quietly returned to Congress in January after nearly a month at a private rehabilitation center in Naples, Fla., but he announced his resignation plans on Monday morning.

Referring to his “personal struggles,” Mr. Radel wrote to Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio, “While I have dealt with those issues on a personal level, it is my belief that professionally I cannot fully and effectively serve as a United States representative to the place I love and call home, Southwest Florida.”

When he was arrested, in Washington, Mr. Radel said he struggled “with the disease of alcoholism.”

His plan to resign was first reported by Politico.

Read more at The New York Times

Homeowner’s son shoots, kills burglary suspect in Van Zandt County

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DALLAS, Tx.—A man suspected of burglarizing a homeowner in Van Zandt County was shot and killed early Tuesday morning by the homeowners son.

The homeowner woke up to see a man burglarizing his pickup truck that was parked in his front yard. He approached the man with a rifle, intending to hold him until law enforcement could arrive, but the man fled the scene, according to the Van Zandt County Sheriff’s Office.

The homeowner fired at the man and then noticed a truck parked in the dark near the roadway, which he believed belonged to the man so he got in the truck and took the keys out of the ignition to prevent him from leaving the scene. The man confronted the homeowner and disarmed him, assaulting him with the rifle, authorities said.

The homeowners son saw the man raising the rifle and, fearing the man was about to shoot his father, shot the suspect, killing him instantly.

More at Dallas News

Michaels Warns of Possible Data Breach

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Crafts-Store Chain Says It May Have Been Victim of Attack

By Andrew Dowell, Wall Street Journal

MK-CJ597_MICHAE_D_20140126182729Michaels Stores Inc. said it may have been the victim of an attack on its data security, making it the third major chain in a rash of assaults aimed at U.S. retailers.

In a statement on its website, the arts-and-crafts retailer said it had recently learned of possible fraudulent activity involving credit or debit cards that had been used at Michaels. The company said it hasn’t determined that a breach occurred, but said it is working with federal law-enforcement authorities and computer-security experts to determine what happened.

The disclosure echoed recent acknowledgments by Target Corp. and Neiman Marcus Group that they had suffered data breaches that compromised customers’ card information. Target said 40 million debit and credit card accounts had been affected, and Neiman said last week that 1.1 million accounts had potentially been exposed. In those cases, software was slipped into the retailers’ systems to quietly scrape card data.

Michaels, like those two retailers, made its comments following inquiries from security researcher and blogger Brian Krebs. In the statement, Michaels Chief Executive Chuck Rubin said the retailer was disclosing the issue to alert customers so they could take steps to protect themselves.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal

Donor beware. You are in Kansas.

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william-marottaAnswering a Craigs List ad, William Marotta donated a few cup fulls of sperm to a lesbian couple who performed an artificial insemination procedure in their home. He even signed a contract waiving his parental rights and responsibilities and even made the donation for free waiving the $50. The child was born in December of 2009. Recently, however, the lesbian couple separated and now he has to pay the $50 with interest.

Upon separating, one of the woman became ill and could not work. She applied for assistance which prompted the Kansas Department for Children and Families to file a case against Marotta.

Shawnee County District Court Judge Mary Mattivi has ruled that Marotta owes $6000 for back child support, and must continue to pay child support, for the four-year old child he and his wife only met once by chance.

The reason for the decision is that the artificial insemination was performed at home without the assistance of a doctor.

According to the Kansas City Star:

The judge’s ruling against Marotta seems to be consistent with a ruling in a polar-opposite Kansas case of several years ago, in which a sperm donor who had wanted parental privileges was denied because the baby makers also did not follow the law.

SEE ALSO: CNN

Washington blow dart suspect: ‘I’m a moron’

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blowdartCOLFAX, Washington––A man accused of shooting a woman and man with a blow dart in two separate attacks in Washington state has made his first court appearance on assault charges.

KREM-TV reports 18-year-old Joseph Gillies of Tacoma appeared in court Thursday in Whitman County. He was released from jail until his next court appearance at the end of the month.

Gillies is accused of shooting a woman with a blow dart Jan. 12 on the Washington State University campus. He’s also accused of hitting a man with a dart two days later while walking in Pullman.

Read more at FOX News

VA Health care roll out problem: The ID.

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ABC Action News in Florida reported November 6th that the new Veteran identification cards have a bar code that can be read by bar code scanner aps on “smart phones” revealing social security numbers. Use of these aps can lead to identity theft of veterans.

Although the the web site for the Department of Veteran’s Affairs has a warning about the problem, veterans were not told when receiving their card about the anomaly.

VA says that the problem will be fixed in the next generation of cards expected to be issued this year.

Facebook Is About to Lose 80% of Its Users, Study Says

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Mark Zuckerberg during a Facebook press event to introduce 'Home' a Facebook app suite that integrates with Android in Menlo ParkFacebook’s growth will eventually come to a quick end, much like an infectious disease that spreads rapidly and suddenly dies, say Princeton researchers who are using diseases to model the life cycles of social media.

Disease models can be used to understand the mass adoption and subsequent flight from online social networks, researchers at Princeton’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering say in a study released Jan. 17. The study has not been peer-reviewed.

See more at Time

The President Inhales

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He ought to change federal drug law rather than refuse to enforce it.

300px-Obama_Portrait_2006To the delight of dorm rooms everywhere, President Obama has all but endorsed marijuana legalization. “We should not be locking up kids or individual users for long stretches of jail time when some of the folks who are writing those laws have probably done the same thing,” he told the New Yorker magazine. Let’s try to see through this political haze.

Mr. Obama also muses to an admiring David Remnick that while pot is “a bad habit and a vice” and not something he would encourage his daughters to try, “I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol.” He called the Colorado and Washington legalization experiments “important for society,” while offering no comment on the federal Controlled Substances Act that he has an obligation to enforce equally across the country.

Marijuana remains a Schedule I substance under that 1970 law, meaning that it has a high risk of abuse. “No more dangerous than alcohol” is still dangerous, given the destructiveness of alcohol-related disease and social ills like drunk driving. There’s an industry related to mitigating alcohol problems, after all.

We tolerate drinking because most adults use alcohol responsibly, and by all means let’s have a debate about cannabis given how much of the country has already legalized it under the false flag of “medical” marijuana. But an honest debate would not whitewash pot’s risks.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal

3 Bodies Found at Fort Hood (2 Children)

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wpid-Flickr_-_The_U.S._Army_-_Ambulances_outside_Fort_Hoods_Soldier_Readiness_Processing_CenterMark Hastings; Universal Free Press
(CNN)—The bodies of three people, two of them children, were discovered at an on-base residence in Fort Hood, Texas, the Army said in a news release.

The bodies — one man and two children — were found about 8:15 a.m. ET, and the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command has launched a probe, according to the release.

No further details were available, and the identifications of the deceased won’t be released until the next of kin is notified, the Army said.

Chris Grey, spokesman for the criminal investigation command, could not provide further details but said, “We do not believe there is any further threat to the community at this time.”

2 arrested at Texas border linked to Target breach, credit card fraud

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illegals-arrested
McALLEN, Texas—Police in South Texas arrested two people trying to enter the U.S. from Mexico who may be connected to the massive data breach at Target.

27-year-old Mary Carmen Garcia and 28-year-old Daniel Guardiola Dominguez, both of Monterrey, Mexico, were arrested Sunday at the Anzalduas International Bridge on fraud charges. The duo had 96 fraudulent credit cards with them when they tried to re-enter the U.S., according to officials.

Police said the cards the two possessed bore the names of Mexican banks, but the numbers matched account information of South Texas residents affected by the Target data breach. Police said many of the cards had been used to buy tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise from national retail outlets in the area, including Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Toys ‘R’ Us.

Investigators are working to determine whether Garcia and Dominguez are involved in organized crime in Mexico, but McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez let slip that they appeared to have been dealing directly with the hackers and that the stolen account information appears to have been divvied up and sold off regionally — right down to the ZIP code.

KMSP-TV

More at KMSP Fox 9