Conservative Blogger
Friday, May 22, 2015
Officers indicted in death of Freddie Gray
The indictments were very similar to the charges Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced about three weeks ago. The most serious charge for each officer, ranging from second-degree "depraved heart" murder to assault, still stood.
Gray suffered a critical spinal injury after police handcuffed, shackled and placed him head-first into a van, Mosby has said. His pleas for medical attention were repeatedly ignored, she said.
Mosby said prosecutors had presented evidence to the grand jury for the past two weeks. Some of the charges were changed based on new information, but she didn't say what that new information was. She also did not take questions.
"As is often the case, during an ongoing investigation, charges can and should be revised based upon the evidence," Mosby said.
In all, three of the officers had additional charges brought against them while three others had one less charge.
Gray was arrested April 12. He died in a hospital a week later and became a symbol of what protesters say was police brutality against blacks.
Two officers, Edward Nero and Garrett Miller, were indicted on second-degree assault, misconduct in office and reckless endangerment.
Caesar Goodson, who drove the transport van, faces manslaughter and second-degree "depraved heart" murder. Sgt. Alicia White, Lt. Brian Rice and officer William Porter are each charged with manslaughter, second-degree assault, misconduct in office and reckless endangerment.
Gray died on April 19, one week after he was critically injured, and his death inspired outrage among Baltimore residents that spawned protests that at least two points gave way to violence, looting and arson. In the wake of the riots, Democratic Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake implemented a curfew for all Baltimore residents, and Republican Gov. Larry Hogan declared a state of emergency.
Gray was arrested in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood of West Baltimore. According to court documents, Gray made eye contact with a police officer and took off running. He was apprehended two blocks away and arrested for possession of what Miller wrote in charging documents is illegal under a city ordinance.
Mosby said the arrest was unlawful because the knife is legal under state law.
None of the officers secured Gray's seatbelt in the van, a violation of police policy. Soon after he was placed in the van, Goodson stopped to secure him with leg irons because he had become "irate," police said.
After a ride that included several more stops, including one to pick up a second passenger, the van arrived at the Western District station house. By that time, Gray was non-responsive.
All for nothing? US vets who fought for Ramadi angry over fall to ISIS
Iraqi War veteran Sgt. Ben Rangel remembers fighting to secure the city of Ramadi when he first arrived in Iraq for a tour of duty in 2004. He also recalls the bloodshed.
Now, like other veterans who fought Iraqi insurgents for the capital city of Iraq's Anbar province, as well as the loved ones who died in fierce battles there, Rangel bristles at the sight of the ISIS flag-waving above the government complex. Many are wondering why their hard-fought gains were so easily surrendered when Iraqi forces, following the U.S. pullout, were unable to stand up to the black-clad terrorist army.
“It’s hard to watch and then be told that it’s all part of a successful plan.”“We lost a lot of men,” Rangel, a former infantryman with the 2nd battalion/5th Marines Fox Company, told FoxNews.com. “The fighting in Fallujah got a lot of attention in the news, but Ramadi was a very important city because of the supply route that ran through it to Baghdad.
- Pete Hegseth,Concerned Veterans for America
“We were fighting non-stop for three months," he said. "Our mission was always to make sure that the supply route was secure.”
Ramadi, once a city of 750,000, lies some 70 miles west of Baghdad in the Sunni-majority province. During the Iraq War, which raged from 2003 to late 2011, nearly 5,000 coalition forces were killed and more than 32,000 wounded. Some of the war's fiercest fighting occurred in Anbar province, including in Falluja and Ramadi.
Rangel’s battalion lost 23 men during the fighting, and the veteran lost a close friend when that man's unit struck an IED along "Route Michigan," the military's name for the supply road that leads from Baghdad into Syria, passing through Fallujah and Ramadi.
“I never got to see him again,” the Marine recalled.
Despite the hardships and loss of men, over the next few years, Ramadi was eventually secured.
“All that fighting had paid off,” Rangel said, adding that the city was completely out of the clutches of the insurgency when he went back with his unit in 2007, a year after the infamous Battle of Ramadi in 2006, to train Iraqi police forces.
Nearly a decade after Rangel and others fought to free Ramadi, the city is poised to become a bloody battleground yet again. Iraqi troops, driven out by a much smaller ISIS army over the weekend, are poised to mount a counter-offensive, aided by a coalition of Shia Muslim fighters. But the failure by Iraqi forces to hold the city has already led to a humanitarian crisis, as an estimated 25,000 Iraqi refugees have fled for safety, most of them heading along Route Michigan for Baghdad.
Related Image
Sgt.
Ben Rangel, seen here in a a photo taken in the City of Ramadi in 2004,
said the fighting was "non-stop" against the insurgency at the time.
“It’s because they [Washington] refuse to send troops that we are seeing this insurgence,” she added.
The U.S. has been coordinating airstrikes since last August, pounding ISIS positions in both Iraq and Syria. But the Obama administration has said it does not want troops back on the ground in Iraq, and has said it is up to the Iraqis to defend their land from the terrorist army. Weapons the U.S. gave to the Iraqis, including tanks, have fallen into the hands of ISIS when the Iraqi forces fled, first in Mosul last year and now, most recently, in Ramadi.
Sgt. Rangel, whose unit helped train Iraqi forces in 2007, said he never had a lot of confidence in them,.
"At one point we had to take over for the Iraqi police because many of them were helping insurgents,” he said. “It was very difficult to know who the enemy was. One minute, they [insurgents] would be in civilian clothes, the next they were picking up rifles and attacking us.
A senior military official confirmed to Fox News Channel on Wednesday that the Obama administration is looking into arming Sunni tribes to help national forces and Shia militia retake Ramadi. However, public comments from another Pentagon official suggest that not much more assistance will be provided.
“We are confident that we have the right strategy at this time,” U.S. Central Command spokesman, Col. Patrick Ryder, U.S. Air Force said Wednesday. “Momentum will continue to be on our side.”
Related Image
Sgt.
Rangel, served with the the Marine Corps' Fox Company and returned in
2007, after Ramadi was secured, to help train Iraqi police forces.
“It’s hard to watch and then be told that it’s all part of a successful plan,” Hegseth said. “Ramadi was a model success story and we continue to see all of the gains we made there be somewhat reversed.
"It’s a slap in the faces of families of soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice,” he added.
US warns China not to challenge military flights over South China Sea
The U.S. warned China Thursday against confronting U.S. aerial patrols over the South China Sea days after a verbal dispute between a Chinese military dispatcher and a U.S. Navy surveillance aircraft.
The Los Angeles Times reported that the Navy released two videos and an audio recording of the confrontation, which took place on Wednesday when the Chinese dispatcher demanded eight times that the Navy P8-A Poseidon leave the area as it flew over Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratly Island chain, where China has conducted extensive reclamation work.
"Foreign military aircraft, this is Chinese navy. You are approaching our military alert zone. Leave immediately," the dispatcher said on the recording. After the American crew responded that it was flying over international waters, the Chinese dispatcher responded "This is the Chinese navy ... You go!"
The incident was the latest example of friction between Washington and Beijing, with China seeking to assert its expansive claims to the South China Sea and the U.S. pushing back and attempting to demonstrate that China's massive land reclamation does not give it territorial rights.
Daniel Russel, the top U.S. diplomat for East Asia, said the flight of a U.S. reconnaissance plane in international airspace over the South China Sea was a regular and appropriate occurrence. He said the U.S. will seek to preserve the ability of not just the United States but all countries to exercise their rights to freedom of navigation and overflight.
"Nobody in their right mind is going to try to stop the U.S. Navy from operating. That would not be a good step. But it's not enough that a U.S. military plane can overfly international waters, even if there is a challenge or a hail and query" from the Chinese military, he said.
"We believe that every country and all civilian actors also should have unfettered access to international waters and international airspace," he said.
Speaking at a regular daily briefing Thursday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei reiterated Beijing's insistence on its indisputable sovereignty over the islands it has created by piling sand on top of atolls and reefs.
While saying he had no information about the reported exchange, Hong said China was "entitled to the surveillance over related airspace and sea areas so as to maintain national security and avoid any maritime accidents.
"We hope relevant countries respect China's sovereignty over the South China Sea, abandon actions that may intensify controversies and play a constructive role for regional peace and stability," Hong told reporters.
China claims virtually the entire South China Sea as its own, along with its scattered island groups. The area that is home to some of the world's busiest commercial shipping routes is also claimed in part or in whole by the Philippines, Taiwan, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam.
The U.S. and most of the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) want a halt to the projects, which they suspect are aimed at building islands and other land features over which China can claim sovereignty and base military assets.
The U.S. says it takes no position on the sovereignty claims but insists they must be negotiated. Washington also says ensuring maritime safety and access is a U.S. national security priority.
China is also at odds with Japan over ownership of a group of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea that are controlled by Tokyo but also claimed by Beijing, leading to increased activity by Chinese planes and ships in the area, which lies between Taiwan and Okinawa.
Both sides have accused the other of operating dangerously, prompting fears of an incident such as the 2001 collision between a Chinese fighter jet and a U.S. surveillance plane in which the Chinese pilot was killed and the American crew detained on China's Hainan island.
Also Thursday, the Chinese air force announced its latest offshore training exercises in the western Pacific as part of efforts to boost its combat preparedness.
People's Liberation Army Air Force spokesman Shen Jinke said the exercises were held in international airspace but gave no specifics. In its report on the drills, state broadcaster CCTV showed a video of Xian H-6 twin-engine bombers, a Chinese version of Russia's Tupelov Tu-16, in flight and landing at an air base, although it wasn't clear when the video was shot.
Clinton Foundation reveals up to $26.4M in previously undisclosed payments
The Clinton Foundation acknowledged Thursday that it had received millions of dollars in payments that had not previously been disclosed under a 2008 ethics agreement with the Obama administration.
The Washington Post, citing foundation officials, reported that the payments were categorized internally as "revenue" instead of donations, which exempted the organization from including them in its public list of contributions.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, has faced questions about whether the foundation fully complied with the agreement it made with the Obama administration when Clinton was nominated to be America's top diplomat. Questions have also been raised about whether the foundation's lengthy list of donors tied to foreign governments presented a conflict of interest for Clinton while she was Secretary of State or whether such conflicts might arise should she become president.
According to the Post, the previously undisclosed money was paid in the form of speaking fees for Hillary and former President Bill Clinton, as well as their daughter Chelsea. The foundation does not say how much the Clintons were paid for each speech, only giving a range. The total amount in new payments is between $12 million and $26.4 million.
According to new information released by the foundation, the Clintons have made a total of 97 speeches to benefit the foundation since 2002. Those speeches have been sponsored by a number of institutions, including colleges and universities, corporations, and at least one foreign government, Thailand.
The Post reports that the organizations that paid to hear Hillary Clinton speak to them include large financial institutions Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase. Another organization, founded by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, paid between $250,000 and $500,000 to hear the former Secretary of State. In all, 15 speeches by Hillary Clinton were newly disclosed by the foundation, which did not provide any dates for the events.
Former President Bill Clinton gave 73 of the 97 newly disclosed speeches, including the speech paid for by Thailand's Energy Ministry, which contributed between $250,000 and $500,000. Other organizations addressed by Bill Clinton include the U.S. Islamic World Forum (between $250,000 and $500,000 contributed), a South Korean energy and chemical company ( between $500,00 and $1 million), the China Real Estate Development Corp., and the Qatar First Investment Bank (both paying between $250,000 and $500,000).
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