Monday Reads

Well, my computer is being quirky again so we’ll have to see how long it takes to get this up today.  I really need a new one badly but this year has just about done me in on all levels including financially.  Right now I’m on an old HP running VISTA that’s unbelievably slow.  Hopefully, the other one will come alive once it sits awhile which happens, usually. This is just another level of stress I do not need.

We keep having more mass shootings and violence. There was one here down in the nastiest part of Bourbon Street early Sunday morning. Ten people were shot with one young man dying of his injuries.

Ohio State University has just experienced another horrid attack by a Somali refugee who drove a car into a group of people then started stabbing people with a butcher knife.  This will undoubtedly get some kind of play from the white nationalists.  I’m just waiting for it.

Police confirm the suspect who drove a car into a crowd of people and began attacking them with a butcher knife on the campus of The Ohio State University is dead.

OSU president Michael Drake says the sole suspect drove a car into a group of people, got out and began to cut them with a butcher knife. A police officer arrived within a minute of the attack and shot and killed the attacker.

A police officer was on the scene within a minute and killed the assailant. “He engaged the suspect and eliminated the threat,” OSU Police Chief Craig Stone said.

NBC News reports the suspect in the attack was an 18-year-old student, a Somali refugee and legal permanent resident of the United States. The suspect’s name was not released and the motive was unknown, but officials said the attack was clearly deliberate and may have been planned in advance.

“This was done on purpose,” Stone said.

Mass murder/shooter Dylann Roof wants to defend himself against his outstanding hate crimes charges. Jury selection began in the trial with Roof representing himself.

A federal judge has ruled that accused Emanuel AME Church shooter Dylann Roof can represent himself in his federal hate crimes trial, potentially allowing the self-avowed white supremacist to question the shooting survivors and nine victims’ family members if they are called to testify.

Roof made the last-minute request as jury selection in his death penalty trial was set to begin this morning. U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel cautioned Roof against serving as his own attorney, noting his defense team’s considerable legal expertise, but ultimately granted the request. He noted that Roof has a constitutional right to represent himself.

“I do find defendant has the personal capacity to self-representation,” Gergel said. “I continue to believe it is strategically unwise, but it is a decision you have the right to make.”

Roof, garbed in a striped grey-and-white jail uniform, stood up front in the courtroom and answered the judge’s questions with “yes, sir” in a quiet, raspy voice. After Gergel’s ruling, he smiled slightly as he returned to his defense table but showed no other obvious emotion.

Roof then sat in the front-and-center seat as his lead lawyer, renowned capital defense attorney David Bruck, scooted over. Roof told the judge that he wanted the attorneys he’d just asked to be discharged sit at the table with him. They now will act as “stand-by counsel,” Gergel ruled.

At one point, Bruck stood to object to a potential juror after the court had moved on to consider others without Roof objecting. The judge admonished Bruck and told him to sit down and confer with Roof.

“Mr. Roof elected to self-represent,” Gergel said.

The first panel of 10 prospective jurors brought in Monday morning were all white and appeared to be middle-aged or older. Filling three rows in the audience, an all-black group of shooting survivors, families of the nine dead, and the pastor of Emanuel AME listened attentively with no outward reactions to news that Roof would be acting as his own attorney.

Trump supporters continue to terrorize and harass their neighbors and folks that just happen to have looks they don’t like.  We already talked about the appalling jerk on the Delta flight screaming Hillary Bitches at women passengers.  Here’s another nasty white woman harassing black store employees.