Today, a federal judge sentenced former CIA officer Jerry Lee to 19 years in prison. He was convicted of gathering United States defense information and other sensitive information, and handing it over to agents for the government of China. Read the rest
Former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh today pled guilty to conspiracy charges and tax evasion in federal court. Read the rest
Devin Nunes is such an idiot. Read the rest
On her official Twitter account, New York Attorney General Letitia James today announced that NY is suing Juul. Read the rest
Well this is awkward.
Donald Trump, a very normal and innocent President of the United States, just tweeted:
So they now convict Roger Stone of lying and want to jail him for many years to come. Well, what about Crooked Hillary, Comey, Strzok, Page, McCabe, Brennan, Clapper, Shifty Schiff, Ohr & Nellie, Steele & all of the others, including even Mueller himself? Didn’t they lie?....
LOL.
Lol you know everything you touch dies, right? https://t.co/PO2els1IWF
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) November 15, 2019
Who is next?
Roger Stone is the latest in a line of people around Trump who spent careers one step ahead of the law - until he became president, and now they're behind bars. Manafort, Cohen, Gates, now Stone. Who's next?
— Paul Waldman (@paulwaldman1) November 15, 2019
PREVIOUSLY ON BOING BOING:
A federal court ruled today that an atheist gentleman from Kentucky should be permitted to get a personalized license plate from the state with the phrase “IM GOD” on it. The man is committed to his cause -- this only took three years of legal fighting. Read the rest
Chris Wallace of Fox News was impressed with Ambassador William Taylor's testimony in today's impeachment hearings:
"William Taylor was a very impressive witness and was very damaging to the president. First of all, as you pointed out, he took very copious notes at almost every conversation... I think very nonpolitical. He went out of his way to talk about what he knew, what he was specifically testament to. The only thing he talked about was a strong feeling that it was in the U.S. national security interests to support Ukraine in the fight against Russia. But he certainly wasn't taking any partisan position."
Chris Wallace: "I think William Taylor was a very impressive witness and was very damaging to the president." pic.twitter.com/QvCe5FEqL9
— Lis Power (@LisPower1) November 13, 2019
#ImpeachmentHearings have begun. Let loose the bowels of trumpian treason. Read the rest
“They shouldn’t be having public hearings,” said acting president of the united states Donald J. Trump today, about a week after he demanded public hearings. Read the rest
Grab your headphones. Read the rest
Retired professor James Fetzer co-authored the book "Nobody Died at Sandy Hook." He was found guilty in June of defaming Leonard Pozner. Now, a jury says he must pay nearly half a million dollars in damages. Read the rest
Not ashamed to admit I'm obsessed with this crime story. Read the rest
PHOTO: Shutterstock. TX AG Ken Paxton, shown here, is leading nationwide probe into Google.
The Texas attorney general today issued a 29-page civil investigative demand with more than 200 directives for Google to provide detailed information on its ad business. The deadline is October 9. Read the rest
The Justice Department today announced indictments for 80 individuals on charges they ran a massive business email and money laundering scam that operated in part out of Southern California.
DoJ's 145-page indictment was unsealed Thursday, and charges 80 named individuals with conspiracy to commit mail and bank fraud, plus aggravated identity theft and money laundering.
More than a dozen individuals were arrested during raids on Thursday, most of which took place in the greater Los Angeles area.
News of the early-morning Southern California raids on Thursday were first reported by LA's ABC7 News.
Read the restBut it’s not immediately known if the Nigerian nationals will be extradited to the U.S., however a treaty exists between the two nations making extraditions possible.
U.S. Attorney Nicola Hanna said the case was part of an ongoing effort to protect citizens and businesses from email scams.
“Today, we have taken a major step to disrupt criminal networks that use [business email scam] schemes, romance scams and other frauds to fleece victims,” he said. “This indictment sends a message that we will identify perpetrators — no matter where they reside — and we will cut off the flow of ill-gotten gains.”
These business email compromise scams rely partly on deception and in some cases hacking. Scammers send specially crafted spearphishing emails to their targets in order to trick them into turning over sensitive information about the company, such as sending employee W-2 tax documents so scammers can generate fraudulent refunds, or tricking an employee into making wire transfers to bank accounts controlled by the scammers.
Thoughts and prayers. Video games are fucking folks up. He's white so let's call it mental illness. Apologists for the far right talking shit. It's always the same song and dance anytime some asshole with a credit card buys an assault rifle to do what they feel entitled to do to innocent souls. As an outsider who watches terrorist acts like the one that unfold unfolded in El Paso this past weekend, one after another, it's a tune that I'm tired of hearing. I can't imagine how the citizens of your nation must feel. I mourn for your dead the way that I mourned for our own when a similar tragedy struck a few years back. Mourning and rising up in protest are all that we as citizens have available to us to give voice to our outrage.
That's not the case, however, where a grieving nation is concerned. During the El Paso terrorist attack, seven Mexican nationals were killed. Six were wounded. Their nation's government, in their grief, has decided that it's had enough.
From Buzzfeed News:
Read the restMexico's foreign minister on Monday called the mass shooting at a Texas Walmart that claimed the lives of eight Mexican nationals an act of terrorism against its citizens on US soil and vowed to take legal action.
Marcelo Ebrard, who had threatened to take action after the shooting, said the Mexican government will "definitely" launch legal action against the selling and distribution of assault rifles in the US, like the one used by the shooter in Saturday's attack.
Toni and Peter Thompson were building a new house in Sonoma, California. They removed three trees, including a 180-year-old oak, from a nearby piece of property they owned with plans to relocate them next to the house. But the trees were damaged in the removal process and they died. The surrounding area around the trees was also damaged. The land was protected by the state, and now the couple has been ordered to pay about $600,000 in damages.
From The Washington Post:
“I was not prepared,” Bob Neale, the trust’s stewardship director, told the Press Democrat. “It was really the most willful, egregious violation of a conservation easement I’ve ever seen.”
Portions of the area that had once been blanketed by untouched native plants were reduced to mounds of loose dirt, and others were scraped down to bedrock, according to court documents. Some photos showed a massive oak tree in a trench with its roots bound and surrounded by yellow construction equipment. A dirt road stretching for about a third of a mile was also carved through the land, destroying 12 smaller trees and other vegetation in the way, the ruling said.
...
Over the course of the trial, the Thompsons offered a dozen defenses, none of which the court found had any merit. The pair were “further undermined by their persistent failure to tell the truth,” Broderick wrote.
Image: Large oak tree providing shade, Sugarloaf Ridge State park, Sonoma County, California, by Sundry Photography/Shutterstock Read the rest
