ABC 7: Gray’s Most Serious Injury Happened In The Back Of The Van

BALTIMORE, Md. (WJLA) —

According to WJLA, an investigation into the death of Baltimore resident Freddie Gray has found no evidence that his fatal injuries were caused during the arrest by police officers, stated multiple law enforcement sources.

The sources spoke to ABC 7 News after being briefed on the findings of a police report turned over to prosecutors on Thursday.

Sources said the medical examiner found Gray’s most serious injury was caused when he slammed into the back of the police transport van, apparently breaking his neck, states ABC 7.

A head injury he sustained matches a bolt in the back of the van, states ABC 7.

Details surrounding exactly what caused Gray to slam into the back of the van was unclear. The officer driving the van has yet to give a statement to authorities. It’s also unclear whether Gray’s head injury was voluntary or was a result of some other action.

CNN and other sources have claimed Freddie Gray was not buckled in to the transport van by police officers.

(Updated article)

http://www.wjla.com/articles/2015/04/breaking-news-no-evidence-found-that-freddie-gray-s-death-was-result-of-police-who-arrested-him-prob.html

Homeless Person Donates To Church

An envelope with 18 cents inside was left as an offering at a Charlotte, North Carolina, church last Sunday, according to The Huffington Post.

Church members say they were deeply moved by the “powerful” gift.

“Please don’t be mad, I don’t have much,” someone wrote on the outside of the envelope, left in a collection plate at First United Methodist Church. “I’m homeless. God Bless.”

homeless person donation

According to WCNC, the First United Methodist Church in uptown Charlotte is nestled between a homeless shelter in one direction [and] the big banks in the other.

Low-Level Campaign Finance Win

According to The Huffington post, in a 5-4 decision on Wednesday, the Supreme Court upheld the right of states to ban elected judges from soliciting campaign contributions for their own campaigns. The majority decision was written by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by the court’s four liberal justices, writes the HuffPost.

So, states have the right to ban elected judges from receiving money for their campaigns.

Oddly, the decision comes after a long string of court rulings that overturned campaign finance regulations, among them the well-known 2010 Citizens United and the 2014 McCutcheon cases. The ruling, by contrast, maintains the ability of the states to uphold campaign finance reform in regards to elected judges. It does so by making a strong distinction between the role of the judiciary and the role of elected legislative and executive officials.

The distinction seemed weak. Roberts, writing for the majority, said: “A State’s interest in preserving public confidence in the integrity of its judiciary extends beyond its interest in preventing the appearance of corruption in legislative and executive elections. As we explained in [Republican Party of Minnesota v. White], States may regulate judicial elections differently than they regulate political elections, because the role of judges differs from the role of politicians.”

In the case before the court, Florida judicial candidate Lanell Williams-Yulee had signed her name to a fundraising solicitation letter while running for office in 2009. She did so despite Florida’s ban on fundraising solicitation by judicial candidates.

Candidates like Williams-Yulee are allowed to raise money through campaign committees, but they may not ask for the funds themselves. Williams-Yulee challenged the law as a restriction of her First Amendment right to free speech.

Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly Goes Off On African Americans For Baltimore Situation


Secular Talk

Recently, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly criticized Baltimore African Americans on many fronts, including income and arrest rates.

According to MediaITE, he said that “despite African-Americans controlling Baltimore, the city’s not prospering” and he focused on personal behavior instead of economic conditions.  He also pointed out stats about black crime in Baltimore.

Secular Talk discusses it.

(Updated article)

Ex-Husband Of Fox News’ Megyn Kelly Speaks Out

Recently, Dr. Dan Kendall, the first husband of Fox News superstar Megyn Kelly gave an interview to the Daily Mail about his previous marriage with the host of the Kelly File.

The Fox News star twice told of her hurt at being betrayed by a lover, each time saying it was not her current husband Doug Brunt.

However, she never cleared first husband Dr. Dan Kendall.

Kendall denies he cheated on her.

“I can say with 100% certainty that I was completely faithful to Megyn,” Kendall, 45, said as he sat in his $2 million home in the Washington suburb of Vienna, Virginia.

“When she made that comment about it not being in her current marriage it irritated me a bit because it seemed like she was suggesting it was me,” he stated.

“I texted her at the time and she apologized. I think I was a good husband.”

Although they no longer talk, The Daily Mail states that Kendall and Kelly are on friendly terms.

He even appeared on her show in 2011 when she needed an expert to discuss the case of Conrad Murray, the doctor charged with involuntary manslaughter in Michael Jackson’s death.

Kendall is now a top anesthesiologist and pain management physician.

He said he believes he knows who it was who cheated on Kelly, but would not reveal the name out of respect for her.

Kendall and Kelly married in 2001, just 18 days after 9/11 having dated for nearly four years. They divorced amicably in 2006 and she moved out to a house just 200 yards away so they could keep close.

Dr. Kendall says they had a beautiful church wedding in Chicago and reception at the Waldorf hotel in Chicago in 2001.  They are now both happily remarried.

Kendall and his second wife Emily have two young daughters. “I was lucky to find someone special in 2009. Emily is smart, beautiful and an amazing wife and mother,” he says

However, Kelly, 44, has never gotten over the man who cheated on her, bringing up the subject publicly at least twice.

The first time she brought it up was in 2011 during an interview with USA Weekend.

She was discussing how New York congressman Anthony Weiner was in the middle of a scandal after tweeting explicit pictures of himself to several women.

“I feel sorry for his family,” Kelly told USA Weekend. “His wife doesn’t deserve this. I have been in the position, not with my current marriage, where I’ve been betrayed.”

“It bugged me,” Kendall said about her statement.

Two years later, on her own show, Kelly made a similar statement.

She surprised her on-air guest, Fox Online editor Chris Stirewalt, in the middle of a conversation about attorney general Eric Holder signing off on a search warrant for a reporter.

“Have you ever caught somebody cheating on you?” she suddenly asked Stirewalt. “No,” he responded, taken aback by the question.

“OK, I have, and I’m sure a lot of our viewers have – not my husband of course,” said Kelly.

“And let me tell you what the person does when they’re caught. They apologize! They tell you that they regret it, that they’re sorry, and that they’re not going to do it again. And that’s what they do when they’re caught, all right? But it tends to be that, did it the one time…”

She then went back to discussing Holder and his search warrants without any further explanation for her outburst.

Kendall has also not attempted to correct several online articles that described their marriage as “short-lived”, many even saying they divorced within a year of their wedding.

“We were together for eight years in total,” he said to the Daily Mail. “We were married for 4½.”

“I met her in Chicago at a street festival. She was out with friends and we became friends. I was a third year medical student and she was an attorney working for Bickel & Brewer as a fourth year lawyer.”

“I really liked her a lot and we were just friends for a while as she was dating someone else at the time and I was hoping to meet other friends like her, but after a while she broke up with the man she was dating and she showed an interest in me and we started dating.”

Eventually the happy couple moved to New York and lived together in the Battery Park area of Manhattan. They later moved to Baltimore and then back to Chicago where they got married.

Kendall said he was ready to settle down. He bought a diamond ring and whisked his girlfriend off to Paris for a romantic weekend. Megyn had no idea that he intended to propose to her while in the French capital.

“I checked out in Frommers for a romantic place to propose and we found this restaurant but when we got there it was full of Americans and she said she hated the place because it was so touristy so I quickly had to find another place.”

...and wow: 'She reports, we decide she's hot' wrote GQ magazine in December 2010. She posed for this photo for an in-depth interview for the magazine

He found another restaurant that was more to Megyn’s liking. “I got down on one knee not knowing whether she would accept but she said yes.”

They married in Chicago on September 29, 2001, shortly after the country had been wracked by the terror attacks of September 11. “We had a beautiful church wedding in Chicago and had the reception at the Waldorf.

“Of course we were worried about people getting there after 9/11 but everyone we invited managed to get there we had about 90 guests. We had a Rolls Royce pick us up and it was very extravagant.”

“But even before they married there were signs that they were not meant to be,” states the Daily Mail.  Kendall was setting out as a successful doctor and his bride-to-be was still a high-powered attorney.

Even the Roman Catholic priest who married them expressed his worries that they would be able to make their marriage work, Kendall remembered.

“He could see the potential conflict. I remember him telling Megyn it is going to be important to take care of your husband at home and I remember her saying ‘what about him taking care of his wife?'”

Eventually, Kendall got offered a highly sought-after pain management fellowship at the prestigious Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and Megyn agreed to follow him.

“She was burning out as a lawyer in Chicago and she decided to take a class which included reporting and she did very well with it.

“When she came to Baltimore she managed to get a part-time job with Channel 8, the ABC affiliate. Again she was very hard-working, she would TiVo herself and watch herself over and over critiquing herself, saying how bad she was, and she just got better and better.

“Literally within a month, she got an offer from Fox News.”

They settled in Alexandria, Virginia, a wealthy suburb of the nation’s capital, buying a $640,000 townhouse with 3 beds and 4½ baths in 2004, but within two years the marriage was as good as over.

Just married: Megyn and Dan settled in Alexandria, Virginia, a wealthy suburb of the nation's capital, buying a $640,000 townhouse in 2004. But within two years the marriage was as good as over.

Neighbor Frank Birdsong told Daily Mail, “It seemed simple, he wanted the 2.4 children and she didn’t.”

Kendall admits that is what they told people, but the truth was deeper. “I believe working two jobs, the long hours of corporate law and part time news together with my long hours of medical training took a toll on our marriage,” he said.

“I was working very hard and very long hours and we found our interests to be in different places,” said Kendall.

“It is fair to say that I wanted to start a family at some point and she wasn’t at that point, and yes, after we split that is what we told neighbors, but really there was more to it than that. She probably needed more emotional support than I could give her, and the same for me.”

“I wanted a wife and she wanted a wife — we both needed someone to cook and clean and support us. She has very much a Type A personality. I couldn’t imagine her staying at home. She needed more of a Type B husband.

“Sometimes with two professionals it doesn’t work out, we were both working extremely hard and both excelling at what we did.

“It is just a matter that sometimes two personalities can clash.

“So we broke up, it was mutual. She wanted to work on things and wanted to keep it going but I realized it wasn’t going anywhere. She moved just down the street and it was very amicable — we still walked the dogs together.”

Kelly’s new house was in the same Stonegate development. Slightly smaller, she bought it for $585,000, public records show. But then came the property crash and she ended up hanging on to it for years after she had moved to New York to become a Fox News star. She only sold it in 2013, losing $70,000 on the deal.

Ironically, it turned out that Kelly had children before her ex-husband. She and second husband Brunt, 43, an internet security executive-turned-writer, married on Long Island, NY, in March, 2008 after being set up on a blind date in Washington.

The couple had their first son, Yates, the following year. They also have a daughter, Yardley, 3, and an 18-month-old son Thatcher.

But Kelly’s first husband is also remarried. Dan Kendall and his second wife Emily have two daughters, one aged 3½ and the second who turned 2 on Super Bowl Sunday. “I was lucky to find someone special in 2009. Emily is smart, beautiful and an amazing wife and mother,” he said.

“I have a tremendous amount of respect for Megyn and I still like her as a person,” her ex said. “I just want what is best for her and her family.”

(Updated article)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2938070/I-wanted-wife-wanted-wife-Ex-husband-Megyn-Kelly-speaks-marriage-FOX-News-star-reveals-didn-t-CHEAT-bugged-hinted-did-air.html#ixzz3YdmtbEv2

Farmer In India Hangs Self At Political Rally

NDTV

The New York Times writes that last week, a dead farmer endeared himself to the nation more than all the dead farmers before him. The New York Times states that Gajendra Singh, who was skilled in tying turbans and had a keen interest in politics, was not exactly a poor farmer.

The New York Times:  “He attended a political rally in the capital, climbed a tree, tied a piece of cloth to a branch and a noose around his neck, and shouted slogans about the plight of farmers. What happened after that is disputed. Some say he fell by accident, some say he hanged himself. There was enthusiastic news coverage until the earthquake in Nepal deflected attention. Politicians visited his family. The government announced it would name a farmer welfare program after him. Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that the nation was ‘deeply shattered.'”

However, the Indian TV broadcasting company NDTV tells it differently:

“Before killing himself, Gajender Singh from Dausa district threw a suicide note at the crowd, in which he said he had suffered failed crops and was unable to feed his three children anymore.

“AAP had called the rally at the city’s Jantar Mantar, just a km from Parliament, to protest against the Centre’s proposal to make it easier to buy farmland for development projects.

“41-year-old Gajender, who had contested the 2003 Rajasthan election, caught the crowd’s attention by balancing precariously on a tree, shouting and waving a broom. An AAP worker and others climbed after him urging him to come down.

“The tree was just 40 steps from the stage where Mr Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia were seated. In visuals, people were seen focusing mainly on the stage, their cheers and claps drowning out Gajendra’s voice.”

So the version from India doesn’t doubt that it was a suicide and makes it clear that he had a suicide note.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had staged the rally in Delhi to protest against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s controversial land acquisition bill.

Opponents of the bill say it will hurt the interests of farmers, states the BBC.

A slightly different view: The Times of India states Delhi Police have blamed the “mob” at AAP ‘s rally for inciting the farmer to commit suicide.

Do Death Panels Exist Under Kansas’ Privatized Medicaid?


Secular Talk

Recently, a High school senior was rejected by the privatized state Medicaid system in Kansas.

Changes to the Kansas health care system instituted by state’s governor Sam Brownback channeled about 400,000 Kansas residents out of the public Medicaid health insurance program into a new, privately-run, profit-making system called KanCare.

Three health insurance companies now coordinate that care.

The student said that he was just days away from dying when he fled the state and found treatment at a hospital in Tennessee, states RawStory.

Ross’ doctors advised him to get treatment out of state, but after not responding for weeks, his insurance provider rejected the advice.

The private insurance provider told him that he had to get the surgery at a hospital in Kansas, even though his own doctors told him that was impossible.

The Inquisitr states that St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee told Levi he could have his surgery there, and he will have to make payments to them.

Levi Ross will still have considerable costs associated with his cancer care and even though he is back in Kansas, they won’t all be covered, states The Inquisitr.

His family has created a crowdfunding page to help with those costs on GiveForward.com, which can be reached here at this link.

(Updated article)

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/04/cancer-patient-with-a-week-to-live-flees-kansas-for-profit-medicaid-for-life-saving-surgery-in-memphis/

http://www.inquisitr.com/2049480/levi-ross-cancer/

http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/editorials/article2174129.html

Did John Kerry Make A False Statement?

Wikipedia states that The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (commonly known as the LTTE or the Tamil Tigers) is a now-defunct militant organization that was based in northern Sri Lanka.

It was founded in May 1976 by Velupillai Prabhakaran, and waged a secessionist nationalist insurgency to create an independent state in the north and east of Sri Lanka for Tamil people.

The military engagement led to the Sri Lankan Civil War, which ran from 1983 until 2009, when the LTTE was decisively defeated.

Recently, the publication Lankaweb pointed out a petition to urge John Kerry to retract a statement he made about Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers.

“In remarks made February 12, 2015, welcoming Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera to Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry referred to a war that never took place: Sri Lanka’s 30-years of war with the Tamils.” Regretfully, Minister Samaraweera failed to point out this distortion and we, the undersigned, hasten to request that it be corrected.

“Sri Lanka’s 30-year turmoil can best be summed up using President Obama’s ISIS analogy: it was a war on a terrorist group, not on the people it claimed to represent.

“The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) waged a brutal and lengthy armed campaign for a separate state, and the Sri Lankan government responded with military force, eventually eliminating it.

“Any serious effort by the US or others to help Sri Lanka on its path to further reconciliation must start with this recognition: Sri Lanka was no more at war with its Tamil population than the American people with Muslims. The distinction is fundamental to the narratives of both nations.”

(Updated photo)

http://www.lankaweb.com/news/items/2015/04/27/petition-%C2%B7-urge-secretary-kerry-to-retract-distorted-statement-on-sri-lanka-%C2%B7-change-org/