I mean, what kind of country have we become? One in which federal prosecutors can take “evidence” before a “grand jury,” and that grand jury can “vote to indict” a former president for 37 alleged “crimes”? Look at all the other people out there in America, including Democrats like Hillary Clinton and President Joe Biden, who HAVEN’T been indicted for crimes on the flimsy excuse that there is no “evidence” they did crimes. THAT’S TOTALLY UNFAIR!
It’s like Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin wrote in a tweet Friday: “These charges are unprecedented and it’s a sad day for our country, especially in light of what clearly appears to be a two-tiered justice system where some are selectively prosecuted, and others are not.”
What kind of country holds a president accountable for alleged crimes a grand jury charges him with?
TWO TIERS! One tier in which President Trump keeps getting indicted via both state and federal justice systems and another in which the people I don’t like keep getting not indicted via all the things Fox News tells me they did wrong.
It’s like America has become a banana republic, as long as you do as I’ve done and refuse to look up the definition of “banana republic.”
A copy of the indictment of former President Donald Trump and Trump aide Walt Nauta, brought by the U.S. Justice Department. They’re charged with dozens of counts of allegedly violating eight federal statutes related to the handling of classified documents after the former president left the White House, according to the 44-page indictment unsealed June 9, 2023.More
Regardless of the Trump indictment, it’s clear this is all Biden’s fault
And of course, you know who’s behind this travesty of justice, right? It’s so-called President Biden, who is both frail and senile and also a laser-sharp master at conducting witch hunts.
Former President Donald Trump greets supporters in Grimes, Iowa, on June 1, 2023.
Sure, they’ll tell you that the indictment came via a special counsel investigation, and that the federal special counsel statute keeps such investigations walled off from political influence.
But that’s complete nonsense, unless we’re talking about special counsel John Durham, who was appointed by Attorney General Bill Barr while Trump was president and tasked with investigating the NEFARIOUS LEFT-WING CRIMES committed in the Trump-Russia probe. Durham was above reproach, and the fact that The New York Times reported he “charged no high-level F.B.I. or intelligence official with a crime and acknowledged in a footnote that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign did nothing prosecutable, either” is something I will ignore.
This is a WITCH HUNT, and I believe that because Trump said so!
Current special counsel Jack Smith, on the other hand – he’s bad news. I know this because Trump has said repeatedly that Smith’s investigation is a witch hunt, and I’ve never known Trump to lie about anything.
Keep in mind, in 2016, Trump said: “I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law.”
This image, contained in the indictment against former President Donald Trump, shows boxes of records stored in a bathroom and shower in the Lake Room at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla. Trump is facing 37 felony charges related to the mishandling of classified documents according to an indictment unsealed Friday, June 9, 2023.More
So after he said that, you expect me to believe he didn’t protect classified information? Just because, according to the indictment, there’s a recording of him holding a classified document in his office at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and saying to two staff members and an interviewer: “See, as president I could have declassified it. … Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”
You call that “damning evidence.” I call it, “What about Hunter Biden’s laptop?”
Putting Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden in prison? Now THAT makes sense!
Now I can already hear all the libs out there whining and saying that if it were Biden or Hillary or Hunter getting indicted, I wouldn’t be saying a word about two tiers of justice or the weaponization of the Department of Justice or anything like that.
The notably non-indicted President Joe Biden.
Well, those whiners would be right, but the difference is I believe Biden and Hillary and Hunter are all guilty and should be locked up for life, whereas with Trump, I believe he is great and innocent and the best president America has ever known.
It’s like this: If Hillary got indicted for murder, I would say, “Yes, she is absolutely a murderer. Lock her up.”
But if in some outrageous scenario President Trump were indicted for murder just because he told a bunch of people that he did a murder, I would say: “HOW DARE YOU CHARGE THIS MAN WITH MURDER WHEN OTHERS IN THE U.S. HAVE NOT BEEN CHARGED WITH MURDER! THERE ARE CLEARLY TWO TIERS OF JUSTICE, ONE IN WHICH MY FAVORITE PRESIDENT, WHO SAID HE MURDERED SOMEONE, IS CHARGED WITH MURDER AND ONE IN WHICH PEOPLE WHO HAVEN’T MURDERED ARE NOT CHARGED WITH MURDER!”
And that, my liberal friends, makes perfect sense to me and my MAGA companions. So watch out. The Trump Train’s a comin’.
Federal indictments against Trump are not a turning point.
By Neil Steinberg – June 11, 2023
Donald Trump addressed the North Carolina Republican state convention on Saturday, two days after becoming the first former U.S. president indicted on federal charges.
This Friday, June 16, marks many things. It’s Bloomsday, the day in 1904 when the entirety of James Joyce’s great novel, “Ulysses” takes place. It’s also my parents’ anniversary — 67 years and still going strong. (Happy anniversary, Mom and Dad!) And my younger son’s birthday.
It’s also the date in 2015 when Donald John Trump descended that escalator in the vomit-colored lobby of Trump Tower in New York City, declared himself a candidate for president and promised to save this country from the twin perils of Mexican immigrants and Muslims.
Eight years. Three thousand days, most of which saw Donald Trump twirling like a demented ballerina in drippy orange makeup in the spotlight of American life. From that introductory moment — the first words out of his mouth a lie, natch, inflating the few dozen people present into “thousands” — to last week, when he was indicted by federal authorities on 37 counts related to seven charges under the Espionage Act.
What a strange, terrible time in American history. Sometimes I consider it punishment for, having missed the tumult of the 1960s, wishing I could have lived in a momentous era of American history when great issues were being resolved. I take it back.
No time for regret now. Not with Trump followers urging violence at the prospect of his being prosecuted for his crimes. Not when they question the value of law enforcement before they’ll ever question their Chosen One.
Trump certainly will never pause from lying. Why would he? The lies work. The federal case, outlining his betrayal of national interest and endangering our security by exposing America’s military secrets to her enemies, was instantly shrugged off. Republicans have honed a variety of survival skills — perpetual imaginary victimhood, look-a-squirrel whataboutism, but-the-trains-run-on-time tunnel vision — allowing them to instantly ignore anything Trump does, did, or ever could do.
If Republicans are in a trance, so are Democrats. Because we keep waiting for Republicans to wise up.
“It has become impossible to ignore Trump’s many transgressions over the years,” the Sun-Times said in an editorial Sunday. At the risk of contradicting the editorial board, that’s a complete inversion of the situation. It is not impossible to ignore Trump’s crimes. Rather, it is mandatory, among his followers. Ignoring Trump’s misdeeds is not a flaw, but a feature.
To toss out another date: Jan. 6, 2021. Trump goaded a mob to assault the Capitol trying to overturn a free and fair American election. If that didn’t shake his followers awake to the peril, what is going to now? This latest indictment?
If they can laugh off Jan. 6, what can’t be chuckled at? His being ordered to pay $5 million for slandering the woman who claimed Trump raped her boosted his poll numbers.
His millions of followers are never going to be disillusioned with Trump, just as 40% of Russians approve of Joseph Stalin, the millions starved or pact with Hitler notwithstanding. A hundred years from now, Trump will be a revered figure, like Jesus, and for the same reason: the need to worship something. Charges, investigations, convictions, are just the Romans lashing their savior as he drags his cross to Calvary.
Jan Plemmons, of Columbus, Ga., waits at a private airfield for former President Donald Trump’s arrival in Georgia on Saturday.
Wake up. Liberal do-gooders are constantly calling upon values that just aren’t there. Remember former Ald. Leon Despres (5th), nicknamed the “conscience” of the Chicago City Council? Paddy Bauler, his notoriously corrupt Council colleague, once said to him: “Leon, the trouble is you think the whole thing’s on the square.”
The trouble with Democrats is they think the whole thing’s on the square. Still. Despite everything that has happened over eight years. We’ve learned nothing, and must start learning, fast. Time to stop invoking decency that isn’t there. If we are to continue to be a nation of laws, votes and varied voices, we must see the Trump menace for what it is: the gravest threat our nation has faced. The peril isn’t weakening; it’s growing stronger.
Someday, should America survive the Trump onslaught and become great enough to view history clearly, perhaps June 16 can become kind of a semi-official Day of Infamy, like Dec. 7 and Sept. 11. A cautionary tale for future generations. Not that we are anywhere near that safe perch where we can look back on the nightmare. Rather, we are in the thick of it, with more, maybe worse shocks to the American spirit speeding toward us.
Stunning details in Trump indictment show the importance of getting case right
The laws governing the handling of secret documents are there for a reason: to keep the country safe. Former President Donald Trump has been charged with egregiously violating those laws, and a just resolution to this case is important for America’s future.
Chicago Suntime’s Editorial Board – June 9, 2023
People demonstrate in front of the White House after Special Counsel Jack Smith delivered remarks about the unsealed federal indictment against former President Donald Trump on Friday.
Critical times of reckoning define nations’ identities far into the future.
The United States is at such a crossroads, brought to this point by the egregious actions of former President Donald Trump. It has become impossible to ignore Trump’s many transgressions over the years but still assure America is seen, by both its residents and other nations, as a place where rule of law prevails — where no one, not even presidents or former presidents, is granted the royal privilege to do as they like, without regard to laws others must obey.
“We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone,” as Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the investigation into Trump’s mishandling of secret documents, said in a brief statement Friday.
Hours earlier, a detailed 49-page indictment was unsealed by the Justice Department accusing Trump of 37 felony counts of withholding top secret and other documents, refusing to return them, hiding the documents and lying about it. The indictment says Trump and aide Walt Nauta moved boxes with documents before one of his attorneys could review them and then concealed that fact. Nauta is charged with six counts.
Among the devastating accusations: Upon leaving office, Trump allegedly took documents related to the military capabilities of the United States and other nations, information about America’s nuclear program and other important documents, then stored them at low-security, porous Mar-a-Lago, where all sorts of people wandered around, including possibly foreign intelligence individuals.
Shockingly, some boxes of documents sat at one point unsecured on a ballroom stage at Mar-a-Lago and in other unsecured locations, including a shower and Trump’s bedroom. According to the indictment, Trump, while at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, showed a military map of a country with an ongoing military operation to a political action committee member who didn’t have security clearance.
Trump took documents from seven different departments and intelligence agencies, among them the CIA, the NSA and the Department of Defense. The sensitivity of the documents Trump took is stunning.
Could foreign agents have accessed those documents? No one knows. If that did happen, no one knows how much damage has been done or how much the nation has been put at risk.
The laws governing the handling of secret documents are there for a reason. As Smith said, “Violations of those laws put our country at risk.”
The indictment also contains evidence that Trump knew he was violating the law. At one point, he said, “This is secret information. Look. Look at this.” He knew it was secret and yet invited a writer without security clearance to look at it anyway.
And tellingly, the indictment also points out six instances in which Trump noted the importance of protecting classified information — five times speaking publicly and once in a written statement.
Multiple investigations, lawsuit settlements
Trump has a long history of acting at though the law does not apply to him. In March, he was indicted on 34 counts in New York for allegedly falsifying business records, a felony, in connection with hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.
He was impeached, but not convicted, for trying to get Ukraine to announce an investigation of Joe Biden.
He is under investigation in Georgia for allegedly trying to overturn that state’s results in the 2020 presidential election. He is under investigation by Smith for allegedly inciting an attempted coup on Jan. 6., 2021, at the U.S. Capitol. He was impeached a second time for his conduct on Jan. 6.
Last year, two Trump Organization companies were found guilty on multiple counts of criminal tax fraud. In May, a New York jury found against Trump in a sexual abuse and defamation case filed by author, journalist and advice columnist E. Jean Carroll. In 2018, his Trump University settled for $25 million claims by students who said they were defrauded.
The list goes on and on. Trump’s disregard for the law also can be seen in the number of his political allies and members of his administration who have been indicted. His was a reign of the swamp.
Even now, many Republicans and Trump supporters are trying to explain everything away, absurdly claiming the damning evidence is just a conspiracy to pursue Trump, despite his clearly reckless behavior. There’s also the scary prospect that some of his supporters might threaten those connected to the investigation, an ugly scenario that has happened before. Trump set the pattern on Friday by calling Smith a “deranged lunatic.”
But waving away the abuses alleged in the indictment sets an unacceptable precedent — in effect, green-lighting more legal abuses by future presidents. And imagine, in such scenarios, abuses that are perhaps even more flagrant, scandalous and dangerous than those in this indictment.
The United States is at a pivotal moment in its history. The world is watching. A just resolution of this case, based on the evidence and the law, is imperative.
In Bones of Crows, Grace Dove found healing among the heaviness
Prince George, B.C., actor says she got into the craft to share hard stories
CBC News – June 10, 2023
Starring as Aline Spears, Grace Dove in Bones of Crows plays a Cree woman who navigates her trauma from the residential school system. (TIFF)
After a decade in the acting industry, Grace Dove knows why she chose this field.
“I really believe I became an actor and a storyteller to share hard stories,” she told CBC’s Eli Glasner.
Dove stars as Aline Spears in Bones of Crows, a film written and directed by Marie Clements.
The film follows a Cree woman’s journey from her childhood to old age as she navigates trauma from her time in the residential school system. WATCH | Grace Dove talks about handling difficult subject matter:
Bones of Crows star Grace Dove says she became an actor ‘to share hard stories’
Dove says both heaviness and healing were involved in making the upcoming film and mini-series that deals with intergenerational trauma and residential schools.
As with any role, there’s research involved.
“I have to do the homework. I have to study about World War II. I have to study about code talking,” Dove said. “I have to study about even being a Cree Indigenous person. I’m Secwépemc, so that brings so much to learn about.”
And an actor, she says there’s something from within that she must also bring to the role.
“I have to bring a piece of me,” she said. “Especially when it comes to Indigenous representation, when it comes to Indigenous films, this is my story. This is my family story. So there is so much heaviness to it.”
“But also it’s so healing, and I think that every role I do, it really brings out what I need to almost let go.”
Dove says she gave a piece of herself to her character, Aline Spears, in the film. (CBC)
She says Bones of Crows is another way to address a subject where some may want to look away.
“I think there’s a time and place for films about love, a rom-com. And we will see that,” she said. “I hope for more of that, that we have more light Indigenous cinema, but … we can’t do that yet until the truth is out there.”
Expanded series
Bones of Crows will also be a five-part limited series on CBC and APTN beginning Sept. 20. The story will expand on the feature film, with a broader focus on Spears’ relatives over the span of 100 years.
“I think the most important message that I took away is, what happens to you and how you deal with those adversities is going to last for, we say seven generations,” Dove said.
“It really shows the impact generation by generation and I think that’s what the series is really going to delve into.”
Dove grew up in Prince George, B.C. She says Bones of Crows can help educate young people and anyone else about the traumas that Indigenous people still face today. (Matt Sayles/ABC)
The breadth of the project meant a large cast, many of whom came to the production with lengthy resumes.
“We’ve had so many Indigenous creatives fighting for us to be here, for me to be here, and so it’s just constantly passing the torch and getting better every time,” she said.
Dove had a breakthrough role in the 2015 film The Revenant, playing the wife of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character Hugh Glass. DiCaprio is starring in the upcoming Killers of The Flower Moon, from director Martin Scorcese, which centres around the Osage Nation in Oklahoma.
She says she was in the running to be cast in that film and met Scorcese.
“I think it would be weird if me and Leo got married again, especially, you know when it happens eventually in real life as well,” she joked.
Lessons for the audience
There’s a practical lesson Dove wants viewers to take from Bones of Crows.
“I hope that audiences can walk away and think about their actions, and think about the way that they treat people. Because the way that you treat someone today might affect their family for generations,” she said.
“It just comes back to human kindness, and seeing people for real people.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joseph Pugh is a writer with the Entertainment department at CBC News. Prior to joining CBC he worked with the news department at CHLY, Nanaimo’s Community radio station, and taught math at Toronto’s Urban International School. He can be reached at joseph.pugh@cbc.ca
Trump: I have been indicted in classified documents case
Possible charges could include a violation of the Espionage Act.
David Knowles, Senior Editor – June 8, 2023
Donald Trump at a campaign event in Waco, Texas, March 25. (Evan Vucci/AP)
Former President Donald Trump announced on Thursday evening that his attorneys had been informed that he had been indicted by the federal government for alleged crimes stemming from his handling of classified documents after leaving the White House in early 2021.
“The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I have been Indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax,” Trump wrote on his social media website, Truth Social, adding, “I have been summoned to appear at the Federal Courthouse in Miami on Tuesday, at 3 PM. I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former President of the United States.”
Reuters, ABC News and the Associated Press confirmed that Trump had been indicted on seven criminal counts in relation to his handling of the documents, his second indictment in as many months. The National Archives and the FBI sought to retrieve the classified documents before issuing a subpoena last spring for their return.
Possible Espionage Act charge
Among the charges that will be made public Tuesday, Trump will be accused of violating the Espionage Act, according to reporting from the New York Times. The act prohibits the unauthorized possession of national defense-related documents and makes special mention of those that are “willfully retained” despite government efforts to retain them. If convicted on that charge alone, Trump, 76, could face a sentence of 10 years behind bars.
Justice Department stays mum
Attorney General Merrick Garland. (Nathan Howard/AP)
The Justice Department did not issue a statement about the latest indictment or the specific charges it would contain, the AP reported. Two people familiar with the case but who are not authorized to speak publicly about it, confirmed to the outlet that prosecutors had contacted Trump’s lawyers on Thursday to inform them of the indictment.
President Biden at the White House on Thursday. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)
While Trump sought to frame the indictments as politically motivated, President Biden was asked Thursday why Americans should have faith that the Justice Department was acting in accordance with the law.
“Because you’ll notice I have never once, not one single time, suggested to the Justice Department what they should do or not do, relative to bringing a charge or not bringing a charge. I’m honest,” Biden responded.
What Trump’s GOP rivals have said about another possible indictment
Prior to the indictment, some of Trump’s Republican rivals for the GOP presidential nomination weighed in on the possibility of a second round of criminal charges against the former president.
Trump’sformer vice president, Mike Pence, who announced his own presidential candidacy on Wednesday, said in an interview that he hoped that the DOJ would not indict Trump.
“I would hope the Department of Justice did not move forward. Not because I know the facts, but simply because I think after years where we’ve seen a politicization of the Justice Department is to undermine confidence in equal treatment of the law,” Pence said on the campaign trail in Iowa.
But Pence issued somewhat contradictory statements on a possible Trump indictment, stating that “no one’s above the law.”
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said he would wait to see what the charges against Trump consisted of, but made clear that Trump had himself to blame if he was charged for his mishandling of the documents.
“The problem with all of this is that it’s self-inflicted. In the end, I don’t know that the government even knew that Joe Biden had those documents or not,” Christie, a former U.S. attorney, told Fox News, drawing a distinction between a Justice Department investigation into classified documents found at Biden’s home. “They did know Donald Trump did and in fact asked voluntarily for them for over a year and a quarter and got them back in dribs and drabs.”
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson was more succinct, saying Trump should “step aside” if indicted in the documents case.
Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., said the DOJ was guilty of weaponizing its investigation and that the “the determining factor for the 2024 election should be the voters,” ABC News reported.
Will the indictment hurt Trump?
Former President Donald Trump at ta campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa, June 1. (Charlie Neibergall/AP)
While an April Yahoo News/YouGov poll taken after Trump’s first indictment in New York on charges stemming form his alleged hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels show that Trump had solidified his support among Republican voters, it remains to be seen how a second indictment will play out with his party.
Trump wasted little time in using the news of his latest indictment to try to boost his standing.
“This is indeed a DARK DAY for the United States of America. We are a Country in serious and rapid Decline, but together we will Make America Great Again!” he wrote on Truth Social.
His campaign also jumped into action, seeking to fundraise off the latest news.
Large body of misinformation is fueling American gun violence
Tom Gabor and Fred Guttenberg – June 7, 2023
Slogans like “Guns don’t kill, people do” and “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” reflect the decades-long campaign by the gun lobby and its allies to convince Americans that owning guns makes them safer. This campaign, based on a large body of misinformation, has made America a far more dangerous place. Our book American Carnage identifies and debunks close to 40 core myths that have led many Americans to mistakenly believe that carrying a gun and keeping one in the home will protect them rather than expose them to an elevated risk of harm.
Much of this misinformation stems from the radicalization of the gun lobby, beginning in the 1970s. Since then, the gun industry and gun rights organizations have made it their priority to convince Americans that an armed citizenry is the most effective way to shield ourselves from violence. This campaign has included stoking the public’s fear of crime, funding dubious scholarship by gun-friendly researchers, and shutting down federal funding of research showing that guns in the home put occupants at an elevated risk.
Before you fight over the word ‘woke,’ learn its history. It will blow you away.
Phil Boas, Arizona Republic – June 7, 2023
Poster of Leadbelly at the Rusty Nail in Wilmington.
Someday when the cultural moment that many have called “The Great Awokening” is finally, mercifully, over, Americans of all races should fight to give African Americans their word back.
Less than 10 years ago, “woke” was a word so deeply layered with history and meaning it could evoke years of pain suffered by descendants of slaves coming of age in Jim Crow America.
You don’t have to be African American, however, to feel its history. The word woke is seminal to our larger culture in ways most of us have never understood.
It’s one of the great words in American English and it should be preserved in its purest form.
At the moment it is being hijacked by politics – first by white liberals, then by white conservatives.
A battle over ‘woke’ in the Republican Party primary
This week the word “woke” is igniting a family spat within the 2024 Republican primary for president, pitting Donald Trump against his former apprentice, Ron DeSantis.
DeSantis, the Florida governor, uses the word frequently to describe an ideology steeped in identity politics that has taken over our universities, media, large corporations, medicine, arts, entertainment and sports.
Trump argues he doesn’t use the word. “I don’t like the term ‘woke’ because I hear, ‘Woke, woke, woke.’ It’s just a term they use, half the people can’t even define it, they don’t know what it is.”
There’s a good chance none of us would know the word today had the Library of Congress not set out in the 1930s to preserve American folk music in the South.
That project took library archivists to Louisiana where they discovered a little-known African American blues singer named Huddie William Ledbetter or “Lead Belly.”
The archivists recorded on aluminum discs Lead Belly and his 12-string guitar, preserving what would become some of the great Blues standards such as “Cotton Fields,” “Goodnight, Irene” and “Rock Island Line.”
‘Woke’ emerges with a song about race and suffering
In Lead Belly’s song “The Scottsboro Boys,” the nine African-American young men falsely accused of raping two white women in Alabama, he admonishes his listeners to, “Best stay woke!”
As Huddie Ledbetter used “woke,” it meant that when you’re a Black person travelling through a deeply racist state such as Alabama, you need to know what you’re dealing with – a highly refined form of evil.
Ledbetter would know. He travelled the byways of Louisiana, Alabama and Texas singing his songs and confronting white bigotry and its violence against Black people.
In a way that history has of surprising us, Lead Belly would become essential to white culture in America and Great Britain. All white people reading this and learning the name Huddie Ledbetter for the first time, should know that they have likely felt his influence, far more than they could have imagined.
Lead Belly influences Rock ‘n Roll’s greatest band
Donovan became “the king” of the U.K. “skiffle craze” and eventually inspired new skiffle groups across England, such as Liverpool’s The Quarrymen, then led by an aspiring singer-songwriter named John Lennon.
By 1960, the group would evolve into The Beatles, and its lead guitarist, George Harrison, would one day tell an interviewer, “If there was no Lead Belly, there would have been no Lonnie Donegan; no Lonnie Donegan, no Beatles. Therefore, no Lead Belly, no Beatles,” as recounted by Smithsonian Magazine.
Lead Belly was inspiring many musical forms of that day. Those same early recordings that preserved his music and the word “woke,” found their way into the imagination of another young artist of some note.
“Somebody – somebody I’d never seen before – handed me a Lead Belly record with the song ‘Cottonfields’ on it,” recalled Bob Dylan in his 2017 lecture to the Noble (Prize) Foundation. “That record changed my life right then and there. Transported me into a world I’d never known.
“It was like an explosion went off. Like I’d been walking in darkness and all of the sudden the darkness was illuminated. It was like somebody laid hands on me. I must have played that record a hundred times.”
The biggest names in many genres sing his songs
By the end of the century, Led Belly’s influence on American popular music was its own constellation of stars. Artists covering his songs included Gene Autry, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Tom Jones, Harry Belafonte, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, The Beach Boys, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Aerosmith, Lead Zeppelin, Tom Petty, The Grateful Dead.
When Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs wrote, “These new rock ‘n roll kids should just throw away their guitars and listen to something with real soul, like Lead Belly,” a young musician in Seattle named Kurt Cobain took up his challenge.
Years later, he recalled on an MTV stage: “I’d never heard about Lead Belly before so I bought a couple of records, and now he turns out to be my absolute favorite of all time in music. I absolutely love it more than any rock’n’roll I ever heard.”
Our chattering classes, and I include myself among them, have been poor caretakers of the word “woke.”
When this battle over wokeness is finally over, it would do us well to give the word back.
And while we’re at it, maybe we could make the name Huddie Ledbetter, one of America’s most important songwriters, as easily recognizable as say, Ringo Starr.
Phil Boas is an editorial columnist with The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic:
U.S. eyes Russia in destruction of Ukraine’s Kakhovka dam
Preliminary U.S. intelligence suggests Russia blew a major piece of Ukrainian critical infrastructure.
Michael Weiss and James Rushton – June 6, 2023
The U.S. government “has intelligence that is leaning toward Russia as the culprit” behind the destruction of Ukraine’s Kakhovka dam and hydroelectric power plant in the early hours of June 6, according to a report by NBC News.
The dam across the Dnipro River, one of the country’s major waterways, was all but gone in video and satellite footage that has emerged over the last 18 hours. The Kakhovka Reservoir has been emptying into the river all day, causing catastrophic flooding downstream in the Ukrainian region of Kherson. Water from the reservoir is also used by the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to cool its reactors. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, there is at present no immediate nuclear safety risk at the plant.
Widespread flooding
A local resident makes her way through a flooded road after the walls of the Kakhovka dam collapsed overnight. (Evgeniy Maloletka/AP)
Upward of 40,000 people are now in danger due to floodwaters, according to the Ukrainian government. As many as 70 towns along the Dnipro are at risk, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday.
Footage from Kherson showed rooftops floating down the river and other homes half submerged, and flood waters are expected to peak by Wednesday. Tragically, most of the animals at a zoo in the settlement of Nova Kakhovka, which is under Russian occupation, have drowned, according to the zoo’s management.
Even as rescue work continued, noise from Russian artillery could be heard nearby, a grim reminder that a mass ecological disaster is occurring amid the backdrop of war.
Timing of the dam incident
An aerial view of the damage at the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
Ukrainian analysts have linked the alleged Russian dam destruction to the much anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive, which may already be in progress. “In the course of the Kharkiv counteroffensive operation, the Russians destroyed the dam over Oskil reservoir,” Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at National Institute for Strategic Studies, a government-funded think tank, told Yahoo News, referring to the Ukrainian military’s recapture of thousands of square miles of terrain in September. “So there is precedent here.”
“Although one reason might be to impede the Ukrainian offensive, the Russians also have established an historical pattern of destroying infrastructure in areas they do not control — such as Kyiv — and areas they must leave behind when retreating, signaling that, if they cannot control it, no one else will be allowed to possess it,” said Dr. Alex Crowther, a retired U.S. Army colonel and strategist. “In short, the Russians did this for spite.”
The Ukrainian government was itself quick to blame Russian occupiers for blowing up the dam, originally built by the Soviets in 1956. Oleksii Danilov, chairman of Ukraine’s National Security Council, attributed the sabotage to Russia’s 205th Motorized Rifle Brigade, suggesting Kyiv was in possession of specific intelligence confirming that claim. In October 2022, a Telegram channel, purportedly belonging to a member of the 205th, outlined plans to mine and undermine the structure, with instructions for local residents in the event of “dam failure.”
Eyewitnesses have also come forward, describing hearing loud bangs at the dam they say indicate the use of large explosives.
‘An outrageous act’
Tetiana, a resident of Kherson, inside her damaged house after the Kakhovka dam was blown up overnight. (Evgeniy Maloletka/AP)
Ukraine’s Western partners wasted little time placing blame on Russian forces.
“The destruction of the Kakhovka dam today puts thousands of civilians at risk and causes severe environmental damage,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg tweeted hours after the dam was destroyed. “This is an outrageous act, which demonstrates once again the brutality of Russia’s war in Ukraine.”
Josep Borrell, the high representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, described the catastrophe as “a new dimension of Russian atrocities.” Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, commented: “The destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam is an outrageous act of environmental destruction that imperils the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, as well as the natural environment.”
How will the West respond?
The House of Culture in Kherson is partially submerged after the nearby dam was attacked. (Alexey Konovalov/TASS/Handout via Reuters)
Previous large-scale Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure have almost always led to significant increases in weapon systems from Western allies.
Most recently, after Russia began its campaign of aerial bombardment of Ukrainian power stations and energy plants in October 2022, the U.S. and other Western nations responded by sending their most advanced air defense systems, such as the Patriot platform, to Kyiv.
The Russian response, meanwhile, started with an unequivocal denial that anything untoward had happened to the Kakhovka dam, then segued into accusations that Ukraine destroyed its own critical infrastructure. Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, claimed without evidence that Kyiv was behind this act of apparent sabotage and that it would result in “very severe consequences” for local residents and the environment. Meanwhile, Russia’s Investigative Committee — tantamount to the FBI — said it had launched a criminal investigation.
Meanwhile, the Russia-appointed governor of Kherson Oblast, Vladimir Saldo, gave a surreal interview, filmed against the backdrop of Nova Kakhovka, visibly underwater. “Everything is fine in Nova Kakhovka,” he said. “People go about their daily business like any day.”
Couple charged in ‘torture’ abuse case that left 5-year-old boy with 46 visible injuries
Mark Harper, The Daytona Beach News-Journal – June 3, 2023
A 5-year-old boy whose skull was fractured when his mother’s live-in boyfriend struck him with a mop handle, breaking it in half, has been beaten, neglected, and tortured repeatedly, the Volusia Sheriff’s Office revealed on Saturday.
Investigators discovered video surveillance from inside the DeLand-area home revealing the child once had his hands tied behind his back for more than 19 hours. Doctors examining him found, in addition to the skull fracture, 46 visible injuries as well as internal injuries, Volusia Sheriff’s spokesman Andrew Gant said in a news release.
There were three children in the home, including an 8-year-old girl and a 9-year-old boy.
“The torture these kids endured is hard to imagine. The good news is they’re in safe hands now, and their scumbag abusers will have to answer for what they did,” Sheriff Mike Chitwood wrote in a Facebook post Saturday.
Shawn M. Stone, 32, has been in custody since May 9. In addition to one count of aggravated child abuse, he was charged on Friday with 23 other counts of abuse and neglect.
The boyfriend, Shawn M. Stone, 32, has been in custody since May 9. In addition to one count of aggravated child abuse, he was charged on Friday with 23 other abuse-and-neglect-related counts.
Jail records show Stone is facing eight counts of neglect of a child causing great bodily harm; five counts of aggravated child abuse; four counts of neglect of a child; three counts of failing to report suspected child abuse; two counts of false imprisonment of a child under 13; and two counts of tampering with a witness in a life felony proceeding.
He is being held without bond.
Meanwhile, the mother, Taylor B. Schaefer, 28, is facing 25 charges after investigators said she repeatedly witnessed abuse and failed to stop or report it. She has yet to be located by authorities, Gant said.
Schaefer called 911 after the mop handle incident, saying she had a “gut feeling” that Stone was abusing the victim, then checked the video footage and confirmed it.
Taylor Schaefer
But investigators who watched hours of video found that she had been present in the house when the 5-year-old was being beaten, Gant said, while the mother also saw the boy visibly injured and limping, but did not provide medical attention.
“On the day that Schaefer did report the abuse, video showed her mopping up the area where the victim was beaten with the mop handle,” Gant said.
The 5-year-old boy had been repeatedly bound for hours at a time. In one instance, his hands were tied behind his back at 6:43 p.m. one night, and left that way until 2:02 p.m. the following afternoon.
Shawn Stone
The victim had also been tied up and placed in a dog cage, Gant said, adding that a common form of punishment for him was food deprivation.
“Another child in the home was forced to drink boiling water, sprayed with boiling water, and beaten with several household objects,” Gant said. “That child also witnessed the brutal abuse inflicted on the younger victim.”
A third child victim in the house was not receiving proper nutrition or care for a serious medical condition, and also witnessed the constant abuse, Gant said.
Investigators’ video evidence is backed up with text messages and witness interviews, Gant said.
All three children were removed from the home and placed in a “safe environment” on May 9, Gant said.
Chitwood shared a Go-Fund-Me page to help the adults who are now caring for the children.
Glen Hobbs, the organizer of the page, has provided several updates on the children. All three have been released from the hospital, where they began eating regularly.
The 5-year-old will need a wheelchair and walker, and “has a long road to recovery,” Hobbs said. The 8-year-old girl is eating well, while the oldest boy “is in good spirits and looks healthy.”
The Go-Fund-Me had raised more than $8,000 of a $20,000 goal as of late Saturday afternoon.
A Small Town’s Tragedy, Distorted by Trump’s Megaphone
Charles Homans and Ken Bensinger – May 29, 2023
From left, Larry Erickson, Sue Bakko, and Bob Bailey having breakfast at the Hunting Shack Cafe in McHenry, N.D., on May 24, 2023. (Lewis Ableidinger/The New York Times)
McHENRY, N.D. — There were no known witnesses when Shannon Brandt and Cayler Ellingson got into an argument in the blurry hours after last call at Buck’s n Doe’s Bar & Grill in September. And no one but Brandt could say with certainty what led him to run over Ellingson with his Ford Explorer, crushing him to death in a gravel alley.
But the people of McHenry, a town of 64 in sparsely populated Foster County, North Dakota, have gotten used to hearing from people who think they know.
They include former President Donald Trump, who denounced the killing of Ellingson, an 18-year-old recent high school graduate, at the hands of a “deranged Democrat maniac who was angry that Cayler was a Republican” in a Truth Social post. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia described Brandt on Twitter as a “Democrat political terrorist” and cited the case as evidence that “Democrats want Republicans dead, and they’ve already started the killings.”
Trump and Greene were among a chorus of Republican politicians — including several members of Congress and the attorney general of North Dakota — who rushed to condemn Brandt. They relied on a handful of early news stories that cited a state highway patrol officer’s report, which suggested Brandt killed Ellingson because he believed he was a “Republican extremist.”
That claim, made weeks before the midterm elections, ignited a brief national political firestorm. Republican politicians and right-wing media figures claimed that Brandt had been inspired by President Joe Biden’s recent warnings about “extremism” in the Republican Party. They complained that news media coverage of political violence willfully ignored instances when the assailants were Democrats.
But the episode quickly became an example of another media phenomenon: the distortion of complex, painful events to fit an opportune political narrative.
Although evidence in the case suggests the two men argued about politics that night, law enforcement officials concluded quickly that the killing was not politically motivated. The prosecutor for Foster County who brought the charges never accused Brandt of running over Ellingson because of political beliefs.
Acquaintances and a family member could not recall Brandt, a 42-year-old welder with no history of party registration, expressing political views.
Late last month, the murder charge against Brandt was downgraded to manslaughter, which carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison. He agreed on May 18 to plead guilty.
By averting a courtroom trial, the plea leaves many questions hanging over a still largely unexplained incident — and over a town that found itself swept abruptly into a national political cyclone and just as abruptly cast out.
In conversations this month, residents of McHenry — a conservative, close-knit agricultural community where most families, including the Ellingsons and the Brandts, have known each other for decades, if not generations — said the narrative of the tragedy that Trump and others promoted never made much sense to them. But except for a handful of county officials, they have shied away from speaking on the record about it.
Robyn Sorum, the mayor of McHenry, said she had advised the community against doing so to avoid worsening local tensions around the case. “Anywhere something like this happens, it’s a tragedy, you know?” she said. “But then you get to a small town where everyone knows each other, it makes it even rougher.”
Ellingson’s family did not comment. Brandt, through his attorney, Mark Friese, declined an interview.
Friese, who did not discuss details of the incident, described the aftermath as a cautionary tale. “I think we’re going to see more of this,” he said. “Things end up being tried on social media instead of in the courtroom.”
A Confusing Encounter
The town of McHenry sits on a crosshatch of gravel roads etched into an undulating plain of wheat and soybean farms and Angus cattle ranches. The nearest landmarks of any significance, a 30- and 60-minute drive away, respectively, are a decommissioned intercontinental ballistic missile silo and the world’s largest concrete buffalo.
“It’s a nice little town,” said Sorum, who is also the proprietor of the Hunting Shack cafe, the only business besides Buck’s n Doe’s on the town’s main thoroughfare. “Everybody tries to help everybody else.”
On the night of Sept. 17, 100 or so people from McHenry and surrounding towns gathered outside of Buck’s n Doe’s for McHenry Days, a local festival. After midnight, when a three-piece country band from Fargo packed up and went home, some of the festival goers drifted into the bar.
The crowd included Ellingson, who had come to the festival with his family and stayed behind with his brother after their parents drove back to nearby Grace City. And it included Brandt, who came from a locally prominent family that had lived in McHenry since the early 20th century. His father and uncle had shot the immense trophy elks that looked down upon patrons from the walls of the bar.
Buck’s n Doe’s closed at 2 a.m. Fifty-five minutes later, the county 911 dispatcher received a call from Brandt. “I hit a man with my vehicle,” he said in the recording of the call.
At the time, Ellingson was alive and conscious but badly injured. He died later that morning at a hospital.
The next day, two Fargo television stations reported that a sworn declaration from a highway patrol officer said that Brandt had claimed Ellingson “was part of a Republican extremist group” and admitted to hitting the teen with his car “because he had a political argument” with him. The highway patrolman’s statement was based on a recording of the 911 call and an interview of Brandt by two other law enforcement officers.
But the declaration appears to have mischaracterized the 911 call. And the prosecutor never presented evidence that showed Brandt told officers that he ran into the teen because of the argument or that he believed he was part of an extremist group. Five days after the incident, a captain in the North Dakota State Highway Patrol told reporters that his agency had concluded the killing was “not political in nature at all.”
Subsequent court filings and testimony instead revealed a murkier, more confused encounter.
In phone calls, Brandt and Ellingson both made a reference to some sort of political dispute. Both called family members during the encounter, and each described feeling threatened, according to court records.
Ellingson told his mother “some politics had got brought up” and Brandt “didn’t like what he had to say,” according to a state Bureau of Criminal Investigation agent who interviewed Ellingson’s mother. She recalled her son saying “something to the effect of, ‘They’re on to me. I should round up my cousins or my posse,’” the agent testified.
In his 911 call after he hit Ellingson, Brandt said the teenager had said “something about some Republican extremist group,” but he did not claim Ellingson was a member. Brandt told the dispatcher he believed the teen was “calling other guys to come get me.” There’s no evidence Ellingson did so.
In the 911 call, Brandt described trying to leave in a panic only to be blocked by Ellingson. At one point he said he knew his running over Ellingson had been “more than” an accident. But he otherwise insisted the act had been unintentional. “I never meant to hurt him,” he told the dispatcher.
Both men were intoxicated. Brandt’s family and Friese say Brandt has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, which Friese argued was a relevant factor in the case. An autopsy by the state forensic medical examiner ruled the cause of death as “accidental.”
‘Politically Motivated’
In the days after the episode, several local news outlets published articles. As is typical with early reports, those first stories relied heavily on the sparse details provided by law enforcement records.
“Man admits to killing teen after political dispute in Foster Co., court docs allege,” was the headline published online by Valley News Live, a news outlet based in Fargo, the day after Ellingson’s death.
The next morning, Gateway Pundit, a right-wing site that regularly seeds stories in the conservative media, wrote its own version under the headline “Crazed North Dakota man runs over and kills teen for ‘extremist’ Republican views.”
That evening, the case hit Fox News’s prime-time lineup, where it stayed for days. “This is a guy who intended to kill an 18-year-old Republican because he was a Republican,” Jeanine Pirro said during an on-air debate about the incident, claiming that Brandt chased Ellingson in his vehicle.
Pirro blamed Biden, who she said “is the one who started this extremist hate” when he made a speech about the perils of far-right extremism earlier that month. On Twitter, Greene posted a clip of Biden referencing “extreme MAGA Republicans,” adding that Ellingson was “executed in cold blood by a Democrat political terrorist because of rhetoric like this.”
The case spread across the right-wing ecosystem, from Jack Posobiec, the far-right conspiracy theorist and podcaster, to Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who appeared on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show, calling Brandt a “terrible guy.” State Attorney General Drew H. Wrigley condemned the episode as “hateful violence.”
In McHenry and the neighboring town of Glenfield, where Brandt lives, acquaintances said they were surprised by the claims of a political motive. There is no evidence in public records or court filings suggesting Brandt is a Democrat.
“I can honestly tell you, I don’t know who Shannon voted for in the last presidential election,” Ashley Brandt-Duda, Brandt’s sister, said in an interview. Although their parents are both registered Republicans, “I would say my family is quite apolitical,” she said.
Brandt’s reference to extremists was similarly met with surprise in McHenry, where both residents and law enforcement officials profess to know little about such groups. The county sheriff’s records do mention one previously unreported incident: In October, a long-shuttered local school was found to have been vandalized, its interior walls spray-painted with the stenciled logo of Patriot Front, a white nationalist group.
The building’s owner, David Ludwig, initially told a sheriff’s deputy that the break-in happened the weekend of Ellingson’s killing. But when reached by The New York Times, he said that timing was just a guess. Justin Johnson, the Foster County sheriff, said he considered the incident to be “totally unrelated.”
Nothing on public record suggests that Ellingson or Brandt had links to extremist groups.
‘Everything Just Exploded’
In the week and a half after Ellingson’s death, the case was discussed on at least seven Fox News shows. The coverage continued well after law enforcement officials had said the killing was not politically motivated, a point that was only occasionally mentioned on-air.
Brandt-Duda said her parents left their home in McHenry out of concern for their safety. When they returned about a week later, they found more than 50 threatening messages on their answering machine.
They received numerous threatening letters, too, Brandt-Duda said. One was written on the margins of an article about the incident from The New York Post, she said. The newspaper covered the case extensively and also published an opinion column arguing that the “president of the United States, supported by a fan-girl media, spouts irresponsible rhetoric that led to Ellingson’s death.”
“Everything just exploded,” Brandt-Duda said.
The county court and sheriff’s offices also received numerous threats, according to multiple local officials. On Sept. 29, 11 days after Ellingson’s death, the county prosecutor, Kara Brinster, dropped the initial charge of vehicular homicide, which is used for fatal drunken driving accidents, for a new one: intentional homicide, which carries a sentence of up to life in prison.
Brinster did not respond to requests for comment on the decision.
Then, as quickly as it swelled, the media frenzy receded. Fox Digital, the TV network’s online arm, continued to publish articles that acknowledged the more complicated story that was emerging from officials. But Fox News’ hosts did not mention the case on-air again after Sept. 30.
Asked for comment, a Fox spokesperson, Jessica Ketner, noted the company’s online articles but did not comment on the network’s television coverage.
Gateway Pundit, too, stopped publishing stories on the case. Politicians who had been quick to speak out appeared to lose interest. Trump, Greene, Jordan and Wrigley did not respond to requests for comment.
This month, after Brinster dismissed the intentional homicide charge, the decision merited little more attention than a front-page story in The Foster County Independent and an article by The Associated Press.
But just as Brandt agreed to plead guilty, Posobiec, the right-wing podcaster, took up the story again. In a segment on his daily show, he singled out the prosecutor, claiming she had gone soft on Brandt. He posted her photograph and phone number online, and told listeners to call her to complain.
“Maybe Kara Brinster should be prosecuted,” he said. “Maybe we should look into her.”
