SPECULATION RUN AMOK 

Tiny E&P Share Price Spikes 959% 

on Reddit Mention
by Bloomberg
|Michael Tobin
|Friday, January 29, 2021




An obscure company that employs five people and appears to 

produce from some wells in Appalachia became the latest Reddit-fueled day-trading craze.

(Bloomberg) -- An obscure company that employs five people and appears to produce negligible amounts of oil and natural gas from some wells in Appalachia became the latest Reddit-fueled day-trading craze, soaring nearly 1,000% to become a $128 million company in a matter of hours.

New Concept Energy Inc. got a mention by retail traders on the WallStreetBets forum on Reddit on a day when brokerages including Robinhood Markets clamped down on trading in shares such as GameStop Corp. after some of the wildest stock swings the markets have seen in recent years.

For a company that produces a mere 70 barrels of oil equivalent a day and has a board whose average age is 74, that was still enough to send its shares up by a whopping 959% to $25, the highest since 2000.

Short interest in New Concept Energy has fallen to 0.3% of its float from 13% earlier this month, according to data from S3 Partners.

The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for a comment on Thursday’s meteroric stock performance.

At the end of 2019, New Concept Energy had 153 producing gas wells and 44 non-producing wells, with mineral leases across 20,000 acres, according to regulatory filings.

The company lost 46 cents a share on revenue of $590,000 in 2019, according to its annual report.

© 2021 Bloomberg

Social media platform Reddit hit by outages in the U.S.

Reddit users reported outages in the U.S. and Canada for a short time on Saturday.


Akarsh Verma

New Delhi

January 31, 2021







HIGHLIGHTS
Several Reddit users reported problems logging in to Reddit on Saturday.
Reddit has been at the center of controversy this week after users from the r/WallStreetBets subreddit kicked off a stock-buying frenzy.
The stock buying frenzy has led to a fierce debate with many on Wall Street calling it market manipulation.

Users in both the US and Canada reported outages on Reddit for a short period on Saturday, with the company admitting there have been “higher error rates” this week amidst newfound attention on the r/WallStreetBets subreddit.

A map on the Downdetector website showed customers reporting issues logging in to Reddit and sending messages, according to Reuters. Regions such as New York, Boston, and Washington, D.C., were affected, as was Toronto.

We did have some issues with higher error rates this week...It meant slower load times for some users but we were never hard down,” a spokesperson for Reddit told Reuters about the latest wave of issues.

Reddit has been at the center of controversy this week after users from the r/WallStreetBets subreddit kicked off a stock-buying frenzy, significantly adding to the value of companies like GameStop and AMC, which had been struggling in the marketplace. The subreddit has approximately six million members.

Empty seas: Oceanic shark populations dropped 71% since 1970

Scientists have known for decades that individual shark species are declining, but a new study drawing on 57 global datasets underscores just how dramatically worldwide populations have collapsed in the past half-century.

Associated Press Washington January 28, 2021
This 2001 photo provided by Dr. Greg Skomal shows a shortfin mako shark off the coast of Massachusetts. (Photo: AP)

When marine biologist Stuart Sandin talks about sharks, it sounds like he's describing Jedis of the ocean. "They are terrific predators, fast swimmers and they have amazing senses - they can detect any disturbance in the ocean from great distance," such as smells or tiny changes in water currents.

Their ability to quickly sense anything outside the norm in their environment helps them find prey in the vastness of the open ocean. But it also makes them especially vulnerable in the face of increased international fishing pressure, as global fishing fleets have doubled since 1950

"You drop a fishing line in the open ocean, and often it's sharks that are there first - whether or not they're the primary target," said Sandin, who works at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Scientists have known for decades that individual shark species are declining, but a new study drawing on 57 global datasets underscores just how dramatically worldwide populations have collapsed in the past half-century.

Globally, the abundance of oceanic sharks and rays dropped more than 70% between 1970 and 2018, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

And 24 of the 31 species of sharks and rays are threatened with extinction, while three species - oceanic whitetip sharks, scalloped hammerhead sharks and great hammerhead sharks - are considered critically endangered.

"The last 50 years have been pretty devastating for global shark populations," said Nathan Pacoureau, a biologist at Simon Fraser University in Canada and a co-author of the study.

Sometimes sharks are intentionally caught by fishing fleets, but more often they are reeled in incidentally as " bycatch," in the course of fishing for other species such as tuna and swordfish.

Sharks and rays are both fish with skeletons made of cartilage, not bone. In contrast to most other kinds of fish, they generally take several years to reach sexual maturity, and they produce fewer offspring.

"In terms of timing, they reproduce more like mammals - and that makes them especially vulnerable," said Pacoureau. "Their populations cannot replenish as quickly as many other kinds of fish."

The number of fishing vessels trolling the open ocean has risen steeply since the 1950s, as engine power expanded ships' range. And while climate change and pollution also imperil shark survival, increased fishing pressure is the greatest threat for every oceanic shark species.

"When you remove top predators of the ocean, it impacts every part of the marine food web," said Stuart Pimm, an ecologist at Duke University, who was not involved in the study. "Sharks are like the lions, tigers and bears of the ocean world, and they help keep the rest of the ecosystem in balance."

SpaceX Eyes Gas Wells Near South Texas Launchpad

by Bloomberg

|

Sergio Chapa

|

Monday, January 25, 2021 

SpaceX plans to drill wells close to its Boca Chica launchpad, it was revealed during a Friday hearing before the Railroad Commission of Texas.

(Bloomberg) -- Elon Musk recently moved to Texas, where he launches some of his rockets and is building a battery factory. Now, for good measure, he plans to drill for natural gas in the state.

The billionaire’s SpaceX intends to drill wells close to the company’s Boca Chica launchpad, it was revealed during a Friday hearing before the Railroad Commission of Texas, the state’s energy regulator.

Production has yet to start because of a legal dispute between the SpaceX subsidiary Lone Star Mineral Development and another energy company. Tim George, an attorney representing Lone Star, said at the hearing that SpaceX plans to use the methane it extracts from the ground “in connection with their rocket facility operations.”

While it’s unclear what exactly the gas would be used for, SpaceX plans to utilize super-chilled liquid methane and liquid oxygen as fuel for its Raptor engines. The company’s Starship and Super Heavy vehicles are tested at Boca Chica, and orbital launches are planned for the site.

George declined to answer further questions and hung up when called for comment. SpaceX didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Musk said in December he relocated to Texas to focus on SpaceX’s Starship vehicle and Tesla Inc.’s new Gigafactory, which is being built near Austin. On Thursday, the billionaire tweeted that he plans to donate $100 million toward a prize for the best carbon-capture technology. His past comments have suggested that he wants to use the tech to produce synthetic carbon-neutral rocket fuel. Until then, fossil fuels will power SpaceX rockets.

Formed in June 2020, Lone Star bought the 806-acre (326-hectare) La Pita oil lease from Houston-based Sanchez Energy, which was later renamed Mesquite Energy Inc. after exiting bankruptcy. Financial terms for the deal weren’t disclosed, but the SpaceX subsidiary’s drilling plans have been called into question amid a dispute with Dallas Petroleum Group, which claims ownership of some inactive wells sitting on the same land.

Dallas Petroleum took the dispute to the Railroad Commission in August. Two months later, it sued three companies -- Sanchez Midstream Partners LP, Sanchez Midstream Partners GP LLC and Sanchez Oil & Gas Corp. -- in state court in Brownsville, Texas.

That lawsuit prompted SpaceX’s land-acquisition arm Dogleg Park LLC to intervene in November. In a filing to the court, Dogleg said Dallas Petroleum locked SpaceX out of the property and asserted ownership claims for the “sole purpose of extorting money from SpaceX.”

Dallas Petroleum Group denies the allegations and maintains it has ownership of both the wells and the 24 surrounding acres.

During Friday’s hearing, Dallas Petroleum CEO Matt Williams shared aerial photos that he said showed company equipment near the wells had been disconnected, while drilling and hydraulic-fracturing gear it doesn’t own had been moved onto the property. His company, he added, was also given a trespass warning.

“Our signs are all over these tanks and the well head,” he said. “Any operation that went on there, we were very much liable for any problems that could have happened.”

The Brownsville court is due to hear the lawsuit on Feb. 9 while Railroad Commission Administrative Law Judge Jennifer Cook is likely to take months to propose a decision that will later be voted on by the agency’s three commissioners in a public hearing. Cook is expected to scrutinize Dallas Petroleum’s claims against property and tax records, which list Sanchez as owner of the disputed land.

The area around the SpaceX facility has seen limited oil and gas development. There are almost a nearby dozen wells classified as either abandoned or dry holes, Railroad Commission Records show. Canadian company Enbridge Inc. owns and operates the nearby Valley Crossing Pipeline, which moves 2.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day from the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas to customers in Mexico.

The Brownsville region may see more energy investment in the years ahead. There are separate plans for three liquefied natural gas export terminals about 5 miles (8 kilometers) west of the launch site. Environmental reports for those projects say they could safely coexist with SpaceX, although some activists dispute those claims.

--With assistance from Akshat Rathi and Rachel Adams-Heard.

© 2021 Bloomberg L.P.

Woman who lived at Chicago church for over 3 years goes home after Biden administration suspends deportations

By PAIGE FRY
CHICAGO TRIBUNE |
JAN 23, 2021 

Francisca Lino hands luggage to her husband, Diego Lino, outside Adalberto Memorial United Methodist Church, 2716 W. Division St., as they head home to Romeoville on Jan. 23, 2021, in Chicago. Lino lived above the church since August 2017 to seek sanctuary because of her undocumented status. President Joe Biden issued a 100-day moratorium on deportations on Friday, in keeping with a pledge during his campaign to work on immigration policy reform. 

(John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune)

A woman who has lived in a Humboldt Park church for three and a half years to avoid deportation returned home Saturday night to live with her family after President Joe Biden’s 100-day moratorium on deportations went into effect Friday.

Francisca Lino took sanctuary in an apartment above the same Chicago church that protected immigration activist Elvira Arellano, Adalberto United Methodist Church, at 2716 W. Division St., after she defied a court order in August 2017 mandating that she leave the country.

Saturday, she was headed back to her Romeoville home.

Lino, a mother of six, is one of many immigrants who the government knew were living in the country illegally and allowed to stay, provided they check in with immigration officials every six months to a year. Under President Barack Obama’s administration, this population was not considered a priority for deportation because of their clean criminal records or sympathetic cases.

But they felt fear under President Donald Trump’s administration. Lino, the church and Democratic politicians held a news conference in July 2019 where they pledged to fight back against what they said were merciless immigration enforcement policies from the Trump administration. Trump had announced that year that federal officials would begin large-scale deportations in major U.S. cities, including Chicago.

Now, the Biden administration has already made moves to assist immigrants. The Homeland Security Department announced a 100-day moratorium on deportations “for certain noncitizens” that started Friday, according to The Associated Press. It was after Biden revoked one of Trump’s earliest executive orders making anyone in the country illegally a priority for deportations.

The three and a half years in sanctuary was very difficult, Lino said, translated by Chicago immigration activist Emma Lozano, a pastor of Lincoln United Methodist Church, during a news conference Saturday.


Francisca Lino prays with supporters outside the Adalberto Memorial United Methodist Church, 2716 W. Division St., before heading home to Romeoville on Jan. 23, 2021, in Chicago.

 (John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune)

Lino couldn’t be there for her daughter when she gave birth to her grandson or for another child who had surgery, Lozano translated for Lino. But now, Lino can enjoy the remainder of the 100 days with them.

“She said, ‘I’m so happy,’ and that she feels that she can walk out of here without fear, where that wasn’t like that a year ago,” Lozano said, translating for Lino. “And she says that now that she can go home — and it’s been a long time — where she feels free to go home and hug her children.”

After the 100 days, Lino said, “We’ll have to see,” Lozano translated.

Lozano also spoke about how activists are calling on Biden to support and pass the American Right to Family Act, which was introduced by Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., in October. If passed, it would direct the secretary of Homeland Security to grant lawful temporary residence to the parents of citizens if they’ve lived in the United States for 10 years.

“Family is a human right, and they’ve been separating our families for years by deportation because of documents,” Lozano said. “When these hundred days run out, we will be ready to see the future of our people.”


Francisca Lino packs her belongings in a second floor apartment above the Adalberto Memorial United Methodist Church, 2716 W. Division St., before heading home to Romeoville on Jan. 23, 2021, in Chicago. Lino lived above the church since August of 2017 to seek sanctuary because of her undocumented status. President Joe Biden issued a 100-day moratorium on deportations on Friday, in keeping with a pledge during his campaign to work on immigration policy reform.

 (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)

Lino illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in 1999 but was caught, fingerprinted and released after a few hours. After a few days, she made a second attempt and successfully crossed. She eventually settled in Bolingbrook with her husband, Diego Lino.

Francisca Lino was arrested in 2005 during an interview to obtain her green card because her application did not disclose that she had previously been arrested at the border, her attorney Christopher Bergin previously said. He said Lino was the victim of notary fraud and that she had been honest with immigration officials from the start.

She was handed a deportation notice in March 2017 during a scheduled Immigration and Customs Enforcement check-in and was told to return to the immigration office Aug. 23 with a plane ticket. Instead she asked her husband to drive her to the Humboldt Park church, where she had been a member for 15 years.

Bergin showed up to Lino’s final appointment with ICE and delivered a letter to immigration officials explaining that she had decided against self-deportation.

Lino later filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against federal officials including Trump, alleging her right to due process was violated during her 1999 expedited removal. They voluntarily dismissed the lawsuit in 2018, six months after filing it.

After the news conference Saturday, Lino went back inside to grab a black suitcase.

She stood on Division Street as her husband drove a gray Honda Pilot up to the curb, where three and a half years ago he dropped her off. Lino entered the front passenger seat, and they finally went home.




Paige Fry

Chicago Tribune
Paige Fry is an overnight crime reporter for the Chicago Tribune. She graduated from the University of Florida, where she was the editor-in-chief of the student-run paper The Independent Florida Alligator. She has also previously written for the Tampa Bay Times, The Palm Beach Post and The Gainesville Sun.

As Philippines seeks Covid-19 vaccines, ghost of Dengvaxia controversy lingers


In 1990, nine in 10 Filipinos believed in the importance of vaccines – a trend that’s reversed in recent years following controversy over a dengue vaccine

As Covid-19 cases rise in one of the region’s worst-hit nations, low public trust in vaccines will be a huge hurdle in the government’s vaccination bid


A health worker conducts a mock Covid-19 vaccination during a simulation exercise in Manila. Photo: Reuters

“Vaccination? Not me, I don’t want it,” said Carlito Cristo Niniado, 68, a carpenter in Manila.
He said he had read that 23 people abroad died after receiving Pfizer’s
coronavirus vaccine. “If I don’t die of Covid, I’ll die of vaccination. It’s better not to take chances.”
Niniado is far from a lone voice in the
Philippines, where public trust in immunisations has for several years been at an all-time low, after a controversy over a dengue vaccine sparked widespread panic and a loss of faith in immunisation.


The challenge of convincing Filipinos to take the Covid-19 shots will be a huge hurdle for the Philippine government, which is already plagued by accusations of disorganisation, delay and corruption, as it readies vaccine orders to inoculate 108 million people.

Delays and missteps: how Duterte’s Philippines struggled against Covid-19
31 Dec 2020


In November, a poll conducted by Pulse Asia Research Inc showed that only 32 per cent of respondents in the Philippines were willing to receive a Covid-19 vaccine.

Almost half of the 2,400 people surveyed said they would skip immunisation, while 21 per cent could not say what their decision was. Many of those who didn’t want to get inoculated said the main reason was they were not certain of the vaccine’s safety.

In 2019, the World Health Organization listed vaccine hesitancy – the refusal to take vaccines – as one of the top 10 threats to global health.

Filipinos were not always hostile to vaccines: in the 2015 Global Vaccine Confidence Index, 93 per cent of Filipinos surveyed agreed that vaccines were important.

It was a confidence decades old, an expert said.

“Way back in 1990, we had the highest vaccine confidence in the maps of the world,” said Dr Lulu Bravo, executive director of the Philippine Foundation for Vaccination. “We had 5 to 8 million children vaccinated from 1981 to 1993. There was no problem at all – we were able to eradicate polio.”

Then in 2019, trust in immunisation “plummeted”, she said.

What happened was what Health Secretary Francisco Duque III called a “very unfortunate experience”.

Why the Philippines suspended a world-first dengue vaccine
20 Jul 2018


In 2015, the administration of then-President Benigno Aquino III started a major 3 billion peso (US$151 million) campaign against dengue with Dengvaxia, a vaccine made by the French company Sanofi. In 2017, Sanofi made a shock announcement that its vaccine could be dangerous if administered to people who had never been exposed to dengue.

By then, some 700,000 children had been inoculated, said Dr Anthony Leachon, a health reform advocate and a former senior adviser to the country’s Covid-19 task force.

The news triggered outrage in the Philippines, prompting congressional investigations which were played out in a series of hearings that mixed medical facts, hysteria, political posturing and melodrama.

Families stepped forward to claim their children had died after receiving a Dengvaxia jab, an unsubstantiated narrative which spread online like wildfire, and one that the Public Attorney’s Office (PAO) pushed during the hearings. There were reports health officials advocated the use of Dengvaxia in exchange for commissions and kickbacks.

A medical worker displays vials of Sanofi’s dengue vaccine Dengvaxia. File photo: AFP

“Every day, there would be news of another death from Dengvaxia, and the PAO would get a lot of media exposure that they had been asked by parents for autopsies of children who died,” said Bravo, who was sceptical of the claim that many people died. “If you were to ask me, no one died. PAO would say hundreds.”

Medical professionals became a public enemy. “The scientists were vilified, trolled, insulted. I got my own share of that,” she said.

After one congressional hearing in 2018, a mother screamed “you killed my child” and attempted to attack former Health Secretary Janette Garin. The woman later admitted her child had not actually died.

Are Philippine children’s deaths linked to dengue vaccine?
22 Apr 2019


Critics of the proceedings said the Duterte administration used the hearings as a pretext to jail Aquino. But Leachon, a former medical director at Pfizer, said the backlash against Dengvaxia was justified.

He referred to a 2018 letter written by a group of Filipino doctors that pointed out the errors the authorities had made in handling Dengvaxia: multisectoral stakeholders were not consulted, there was no public education and the project was rushed.

“The programme was too hasty. Usually there’s a playbook; you need to prepare the community for three to six months before launching a national vaccination programme,” Leachon said.

He added that while it could not be determined if Dengvaxia had directly caused any deaths, “we can say there was proximate cause” – at least two people who were vaccinated later died.

I am sure we have the highest level of vaccine hesitancy in the Asia-Pacific region because of the Dengvaxia issue

Dr Lulu Bravo, Philippine Foundation for Vaccination

At the end of the hearings, Aquino and some officials faced cases of plunder and graft because the Dengvaxia programme allegedly didn’t follow government procurement rules and there was “unseemly haste” in implementing it, while cases of negligence resulting in homicide were filed against other executives, including those involved in the vaccine clinical trials.

But beyond that, it also caused a mass distrust of vaccines that led to a spike in preventable deaths. Some fearful parents all but barricaded their children, refusing to have them inoculated. Diseases that had been eradicated began reappearing.

“In 2000, the Philippines was declared polio-free. In September 2019, we got the first report of polio followed by other cases,” Bravo said.

“We had a measles outbreak in January 2019. By April, there were about 500 deaths from measles,” she added. In comparison, “starting 2005 there were zero deaths from measles”.

The Philippines on dengue fever alert as 2019 outbreak death toll nears 500

“I am sure we have the highest level of vaccine hesitancy in the Asia-Pacific region because of the Dengvaxia issue,” Bravo said.

She acknowledged, however, that “a lot of scientists may also have been at fault, by not communicating well” the benefits and risks of Dengvaxia.

Now, with Covid-19 infections rising in one of Southeast Asia’s worst-hit countries, reaching some 511,000 cases on Saturday, the shadow of Dengvaxia hangs heavily over the proposed immunisation effort. Bravo called it “the elephant in the room”.

‘BFF prices’, no corruption: Manila defends deal with China’s Sinovac
18 Jan 2021


To reduce vaccine resistance, Leachon said the government should consult the ground and take residents’ concerns into account.

“They need to survey people and ask them, are you willing to be vaccinated? If yes, what are the reasons, and also, what particular vaccine do you want? Some local governments are already doing this,” he said

In the city of Cainta in Rizal province, residents indicated they did not want Chinese-made vaccines, said Leachon.

In early January, Health Secretary Duque told senators in a hearing that there would be a “massive social marketing campaign” to convince Filipinos to immunise themselves against Covid-19.

Senate President Vicente Sotto III had earlier warned Duque that the government was losing the information battle on social media. “You’re being defeated by those [messages claiming that people] are being vaccinated and they speak Chinese afterwards,” he was quoted by GMA News as saying.

Health workers check the temperature and blood pressure of a woman during a simulation exercise for Covid-19 vaccination efforts in Manila. Photo: Reuters

Bravo said the vaccination effort this time should involve medical societies, the private sector, non-government organisations, communities and academics.

The Dengvaxia controversy continues to take its toll on her. A staunch advocate of vaccines, she has been among the doctors pilloried and accused of being in the pocket of drug companies.

“When facing the media I have to pray, I have to pray a lot,” she said. “That has been the curse of Dengvaxia”.

ANTI GOVT TRUMPER USES PUBLIC DEFENDER

California Gym Owner Admitted He Was Inside Capitol, Tried to Blame Cops and Antifa, Got Charged Anyway

MATT NAHAM Jan 29th, 2021





The It Was Antifa defense continues to be as effective as The Cops Made Me Do It defense, which is to say not at all effective. A California gym owner and Donald Trump supporter deployed this explanatory strategy during an interview with the FBI and now faces two federal charges for his actions on Jan. 6, according to federal enforcement.

According to the FBI, Jacob Daniel Lewis, 37, was charged by complaint seven days ago and arrested on Wednesday in the Central District of California. He made his initial appearance the day of his arrest and was released on $50,000 bond with conditions.

A statement of facts in this case said the FBI received tips that, like many other Capitol siege defendants, Lewis placed himself in D.C. on Jan. 6 by documenting his presence on social media—namely, Instagram. Days later, a separate tip from a person calling themselves a friend of Lewis’s claimed that the defendant said “watch what happens to the Capitol on the 6th” during a Dec. 2020 conversation. The witness claimed they also saw videos on Lewis’s Instagram showing him at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

The feds said that agents with the Riverside California Residential Agency (RVRA) contacted Lewis at his Victorville home and that he agreed to an interview. Lewis allegedly “acknowledged” that he was wearing the attire you can see in the pictures above and that he did march towards the Capitol after then-President Donald Trump addressed his supporters at a rally.


According to the feds, Lewis admitted he entered the Capitol but blamed Antifa and cops:


LEWIS admitted that following the rally, he walked toward the Capitol, and that he then entered the capitol building with a number of people after it had been breached by others. He stated that he was never told that he could not enter, and that he was “escorted” by the Police in the building. He stated that he did not partake in any violence while he was in the building and that he believed that some individuals involved in agitating were Antifa members in disguise.

Lewis made waves several months ago by defying California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) shuttering of gyms at the initial height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Clearly taking issue with the essential versus nonessential business dichotomy, Lewis declared in April 2020 that the “Gym is ‘essential’ to people’s mental and physical health.”


“With that being said, I, Jacob Lewis will take full responsibility for re-opening of The Gym,” he said. “Gyms are essential and have a lower flow than Costco, Walmart, Target Etc. There is no reason Gyms can’t operate under the same protocol. It was a mistake to close gyms and a bigger mistake to keep them closed.”

The defendant faces charges for knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.

Lewis is scheduled to appear in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia virtually at 2 p.m. on Feb. 10.

Federal public defender Young Kim is currently listed as Lewis’ attorney of record. Law&Crime reached out for comment.

[Images via FBI]

A Bipartisan Group of Virginia Lawmakers is Pushing to Abolish the Death Penalty

ELURA NANOS

Jan 30th, 2021




A bipartisan group of Virginia lawmakers is pushing to abolish the death penalty — a move advocates hope is a sign of changes to follow across the region. However, pushback within the legislature has already commenced

On the first day of the 2021 legislative session, Virginia legislators introduced three bills that would end the death penalty. SB 1165, introduced by Sen. Scott Surovell (D-Fairfax) with Republican co-patron Bill Stanley (R-Franklin), HB 2263, introduced by Del. Michael Mullin (D-Newport News), and HB 1779, introduced by Del. Lee Carter (D-Manassas). The house bill passed in committee by wide margins, and Governor Ralph Northam (D) has promised to sign it into law.

However, opposition to the move sprang up late in the week. Sen. Tommy Norment (R-James City) introduced substitute legislation that would keep the death penalty in place against defendants convicted of capital murder. Under Virginia law, capital murder includes the killing of another person for hire, during an abduction, during a robbery, or during sex crimes. It also includes, among other things, defendants convicted of killing multiple people and defendants convicted of killing more than one person. Under Norment’s proposal, such defendants could still be eligible for the death penalty.

Virginia’s most recent execution was in 2017. Like many other states as well as the pre-Trump federal government, Virginia called a moratorium on executions. A moratorium, though, is a far cry from complete abolition.


The move to permanently end capital punishment in the Old Dominion State is particularly momentous: Virginia is the former seat of the Confederacy; it carried out the very first execution in the Thirteen Colonies; and it is responsible for executing the second most people in the modern era — ahead of even Oklahoma and Florida. Texas has executed the most convicts by a wide margin.

“Just as Confederate monuments are being dismantled, this vestige of Confederate law is also facing dismantling,” Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center told the Washington Post. “That historical context is a central part of the repeal. And repeal offers a real opportunity for racial healing.”

The current effort to end Virginia’s death penalty isn’t the first time the matter has arisen. In fact, similar legislation was introduced in 2020, but died in committee. While the makeup of the voting committees hasn’t changed dramatically, it appears that attitudes toward the death penalty have. Some have speculated that the change was in part due to public outrage over the Trump administration’s rush to conduct multiple federal executions in its final days.


Abolition efforts in Virginia have critical bipartisan support; advocates point not only to important criminal justice reform value, but also to fiscal benefits, which include savings of nearly four million dollars annually by keeping people alive.

The move is also supported by a number of Virginia prosecutors, including Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney Colette McEachin, who explained, “The question is not whether someone ‘deserves’ to die because of the depravity of their act, but whether we as a society are so convinced of the infallibility of our decisions that we should sentence an individual to death.”

Most Southern states allow the death penalty. In 1965, West Virginia was the first Southern state to abolish it. Virginia would be the second.


The Supreme Court’s complicated 1972 opinion in Furman v. Georgia effectively ended the death penalty until state laws could be amended to include additional constitutional safeguards. However, the Court reaffirmed the death penalty in the 1976 decision Gregg v. Georgia after states amended their procedures.

Aaron Keller contributed to this report.

[Photo by California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation via Getty Images]

 THE OTHER GUN TOTING QANON REPUBLICAN CONGRESSWOMAN

Rep. Lauren Boebert Introduces Bills To Block Mask Mandate, Paris Accord, Sanity, Etc.

Robyn Pennacchia

January 23, 2021 02:00 PM

 

Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert still has a cloud of suspicion hanging over her head over whether or not she had a role in the Capitol riots on January 6. While nothing has been definitively proven, Boebert's connections to militia groups, her tweets about "1776" and rumors that she led a tour group of "patriots" looking to case the joint have made her colleagues a little nervous. There is increasing evidence that the rioters had an "inside man and/or woman," and — due to her incendiary behavior, many assume it was her.

But that doesn't really bother her at all. If anything, she feels even more like she's doing what she wants and what her supporters want — largely because her supporters are the exact kind of people who would storm the Capitol. And she has no problems continuing to pander to them, even if it means racking up $5,000 fines for setting off metal detectors in the Capitol building with her beloved glock.

And one of the first things she's doing this week is introducing bills meant to block good things President Biden is doing that she doesn't like — namely, requiring people on Federal grounds to wear masks and rejoining the World Health Organization and the Paris Agreement.

Via Colorado Public Radio:

The first bill would prevent the U.S. from spending any money to rejoin the Paris Climate agreement unless the Senate ratifies the agreement.

"Responsible energy production supports more than 230,000 Colorado jobs," she said in a statement. "The Paris Agreement puts these jobs at risk and will increase energy costs."

The second bill would prevent funds going to the World Health Organization until America holds the international health organization and China "accountable for their role in the global pandemic."

This was a constant refrain from former President Donald Trump, who downplayed the pandemic in its early days and whose administration was criticized for its response to the coronavirus and attempted to pull out from the WHO.

Boebert's third bill would overturn Biden's mask mandate on federal lands and interstate travel on planes, trains or buses. She called it "continued federal overreach." Boebert defied public health orders by keeping her restaurant open during the early days of the pandemic.

None of this is going to happen, obviously. Rejoining the World Health Organization and the Paris Agreement is already done. and she doesn't have anywhere near the votes she would need in the Democratic-controlled Congress. Unless she's really stupid — which is very possible and in fact likely, given her early support of QAnon — she knows this. Though I do doubt she has any idea what the Paris Agreement is. She's just introducing these bills because doing so will make her equally terrible supporters feel like she is fighting for them — and that, actually, is quite clever. Not that being in the minority has ever dissuaded Republicans from pushing their own agenda and introducing terrible bills, whether they have any chance of passing or not. It's marketing.

It's still not clear what Boebert's role in the January 6 riots was, and it may never be — unless she gets ratted out by someone looking to get a lighter sentence. But judging by this move it's clear that we've got two years of "WTF did this one do now?" ahead of us — but at least, for now, she's a little less dangerous than she would be if she were in the majority.

[Colorado Public Radio]

Rep. Lauren Boebert Introduces Bills To Block Mask Mandate, Paris Accord, Sanity, Etc. - Wonkette

REALLY DUMB LIES

Sen. Rand Paul says Biden's push for raising minimum wage shows he hates Black teenagers

Emma Austin
Louisville Courier Journal, 

Louisville, Kentucky
Feb 29, 2021

Not for the first time this week, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul took his criticisms of newly inaugurated President Joe Biden to Fox News.

Speaking with conservative personality Sean Hannity, the Republican congressman repeated his claim that Biden's goal of increasing the national minimum wage to $15 would cause 4 million people to lose their jobs.

"And the people who lose their jobs first when you hike up the minimum wage are Black teenagers," Paul said. "So, you know, 'why does Joe Biden hate Black teenagers' should be the question. Why does Joe Biden want to destroy all these jobs?"

Paul's claim about job loss is a distortion of the Congressional Budget Office's median estimate, according to FactCheck.org at the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

Paul said  "even the government says that nearly 4 million people will lose their jobs" after the minimum wage hike, but the claim is a reference to the high end of the budget office's range of potential outcomes, according to FactCheck.org. The low end of the range was “about zero” jobs lost.

To support his claims, Paul's office sent the fact checking site a link to a July 2019 report from the budget office that did not say more than doubling the federal minimum wage would definitely result in about 4 million fewer people working.

Paul then turned the conversation with Hannity to former President Donald Trump's upcoming impeachment trial, saying he doesn't think the Senate "should validate this corrupt, one-week process with no due process."

The House of Representatives last week voted to impeach Trump for a second time, charging him with inciting the crowd before the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. The Senate will start the impeachment trial the week of Feb. 8, according to a deal announced Friday.

"If they're going to impeach people who incite violence, I have a question," Paul said. "Are they going to impeach (Sen.) Bernie Sanders? You remember the guy who shot Steve Scalise … the guy was a rabid Bernie Sanders supporter, and you remember what Democrats were saying at the time.

"They were saying, Republicans' health care plan is: You get sick, and then you die. That sounds like an incitement if you're telling people that the Republican Party is going to kill you."

Paul clarified he did not think Sanders should be impeached but said it would follow the same logic leading to the former president's second impeachment.

The impeachment came after Trump urged supporters to rally in D.C. to protest the electoral vote confirming Biden's presidency. In a speech at the rally, Trump told the crowd to walk to the nearby Capitol and "fight like hell," after which a mob stormed the Capitol in a deadly riot.

Kentucky's other senator, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, said earlier this week the mob had been "provoked by Trump" and "was fed lies."

"I think it's an illegitimate procedure, and it isn't a real impeachment," Paul said. "It's going to be a fake partisan impeachment."