It's time to enforce the Constitution and ban seditious Republicans from Congress

Thom Hartmann,

 Independent Media Institute
September 09, 2022

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene(R-GA) holds a press conference to call for the dismissal of Dr. Anthony Fauci on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on June 15, 2021. (Photo by JIM WATSON / AFP)

Before I even get into the guts of this argument, just ask yourself: if Democratic Members of Congress had engaged in a seditious conspiracy to overthrow our government to put or keep a Democratic president in power against both the popular vote and the Electoral College, and Republicans controlled Congress right now, what would those Republicans be doing?

It’s time to enforce the Constitution, and a judge in New Mexico just kicked off the process. Democrats need to jump on this with the vigor of Trump crashing a Miss Teen USA dressing room.

The 14th Amendment to the Constitution clearly says that if an elected official “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the United States and the laws of the United States, “or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof,” that elected official may not “hold any office, civil or military” including those who are “a member of Congress,” a member of “any State legislature” or “an executive or judicial office of any state.”

It was ratified on July 9, 1868, after the Civil War, so courts could prevent traitors from the Confederacy from serving in any political office, and expel those who may have made it through over the years. With a two-thirds vote of both the House and the Senate, the 14th amendment says, such former insurrectionists could be re-admitted, but that’s a pretty high bar.

The last time the Amendment was used was in May of 1869, when a Black man named Caesar Griffin was arrested and convicted of a crime and then appealed the conviction because, he claimed, the judge in the case — a former Confederate slave-holder and the Speaker of the Virginia House when that state seceded from the Union — was illegally a judge because, as a legislator, he had given “aid and comfort” to the Confederate “insurrection” against the United States.

The courts agreed and the Judge, Hugh W. Sheffey, was forced to resign his seat in the winter of 1869 when he refused to pledge allegiance to the US; he went back to practicing law in Staunton, Virginia until his death. The accused criminal, Caesar Griffin, was re-prosecuted by a different non-traitor judge for a slightly different charge (to avoid double jeopardy) and ended up back in prison.

This week a court in New Mexico revived the issue, kicking Couy Griffin out of his seat as an Otero County commissioner based on that provision of the 14th Amendment.

While he tried to defend himself by claiming that he’d not engaged in any violence while in the Capitol on January 6th and that he had a First Amendment “free speech” right to hold political office on the county commission, District Court Judge Francis Mathew was having none of it.

By simply being there on January 6th and offering encouragement to his more violent colleagues in the insurrection, the court determined, he more than met the criteria of “giving aid and comfort” to the people directly engaged in violent insurrection.

Five members of the current Congress have so far been charged under this provision of the 14th Amendment: Madison Cawthorn, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs, and Jim Banks.

The charges against Cawthorn were thrown out because, just four years after the 14th Amendment was ratified, President Ulysses Grant determined it wasn’t effective and was, in fact, aiding Klan recruiting: Congress granted a general amnesty to all but the most senior members of the Confederacy with the Amnesty Act of 1872.

That law decreed that:

“[A]ll political disabilities imposed by the third section of the fourteenth article of amendments of the Constitution of the United States are hereby removed from all persons whomsoever, except Senators and Representatives of the thirty-sixth and thirty-seventh Congresses , officers in the judicial, military, and naval service of the United States, heads of departments, and foreign ministers of the United States.”

Cawthorn argued, and U.S. District Judge Richard E. Myers II — a Trump-appointed Federalist Society judge — agreed, that the Amnesty Act not only pardoned all the traitorous Confederates of that time but pre-pardoned all future traitors to the United States, even though the law says no such thing.

As Ron Fein, legal director of Free Speech For People (who participated in the case), said of the Trump-appointed judge’s decision:

“According to this court ruling, the 1872 amnesty law, by a trick of wording that — although no one noticed it at the time, or in the 150 years since — completely undermined Congress’s careful decision to write the insurrectionist disqualification clause to apply to future insurrections. This is patently absurd.”

Marjorie Taylor Green’s case went to Fulton County Superior Court Chief Judge Christopher S. Brasher, who recently partially retired after being accused of verbally attacking a Black defendant before his court by “physically pointing at her, angrily raising his voice, and turning visibly red.”

Judge Brasher found that “there is no evidence to show that Rep. Greene participated in the invasion itself,” and refused to allow the parties arguing she should be kept off the ballot to engage in discovery, which, they argued, could have turned up both her alleged text messages to insurrection organizers and her open statements to the public in support of the insurrection.

“[P]re-hearing discovery is improper,” Judge Brasher ruled, while blocking access to evidence of her possible crimes and freeing Greene to run for re-election.

The challenge to Congressman Jim Banks, a major Trump supporter, was heard before the Indiana Elections Commission, which ruled 4-0 that he could remain on the ballot. Banks’ lawyer argued that “Congressman Banks has publicly commented that he did not support that conduct, nor did he engage in it, and he has also called for the prosecution of unlawful conduct that occurred that day.”

That argument — essentially that he didn’t participate in the insurrection and later disapproved of it — was apparently enough for the commissioners. After being confirmed on the ballot, Banks, who voted against certifying President Biden’s election, released a belligerent statement, saying:

“Many Democrats in Washington hope to weaponize the 14th amendment to disenfranchise President Trump’s 74 million voters. I hope they watched today’s unanimous decision.”

The case against Biggs and Gosar was shot down by an Arizona judge who argued that even though the Constitution outlaws such behavior through the 14th Amendment, Congress never passed implementing legislation. Because of this failure, he said, this was an issue for Congress to resolve rather than the courts.

“Therefore, given the current state of the law and in accordance with the United States Constitution,” wrote Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Christopher Coury, “plaintiffs have no private right of action to assert claims under the disqualification clause. … The text of the Constitution is mandatory,” Coury wrote. “It sets forth the single arbiter of the qualifications of members of Congress; that single arbiter is Congress.”

So, right now, the score is 5-1, although all the cases of members of Congress who were allowed to continue to run for office were, arguably, tainted by politics or brought in weak venues like Banks’ election commission or Coury’s “not my responsibility” courtroom.

But what about members of the House and Senate who, we’re finding, were actually in direct communication with the armed insurrectionists or Trump’s henchmen?

Multiple Senators and House members were texting and carrying on phone calls with Trump and Giuliani on and immediately before the attack, as the January 6th Select Committee has found. Some were even talking with Trump or his people during the peak of the January 6th attack.

Others, like Lauren Boebert, stand accused of tweeting the location (or absence thereof) of Nancy Pelosi and other members of Congress as the Republican mob attacked with the clear intent to kill Pelosi and Pence.



The case of Couy Griffin was the easiest to prosecute under the 14th Amendment because he was caught in the act on January 6th and later convicted of it in court; the others were less directly involved or, if they were, apparently Trump-sympathetic judges refused to allow evidence to be entered in court.

But as more and more evidence becomes public of Republican members of the House and Senate being directly or closely involved in this first attack on Washington, DC since the War of 1812, the pressure to deprive them of their ability to stay in Congress will grow.

As mentioned in the opening paragraph of this article, if it had been Hillary Clinton who’d worked to seize the White House in 2016, you can bet that blocking her collaborators in Congress would be the least of the efforts Republicans would have undertaken. She’d more likely be facing the fate of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, along with any Congressional co-conspirators.

President Biden has correctly identified these people as “semi-fascists” and called them out to their faces. Now Democrats in Congress — particularly as more information comes out through the January 6th Committee and the efforts of the FBI — need to take the gloves off and challenge the right of insurrectionists and those giving them “aid and comfort” to continue to serve in Congress.

Article 3 of the 14th Amendment:
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.

Texas judge says Affordable Care Act's requirement of free HIV drugs violates religious freedom

2022/09/07
A federal judge has sided with a Fort Worth, Texas, orthodontist who argued that requiring health insurance to pay for HIV prevention drugs was a violation of his religious freedom. - Dreamstime/Dreamstime/TNS

FORT WORTH, Texas — A federal judge has sided with a Fort Worth orthodontist who argued that requiring health insurance to pay for HIV prevention drugs was a violation of his religious freedom.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, of the Northern District of Texas, issued a ruling in the case Wednesday.

Technically, O’Connor’s ruling focused on just one plaintiff: Braidwood Management Inc., a company based in Texas. But in principle, his decision supports the reasoning of multiple North Texas Christians, who challenged a key part of the Affordable Care Act when they sued the federal government in 2020. The plaintiffs include Fort Worth oral surgeon Gregory Scheideman, Fort Worth orthodontist John Kelley, and his company, Kelley Orthodontics.

Braidwood Management Inc., Kelley and the other plaintiffs opposed a core feature of the Affordable Care Act, often known as Obamacare. The law requires that private health insurance plans pay for preventive health care in full, with no charge to the insured patients. Kelley and his co-plaintiffs disagreed with the groups that determine what kind of health care is preventive, and also opposed insurance coverage of services like birth control, testing for sexually transmitted infections, and the HIV prevention drug PrEP on religious grounds.

Kelley is “a Christian, and he is therefore unwilling to purchase health insurance that subsidizes abortifacient contraception or PrEP drugs that encourage homosexual behavior and intravenous drug use,” according to the lawsuit.

In his ruling Wednesday, O’Connor focused on Braidwood Management Inc., a for-profit company owned by QAnon conspiracy theorist Dr. Steven Hotze. Because Braidwood employs more than 50 people, it is required by law to offer health insurance to all of its full-time employees. For his part, Hotze argued that offering his employees insurance plans that would pay for drugs like PrEP would violate “his religious beliefs by making him complicit in encouraging those behaviors,” O’Connor wrote in his ruling.

O’Connor agreed with Hotze and ruled that the requirement that insurance companies pay for PrEP violates Braidwood Management Inc.’s religious freedoms.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs did not respond to an email asking for comment.

The ruling does not have any immediate effect on people with private health insurance, or people who take drugs like Truvada to reduce their chances of contracting HIV.

O’Connor has scheduled a hearing in the case on Friday.



© Fort Worth Star-Telegram

SCOTUS SET LIST FALL 2022

Amy Coney-Barrett to rule on LGBTQ case whose anti-LGBTQ attorneys paid her 5 times for speaking engagements

Lynda Edwards, Staff Reporter
September 07, 2022

Amy Coney Barrett (AFP)

What does an oil rig supervisor earning $963 per day have in common with a diner’s head cook or a dollar store manager? Probably nothing, except this upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case. The justices’ decision could make it almost impossible for workers to get overtime pay from employers who insist the employees are salaried — not hourly workers.

It's one of several could-be landmark cases SCOTUS will hear this fall that could affect ordinary life for Americans.

Lawyers arguing Helix Energy Solutions Group Inc v Hewitt face the Supreme Court on October 12. Michael Hewitt was a Helix manager earning $963 per day, often more than $200,000 annually when he was terminated. He sued for thousands of dollars in overtime that he says Helix owes him.

There are federal laws and regulations protecting overtime. That’s thanks to low-wage managers who fought in court after their bosses promoted them to a “salaried manager” position. The problem was that many salaried managers of diners, dollar stores, dive bars and other service industry jobs would be given annual pay of $30,000 to $40,000, but were required to work 15-hour days, seven days a week and holidays, with no overtime.

Hewitt was not a low-wage Joe Six Pack. But as Law360 noted, to be a manager exempt from overtime, a circuit court ruled that weekly salary should be assured, not dependent on the number of days and hours the manager works, no matter how few.

“While Hewitt's day rate of $963 was well above the minimum weekly requirement for salaried professionals, which at the time was $455 and is now $684, the pay was tied to days worked and consequently failed to constitute a real salary,” Law360 noted.

CAN ARTISTS REFUSE THEIR SERVICES TO LGBTQ PATRONS?

The plaintiff in 303 Creative LLC v Elenis is a Christian website designer represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a 501c3 that donated financially to the Jan. 6, 2021 Trump rally that morphed into a riot. This is ADF’s second go at a Supreme Court in LGBTQ rights case.

They also represented the baker who didn’t want to make a cake for a gay wedding.

ADF paid Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett for five speaking engagements since 2011, according to The 19th.

On her business site, the plaintiff says that “God gave me the creative gifts that are expressed through this business, I have always strived… to avoid communicating ideas or messages, or promoting events, products, services, or organizations, that are inconsistent with my religious beliefs.” No LGBTQ person has demanded a pro-gay website from the plaintiff. But apparently, SCOTUS will be asked to decide whether artists–designers, singers, photographers, chefs, bakers—have the right to refuse their interpretive and creative services to a community willing to pay for them.

The ADF has an arm devoted to legal action on behalf of conservative churches and asks congregations online if they would be willing to be plaintiffs in a court case preserving religious freedoms.

WILL COLLEGE CAMPUSES BE WHITER?

On Halloween, The University of North Carolina and Harvard will fight Virginia-based Students for Fair Admissions before the Supreme Court. At stake is whether colleges should be allowed to use race as a factor in who is admitted to a college.

Asian Americans Advancing Justice was one of the many social justice groups to write an amicus brief in favor of Harvard’s race-conscious admissions process and affirmative action everywhere. It was an especially poignant show of solidarity since Students for Fair Admissions’ lawsuit accuses Harvard of discrimination against Asian-American applicants who, on average, outscored white and Black applicants academically. The suit against UNC accuses the university of discriminating against white and Asian applicants to favor Black people.

“I refuse to be weaponized against other students of color who face institutional barriers to higher education,” Harvard class of 2019 grad Sally Chen, who is Chinese American, testified for the amicus brief. “The full breadth of our identities cannot be captured in a race-blind application.”

Dozens of corporations have signed amicus briefs supporting affirmative action including Google, Hershey, Starbucks, Proctor & Gamble, Mattel, Levi Strauss, JetBlue, United Airlines and Salesforce.

But many longtime SCOTUS watchers think the odds are, that this court may kill affirmative action — and not just because there are five conservative judges making the decision.

The New York Times saw the recent failure of a California proposition supporting affirmative action as an ominous sign. Voters rejected it by a 57 to 43 margin. The New York Times noted that a high percentage of Latino and Asian American voters rejected the proposal. There was a sense among some voters who were people of color that race-conscious admissions tend to overlook obstacles encountered by working poor and working-class applicants.

Elliot Mincberg, People for the American Way senior fellow, is a Supreme Court scholar who also served as chief counsel for oversight and investigations of the House Judiciary Committee.

“It’s been an issue for years to figure out how to do a conglomeration of race and social class in the admissions process,” Mincberg told Raw Story. “It’s highly likely this Supreme Court will eliminate or severely restrict affirmative action.”

There are other more basic questions that affirmative action hasn’t completely resolved, such as: does affirmative action benefit Latinos since the federal government defines them as an ethnicity, not a race?

“That depends on the individual institution’s process,” Mincberg replied.

If affirmative action is struck down, universities can use what he calls “Constitutional workarounds,” to use some sort of method to ensure diversity.

DOES A JURY NEED TO KNOW WHEN A CONVICTED KILLER CAN NEVER BE PAROLED?

Death row inmate John Cruz was sentenced to death in 2005 for shooting a Tucson law enforcement officer five times, killing him. Cruz — and other death row inmates joined in this suit — argues that the court allegedly did not allow him to tell the jury that his sentencing did not allow him the option of parole so he could not pose a danger to the world outside prison ever again.

There is a 1994 Supreme Court case, Simmons v South Carolina, that Cruz’s lawyers cite as a precedent for this case. Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy wrote in a concurring opinion agreeing that a prisoner facing the death penalty had the right to tell jurors when parole is off the table.

:"[W]here the State puts the defendant’s future dangerousness in issue, and the only available alternative sentence to death is life imprisonment without possibility of parole, due process entitles the defendant to inform the capital sentencing jury—by either argument or instruction—that he is parole ineligible," the justices wrote.

HILLBILLY OZ

Mehmet Oz said incest with 'more than a first cousin away' was 'not a big problem' in unearthed interview

Brandon Gage, Alternet
September 07, 2022

Dr. Mehmet Oz / Shutterstock.

Republican United States Senate candidate from Pennsylvania Mehmet Oz defended incest in a February 2014 interview with a morning radio show that was unearthed on Tuesday by Jezebel.

The Breakfast Club host Angela Yee had read Oz a question on the topic that was submitted by a listener:

I’m going to ask you this and you tell me if this is safe for this person, okay? Well, he said, ‘Yee, I can’t stop smashing my cousin.’ That means sleeping with. We hooked up at a young age and now in our 20s, she still wants it. No matter how much I want to stop, I always give it to her. Help me.’ What advice would you give that person?

Oz, whose struggling campaign was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, offered his medical opinion.

Oz:

If you’re more than a first cousin away, it’s not a big problem.

Yee:

Okay, so second cousin is fine to smash.

Yee's co-hosts also weighed in.

Charlamagne Tha God:

It’s so funny, cause I knew that.

DJ Envy:

How did you know that?

Charlamagne:

Cause I’m from the country! Third cousins?

Oz:

Yeah. It’s fine.

He explained the risks that incest poses to the health of offspring:

Every family has genetic strengths and weaknesses. And so the reason we naturally crave people who are not so like us is because you just mix the gene pool up a little bit so that if I had one gene for, let’s say, hemophilia, which is a classic example where you bleed a lot if you cut yourself, I don’t want to marry a cousin who has the same hemophilia gene, because the chance of our child having both those genes is much higher.

He continued:

You know, that’s why children, girls don’t like their fathers’ smell. Their pheromones will actually repel their daughters because they’re not supposed to be together. My daughters hate my smell.

Yee quipped to Oz that "maybe you just smell."

Oz replied that "my wife says she likes the smell.”

Not long after the video surfaced, Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman – Oz's Democratic opponent – tweeted, "yet another issue where Oz and I disagree."

A quarter of California homes had no A/C this heat wave. It could stay that way for years

2022/09/10

Ceiling fans can be helpful, but for many of the 24% of California households across the state without A/C, the latest heat wave has been a misery and a health hazard. - Dreamstime/TNS/TNS

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — In her Stockton apartment, Esther Johnson has been freezing pots of water overnight for relief from California’s historic heat. In the morning, she wraps them in towels, puts them at the foot of the couch and blasts them with fans to create some cool air.

It was 107 degrees outside on Tuesday, the day several cities broke all-time heat records. Inside, it was 96 degrees.

Californians blasted their air conditioning so much this week they nearly overwhelmed the state’s electricity grid. For many of the 24% of households across the state without A/C, each day has been a misery and a health hazard.

“You know when you go into a sauna? It’s like that,” said Johnson, 64, who is recovering from double knee surgery. Her A/C unit has been broken since June, and her landlord isn’t rushing to fix it. “My face is dripping and everything.”

California law and building codes require residential units to maintain temperatures of 70 degrees inside during cold weather. But there is no requirement for air conditioning or other cooling mechanisms to keep residents safe from the extreme heat, which is quickly becoming our routine heat.

Robert Brooke-Munoz, director of San Joaquin Fair Housing, said immediate help is needed for renters whose landlords aren’t fixing A/C units simply because the law doesn’t require them to.

“There’s got to be tighter laws and regulations on air conditioning especially because of the heat and our changing climate,” said Brooke-Munoz, who has been getting daily calls from tenants about broken cooling systems. “This is the worst I’ve seen it.”

Extreme heat is the most deadly symptom of climate change, primarily impacting low-income renters and the elderly. Despite California’s reputation as a strong regulator, the state has moved slowly to create temperature standards that would enforce cooling the same way it does heating.

A bill in the state legislature this year that would have set cooling standards was stalled by opposition from the California Apartments Association. Instead, the state is tasked with forming policy recommendations by 2025, a timeline that is almost sure to include more heat waves.

Jovana Morales-Tilgren, housing policy coordinator at the Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability in Fresno, which led the legislative push, said her organization hopes to move that complicated process along as quickly as possible.

“These issues are happening now and folks feeling it the most are vulnerable populations,” she said. “This heat wave is going to happen again, and who knows if it will be even hotter.”

Californians without cooling

Mario and Elvia Garcia have been buying ice every day to try and keep their five kids cool in Lamont outside Bakersfield.

They get back from school sunburned to a home that’s over 90 degrees inside. At night, they all sleep together on the living room floor, near the most powerful fan.

Fearing a rent hike, they haven’t asked their landlord for an A/C unit. But Mario said government officials need to “go back to the drawing board” and figure out solutions. Maybe solar panels, or subsidies for landlords to install cooling.

“They need to make it right so people feel comfortable in their home,” Mario said.

Extreme heat has become increasingly common in the Golden State with the onset of human-induced climate change. It is the most deadly weather event nationwide.

The percentage of households without air conditioning ranges across the state, as high as 54% in historically cooler San Francisco metro area and as low as 20% in Los Angeles, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 American Housing Survey.

An LA Times investigation last year found that California under counts the number of people who die from extreme heat, reporting that the recorded 599 deaths between 2010 and 2019 is likely six times higher.

A growing body research also shows that extreme temperatures disproportionately affect low-income people and people of color, particularly in underserved neighborhoods of denser urban areas.

New data from the Department of Energy show a disparity between single family homes and multifamily rentals too. In California, 67% of multifamily housing units in the state lack central A/C compared to 33% of detached single family homes, according to an analysis by UC Davis Professor C.J. Gabbe.

Making landlords sweat

AB 2597 by Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, would have directed officials to create statewide standards for safe indoor temperatures.

The measure was opposed by the politically potent rental housing industry and other real estate interests, who would be on the hook for retrofits of existing buildings with air conditioning or other forms of cooling.

Any changes to the code for new buildings would also have to go through the Building Standards Commission at the Department of General Services, which adopts a new code only every three years.

Instead of passing the bill, lawmakers put $5 million in the state budget for the Department of Housing and Community Development to develop recommendations to the legislature to ensure that residential units can maintain a safe indoor air temperature.

A spokesperson for the department said “it is premature to comment at this time” when asked about plans to form recommendations.

In a statement on the original bill, California Apartment Association executive vice president Debra Carlton said that “changing the rules for existing buildings is not feasible in many cases.”

Older homes and apartments are not designed to allow for installation of new cooling system, she said, adding that new A/C systems would further strain the state power grid.

After releasing an extreme heat plan this April, California created an advisory committee to study its effects on California’s economy. It sent workplace safety standards, meant to prevent heat illness among outdoor workers, to Newsom’s desk.

New temperature standards are expected to vary across the state depending on local climate, as enforcement protocols are worked through and landlords figure out how to pay for it.

UCLA urban planning professor V. Kelly Turner pointed to the many ways buildings can keep residents cool other than A/C, like using trees and central plazas for shade. But the most important thing is that it gets done soon.

“It’s glaringly obvious that it’s insufficient when it’s illegal to rent a home that’s too cold, but perfectly legal to rent a home that’s too hot,” she said.

The results of this year’s legislative session are “a good step forward,” said Brian Augusta, a legislative advocate representing the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation.

“This week’s weather tells tells the story. We’re gonna see more events like this, and I think there will be increasing pressure to act more urgently but we’re on a path now.”

———

© The Sacramento Bee

‘Agape Boarding School should be closed.’ New Missouri AG filing says abuse is systemic

2022/09/09

Agape Boarding School, Stockton, Cedar County, Mo. Former students of Missouri Christian boarding schools say they were physically restrained by staff and other students as a form of punishment. - Jill Toyoshiba/The Kansas City Star/TNS

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Missouri Attorney General and state child welfare leaders filed an amended complaint Friday afternoon, saying students must be removed from Agape Boarding School because of a long pattern of abuse.

The complaint, filed in Cedar County Circuit Court, contained additional details that the AG’s office said provided explicit evidence of systemic abuse of students at the unlicensed school near Stockton that has gone on for years.

Those new details also include allegations that Agape provided “incomplete information” to the state in recent days. And it said multiple people still working at the school are appealing their substantiated findings from the Missouri Department of Social Services that they physically abused students. State law allows the staffers to keep working while they appeal the findings.

The Kansas City Star has independently learned that Agape director Bryan Clemensen is one of those who was notified by DSS that he had a substantiated report of abuse against him. Multiple sources also said that Scott Dumar, the school’s longtime medical coordinator, also is among those appealing a substantiated DSS finding. Dumar is also one of five staff members who were charged last year with physical abuse of students.

“Agape has failed over many years to stem the tide of abuse and neglect perpetrated at their school and ensure the health and safety of their students,” Friday’s filing said. “The culmination of all of these facts leads the Attorney General and the Department of Social Services to believe that Agape Boarding School should be closed.

“No other relief ensures the safety of the children residing at Agape.”

A hearing is set for 9 a.m. Monday in Cedar County Circuit Court before Judge David Munton.

The Attorney General’s Office filed the initial petition Wednesday during a drama-packed week that included Schmitt and DSS asking for an injunction to immediately close Agape and remove students, citing concerns about their safety.

The petition stated that on Wednesday, DSS added a current Agape staff member to the state’s Central Registry for Abuse/Neglect after the agency found by a preponderance of evidence that the staffer committed child abuse at Agape.

Munton signed an order Wednesday night for the school’s closure, only to put it on hold Thursday morning. He sent Cedar County Sheriff James “Jimbob” McCrary to Agape to determine whether the employee — who is referred to in court records as Staff A — was still working there.

Missouri law prohibits someone from working at a residential care facility if the person has a substantiated finding of child abuse or neglect or is placed on the registry.

“On September 8, 2022, Agape’s director Bryan Clemensen reported that Agape Staff A was fired ‘yesterday’ (September 7, 2022), but still resides on the Agape property in close proximity to children at Agape,” the new filing said.

After hearing that the employee had been fired on Wednesday, DSS obtained a roster Thursday of current Agape employees, individuals with access to children and those who reside on the property, according to the filing.

“Agape Staff A was included on the September 8, 2022 roster that Agape provided to DSS,” the filing said.

“Agape’s harboring of Agape Staff A, an individual who is listed on the state’s Child Abuse/Neglect Central Registry, presents an immediate health and safety concern for the children residing at Agape,” the document said. “... Agape employs and harbors other individuals who present an immediate health and safety concern for the children residing at Agape.”

Friday’s amended complaint also describes how, according to DSS, Agape has provided the child welfare agency with incomplete information about those at the school with access to the children and about the adults who live on the 500-acre campus.

“These new developments are sadly consistent with the dark pattern of behavior at Agape previously exposed by the Attorney General’s Office and DSS,” it said.

The Star reported Tuesday that DSS had confirmed 10 findings of physical abuse involving Agape staff. Those findings are final dispositions and the workers involved have been placed on the state’s Central Registry and do not currently work at any boarding schools in Missouri, DSS officials said.

Those 10 represent the number of abuse findings, DSS said, not necessarily the number of people investigated. In other words, one person could have multiple findings.

On Friday, DSS officials confirmed to The Star that with the Agape employee who was added to the Central Registry on Wednesday, that makes 11 substantiated findings related to the Cedar County boys boarding school.

The Star has investigated Agape and other boarding schools in southern Missouri since late summer 2020. Many men who attended the school in their youth said they were subjected to physical restraints, extreme workouts, long days of manual labor, and food and water withheld as punishment. And, they said, students endured constant berating and mind games, and some were physically and sexually abused by staff and other youth.

Prompted by stories of abuse at several unlicensed Christian boarding schools in Missouri, legislators successfully pushed for change in the state law to implement some oversight of those schools. That law, which went into effect in July 2021, requires schools for the first time to register with the state, conduct background checks on employees and undergo health, safety and fire inspections.

The law also gives DSS, the attorney general or the local prosecuting attorney the authority to petition the court to close a facility if there is an immediate health or safety concern for the children.

Agape now has 63 students, about half of the population the school had in early 2021 when the Missouri Highway Patrol and DSS launched an investigation into abuse allegations. That investigation led to low-level felony charges against five Agape staff members, accusing them of 13 counts of abusing students.

“There has been a long history of allegations of abuse and neglect at Agape, and those allegations have been recently coming to public attention and DSS’s attention,” the amended petition said. “Many child abuse and neglect allegations take years to come to light; a critical mass of allegations coming to light at the same time is sufficient to constitute an ‘immediate health or safety concern.’”

© The Kansas City Star

Buried deep in a time capsule for a century, a 1919 ‘Black Sox’ World Series baseball sees the light

2022/09/10

Developer Lee Golub stands on the 25th floor of Tribune Tower Residences on Aug. 24, 2022, while holding a baseball from the 1919 World Series featuring the Chicago White Sox. - Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune/TNS

CHICAGO — For nearly a century, millions of words poured from the confines of the Tribune Tower in stories about crooked politicians, murderous lovers, civic giants, sports heroes, regular folks and big shots, charting all the joys and tragedies of the human condition. No longer home to a newspaper but to luxurious condominiums, the building now delivers a new and fascinating tale, of a baseball long buried, a baseball that some believe is worth $1 million or more.

The ball is a homely and bruised and beaten thing. It was discovered earlier this year when three time capsules were found during the remaking of the building.

The Tribune Tower was sold for $240 million in June 2016 to the CIM Group in partnership with Chicago-based Golub & Co. Its transformation began after all former tenants — including some 750 Chicago Tribune employees, WGN-AM 720 staff and equipment, a barbershop, restaurant, candy store and other businesses — were relocated and scattered across the city in June 2018.

“I love this building and this has been the most interesting and complicated project I have ever worked on,” says Lee Golub, the executive vice president at Golub & Co. “But there has been great joy in that, because I think this is the greatest building in the world.”

He is happy that two-thirds of the building’s 162 condominiums have been sold, for prices ranging from $700,000 to more than $8 million. He was happy and proud as he walked around the building with Tribune photographer Chris Sweda and myself, neither of us having visited since we left four years ago. Not to play architecture critic, but I was impressed by the transformation, a remake that was jarring but impressive. We saw some apartments with terraces, soaring ceilings and dramatic arch windows. We saw a space with all sorts of amenities, including a gym and swimming pool. We saw a landscaped exterior courtyard, meeting rooms, sundecks, outdoor terraces and grill stations. We saw much more and listened to Golub say, “It was important that we keep the history of the building intact,” and walked through a landmarked lobby cleaner than we had ever seen it. It sparkled.

But back to baseball.

The three battered and worn metal box time capsules — placed inside the cornerstones of the former printing press building, which rose in 1920; Tribune Tower, completed in 1925; and the WGN Radio building, completed in 1950 — contained more than 100 items.

Most of these were predictable time capsule knickknacks. There were yellowed copies of the Tribune newspaper, a 1907 political cartoon from Pulitzer Prize winner John T. McCutcheon, war cartoons from 1942 and motion pictures set to recordings of speeches from owner/publisher Robert McCormick, as well as all of the 263 submissions for the 1922 design competition that offered a $50,000 first-place prize, won by New York architects John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood, and a penny from 1847, the year the Tribune was founded.

It was noted as well that there was also a baseball, one reporter speculating that it was “possibly from the 1919 ‘Black Sox’ World Series.’ ”

The minute Golub saw the ball, he called his friend Grant DePorter. The pair have known one another for years. “I just knew he’d want to see this,” Golub says.

“I ran over the minute he called,” DePorter says.

DePorter is the CEO of Harry Caray’s Restaurant Group, overseeing the operation of seven restaurants. He co-authored a 2008 book with Elliott Harris and Mark Vancil, “Hoodoo: Unraveling the 100-Year Mystery of the Chicago Cubs” (Rare Air Limited). Late in 2003, he paid $113,824.16 for what was known as the “Bartman Ball,” which was exploded early in 2004 in a nationally televised event from the restaurant, with money raised going to charity.

DePorter is also a passionate historian and the mere sight of the baseball compelled him to start digging. He was able to determine, with the help of FBI Special Agent and expert on memorabilia Brian Brusokas, that the ball was used in the 1919 World Series between the White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds.

“And it was a record-setting baseball,” DePorter says. “It is a baseball that struck out more batters in a row in a World Series than any baseball in history.”

The Cincinnati pitcher, his name long faded into history, was Horace “Hod” Eller. He pitched well, striking out nine batters, including a then-World Series record of six in a row during the fifth game, which was played in Comiskey Park in front of 34,379 fans.

“Eller was known for a shine pitch, a pitch that involved putting paraffin wax on one part of the ball and also in the stitches of the ball,” DePorter says, handing me a pile of his research. “Chemicals found in paraffin are used in solvents and also can burn. The ball has a mark where the paraffin shine was placed and the ball’s dark coloring would be attributed to the fact that it was placed in a time capsule for 100 years with paraffin present.”

That 1919 World Series resulted in what DePorter and many others consider the biggest scandal in the history of sports, known as the Black Sox Scandal. It has been the subject of many books, the best of which is Eliot Asinof’s 1963 “Eight Men Out,” which gave birth to the 1988 film of the same name.

In short, the scandal involved eight members of the Sox being accused of throwing the series against the Cincinnati Reds in exchange for money from a group of gamblers. The players’ names were: Arnold “Chick” Gandil, George “Buck” Weaver, Oscar “Happy” Felsch, Charles “Swede” Risberg, Fred McMullin, Eddie Cicotte, Claude “Lefty” Williams and, most famously, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson.

A Chicago grand jury indicted the players in late September 1920 and, though all were acquitted in a public trial on Aug. 2, 1921, baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis the next day permanently banned all eight for life from professional baseball.

Along with the baseball, DePorter found a letter.

“It was hidden in a pile of moldy documents,” he says. “It was written by Tribune sports editor Harvey Woodruff and the letter does not mention anything about any controversy tied to the series even though it was written and placed in the time capsule in May of 1920, seven months after the series.”

DePorter kept digging.

“When Woodruff wrote this letter he was the top choice to be the chairman of the National Baseball Commission and as such would have been the one to decide whether to investigate the rumors that the World Series was fixed,” DePorter says. “He had not written any negative story that would hint that gamblers might have fixed the games. He even told one of his reporters that he did not believe the series had been fixed.”

DePorter believes that had Woodruff been appointed chairman, it would have changed baseball history. He says, “It is also highly likely that “Shoeless” Joe Jackson would have been inducted into Baseball’s Hall of Fame.”

The letter confirmed the ball’s vintage. “This baseball was used by Pitcher Horace (Hod) Eller of the Cincinnati Reds in the fifth game of the World’s Series baseball contests of 1919 against the Chicago White Sox,” Woodruff wrote.

Many of the items found in the time capsules are slated to have a new home in the Chicago History Museum but not that baseball. It will formally meet the public later this month at the Green Tie Ball, an annual event to benefit the nonprofit, public-private partnership that is Chicago Gateway Green, which is dedicated to the greening and beautification of the city. Golub and DePorter, whose father, Donald DePorter. started the organization in 1986, are co-chairs of the event. Golub will perform there, playing drums, with his band, Dr. Bombay.

The event takes place Sept. 17 at the Chicago Sports Museum. DePorter is the founder of the museum and that is where the old World Series baseball will be on display.

“We have a lot of great memorabilia there,” DePorter says. “But this baseball. … No piece of memorabilia has made me more insane, combing through archives, old newspapers, websites. It is hard to put a price on it, but a Mickey Mantle 1952 baseball card, not even in pristine shape, sold last week for $12.6 million. I think of this baseball as a treasure and it tells a great story.”

© Chicago Tribune

Survey finds cyberattacks on healthcare facilities increase patient mortality


The impact of cyberattacks on American healthcare facilities frequently result in higher patient mortality while also leading to millions of dollars in lost productivity, according to a new study published Thursday. File Photo by geralt/Pixabay

Sept. 8 (UPI) -- The impact of cyberattacks on American healthcare facilities frequently result in higher patient mortality while also leading to millions of dollars in lost productivity, according to a new study published Thursday.

The report by Washington, D.C., think tank Poneman Institute found 24% of those interviewed said ransomware increased the mortality rate, while 21% said the same thing about a business email compromise attack.

Over 600 IT professionals across more than 100 U.S. healthcare facilities were interviewed for the study.

Two-thirds of those polled said a BEC attack disrupted patient care to some degree, while 59% said they increased the length of patients' stays at the facility.

The four most common types of attacks were a cloud compromise, ransomware, supply chain, and BEC or phishing, according to the report. More than 70% of organizations admitted they are vulnerable to the first three types, while 64% said they are vulnerable to a BEC incident.

The attacks occur with regularity.

Nine out of 10 organizations admitted to experiencing at least one cyberattack during the past 12 months. The average number of attacks was 43 among facilities in that group.

The financial impact of the attacks is also significant.

The average cost in lost productivity from a cyberattack worked out to $1.1 million.

Overall, the financial cost of the single-most expensive attack an organization suffered over the last 12 months equated to $4.4 million.

A lack of preparedness exists, despite the frequency of attacks. Only 51% of respondents say their organizations include prevention and response to an attack on these devices as part of their cybersecurity strategy.

"The attacks we analyzed put a significant strain on healthcare organizations' resources. Their result is not only tremendous cost but also a direct impact on patient care, endangering people's safety and wellbeing," Ponemon Institute chair Larry Poneman said in a statement.

"Most of the IT and security professionals regard their organizations as vulnerable to these attacks, and two-thirds believe that technologies such as cloud, mobile, big data, and the Internet of Things -- which are all seeing increased adoption -- further increase the risks to patient data and safety."

United Airlines spends $15M for 200 electric air taxis

United Airlines is investing $15 million to buy 200 vertical take-off and landing electric vehicles from Eve Air Mobility, the company confirmed on Thursday. Image by United Airlines

Sept. 8 (UPI) -- United Airlines is investing $15 million to buy 200 vertical take-off and landing electric vehicles, the Chicago-based company said in a statement on Thursday.

The conditional purchase agreement is with Eve Air Mobility, a subsidiary of Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer, and calls for 200 of the four-seat electric aircraft.

United also has an option to purchase a further 200 of the flying taxis, with the first deliveries expected to occur as early as 2026.

The two companies also intend to work together on future projects and develop the application of the aircraft for use in what the airline is terming the "urban air mobility (UAM) ecosystem."

This isn't United's first foray into the eVTOL space. Last month, the world's fourth-largest airline gave a $10-million deposit to California-based Archer Aviation for 100 similar aircraft, as it attempts to be at the forefront of the new technology. At the time, Archer called it a "watershed moment" for the entire industry.

The purchase is part of United's goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2050 without the use of traditional offsets.

The air taxis do not rely on traditional combustion engines. Instead, the aircraft use carbon-free electric motors, "to be used as 'air taxis' in urban markets."

Eve's particular design uses conventional fixed wings, rotors and pushers to operate.

The vehicles have a range of 60 miles and are 90% quieter than current conventional aircraft.

The company plans to begin conducting simulation tests next week in Chicago, beginning with ground tests and followed by passenger flights, using helicopters powered by Blade Air Mobility.

"United has made early investments in several cutting-edge technologies at all levels of the supply chain, staking out our position as a leader in aviation sustainability and innovation," Michael Leskinen, president of the company's innovation wing, United Airlines Ventures said in a statement.

"Today, United is making history again, by becoming the first major airline to publicly invest in two eVTOL companies. Our agreement with Eve highlights our confidence in the urban air mobility market and serves as another important benchmark toward our goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050 -- without using traditional offsets. Together, we believe our suite of clean energy technologies will revolutionize air travel as we know it and serve as the catalyst for the aviation industry to move toward a sustainable future."

‘It’s not just science fiction’: Zeva is taking its flying saucer concept to the next level

Alan Boyle - Friday - Geekwire

Eight months ago, Zeva Aero conducted a milestone flight test for an electric-powered flying saucer that would warm the heart of any sci-fi fan. Now the Tacoma, Wash.-based startup has changed the design ⁠— and although Zeva’s Z2 will look less like a UFO, it will look more real.


An artist’s conception shows Zeva’s Z2 electric air vehicle in horizontal flight. 

(Zeva Illustration)

“It’s not just science fiction,” Zeva CEO Stephen Tibbitts says.

Tibbitts explains what’s changed since January, and why, in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast, which focuses on the intersection of science and fiction.

The company’s first full-scale prototype, known as the Zeva Zero, was developed to compete in the GoFly Prize, a $2 million contest for single-person flying machines.

After Zeva put the Zero through its first untethered, controlled flight test in a pasture south of Seattle, Tibbitts and his team decided to change things around for the Z2. “We’re moving on to what we think solves some of the issues that the Zero has,” Tibbitts says.

Zeva’s goal for the Z2 is basically the same as it was for the Zero: to create a flying vehicle that takes off and lands vertically, but pivots for horizontal forward flight. Its range for flying a single person would be 50 miles, with enough power to hit a top speed of 160 mph.

The streamlined Z2 design still has something of a flying saucer look, but it calls for bigger, more efficient propellers that are mounted on four large motor pods. Zeva also plans to incorporate the latest in battery tech. The new design may not be as compliant with the GoFly Prize’s design specifications, but it’ll more stable on the ground for takeoff.

“We have not finished the prototype yet,” Tibbitts says. “We’re working on it. We have quite a bit of CAD [computer-aided design] work to do before we start cutting molds. But once we start cutting molds and making composite parts, it should go fairly quickly.”

Zeva is aiming to have a Z2 prototype ready for testing later this year.


Stephen Tibbitts is the co-founder and CEO of Zeva Aero. 

(Photo via LinkedIn)

Tibbitts is proud of how far his team has come since the company was founded in 2017. So far, Zeva has gotten its funding from founders, friends and family, plus an equity crowdfunding campaign that brought in more than $200,000. Tibbitts says the company currently has in the neighborhood of six “quasi-full-time” employees and 25 experts it can call upon for advice.

“The remarkable thing about Zeva, really, is that we’ve produced a 100% full-scale flying prototype over four and a half with a budget of $700,000,” Tibbitts says. Now Zeva is ramping up for what it hopes will be a multimillion-dollar Series A funding round.

Can Zeva keep up with much larger companies that are also working on electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing vehicles, or eVTOLs? Companies like Bell, Joby Aviation and Boeing-backed Wisk Aero? Tibbitts says Zeva can occupy a niche of its own.

“A lot of it has to do with focus,” he says. “We’re focused on trying to drive the technology down into the hands of people that just want to fly. Other companies are focused on urban air mobility. … I happen to believe that eVTOL technology has wide-ranging applications far outside the city.”


Artwork shows Zeva’s eVTOL parked in a driveway. 

(Zeva Illustration)© Provided by Geekwire

The way Tibbitts sees it, the first applications could include providing rapid-response air vehicles for first responders and law enforcement officials. He also notes that the U.S. military is looking at eVTOLs for a variety of applications.

“If you look at what the Navy’s asking for, they’re asking for a small, compact aircraft that can launch itself,” Tibbitts says. “They want to be able to store a bunch of these in a container ship … and then be able to launch them to either go ship-to-shore or ship-to-ship, and just supply goods. Not necessarily hauling humans around.”

Once Zeva gets its design figured out, the business plan calls for setting up a pilot production line, most likely in the Puget Sound region. “I would be so bold to say it also could be the site for the future Gigafactory — if we’re following the Tesla model, in terms of being able to set up a factor to stamp these things out and make lots of them,” Tibbitts says.

Zeva is planning on an initial price tag of $250,000.

“I think there’s margin in there for us at that price,” Tibbitts says. “But I also would want to be able to drive it down to a lower cost point eventually — five, six, seven years from now — into something that’s attainable for the consumer. So, you’d have your choice: You can buy a Lamborghini, or you can buy a Zeva.”


In this artist’s conception, a Zeva eVTOL is parked on the side of a building at a SkyDock. 

(Zeva Illustration)

Tibbitts admits that he’s been inspired by the flying cars of science fiction, going back to the bubble car that was featured in “The Jetsons” and the magnetic air car that popped up in the Dick Tracy comic strip starting in the ’60s. But he says the real-life flying machines due to emerge in the decades ahead will look a lot different.

“The ultimate goal, I think, for the next 20 years is to combine eVTOL technology with high-speed, cross-country travel,” Tibbitts says. “Everybody wants a business jet that can land and take off vertically, and there’s actually some Air Force work going on in that area.”

In February, the Air Force selected 11 companies to move ahead with high-speed eVTOL concepts. One of those companies is Jetoptera, which is based in Edmonds, Wash. Another company on the list, VerdeGo Aero, was co-founded by Bainbridge Island resident Erik Lindbergh, the grandson of aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh.

Zeva may not have made the Air Force’s list this time around, but Tibbitts clearly has high-speed flights in his sights. “That’s the next big phase — to get to a point where you’ve got a machine that can land and take off virtually anywhere, but can also go 300-plus miles an hour and get you to your destination very quickly,” he says.

So, if Zeva stays in business long enough, make a note to watch the skies as the Z10 zips by.

Check out the original version of this item on Cosmic Log for Tibbitts’ top recommendation when it comes to far-out science fiction. 

Burning Man highlights the primordial human need for ritual

The Conversation
September 10, 2022

Burning Man (Shutterstock)

At the end of each summer, hordes of people flock to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada to erect a makeshift city the size of the Italian town of Pisa. They call it Black Rock City. A few days later, they will burn it to the ground, leaving no trace.

During their time together, they partake in an extravaganza of unique experiences. Wearing wild costumes and riding carnivalesque vehicles, they attend colorful parades, spectacular light displays and interactive art installations.

Since its inception in 1986, attendance has increased from a few dozens of individuals to over 70,000 — and hundreds of thousands in various regional versions around the world.

In surveys, Burners, as they call themselves, report experiencing strong feelings of connection during the event. Over three-quarters say that their experience was transformative, over 90% say that these transformative effects lasted beyond their stay, and over 80% say that they made a permanent impact on their lives. The great majority return again, many of them every year.

What makes this bizarre event so meaningful to so many people?

The ceremonial experience

The overwhelming majority of Burners identify as nonreligious, yet the deeply spiritual experiences they report resemble those of religious groups. Indeed, the similarities with religion are no accident.

Burning Man, as the event became known, started as a solstice get-together by a handful of friends on Baker Beach in San Francisco. In 1986, they decided to build a wooden effigy and then torch it. Co-founder Larry Harvey called this a “spontaneous act of radical self-expression.” As people started gathering to watch, they realized they had created a ritual. The next year, they put up fliers and drew a bigger crowd. It has been growing ever since.

Harvey was an avid reader of anthropological theories of religion. He was particularly interested in the role of ritual in creating meaningful experiences. These experiences, he argued, address a primordial human need: “The desire to belong to a place, to belong to a time, to belong to one another, and to belong to something that is greater than ourselves, even in the midst of impermanence.”

As an anthropologist of ritual myself, I can see that ceremony is at the essence of Burning Man. It begins as soon as Burners walk through the gate. Upon entering, people signal their arrival by ringing a bell. They hug and greet each other by saying “Welcome home!” That home is treated as sacred, symbolically demarcated and protected from the polluting influence of the “default world,” as they call the outside. Upon their departure, they will perform a purification rite, removing all “matter out of place” – anything that doesn’t belong to the desert, from plastic bottles to specs of glitter.

Leaving their default name behind them, they use their “playa name.” It is a name gifted to them by another Burner and used to signify their new identity in the playa (the desert basin). They also abandon many of the comforts of the outside world. Monetary transactions are not allowed, and neither is bartering. Instead, they practice a gift economy, modeled on traditional ceremonial customs.

Anthropologists have noted that such ceremonial exchange systems can have important social utility. Unlike economic exchanges that produce equivalent outcomes, each act of donation creates feelings of gratitude, obligation and community, increasing both personal satisfaction and social solidarity.

The Burning Man Temple is yet another testament to the power of ritual. When sculptor David Best was invited to build an installation in 2000, he erected a wooden structure without any use in mind. But when a crew member died in a motorcycle accident, visitors started bringing mementos of people they had lost, and later gathered to watch it burn at the end of the event.

Since then, the temple has become a symbol of mourning and resilience.

Its walls are covered with thousands of notes, photographs and memorabilia. They are reminders of things people wish to leave behind: a personal loss, a divorce, an abusive relationship. It is all consumed by the fire on the final night as onlookers gather to watch silently, many of them in tears. Such a simple symbolic act seems to have surprisingly powerful cathartic effects.


The 2006 installation, which was called ‘Temple of Hope,’ is set on fire at Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.
AP Photo/Ron Lewis

The weeklong event culminates with the ceremonial destruction of the two largest structures looming at the center of the ephemeral city. On the penultimate night, a wooden effigy known as “the Man” is reduced to ashes. And in the final act, everyone gathers to watch the burning of the temple.

The human thirst for ritual

The oldest known ceremonial structures, such as Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, predate agriculture and permanent settlement. Although they took enormous effort to build, they too, like Black Rock City, were only used by ephemeral communities: groups of hunter-gatherers who traveled long distances to visit them.

It is not until hundreds of years later that evidence of settlement in those areas was found. This led archaeologist Klaus Schmidt to propose that it was the thirst for ritual that led those hunter-gatherers to permanent settlement, paving the way for civilization.

Whether this radical hypothesis is historically true is hard to know. But phenomena like Burning Man could confirm the view that the human need for ritual is primeval. It both predates and extends beyond organized religion.

Burning Man defies a strict definition. When I asked Burners to describe it, they used term such as movement, community, pilgrimage or social experiment. Whatever it might be, Burning Man’s unprecedented success, I believe, is due to its ability to create meaningful experiences for its members, which reflect a greater human yearning for spirituality.

Dimitris Xygalatas, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Psychological Sciences, University of Connecticut

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

RIP

Bernard Shaw, pioneer anchor at CNN for 2 decades, dies at 82


CNN's Bernard Shaw holds an ACE award for Best Newscaster during the Academy of Cable Excellence Awards at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles on January 14, 1990.

 File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 8 (UPI) -- Bernard Shaw, a pioneer Black broadcast journalist who was a staple on the anchor desk at CNN for two decades and provided numerous memorable on-air moments, died due to complications from pneumonia. He was 82.

Shaw died in a Washington, D.C., hospital on Wednesday, officials at the cable news network said on Thursday.

A constant presence on the air for CNN, Shaw had a distinguished journalism career for more than four decades.


A graduate of the University of Illinois, Shaw started his career at WNUS radio (now WGNB) in Chicago in 1964 before moving on to the Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, where he eventually served as chief White House correspondent.

Shaw spent three years with ABC News before moving on to his renowned stint at CNN when the network launched in 1980. He retired at CNN in 2001 but continued to appear on the network on various occasions as recently as 2020.

"Even after he left CNN, Bernie remained a close member of our CNN family providing our viewers with context about historic events as recently as last year," CNN Chairman and CEO Chris Licht said in a statement Thursday. "The condolences of all of us at CNN go out to his wife Linda and his children."

There was no shortage of memorable or important moments over Shaw's lengthy career in news. He first gained widespread notice on March 30, 1981, for his continuous coverage of the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan.

During the coverage, Shaw made multiple key observations on the air -- including "a very shaken" Secretary of State Alexander Haig after he appeared before the White House press corps and infamously declared, "I am in control here."

At one point in the continuous live coverage, Shaw and journalist Daniel Schorr were closely examining video footage of the shooting when Shaw pointed out that Reagan appeared to have been hit by the bullet a split second before he was shoved into the presidential limousine. It was later determined that the bullet had indeed struck Reagan at precisely the moment Shaw pointed to.

A decade later, Shaw again was noted for his live coverage of the start of the Gulf War in Iraq. He reported on the air for the network -- along with John Holliman and Peter Arnett -- from a Baghdad hotel even though they were in a very dangerous war zone, with rockets and gunfire exploding close enough to the team to be heard on the air.

"Clearly I've never been there, but this feels like we're in the center of hell," said at one moment during the coverage.

Shaw distinguished himself during other high-profile events, including the Tiananmen Square conflict in 1989 and the recount that followed the 2000 presidential election.

Shaw's family said funeral services will be private, but there will be a public memorial in the near future

USPS releases new stamp celebrating NASA's James Webb Space Telescope

Officials unveil the James Webb Space Telescope stamp at the

 Smithsonian National Postal Museum in Washington on Thursday.

 Photo by Leigh Vogel/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 8 (UPI) -- A new postage stamp celebrating NASA's new James Webb Space Telescope, which is the most powerful scope ever put in space, was released on Thursday.

The U.S. Postal Service and NASA celebrated the new stamp at the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum in Washington.


The image on the stamp is an artist's depiction of the groundbreaking telescope -- and the words "Webb Space Telescope" appear in white along its bottom edge. It's a "forever" stamp, meaning it will be good to send postage at any time in the future.

The release on Thursday came nine months after the telescope was launched into space.

"The James Webb Space Telescope orbits the sun about a million miles away from our planet. Now it will travel the United States mail system, with the launch of this new Forever stamp," Anton Hajjar, U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors vice chairman, said in a statement.

"The Webb telescope is sending truly astounding images, I'm sure you will agree! The telescope itself, which we celebrate in this stamp, is an engineering marvel, decades in the making."

The $10 billion telescope is composed of 18 hexagonal mirrors that are 21 feet across. The JWST sent its first dazzling images back to Earth in July.

This image, which was one of the first to be sent back to Earth from the James Webb Space Telescope on July 12, shows the edge of a young, star-forming region, NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula

. Photo by NASA/UPI

The telescope's infrared vision can peer 13.5 billion years into the universe's past -- seeing the light of the first stars and galaxies as they formed after the Big Bang. Unlike the Hubble Telescope, which orbits the Earth, Webb is floating at a certain location in space known as a Lagrange point, nearly 1 million miles away from Earth.

The telescope, which was first conceived in the 1990s as a successor to Hubble, is a joint venture by NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and European Space Agency. Northrop Grumman started building the giant piece of equipment in California in 2004.

NASA Associate Administrator Bob Cabana said in a statement Thursday that he'd like the new stamps to elicit the same excitement that the JWST does.

"When anyone who uses these stamps looks at this telescope, I want them to see what I see: its incredible potential to reveal new and unexpected discoveries that help us understand the origins of the universe, and our place in it," Cabana said.

Google, Amazon employees protest $1.2 billion deal with Israel


Employees of Google and Amazon are protesting the company's contract to provide cloud services to Israel. 

File photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 8 (UPI) -- Hundreds of employees of Google and Amazon will hold protests on Thursday outside the companies' headquarters, in opposition to the $1.2 billion Project Nimbus deal with the Israeli government and military.

The #NoTechForApartheid movement announced that the protests would be held in San Francisco, New York and Seattle. The movement is seeking to prevent Israel from using technology to surveil Palestinians.

"Technology can bring people together -- but when these tools are used to harm communities, they make the world less safe for us all," the movement's website said. "That's why workers at Google and Amazon are urging their employers to walk their talk on human rights.''

In April 2021, the two major tech companies signed a contract with the Israeli government and military to provide them with cloud technology.

In the wake of that agreement, the #NoTechForApartheid movement was founded to push back against the deal. The movement says that Amazon and Google are complicit in Israel's May 2021 assault on Gaza, roadblocks that restrict Palestinians from traveling, and the destruction of Palestinian homes in the West Bank.

The movement also cited instances of Amazon's technology being used to help ICE deport immigrants, and Google selling artificial intelligence to the Department of Defense to make its drone strikes deadlier.

Ahmad Abu Shammalh, a computer scientist in Gaza, said that Silicon Valley has limited the cellular connection of Palestinians.

"Silicon Valley's tech giants show deliberate and systematic censorship of the Palestinian narrative, which borders on a denial of our very existence," Shammalh said in a statement on the movement's website. "These companies support a living apartheid."

Google has said the deal is directed at everyday work that is not highly sensitive or classified.

"We are proud that Google Cloud has been selected by the Israeli government to provide public cloud services to help digitally transform the country," Google spokeswoman Newberry said, according to TechCrunch. "The project includes making Google Cloud Platform available to government agencies for everyday workloads such as finance, healthcare, transportation and education, but it is not directed to highly sensitive or classified workloads."

GRIFTER IN CHIEF
Federal grand jury investigates Trump's Save America PAC


Former President Donald Trump holds a "Save America" hat before speaking to supporters during a rally on Aug. 5, 2022. A federal grand jury is investigating former President Donald Trump's Save America political action committee. File Photo by Alex Wroblewski/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 8 (UPI) -- The Justice Department has opened a probe into a political action committee opened by former President Donald Trump following his loss in the 2020 presidential election.

A federal grand jury investigating Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the events leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol has issued subpoenas to several individuals seeking information about Trump's Save America PAC, ABC News, The New York Times and Politico reported.

The subpoenas showed the Justice Department is interested in the inner workings of Save America, specifically seeking to understand the timeline of its formation, fundraising activities and how it receives and spends money.

Save America's statement of organization filing to the Federal Election Commission says the committee was established days after the 2020 election and is affiliated with the Trump campaign and Trump Make America Great Committee. The small-dollar-focused, joint-fundraising committee between the president's campaign and the Republican National Committee has sent out donor solicitation emails on behalf of Save America.

The PAC can only accept donations of up to $5,000 per donor, well below the more than $800,000 donations previously raised by Trump Victory a high-dollar joint fundraising committee between Trump's campaign and the Republican Party.

Trump and his allies have regularly used claims about fraud in the 2020 election and investigations into Trump's actions surrounding the election and the Capitol riots, as well as his business dealings to solicit donations for Save America.

Following the FBI's search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago home last month, Save America sent out a fundraising email urging the former president's supporters to "rush in a donation IMMEDIATELY to publicly stand with me against this NEVERENDING WITCH HUNT.

During a hearing held by the House select committee investigating the Capitol riots, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said the campaign raised $250 million after the election by claiming they were combatting election fraud.

"Throughout the committee's investigation, we found evidence that the Trump campaign and its surrogates misled donors as to where their funds would go and what they would be used for. So not only was there the big lie, there was the big rip-off," Lofgren said. "Donors deserve to know where their funds are really going. They deserve better than what President Trump and his team did."