Two Men Sentenced Under Maryland’s New Anti-Poaching Law

Community Service and Restitution Mandated; Forfeiture of Rifle and Trophy; Hunting Privileges Revoked

 

Andrew Collison Harding

Toby Allen Hughes

Two men became the first sentenced under a new state anti-poaching law after they were found guilty of multiple charges Wednesday in Dorchester County District Court.

Andrew Collison Harding, 21, of Vienna, and Toby Allen Hughes, 21, of Seaford, Delaware, were convicted of casting rays with an implement (jacklighting), hunting deer at night, hunting deer from a vehicle, hunting deer during a closed season, and having a loaded weapon in a vehicle.

Judge Melvin J. Jews ordered each man to pay $2,000 in restitution to the state’s Wildlife Management and Protection Fund under the terms of the Poaching Restitution Act of 2016. Payment is due by March 31. Each man also must perform 80 hours of community service.

It's A Girl!!

Trump Says He Is Keeping His Promises to the American People. The People Agree.

New poll shows overwhelming majority say Trump is keeping promises

President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he has been delivering on his campaign promises and the American people overwhelmingly agree, according to a pollreleased early Thursday morning showing that a majority of people on both sides of the aisle agree with Trump on this point.

"I'm keeping my promises to the American people," Trump said in the opening statement of his Thursday press conference. "One promise after another, after years of politicians lying to you to get elected."

"I'm here following through on what I pledged to do," he said. "It's all I'm doing."

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Company Recalls 700,000+ Strollers Due To Fall Hazard

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Britax is recalling 676,00 of its strollers in the U.S., and several thousand more in Canada and Mexico, due to a fall risk.

Britax has received 33 reports of car seats unexpectedly disconnecting from the strollers and falling to the ground, resulting in 26 reports of injuries to children, including scratches, bruises, cuts and bumps to the head.

The recall involves Britax B-Agile and BOB Motion strollers, when used as a travel system with a car seat carrier attached.

All models are folding, single or double strollers and have Click & Go receiver mounts that attach the car seat carrier to the stroller frame.

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Florida Doctors May Discuss Guns With Patients, Court Rules

MIAMI — A federal appeals court cleared the way on Thursday for Florida doctors to talk to their patients about gun safety, overturning a 2011 law that pitted medical providers against the state’s powerful gun lobby.

In its 10-to-1 ruling, the full panel of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit concluded that doctors could not be threatened with losing their license for asking patients if they owned guns and for discussing gun safety because to do so would violate their free speech.

“Florida does not have carte blanche to restrict the speech of doctors and medical professionals on a certain subject without satisfying the demands of heightened scrutiny,” the majority wrote in its decision. In its lawsuit, the medical community argued that questions about gun storage were crucial to public health because of the relationship between firearms and both the suicide rate and the gun-related deaths of children.

A number of doctors and medical organizations sued Florida in a case that came to be known as Docs v. Glocks, after the popular handgun.

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Need I Say More?

I think we've given our viewers today a pretty good idea of what SBYNews is capable of. The nay sayers, quite frankly, can bite me. 

We have EARNED, (by word of mouth) all this traffic and I'll be damned if some group of Liberals are going to belittle and even LIE about how well we do on a daily basis.

Now you can understand why our advertisers do so well. 

Officers’ union: ‘ACLU agreement contributed to Lt. Floyd’s murder’

DOVER — Violent offenders being “down flowed” from maximum security cells to lower security housing at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center may have contributed to the inmate uprising on Feb. 1 that left correctional officer Lt. Steven Floyd dead, claims Geoff Klopp, the president of the Correctional Officers Association of Delaware.

To be in compliance with an American Civil Liberties Union agreement adopted by the Delaware Department of Correction in 2016, Mr. Klopp said inmates known for being violent were “down flowed” to make room for inmates with special mental health needs. The lower security buildings they were being “down flowed” to included C Building, the site of the uprising, he said.

“The ACLU agreement contributed to Lt. Floyd’s murder,” he said. “A lot of those inmates shouldn’t have been in that building (C Building). They should have been in a more secure environment. What happened was that the state chose to enter into this agreement and moved a lot of the violent inmates that were housed in a maximum security setting over to C Building to make room for these mental health inmates who needed a certain type of housing to meet the ACLU requirements.”

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Make up your minds! Is the Road Closed or Open?

 

Big Sale Tomorrow At Preston

Go see Dave Wilson and tell him SBYNews sent you.

Presidents Day Sale!

DC mayor lets 8-week paid family leave bill take effect

WASHINGTON — More than a half-million workers in the nation’s capital will get up to eight weeks of paid family leave under a law that Mayor Muriel Bowser has allowed to take effect without her signature.

Bowser joined many leaders in the business community in opposing the bill, calling it a burden on businesses because it imposes a new tax. She also spoke out against the fact that benefits would be available to people who work in the District but live elsewhere.

“It is wrong to raise District taxes to fund a costly, new government program that sends 66 percent of the benefits outside of the city, and leaves District families behind,” she said in a statement in December, when the D.C. Council gave its final approval.

On Wednesday, Bowser wrote a letter to the council saying she would not veto the bill and hopes to work with lawmakers to address its shortcomings.

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Officer Tommy Norman Is The Best Cop Ever!!!!

Nearly 2 million non-citizen Hispanics illegally registered to vote

A large number of non-citizen Hispanics, as many as 2 million, were illegally registered to vote in the U.S., according to a nationwide poll.

The National Hispanic Survey provides additional evidence for use by anti-voter fraud conservatives and bolsters an analysis by professors at Old Dominion University who say non-citizens registered and voted in potentially large numbers.

President Trump has announced he will appoint a task force on voter fraud headed by Vice President Mike Pence. He says he wants the investigation to focus on inaccurate voter registration rolls, which are maintained by the states and the District of Columbia.

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EXCLUSIVE – NSA Whistleblower: Agency ‘Absolutely’ Tapping Trump’s Calls

William Binney, a former highly placed NSA official turned whistleblower, contended in an exclusive interview today that the National Security Agency (NSA) is “absolutely” monitoring the phone calls of President Donald Trump.

Binney was an architect of the NSA’s surveillance program. He became a famed whistleblower when he resigned on October 31, 2001 after spending more than 30 years with the agency.

Asked whether he believes the NSA is tapping Trump, Binney replied: “Absolutely. How did they get the phone call between the president and the president of Australia? Or the one that he made with Mexico? Those are not targeted foreigners.”

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Maryland Legislators Consider a Bill to Legalize Aid-in-Dying Meds

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — In 2014, Alexa Fraser’s 90-year-old father successfully ended his life with a gun to the head after two failed suicide attempts.

Her father, whom Fraser described as a “fiercely independent person,” suffered from Parkinson’s disease, a progressive movement disorder marked by involuntary tremors and slowed movement. His condition had worsened and he feared he would be kept alive beyond his will in a nursing home so he decided to take action, Fraser said.

Since his death, Fraser has been on the forefront of Maryland’s legal aid-in-dying movement, which advocates to allow patients with a terminal diagnosis to receive a lethal prescription to painlessly end their life.

The Maryland legislature for the third year in a row is considering a joint House and Senate bill that would legalize aid-in-dying. Sponsors of previous bills have withdrawn them before a vote, citing lack of support.

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Truth Hurts

Irish firm tackles burning issue of Maryland’s poultry waste

The first thing a visitor notices when stepping inside two of Brad Murphy’s chicken houses is the smell. Usually, the acrid reek of ammonia assaults the senses upon stepping into a 40,000-bird house. But in these two, there’s barely a whiff.

That’s because Murphy’s farm on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, called Double Trouble, is part of the state’s big experiment in converting animal manure to energy. An Irish firm, BHSL, has installed a $3 million system that burns the poultry waste to heat the houses.

The system curtails the ammonia fumes that not only make poultry houses stink, but also compromise the birds’ health. It also can give farmers a financial boost — they can avoid paying for propane to heat the houses, and even make a little income from selling excess energy generated by the system that’s fed into the electric grid.

Maryland’s Department of Agriculture has committed nearly $3.8 million to try out a variety of manure-to-energy projects, $1 million of which went to the Double Trouble project. It’s the largest investment made by any Chesapeake Bay watershed state toward finding alternative uses for the massive amounts of animal waste generated by poultry, dairy and other livestock farms.

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Nixon Aide Reportedly Admitted Drug War Was Meant To Target Black People

“Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

An eye-opening remark from a former aide to President Richard Nixon pulls back the curtain on the true motivation of the United States’ war on drugs.

John Ehrlichman, who served 18 months in prison for his central role in the Watergate scandal, was Nixon’s chief domestic advisor when the presidentannounced the “war on drugs” in 1971. The administration cited a high death toll and the negative social impacts of drugs to justify expanding federal drug control agencies. Doing so set the scene for decades of socially and economicallydisastrous policies.

Journalist Dan Baum wrote in the April cover story of Harper’s about how he interviewed Ehrlichman in 1994 while working on a book about drug prohibition. Ehrlichman provided some shockingly honest insight into the motives behind the drug war. From Harper’s:

“You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

In other words, the intense racial targeting that’s become synonymous with the drug war wasn’t an unintended side effect ― it was the whole point.

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Negligent Driving Bill Stems From Worcester Tragedy

BERLIN — State Delegate Mary Beth Carozza (R-38C) this week introduced legislation in the General Assembly that would increase the penalties for causing life-threatening injuries while operating a vehicle or vessel in the criminally negligent manner.

One year ago this week, a Stockton man drove through a work zone along a roadway in the south end of Worcester County, killing one county roads department employee and critically injuring another. The driver, Marion Jones, 60, of Stockton, was ultimately indicted on charges of manslaughter, criminal negligence manslaughter, negligent driving and reckless driving.

In August, Jones was found guilty of negligent driving and reckless endangerment and was fined $500 for each conviction. The vehicular manslaughter charges were not prosecuted. The case revealed a gap in current law when it comes to prosecuting individuals who cause life-threatening injuries with a vehicle in a criminally-negligent manner.

Worcester County State’s Attorney Beau Oglesby brought the gap to Carozza’s attention, pointing out the only penalty on the books for Jones and others who cause fatalities and life-threatening injuries with a vehicle was a motor vehicle citation carrying a maximum fine of $500. Carozza this week introduced House Bill 585, which would increase the potential penalties for causing life-threatening injuries while operating a vehicle or a vessel in a criminally-negligent manner to a maximum of two years imprisonment and/or a $5,000 fine.

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To Those Investigators Who Are Trying To Claim SBYNews Is Insignificant

This is just SO FAR today.

The Main Stream Media refuses to deliver you numbers, we are NOT afraid. All one has to do is count the comments today, yesterday, heck, go back and entire week, I don't care. NO ONE is going to imply I/We lie to anyone. None of them will because they know they are NOTHING any more and the only reason they'd want to investigate us is because they are that scared. Well guess what people, it's way too late for that. Numbers don't lie and this day is nowhere near done.

Insignificant, I think not! I can't wait for the Liberals/Investigators to come back with their insignificant complaints like calling me a liar. 

BJ's On The Bay Special

Wednesday night we decided to go to BJ's on the Bay for their stuffed flounder special. It was fantastic and get this, only $12.00! I'm not sure how long they'll continue this special but you should call ahead and make a reservation next week. Enjoy!

Bottom Feeder Chuck Cook Wants To Play On Facebook

Chuck Cook

13 mins · 

 

Looks like Joe Albero is taking pot shots at the Mayor's staff on his little blog. So, I think it's helpful to show a comparison.

Joe Albero That's right Chuck, we refuse to put our staff/contributors in the public eye because of assholes like you.

Like · Reply · 10 mins

Chuck Cook replied · 3 Replies · 9 mins

Joe Albero Figures, that's all you've got. Chuck Cook isn't man enough to hold a intelligent conversation. Be careful Chuck, you may end up on the Blog.

Like · Reply · 6 mins

Chuck Cook Oh noes! Hey, remember that time you ran for mayor and lost 70/30? That must have been so embarrassing for you. I'm sorry, Joe.

Like · Reply · 2 · 5 mins

Write a reply...

Joe Albero Embarrassing, really Chuck? You see, at least I was man enough to run for a public position while you have been a bottom feeder begging for any job a Liberal will give you. Funny how you Liberals conveniently forget I retired a very rich man at 40 years old and stood up to you, Jim Ireton and ALL Liberals in the City of Salisbury. I knocked on thousands of doors, not afraid one little bit to face you loud mouths too afraid to confront me face to face. So Chuck, do tell everyone how much of a MAN you are.

MD Democrats Choose Political Games Over Helping Retirees and Veterans

Democrats in the Maryland House of Delegates chose to pass HJ 3, a resolution that would give Attorney General Brian Frosh expanded powers to sue President Donald Trump and the Federal Government if he sees fit. HJ 3 is a precursor to House Bill 913, which is also named the Maryland Defense Act. HB 913 mandates that Governor Hogan spends $1 million of your tax dollars every year to hire five employees in order to potentially sue the federal government. 

HB 913 isn't the only new spending bill introduced by Democrats in order to "fight President Trump." 13 Democratic Delegates have also introduced House Bill 272 - Sanctuary Campus Status. Aside from the typical sanctuary bill elements, this one includes some massive tax increases. 

The Fiscal Note for the bill states that it will:

• Establish a new entitlement program that could significantly increase Higher education expenditures
• Impose an unfunded mandate on a unit of local government
• Provide a stipend for healthcare for illegal immigrant students in public universities throughout the state
• Provide free housing, or a stipend to cover it, to any illegal immigrant students who may be impacted by federal immigration policy changes. 
• Provide a free lawyer to any students who may be impacted by federal immigration law.
• Provide stipends for free tuition if DACA is reversed

The fiscal note for the bills states that it would raise higher education expenditures significantly and place a huge burden on local government, meaning your local taxes may have to be raised to pay for it. 

We find it very ironic that Democrats feel we have money for these bills, but that these bills are somehow unreasonable:

• Hire more veterans
• Make life more affordable for our retirees
• Help veteran retirees like 26 other states

Governor Hogan is focused on common sense legislation that focuses on Maryland's priorities. The Democratic Establishment in Annapolis seems intent to focus on using your tax dollars to play political games instead.

Long Awaited Jeep Pickup Truck Is Finally Here

Showell VFD Oyster Roast Is Tomorrow!

The Oyster Roast is fast approaching! Saturday, February 18th is when the event kicks off, running from 6pm to 10pm! So, what does your ticket include?! Entry to the oyster roast includes AUCE food including roast beef, fried chicken, raw and steamed oysters, and endless beer and sodas! And after you get your belly full, you can dance the night away as our DJ plays some of the hottest hits!

Tickets run $35 in advance and $40 at the door. See any member or stop by the station for tickets!

Maryland Democrats hire strategist to focus on Hogan

The Maryland Democratic Party announced Tuesday it hired a communications adviser to focus on "holding Gov. Larry Hogan accountable."

Hogan, a popular Republican, has amassed a $5.1 million war chest for his 2018 re-election bid, and Democrats have not coalesced around a candidate to face him.

In recent weeks, the Democratic Party has aggressively sought to tie Hogan to Republican President Donald J. Trump, pressuring the governor to take a position on Trump's controversial travel ban. Hogan has declined to do so.

The Democrats hired Bryan Lesswing to manage the party's "communications and messaging strategy focused on holding Governor Larry Hogan accountable," according to a news release. Lesswing most recently worked as a regional press secretary for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

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Tomorrow In Salisbury, Maryland

Steve Bannon: ‘I Could Care Less’ About Repairing Relationship with ‘Opposition Party’ Media

White House chief strategist Steve Bannon said he “could care less” about repairing a relationship with the mainstream media, which he continues to characterize as the Trump administration’s “opposition party.”

CNN’s Dylan Byers reports:

At the Trump White House, hostility toward the media is the agenda. Trump and many of his top officials believe reporters are so deaf to reality and so unfair to them that the only appropriate response is open warfare. “The opposition party is completely focused on trying to destroy Trump and his administration,” Bannon told me. “It’s not going to happen.”

When asked if he had any interest in repairing the relationship, Bannon replied: “I could care less.”

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Islamist Rebels Slay Christian Pastor in Central African Republic

Muslim rebels brutally stabbed to death a Christian pastor in the Central African Republic (CAR), then proceeded to burn his church to the ground.

In what is being reported as a revenge attack for military operations against the Islamist militia, jihadists attacked Pastor Jean-Paul Sankagui of the Church of Christ in the capital city of Bangui on Feb. 7, stabbing him to death and then torching his church as well as two other Christian churches in the area.

CAR military together with UN peacekeepers recently attempted to capture local Muslim militia leader Youssouf Sy, but the operation failed and Sy and one of his men were killed in the incident.

During the operation, Sy and his men opened fire on the security forces and killed two passers-by, a man and a woman, at which point the military returned fire and killed Sy and another militiaman.

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Bullying, harassment a problem in parts of Fairfax fire department, report says

Bullying, harassment and discrimination are perceived to be problems in parts of the Fairfax County Fire Department, and nearly 40 percent of firefighters responding to a survey had experienced or witnessed it, according to a new report released Wednesday.

The analysis of the culture of the Fairfax County Fire Department was commissioned by the county in the wake of the high-profile suicide of firefighter Nicole Mittendorff, who was the subject of sexist and derogatory comments on a local Web forum before her death in April. It remains unclear who posted the remarks on the Fairfax Underground forum, or whether they played a role in Mittendorff's suicide, but fire department officials have been exploring whether the messages might have been posted by her colleagues.

Mittendorff's death and a series of lawsuits by other female firefighters alleging discrimination and sexual harassment prompted questions about the treatment of women in the department and touched off a discussion nationally about the low number of women in firefighting and the problems they face.

[Female firefighter’s suicide is a ‘fire bell in the night’]

The 53-page report by a management consultant group found strong dedication and pride among the Fairfax department’s 1,400 rank-and-file firefighters, but also issues with bullying, senior leadership and conflict management.

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Iowa State violated First Amendment by barring pro-marijuana student group from printing T-shirts with ISU logo (plus cannabis leaf)

From today’s 8th Circuit decision in Gerlich v. Leath:

Iowa State University (ISU) grants student organizations permission to use its trademarks if certain conditions are met. The ISU student chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML ISU) had several of its trademark licensing requests denied because its designs included a cannabis leaf. …

ISU … [has] approximately 800 officially recognized student organizations. Student groups often create merchandise that contains the group’s name and ISU insignia to generate awareness about the group’s cause or attract members. Student groups may use ISU’s trademarks on merchandise if ISU’s Trademark Licensing Office (Trademark Office) determines that the use complies with ISU’s Guidelines for University Trademark Use by Student and Campus Organizations (Trademark Guidelines). ISU’s trademarks include word marks like “ISU” and “Iowa State,” as well as logos, such as the school’s mascot (Cy the Cardinal).

NORML ISU at first got permission from the Trademark Office to use a T-shirt “that had ‘NORML ISU’ on the front with the ‘O’ represented by Cy the Cardinal,” with “Freedom is NORML at ISU” and a cannabis leaf depicted on the back. But after a Des Moines Register article mentioned the T-shirt, a state legislator and someone at the Governor’s Office of Drug Control Policy heard about this and objected, and the University barred NORML ISU from printing further T-shirts with the design. After that, the University’s Trademark Guidelines were changed to ban “designs that suggest promotion of the below listed items … dangerous, illegal or unhealthy products, actions or behaviors; … [or] drugs and drug paraphernalia that are illegal or unhealthful.”

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Animist wins appeal to thwart Christian prayer in public meetings

A federal court of appeals is siding with an animist who said members of a public board in Michigan violated the First Amendment by personally opening monthly meetings with Christian prayers.

The Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit reversed and remanded the case to the district court in a 2-1 ruling Wednesday. The appellate court said the Jackson County Board of Commissioners ran afoul of the establishment clause because the prayers were coercive, exclusively Christian and burdened residents who refused to take part in them.

“Accordingly, we hold that the Board of Commissioners’ use of prayer to begin its monthly meetings violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause,” Judge Karen N. Moore wrote in the majority opinion. “The prayer practice is well outside the tradition of historically tolerated prayer, and it coerces Jackson County residents to support and participate in the exercise of religion.”

The lawsuit was brought by Peter Bormuth, a Jackson County resident and self-described pagan and animist who attributes conscious life to ordinary objects and natural phenomena. His religious practices include worshiping the Sun and Moon, ancestral spirits and Mother Earth.

All nine members of the Jackson County Board are Christians.

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Fake Media — CNN’s Marc Lamont Hill: Conservatives Start Violent Campus Riots, Too

CNN’s Marc Lamont Hill, who is also a professor at Morehouse College, claimed that right-wing students incite riots on college campuses while discussing the Berkeley riots left-wing students over the appearance of Breitbart News’ MILO.

Speaking after the UC Berkeley riots, CNN commentator Ben Ferguson argued that campus leftists need to learn how to respond to speech with less destructive means.

“Liberals need to grow up on college campuses because people are actually getting hurt now,” Ferguson said the day after the riots.

In response, Hill suggested that right-wing students engage in similar destructive behavior on college campuses, but when pressed failed to back up his claim with examples.

“I think it’s also a bit inaccurate to say that this is a problem purely on the left. I think we have intolerance on the left and on the right,” said Hill.

“I traveled to college speaking circuits all the time in school, and the right boycotts, they write letters not to let me in,” he added. Despite this claim, there are no reports that any of his speaking engagements have actually been canceled due to protest.

When challenged whether his critics engage in the type of violence seen at Berkeley, Hill deflected by citing incidents that have occurred away from the campus. “They don’t always go to the college campus. They sometimes blow up abortion clinics; sometimes they burn down mosques; they sometimes shoot up churches,” he said.

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Maryland Republicans Propose Modernizing State Pension Plan

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Maryland Republican lawmakers are proposing some options to modernize the state pension system.

Legislation discussed Thursday would give employees the ability to move all retirement benefits to a new job after three years.

Sen. Andrew Serafini, a Washington County Republican, says the proposals are aimed at starting a conversation that Maryland needs to make changes to its pension system. He says the options would help create predictability and stop the state from digging deeper unfunded liabilities.

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Senate Democrats in Indiana, North Dakota and Missouri face ‘coin flip’ re-elections

Sens. Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Claire McCaskill of Missouri are the most vulnerable Democrats heading into the 2018 mid-term elections, according to a new forecast.

Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana also remain top pickup opportunities for Republicans, who are dreaming of gaining a veto proof 60-seat majority.

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What is NAFTA, and what would happen to U.S. trade without it?

President Trump has put the North American Free Trade Agreement — NAFTA — on notice. Canada and Mexico are gearing up to renegotiate the agreement, and Trump has stated that a failure to conclude a renegotiated deal to his liking could lead the United States to withdraw.

Here are five key things you need to know about NAFTA.

More/Video

President Trump orders Justice probe of intel leaks

President Trump said Thursday he’s ordered a Justice Department probe of leaks of classified information and defended fired national security adviser Michael Flynn, saying “he was just doing his job” by talking to a Russian diplomat before the inauguration.

“We are looking into that very seriously,” Mr. Trump said of leaks from U.S. intelligence agencies. “It’s a criminal act. We’ve got to stop it.”

Mr. Trump said he believes the leaks are coming from “people probably from the Obama administration” who are holdovers in the new administration.

In a wide-ranging news conference about his first month in office, Mr. Trump refuted allegations that some of his campaign officials had contact with Russian operatives before the election. The president said neither he nor his associates have connections with Russia.

“I own nothing in Russia. I don’t have any deals in Russia,” he said.

The president also spoke at length about his firing of Mr. Flynn..

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Daytona veteran beaten up for trying to save turtle's life, police say

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Three young men were arrested Tuesday after police said they beat up a Navy veteran who asked them to stop torturing a turtle, according to Daytona Beach police.

A woman was walking her toddler around a pond at Wedgewood Apartments and told police she saw three men torturing a turtle. She went home and told her husband, Gary Blough, they were “smashing up a turtle.”

Blough went outside and said he saw a group of three men repeatedly abusing the animal, according to the police report.

"The one had it over his head and he was smashing it down on the sidewalk," Blough said. "I asked them to please leave it alone, just let it go to the lake."

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Dem Senator Says Debt Ceiling Could Be Used as Hostage for Hearings

Sen. Chris Coons (D., Del.) agreed with MSNBC's Katy Tur on Wednesday that Senate Democrats could hold the debt ceiling as hostage in order to convince Republicans to investigate former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.

Tur asked Coons what Democrats could do as they are in the minority in both houses of Congress.

Coons said he hoped they would get a subpoena against Flynn, and if an investigation could not move forward they would look towards having a private investigation outside of Congress.

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71-Year-Old Dana Rohrabacher Staffer Knocked Unconscious by Anti-Trump Protesters

A 71-year-old staffer for Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) was knocked unconscious by anti-Trump protesters as she attempted to leave her office,according to a report from CBS Los Angeles.

Kathleen Staunton, who works as Rohrabacher’s district director, had the door of her Huntington Beach office yanked open in front of her as she tried to leave, causing her to trip, hit her head, and fall unconscious. A two-year-old girl also got caught up in the incident, but thankfully was not harmed.

In a statement, Rohrabacher said that he was “outraged beyond words that protesters who mobbed my Huntington Beach office violently knocked down my faithful district director, Kathleen Staunton, causing her to be hospitalized.”

“And, yes, deliberate or not, the incident came as part of a mob action that not only intimidates but coerces. Though the protesters think of themselves as idealists, they engaged in political thuggery, pure and simple,” he continued.

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