WCSO Press Release - May 28, 2015

Incident: Sex Abuse of a Minor

Date of Incident: 28 May 2015

Location: Wicomico County

Suspect: Kelly Michelle Riddle, 32, Salisbury, MD

Narrative: On 5 May 2015 the Wicomico County Sheriff’s Office began investigating a series of written communications between a teacher at Bennett Middle School and a 14 year old student.  The teacher, Kelly Riddle allegedly sent frequent text messages to the juvenile that were interpreted as expressing love and affection. During the investigation it was revealed that the messaging had been ongoing for over 11 months between the teacher and student.

Riddle was indicted by a Wicomico County Grand Jury on 18 May 2015 on the charges of Sex Abuse of a Minor and Attempted Sex Abuse of a Minor. Riddle was released from the Wicomico County Detention Center after posting a bond of $25,000.00.

Charges: Sex Abuse of a Minor and Attempted Sex Abuse of a Minor    

        

Releasing Authority: Lt. Tim Robinson                                          

D.C. Subway System May Post Advocacy Group's Ad Depicting Prophet Muhammad

Washington's transit system is weighing whether to allow a subway ad featuring a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad that won first prize at an event in Texas this month that was attacked by two gunmen.

The Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a standard review of an ad submitted by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, Metro spokesman Mike Tolbert said on Wednesday.

The advertisement calls for Americans to support free speech, and features a cartoon of a bearded, turban-wearing Mohammad waving a sword and shouting: "You can't draw me!"

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Chris Pratt and son adorably say the Pledge of Allegiance together

National Review: Elizabeth Warren Made Over $240K Flipping Foreclosed Homes

A new report claims Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and her husband made thousands of dollars by buying and selling foreclosed homes.

According to National Review, Warren and her husband took in at least $240,500 by flipping houses between 1993 and 1998. And she allegedly did so before stitching together her political career by standing up for everyday Americans — particularly in the face of bigger fish trying to make money off the lower class.

Warren, a Democrat, has also campaigned for consumer protection and helped spearhead the creation of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And she's talked about the economy and helping Americans improve their financial situations.

The National Review story claims Warren and her husband flipped at least five houses in Oklahoma City for profit, including a home built in 1924 that they sold for $115,000 more than they paid for it.

"I don't think it's right, but I don't really know much about it. … You flip houses to make a profit, so I can't really fault [Warren] much," the granddaughter of the previous owner of the home built in 1924 told National Review. "I think my grandmother made a mistake by selling it for so cheap. … She had worked hard all her life and was a self-made woman."

Warren has said she voted Republican before moving left in the mid-1990s.

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Schools Ask 12-year-olds If They've Had Anal Sex

Schools across America don’t need Common Core or its invasive testing component to dig deep into a student’s personal and family life.

Public-school systems have been awash in a culture of privacy-destroying data mining for years, say experts on student privacy.

The recent bombshell reported by MassResistance.org showed that students as young as 13 or 14 are being given surveys asking their sexual orientation, how often they have sex, whether it is anal, oral or vaginal sex, how often they carry guns or other weapons, and the list goes on.

“This is obscene,” said Boston radio talker Jeff Kuhner, host of “The Kuhner Report,” which did an hour-long show on the survey earlier this month.

Kuhner was talking about the popular “Youth Risk Behavior Survey,” which is given to children in Massachusetts schools, grades 7-12, as well as schools across the country.

The main reason the surveys are given is to create misleading “statistics” that are used by radical groups from Planned Parenthood to LGBT groups, which use the data to persuade politicians to give more taxpayer money to their organizations – and let them into schools to help solve the “huge” problems that the surveys reveal, according to Mass Resistance, which has filed a bill in the Massachusetts Legislature requiring written permission from a parent and requiring schools to show the surveys to parents before subjecting students to them.

“It is a very emotional appeal, and millions of dollars are budgeted on the basis of these very questionable surveys,” the group says on its website.

Mass Resistance says the surveys, which have been conducted in public schools since 1991 (with questions recreated every two years), are invasive, damaging to young minds and “grossly unscientific.”

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Bill Gates Fears Plague That Could Wipe Out Humanity

ISIS Using Baltimore Riots To Recruit 'Dissatisfied' Blacks

TEL AVIV – ISIS is taking advantage of racial tensions in the U.S. by attempting to recruit dissatisfied Muslims among the American black population.

This according to Abu Saqer, leader of Jihadiya Salafiya, an Islamist militant group in the Gaza Strip. Jihadiya Salafiya represents al-Qaida in Gaza and has made statements in support of ISIS.

Saqer, speaking to WND from Gaza, would not provide further details other than to confirm ISIS is taking advantage of what he described as the “growing movement within the black community toward Islam and the racist policies of the U.S. government.”

Saqer said he was not aware of whether ISIS actually recruited any dissatisfied black Muslims within the U.S. or whether any such cells have been established.

He said Arabic Internet forums supportive of ISIS were “encouraged” by what he claimed was a pro-ISIS T-shirt worn by Ferguson protesters that became popular on social media.

The London Daily Mail reported last November that ISIS jihadists pledged on Twitter to send militants to fight police in Ferguson if protesters there commit to Islam.

The same article quoted London-born jihadist Junaid Hussain, who now goes by the name Abu Hussain al-Britani, tweeting a photograph of a handwritten letter urging the Ferguson protesters to “reject corrupt man-made laws like democracy” and declare their allegiance to ISIS’ leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who is believed to have been severely injured in a recent airstrike.

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Popularity Pushes Mann’s Vanishing Ocean City Into Second Printing

BERLIN – Less than a year after it was released, the overwhelmingly popular Vanishing Ocean City has gone into a second printing.

Local author Bunk Mann released Vanishing Ocean City, a photo-dominated historical account of the beach town, in September after years of work. He had 5,000 copies and hoped to sell them over the course of two summers. Six months later, he has fewer than two dozen books left.

“It’s been really gratifying,” Mann said. “The locals have really supported the book.”

To ensure that tourists and summer residents have the opportunity to pick up a copy, a second printing of the coffee table book has been arranged.

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Obama's Immigration Ploy Both Incompetent And Unconstitutional

It turns out President Barack Obama was right the first time when, in 2012, he explained why he could not change immigration law on his own: "There are enough laws on the books by Congress that are very clear in terms of how we have to enforce our immigration system that for me to simply, through executive order, ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as president."

A federal appeals court has refused to lift an injunction against Obama’s executive action of last year, which ruled out deporting some four million undocumented people now in the U.S. and created a path for them to win legal status. Texas and 25 other states sued to halt what they called an effective "amnesty," saying the policy didn’t come with the usual public notice and comment period and unconstitutionally forced them to bear new costs in having to issue drivers licenses and other social services such as healthcare and education.

President Obama is now likely going to have to wait until mid-2017 before the Supreme Court delivers a final opinion — and one that many legal experts believe will go against him.

Hispanics and members of other immigrant groups have a right to be angry with Obama. First, he failed to tackle immigration in 2009 and 2010 when his party had overwhelming control of Congress. Then he allowed the problem to fester for several years, chose not to compromise with House Republicans and pass modest reforms first as a confidence-building measure, and then sprang his surprise executive action with almost no consultation.

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Why We Don’t Keep Secrets In Our House {Child Abuse Prevention}

About a month ago, our family was having dinner with some friends at their house. I walked into the kitchen just as the other mom, while winking at me, handed my son a second cookie and whispered, “shhhh. It’s a secret. Don’t tell your mom.” To my delight {and surprise}, my son exclaimed, “Oooooh, but we don’t keep secrets in our house. We do surprises.” In that moment I thought, he gets it and he’s not afraid to say it, thank goodness.

You see, thanks to an excellent Sexual Abuse Prevention workshop that my husband and I attended, called Parenting Safe Children, we have a “no secrets” rule in our house. We have this rule because secrecy is a key ingredient to the sexual abuse of a child. In fact, sexual predators count on the fact that the child will keep a secret. Sometimes they even test the child by asking him to keep small, innocent secrets first to see if he will keep bigger ones later. So, when we teach our children that we don’t keep secrets, even about small and seemingly harmless things like a cookie, we are also instilling in them that they don’t have to keep big and unsafe secrets, like that of someone touching them inappropriately.

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Baltimore residents fearful amid rash of homicides

BALTIMORE (AP) — Antoinette Perrine has barricaded her front door since her brother was killed three weeks ago on a basketball court near her home in the Harlem Park neighborhood of West Baltimore. She already has iron bars outside her windows and added metal slabs on the inside to deflect the gunfire.

"I'm afraid to go outside," said Perrine, 47. "It's so bad, people are afraid to let their kids outside. People wake up with shots through their windows. Police used to sit on every corner, on the top of the block. These days? They're nowhere."

Perrine's brother is one of 36 people killed in Baltimore so far this month, already the highest homicide count for May since 1999. But while homicides are spiking, arrests have plunged more than 50 percent compared to last year.

The drop in arrests followed the death of Freddie Gray from injuries he suffered in police custody. Gray's death sparked protests against the police and some rioting, and led to the indictment of six officers.

Now West Baltimore residents worry they've been abandoned by the officers they once accused of harassing them. In recent weeks, some neighborhoods have become like the Wild West without a lawman around, residents said.

"Before it was over-policing. Now there's no police," said Donnail "Dreads" Lee, 34, who lives in the Gilmor Homes, the public housing complex where Gray, 25, was arrested.

"I haven't seen the police since the riots," Lee said. "People feel as though they can do things and get away with it. I see people walking with guns almost every single day, because they know the police aren't pulling them up like they used to."

Police Commissioner Anthony Batts said last week his officers "are not holding back" from policing tough neighborhoods, but they are encountering dangerous hostility in the Western District.

"Our officers tell me that when officers pull up, they have 30 to 50 people surrounding them at any time," Batts said.

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O.Care to add Billions in Insurance Overhead Costs

Obamacare will cost insurers more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in additional administrative costs by 2022, a new study released Wednesday says.

The findings published in Health Affairs magazine call for a universal single-payer system because it would reduce, rather than add, to administrative costs.

The report says that over the eight years through 2022, the Affordable Care Act will tack on $273.6 billion in overhead. Some of that will be added to Medicare and Medicaid programs, but the bulk of it — $172.2 billion — will be borne by private insurance. That total increase, in both government and private insurance programs, amounts to $1,375 for each newly insured person a year, or roughly 22.5% of total government expenditures.

“Insuring 25 million additional Americans, as the [Congressional Budget Office] projects the ACA will do, is surely worthwhile. But the administrative cost of doing so seems awfully steep, particularly when much cheaper alternatives are available,” the report says.

It goes on to say: “Traditional Medicare runs for 2% overhead, somewhat higher than insurance overhead in universal single-payer systems like Taiwan’s or Canada’s. Yet traditional Medicare is a bargain compared to the ACA strategy of filtering most of the new dollars through private insurers and private HMOs that subcontract for much of the new Medicaid coverage.”

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Martin O’Malley gets the blues for his campaign announcement

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley has signed up a blues band to entertain the crowd at a rally in Baltimore this weekend where he is expected to announce his run for president.

Mr. O’Malley, who fronts his own Irish folk rock band, opted for the Baltimore-based Kelly Bell Band to provide the soundtrack for his big announcement, reported The Baltimore Sun.

Once he makes it official, Mr. O’Malley will join Vermont Sen. Bernard Sanders, who had a Zydeco band at his campaign kickoff Tuesday, and front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has yet to host a campaign rally with live music, in the quest for the Democratic presidential nomination.

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Obama And His Daughter Just Received A Truly Bizarre Offer From A Kenyan Lawyer

According to a report, a lawyer from Kenya has a very unusual offer for the hand of President Obama’s daughter, Malia, in marriage.

Agence-France Presse reported that Felix Kiprono is willing to part with 50 cows, 70 sheep, and 30 goats in exchange for marrying the first daughter. “I got interested in her in 2008,” Kiprono said. The 16-year-old Malia was only 10 at the time.

“As a matter of fact, I haven’t dated anyone since and promise to be faithful to her. I have shared this with my family and they are willing to help me raise the bride price,” he said.

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Photo of slain officer's newborn daughter touching hearts

A photo of the newborn daughter of an Omaha police officer who was fatally shot a day before her daughter was scheduled to be released from the hospital is touching the hearts of many on social media.

Omaha Police officer Kerrie Orozco was looking forward to taking her preemie daughter home from the hospital. She delayed taking her maternity leave until little three-month-old Olivia came home.

Sadly, Kerrie died before Olivia was released from the hospital. She was fatally shot last Wednesday by a fugitive who was fatally wounded by another officer.

A photo was recently posted to Twitter that shows Kerrie Orozco's daughter Olivia wearing a blue onesie that says "Keep Calm and Kerrie On".

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State Dept. Stonewalls About Temporary IG

State Department officials are battling a pair of Freedom of Information Act requests for emails and memos that discuss the agency's temporary inspector general and the influence Hillary Clinton and her staff may have had on his oversight of the agency.

Citizens United, a conservative nonprofit, also sought any documentation of high-level discussions about a February 2013 inspector general report published just as Clinton exited the State Department in the FOIA requests it filed in September of last year.

The State Department argued Friday the "nature and scope" of the group's requests were too broad to estimate how many records might have mentioned the interim inspector general, the controversial report or a Government Accountability Office report from April 2011 that raised many of the same concerns about allowing a temporary watchdog to head the agency.

State Department officials noted in the court filings that they expect to finish digitizing the 55,000 printed pages of emails Clinton turned over to the agency last year by mid-June.

According to the 2013 inspector general report in question, the agency's Bureau of Diplomatic Security Special Investigation Division was susceptible to "undue influence" from senior State Department officials.

Investigators with the diplomatic security office faced "a significant potential for undue influence, favoritism, and potential retribution," the report said.

"[S]ome [investigators] had indeed felt such pressure," the inspector general wrote.

Lawmakers have questioned why the State Department opted to leave the inspector general position empty for more than five years, creating the longest such vacancy in the history of any federal agency.

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MAINE SENATE VOTES TO ELIMINATE CONCEALED HANDGUN PERMITS

State may become sixth in nation to not require permits for concealed handguns

Senate lawmakers in the northeastern state of Maine have approved a bill that would eliminate the need for concealed carry handgun permits, instituting a concept popularly known as “constitutional carry.”

In a 21-14 vote Thursday, the republican-controlled Senate approved L.D. 652, “An Act To Authorize the Carrying of Concealed Handguns without a Permit.”

The bill would allow members of the public “not prohibited from possessing a firearm to carry a concealed handgun without a permit.”

Pro-gun politicians hailed the bill’s passage as a major step forward in securing the rights of law-abiding gun owners.

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Clinton Foundation Hit With Racketeering Lawsuit

Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation have been hit with a racketeering lawsuit in Florida court.

The lawsuit, filed by Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch, includes a legal request to have the Florida judge seize the private server on which Hillary Clinton and her aides hosted their emails while she served as secretary of state.

Klayman has filed dozens of lawsuits against the Clintons and other prominent politicians.

The racketeering, influenced and corrupt organizations, or RICO, case alleges the former first couple and their family philanthropy traded political favors for donations or generous speaking fees for Bill Clinton while his wife was the nation's chief diplomat.

"Negotiations by email about influencing U.S. foreign policy or U.S. Government actions to benefit donors to ... The Clinton Foundation or sponsors of speaking engagements would not be captured on a U.S. Government email account because her emails would not be with a U.S. Government official," Klayman said in court documents obtained by the Washington Examiner.

"Hillary Clinton deleted 32,000 email messages from her email server that included her communications arranging, negotiating, and agreeing upon speaking engagements by Bill Clinton in return for large speaking fees and donations to The Clinton Foundation," the documents, dated May 20, said.

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Financial Insanity Grips The World

Rare is the person who is a realist. We collectively live in a world of pretend and extend. Every one of us wants our present civilization to continue, though for countless millions the world has already turned upside down as unemployment has soared and war and terrorism proliferate. The very structure of life in our world is threatened because madmen have undermined the financial system through the creation of debt instead of wealth. We have collectively borrowed against our children’s future until their very future is in doubt.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal thinks that insanity grips the western world. I have to agree and no one who reads the news would disagree. In the “The Sane Society” prominent psychotherapist Erich Fromm suggested that Western society as a whole was lacking in sanity; that the inequities and disharmonies of the entire society were pathological, not just the mental illnesses of people therein.

The newest mirror of financial insanity are the negative interest rates. Today if you are a manager of other people’s money, like a pension fund manager, you are forced to lend out hard-earned money at a loss, to buy worthless paper, issued by governments who only pretend they will be in any position to pay back. Bloombergwrites, “Negative interest rates are an odd fish in the world of finance given that they basically wreak havoc on a central tenet of investing; that investors will be compensated in some way for, you know, investing in things.”

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Ocean City’s New Street Performer Law Nears Passage

OCEAN CITY – A draft ordinance regulating Boardwalk performers heads to first reading on Monday evening and if all goes to plan the law will go into effect by the end of July.

Ocean City has been struggling with the proliferation of street performers on the Boardwalk for several years. Issues have grown as the number of performers increase every year and the acts diversify from spray paint fumes to costumed characters to a pole dancer. However, court rulings in recent years protecting street performers’ First Amendment rights have prevented the town from strictly regulating the acts on the Boardwalk.

In the beginning of the year, the Boardwalk Task Force was created to specifically look into these concerns, and after two public hearings, the Task Force submitted a formal recommendation to the Mayor and City Council about a month ago.

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