A two-year-old boy from Corsicana, Texas, a town of just under 24,000 people located between Dallas and Waco, shot himself in the head Wednesday night with his father’s handgun while his dad was looking away, police said. The victim was identified as Kinsler Allen Davis, according to The…
Texas pastor tried to coerce high school girl into stripping for him
Texas pastor Jeffrey Dale Williams of the Church of Corinth was arrested and jailed Wednesday on charges of “attempted sexual performance of a child” for trying to coerce an underaged girl into taking off her clothes. According to Dallas-Ft. Worth’s WFAA, Williams’ attempted…
George W. Bush on paintings: I take “great delight in bursting stereotypes”
Prolific artist George W. Bush has opened up about his paintings, which first surfaced earlier this year when hacker Guccifer released emails containing W.’s nude portraits. Since then, the world has been blessed with the former president’s paintings of dogs, shells, cats, dogs, landscapes and more dogs.In an exclusive interview with the The Dallas Morning News this weekend, Bush opened up about his new hobby. “People are surprised,” he said. “Of course, some people are surprised I can even read.”Continue Reading… … Read More
Texas Supreme Court bars sentimental value suits from dog owners
The Texas Supreme Court ruled on Friday that bereaved dog owners cannot file lawsuits calling for their pets’ sentimental value. The Dallas Morning News reported on Friday that, per the ruling, dog owners can only be legally compensated for the market cost of their pets. “Under Texas…
Texas A&M students pass measure to defund LGBT campus groups, State House considers similar proposal
Texas A&M University’s Student Senate approved a measure to allow students to deny funding to campus LGBT groups if they have religious objections. Meanwhile, the Texas House of Representatives is currently considering a proposal to defund all LGBT campus resource centers.The hearing and subsequent vote on the measure at A&M was an emotionally charged event, as reported by the Dallas Voice:Less than 24 hours before the vote, the name of the bill was changed from the “GLBT Funding Opt Out Bill” to the “The Religious Funding Exemption Bill,” and specific references to the GLBT Resource Center were removed. However, opponents of the bill who packed a Student Senate meeting before the vote Wednesday said the name change did not alter the bill’s discriminatory, anti-gay intent. With the crowd spilling into the hallways, an overflow viewing room was set up, and the Senate meeting had to be stopped several times so administrators could clear fire exits, according to a report in The Eagle of Bryan-College Station. Emotions ran high, with senators cursing and the woman assigned to tally their votes bursting into tears.Continue Reading… … Read More
Assistant U.S. attorney bails on Aryan Brotherhood case over ‘security reasons’
An assistant U.S. attorney in Houston sent an email on Tuesday explaining that he’s backing out of a racketeering case against members of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas due to concerns about his security, The Dallas Morning News reported. The revelation was contained in a short email sent by…
Anonymous hacktivist’s mom faces $100k fine for hiding computer
Karen McCutchin, the mom of the 31-year-old imprisoned activist, pleaded guilty last week to a charge of obstructing the execution of a search warrant. Now McCutchin waits for sentencing, where she could be asked to pay $100,000 and spend a year in prison.McCutchin’s trouble with the law began the same day that matters started worsening for her son, who now stands to face a maximum sentencing for his own crimes extending up to 100 years in prison.On March 6, 2012, officers with the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided Brown’s Dallas, Texas apartment in an attempt to execute a search warrant for computers that could contain information involving two hacktivist groups — namely Anonymous and their offshoot, LulzSec — as well as records relating to his personal Twitter account and any online chats he may have participated in. Also listed on the warrant were records relating to Brown’s personal website for an online think-tank he founded called Project PM and the companies that both that group and Anonymous investigated, including government contractors InfraGard, Endgame Systems and HB Gary.When authorities arrived at Brown’s apartment, though, he wasn’t around. He later said that he had been tipped off about the investigation and took his computers to his mother’s house nearby where he was met shortly later by investigators.“They told me that they’d executed a search warrant at my apartment and that the door had been broken in the process, and then asked me if I had any laptops with me here at my mom’s place that I wanted to give them. I responded in the negative, and they left,” Brown said in a dispatch published the next day. “At any rate, the Feds came back a couple of hours later with a search warrant for my mom’s place – they fully intended to take a certain laptop, and did.” Between the two visits, Brown and McCutchin allegedly hid the computers.Brown would later write from behind bars, “I cannot forget how my mom cried on March 6th after the FBI had left with my equipment and hers, and how she whispered through tears that she wanted to be able to protect me from prison but couldn’t.”It was six months before Brown was actually brought into custody later that year in September, but it took three weeks before prosecutors pinned any charges on him. In the first of three indictments filed against Brown, he was charged in October with making threats against government officials. Weeks later in December, he was charged with sharing a link that contained pilfered data that members of Anonymous and LulzSec hacked from private intelligence firm Stratfor. Then in January 2013, Brown was indicted for obstruction.Although McCutchin was not identified by name in January’s indictment, Brown frequently engaged in public discussion before being imprisoned about how the authorities were after his mom. Then nearly one year after the March 2012 raid, a federal grand jury said there was enough evidence to formally accuse Brown and “K.M” of concealing two laptops at McCutchin’s home.The plea deal, first reported by the Dallas Observer, was signed on March 22 and says that McCutchin agrees to waive her rights to a trial by jury and will admit guilt to the one count of obstruction the execution of a search warrant.As the Observer’s Eric Nicholson acknowledges, Brown quite vocally warned days before being arrested that the authorities would go after his mom for obstructing justice.“The charges against McCutchin are hardly unexpected. It was threat of prosecution against his mother that seemed to really set Brown off, and her role in obstructing the FBI (she was referred to as “KM”) was alluded to in Brown’s indictment for concealing evidence,” Nicholson writes.Barrett Brown is expected to stand trial in September, at which point he will have spent an entire year behind bars without a conviction. In an interview Brown gave Vice Magazine from behind bars that was published on Tuesday, Brown said that he wasn’t worried about his case.“They don’t have their shit together in terms of going through what they spied on me regarding,” Brown said, “and I obviously know what’s there in that evidence.”After the raid last year that ended with the loss of his computers, Brown wrote that he hoped the incident would motivate others to investigate the same firms that the FBI searched his laptops for information on.“I am happy to post this list as it contains the names of two firms – HBGary and Endgame Systems – which I will now have particular opportunity to discuss, in a more public setting, as this matter proceeds,” he wrote. … Read More
