Miami Florida Another Bath Salt Incident; Naked Man Threaten 3 Year Old Girl, ” Come Here Little Girl I Want To Stick It In You”

NORTH MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (WSVN) — Police say a designer drug called Bath Salts may be to blame after a naked man made a threatening and crude comment to a little girl in front of her mother, just feet from a police station.

Authorities arrested Shane Schuler on Thursday after he was allegedly naked in a children’s playground behind the North Miami Beach Police Headquarters.

Police say Schuler approached a 3-year-old girl and said, “Come here pretty girl, I’m wanna stick it in you.”

When police took Schuler in custody, he had Bath Salts on his person.

The discussion of the dangers of drugs, specifically bath salts, synthetic and designer drugs is on the rise after Rudy Eugene’s violent attack: chewing off 80 percent of Ronald Poppo’s face under the MacArthur Causeway.

Designer drugs are known to lead to hallucinations and violent acts.

Another recent case involving synthetic drugs surrounded homeless man Brandon DeLeon, who police thought to be on a drug called ‘Cloud 9.’ According to police, DeLeon tried to bite off an officer’s hand while in custody.

While Eugene’s toxicology report is still pending, the personnel file of the officer who shot and killed Eugene has been released.

Miami Police Officer Jose Ramirez has been with the department since 2008. The officer’s personnel file was relatively thin with numerous commendations, only one minor complaint and two incidents of use of force.

Eugene allegedly growled at Ramirez before he was fatally shot. He was also naked.

Video Here

Bath salts are thought to raise body temperature, leading to overheating and agitation.

 

Russia, China ‘decisively against’ Syria intervention

Russia and China strongly opposed intervention and regime change in Syria, said a joint statement released on Wednesday after Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Chinese leaders.

“Russia and China are decisively against attempts to regulate the Syrian crisis with outside military intervention, as well as imposing a policy of regime change, including within the Security Council,” the statement said.

Developments in Syria “are significant for peace and stability in the Middle East and the entire world” and should be regulated through political dialogue among all participants of the conflict, it added.

The two countries also urged support for the peace plan put forward by UN special envoy Kofi Annan.

Russia and China “are convinced of the necessity of strengthening consolidated international support of (Annan’s plan), and persuading all participants of the conflict to immediately stop armed conflict”.

Source 

 

Orlando man with Zimmerman’s old phone number slammed by threatening calls

At age 49, Junior Alexander Guy got his first cell phone last month. The calls started immediately.

Strangers called at all hours. Some were insulting. Others angry. Sometimes, they threatened him.

“You murderer!”

“You deserve to die!”

By Day 2 he figured out what was going on: T-Mobile had given him the phone number formerly used by George Zimmerman, the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who fatally shot Trayvon Martin in February.

The number —407-435-2400 — was the one Zimmerman spelled out to a police dispatcher in a recorded call the night of the shooting that has since been widely circulated by news organizations and is available on the Internet.

Guy, who works at an Orlando wastewater plant, said his phone rang around the clock.

“At 2 o’clock, 3 o’clock in the morning I kept getting these,” he said.

He estimates he received 70 threatening calls.

He has moved out of his home and relocated his mother, who had lived with him, to a different location, he said.

“I was not only afraid for my life, I was afraid for my mother’s,” he said.

He got the phone May 7. On May 16, he turned the phone over to Orlando lawyer Robert Trimble. Since then, the phone has been in Trimble’s safe.

The lawyer has asked T-Mobile to pay damages. He would not say how much.

T-Mobile has said no, according to its top lawyer, Aram Meade.

“They’re not looking to provide my client any compensation for what they’ve exposed him to,” Trimble complained.

Meade said his company had offered to change the number, something that happened Thursday, the same day Trimble requested it.

Also Thursday, the company retired the number, said Glenn Zaccara, a company spokesman. And it provided an account credit and waived an early termination fee, he wrote in an email.

Guy had never had a cell phone, in part, because he got out of prison last year after serving 19 years on a cocaine trafficking charge. It was his third time in state prison, according to Florida Department of Corrections records.

Criminal history or no criminal history, Trimble said, Guy was given Zimmerman’s old phone number, and evidence supports his claim that he was being pummeled by harassing calls.

“I’m asking them for a fair and reasonable sum,” Trimble said.

The 28-year-old Zimmerman is currently in the Seminole County Jail, awaiting trial on a second-degree murder charge.

Source 

 

 

Scott Walker Survives Recall, but Investigations May Zero In on Him

Walker survives his recall fight, but reports he may be the target of two separate probes into shady dealings could still bring him down, reports Matt DeLuca.

Scott Walker faced down Wisconsin’s voters, but he may yet have to do battle with the legal system

An investigation by the Milwaukee district attorney’s office into misconduct by people tied to the controversial Wisconsin Republican during his two terms as county executive is circling closer to Walker, with one reporter alleging this week that the governor has become the target of both the probe and a separate federal investigation.

The D.A.’s John Doe investigation into associates of Walker during his time as the Milwaukee county executive, launched in 2010, has to date led to charges against six people, including Walker’s former deputy chief of staff. While Walker himself has not been charged with wrongdoing, the investigation is ongoing and over the past seven weeks Walker has transferred $160,000 from his campaign to a legal-defense fund that he maintains is to cover the expense of cooperating with the probe.

A John Doe investigation, similar to grand juries in many states, is a sub rosa investigation in which prosecutors can subpoena witnesses and bar them from publicly discussing the matter under investigation. Walker first met with prosecutors in Milwaukee County in February to discuss the investigation. He denied wrongdoing in a statement at the time, saying that he brought two defense lawyers to the meeting to ensure that he was “in the best position possible to continue aiding the inquiry.”

But the governor’s defense fund has raised eyebrows. Walker has said that the money in the fund will only go to legal fees incurred by himself or his campaign, and not his aides. Though he has not been personally charged with any crimes as a result of the investigation, he has said that he needs the war chest to cover the expense of providing documents to lead investigator and Milwaukee District Attorney John Chisholm, a Democrat.

Walker has continued to say that he does not know himself to be a target of the investigation, and that his defense fund was set up under the guidance of the state’s Government Accountability Board.

Continued 

 

Wisconsin Democrats: We control the state Senate

MADISON- Senate Democrats are moving ahead as if they have regained control of the chamber through Tuesday’s recall elections even though the crucial race is too close to call.

The Senate stood divided 16-16 between Republicans and Democrats heading into the elections. Unofficial results from the race in Racine’s 21st Senate District showed Democratic challenger John Lehman leading incumbent Republican Sen. Van Wanggaard by less than 800 votes, and Wanggaard has refused to concede.

Senate Democratic Leader Mark Miller has declared himself majority leader regardless. He held a news conference Wednesday afternoon to say he’s already spoken to Republican Senate Leader Mark Miller about the details of the transition.

“There’s a lot of unfinished business and we look forward to taking the issues that are confronting our state, particularly job creation and opening up the governmental process,” said Miller in a press conference Wednesday.

Republican Senate Leader Scott Fitzgerald says Miller’s stance is premature. He spoke to Miller but only about meeting to discuss committee structures if Democrats have indeed won the chamber.

Miller left the door open to a summer special session, as did his Republican counterpart and recall winner, Scott Fitzgerald. “There has been some talk about the mining bill. The governor has been talking about pulling it together. That’s great, we’ll come in in July and do that,” said Fitzgerald.

Both sides say they can bury the hatchet and get to work. “We’ll be able to move forward and put together some good legislation,” said Fitzgerald.

“When you have a split house or government it requires you to engage in the kind of responsible discussion and negotiation that can lead to progress,” noted Miller.

Source 

 

UN Chief Ban Ki-Moon says UN monitors in Syria were shot at with small arms while trying to reach site of alleged new massacre

(Reuters) – U.N. monitors tried on Thursday to check reports of a massacre of at least 78 villagers by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad – killings that prompted another U.S. demand for the Syrian leader to cede power and leave the country.

Opposition activists said up to 40 women and children were among the dead in Mazraat al-Qubeir, near Hama, on Wednesday, posting film on the Internet of bloodied or charred bodies.

Confirmation will pile pressure on world powers to act, but they have been paralyzed by rifts pitting Western and most Arab states against Assad’s defenders in Russia, China and Iran.

Syria’s pro-government Addounia TV said U.N. observers had arrived in Mazraat al-Qubeir. The chief of the U.N. mission said earlier that Syrian troops and civilians had barred them.

“They are being stopped at Syrian army checkpoints and in some cases turned back,” General Robert Mood, the head of the U.N. observer mission, said in a statement. “Some of our patrols are being stopped by civilians in the area.”

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the latest reported massacre, which follows one in which 108 people were slain in the Syrian town of Houla on May 25, as unconscionable.

“We are disgusted by what we are seeing (in Syria),” she told a news conference during a visit to Istanbul.

YEMEN-STYLE TRANSITION?

Clinton said the United States was willing to work with all U.N. Security Council members, which include Russia, on a conference on Syria’s political future. But it would have to start with the premise that Assad and his government give way to a democratic government, she said.

Kofi Annan, the U.N.-Arab League envoy for Syria, was due to brief the U.N. Security Council in New York later on Thursday.

Continued 

 

Florida Defies Feds On Voter Roll Purge

 

MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Governor Rick Scott refused a federal demand that it stop hunting and purging non-citizens from Florida’s voter rolls, according to CBS4 news partner the Miami Herald.

The response to the Justice Department’s initial request said the DOJ doesn’t understand two federal voting laws at the heart of the dispute and accused the Department of Homeland Security of breaking a federal law for refusing access to a federal citizenship database, according to the Herald.

The move was widely expected and it could set up a fight between the state and the federal government similar to the one about to be decided over the federal health care law.

At an event in central Florida Wednesday, a protester stood up wearing a T-shirt that said “Purge Rick Scott. Let us vote.”

Flora McCall of New Smyrna Beach explained, ”I think this is the biggest threat we have to our democratic way of life and it has to be stopped.”

Broward County already stopped purging its rolls. Miami-Dade County did the same after the elections office says a third of the potential non-citizens the office contacted either provided, or planned to provide proof of citizenship.

Miami-Dade Deputy Elections Supervisor, Christina White said, “that made us stop and say to ourselves ‘maybe this isn’t the most up to date information’ so we stopped and decided we weren’t going to be removing anyone for non-response. We would only be removing people who were ineligible and admitted ineligibility and we stopped and asked the state to take a better look at those name cross check them against more updated data sources.”

The Governor said he needs updated information from the Federal Government, but he’s still standing firm in his position. “We’ve been asking for the database from Homeland Security since last year. They still haven’t given it to us,” Scott said.

Both Miami-Dade and Broward elections officials said they will not change any of their procedures in response to Wednesday’s deadline. White said, “If and when the state provides us with better documentation supporting their position on these non-citizens we will proceed from there.”

But, the actual instances of voter fraud are far from being in a statewide crisis.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement reported a total of 178 cases of voter fraud sent to its department since 2000. Out of those cases, a total of 11 arrests have been made.

Attorney general Pam Bondi’s office has three open cases dealing with voting in her office, but the cases deal with early registration violations due to a law that was recently overturned by a federal judge.

Most of the decline in voter fraud cases has been since a 2004 law requiring a signature from witnesses on absentee ballots was eliminated by the state legislature.

“I’ve not heard [of], since that law was changed, any prosecutors in Florida who really have been able to put together a case on absentee-ballot fraud,” Miami-Dade State Attorney office spokesman Ed Griffith told the Sentinel.

Still, Governor Scott has ordered that local elections departments purge “non-citizens” from their voter rolls.

The Department of Justice has asked the state to stop the purge, but Scott and the rest of the state government have indicated they will continue to pursue the voter purge even if it means challenging the federal government in court.

Part of the problem is the purge, according to critics, has unfairly targeted Hispanics. CBS4 news partner the Miami Herald found that 58 percent of those identified in the rolls were Hispanics, despite Hispanics making up just 13 percent of the 11.3 million active registered voters in Florida.

Whites and Republicans were the least-likely to face the threat of removal, the Herald found. Governor Scott denied in comments made to CBS4 that the purge was unfairly targeting minorities and groups that tend to vote Democratic.

A fight over purged rolls isn’t anything new to Florida. Thousands of eligible voters were removed from rolls in the months leading up to the 2000 election. During that purge, the voters were erroneously listed as felons, which prevented them from voting, according to National Public Radio. Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris headed up the 2000 voter roll purge.

As Tim Russert of NBC News famously said about presidential elections, “It’s all about Florida.” In 2012, it could be another long night for Florida elections officials as a court battle looms over Governor Scott’s plans to scrub the voter rolls.

Source