An outspoken internet activist killed himself in a New York hotel in eerily similar circumstances to fellow hacker and Reddit co- founder Aaron Swartz.
James Dolan, 36, took his own life at a newly opened hotel, Gowanus Inn and Yard, in Brooklyn just after Christmas.
He is the second developer of the whistle-blower submission system SecureDrop to commit suicide by hanging in the same area.
Soon after his death, the internet started drawing similarities between Dolan’s suicide and that of Swartz who hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment in 2013 as he was being pursued by federal agents.
Among those was WikiLeaks, who tweeted: ‘Second developer of WikiLeaks inspired submission system ‘SecureDrop’ security expert James Dolan, aged 36, has tragically died. He is said to have committed suicide. The first, Aaron Swartz, is said to have taken his own life at age 26, after being persecuted by US prosecutors.’ (Read more from “Founder of Whistle-Blower Securedrop Supposedly Hangs Self Just like Co-Founder Did While Being Pursued by Feds” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/6591645993_7af4a4a225_b-1.jpg7681024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2018-01-28 17:00:412018-01-28 22:03:48Founder of Whistle-Blower SecureDrop Supposedly Hangs Self Just like Co-Founder Did While Being Pursued by Feds
A Florida teenager diagnosed with terminal cancer will be granted his dying wish this weekend: to marry his high school sweetheart.
At 19-years old, Dustin Snyder will marry Sierra Siverio on Sunday at the Big Red Barn, which is being donated as a wedding space.
“I could never even think about leaving his side,” Siverio said in an interview with “The Now,” ABC News reported.
Snyder was healthy growing up, playing both football and baseball. He and Siverio also attended two proms together.
He was diagnosed with synovial sarcoma when he was 18, and endured six months of chemotherapy before being declared cancer free.
At the beginning of this year, though, things took a turn for the worst.
“Three weeks ago he was losing lots of weight and he was in a lot of pain,” Cassandra Fondahn, Snyder’s mother, said. “And we took him to the hospital and his stomach and his pelvic areas were infested with the cancer.”
After his terminal diagnosis, just three days ago, he said that his final wish was to marry his high school sweetheart, Siverio.
“She means the world to me,” he said in the interview, though his words are now barely audible.
Snyder’s older sister, Brittany Hails, set up a GoFundMe page to help raise money for the wedding.
“He is currently on hospice and has a pain pump connected to his heart,” the page read. “We are trying to make his wishes come true by providing him and his long-term girlfriend with a wedding 28th Jan 2018 (Sunday).”
So far, the community has helped raise money for wedding rings, a dress and a tuxedo for the young couple. LifePath Hospice is donating flowers and bridesmaid dresses.
“Please lets help Dustin enjoy the rest of his life with his soulmate,” the fundraising page concluded.
Synovial sarcoma is a rare form of soft tissue sarcoma, “which is a type of cancer that arises from soft tissues near the joints but can sometimes develop in the kidney and lung,” according to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
It is common in people younger than 30, but it is still a very rare tumor. It only occurs in 1 to 3 people per million. “About 800 new cases of synovial sarcoma are diagnosed in the U.S. each year,” the hospital reported. It is also more common in males.
Signs and symptoms of synovial sarcoma include “problems using one or both legs, feet, arms or hands” as well as “pain near the affected area.”
No matter how little time is left, the young couple’s upcoming nuptials, and the whirlwind of planning a wedding in a week, is their happy ending. (For more from the author of “High School Sweetheart Grants Boyfriend His Dying Wish After Terminal Diagnosis” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/6589927353_2d0274223a_b.jpg1024765Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2018-01-28 16:48:372018-01-28 16:48:37High School Sweetheart Grants Boyfriend His Dying Wish After Terminal Diagnosis
Many of the so-called Dreamers worried about their immigration status are starting to reconsider their opposition to a possible wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to a report Friday from the San Francisco Chronicle.
President Donald Trump’s wall at the border wouldn’t be so bad, some groups are now saying, so long as it means citizenship for the nearly 700,000 people brought into the country through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
“If building a wall leads us to having citizenship, then I’m all for it,” Ana Rodriguez, who works at a daycare center in California, told reporters at the Chronicle. “The U.S. is what I know and that’s where I want to live my life — I want to be a part of it in full.”
Rodriguez and others like her are arguing about accepting a trade-off — giving Trump his wall in exchange for retaining DACA. The Trump administration proposed a bill earlier this month offering citizenship to 1.8 million illegal immigrants in exchange for $25 billion for a border wall.
Activist organizations have also noted that DACA recipients are making recalculations about their opposition. Marissa Montes, co-director of the Loyola Immigrant Justice Clinic in Los Angeles, noticed in recent weeks that they are sounding more and more likely to back a wall in exchange for citizenship.
“It’s coming from a point of exhaustion — they’ve tried everything,” Montes told reporters. “Their instinct is survival and as human beings, how much longer can they endure this? They’re ping-ponging back and forth.”
Former President Barack Obama implemented the program in 2012 to allow people younger than 16 who live in the country illegally to receive renewable, two-year protections from deportation along with work permits. They also had to live in the country continuously from 2007 onward and have no criminal convictions.
Trump ended the Obama-era executive action in September telling Congress it had six months to codify the program into law before protections expired. The president eventually temporarily reinstated the action after being showered with criticisms — but the temporary halt will be lifted over the next several months.
Democrats have been seeking a bill that covers DACA recipients, and as many as 2 million similarly situated illegal immigrants who did not apply or did not qualify for the Obama amnesty.
Trump’s upcoming proposal appears to be an effort to split the difference between the Democratic demand and an immigration reform bill from House Republicans, which was limited to roughly 700,000 existing DACA beneficiaries.
Democrats used the DACA issue as a cudgel during the budget debate earlier this month to temporarily shut down the government. Republicans refused to bend to the Democrat’s demands at the time to negotiate DACA, while the minority party largely unified to use the shutdown deadline to exact protections from the GOP for hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants.
Republicans tried to sweeten the deal, offering Democrats a long-term extension of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, as well as the delay of some unpopular health care taxes. The GOP believed the public would blame Democrats if the sweetener was rejected.
Democrats appear concerned about the optics as well. A Super PAC allied with Senate Democrats commissioned a poll in 12 battleground states to determine which party would be blamed if a shutdown was tied to the legal status of dreamers. The poll found that Democrats absorb most of the blame in such a scenario.
The poll, which was conducted in December by Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group on behalf of a Senate Majority PAC, also found that blame for a shutdown would be split between Trump and Republicans, and Democrats in Congress, The Washington Post reported earlier this month.
Recent polling shows Hispanics are evenly split on whether to combine a DACA deal to the building of a wall — 42 percent of Hispanics oppose it and 42 percent support it, according to the Quinnipiac poll conducted Jan. 18. In total, 73 percent of voters’ support allowing Dreamers to remain in the U.S. legally, according to the poll.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/DACA_protest_Columbus_Circle_90069.jpg29472885Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2018-01-28 16:42:512018-01-28 16:42:51‘I’m All for It’: DACA Immigrants Suddenly Changing Their Tune on Trump and the Border Wall
West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin thinks Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer gave in far too easily when reaching a deal to end the federal government shutdown on Monday.
Senate Democrats originally forced the three-day shutdown by refusing to support a spending bill. They were upset that it did not address the roughly 700,000 illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and were protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
Appearing Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Manchin indicated that he wanted the shutdown to end, though he doesn’t believe Schumer had “the stomach” to effectively fight for what he wanted.
When asked by host Chuck Todd if, had the shutdown continued, he still would have filed for re-election in 2018, Manchin responded, “I’d have been hollering a lot louder probably.”
“I don’t think Chuck had the stomach to go on,” he added. “He plays a part differently. I understand the dynamics of our caucuses much different.”
Manchin suggested that as a Democrat from West Virginia, his approach is different from the one taken by Schumer, a senator from New York who leads the entire Democrat caucus in the upper chamber.
“The Democrat caucus is … that’s a big tent,” he said. “And I just said I come from West Virginia. I’m representing my state. I’m not a Washington Democrat. I’m a West Virginia Democrat. That’s a little different.”
Schumer has been criticized for the deal he reached with Republicans to end the shutdown.
Lawmakers agreed to keep the government funded through Feb. 8, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised that Republicans in the upper chamber intend “to take up legislation … that would address DACA, border security and related issues, as well as disaster relief,” according to ABC News.
As noted by the Washington Examiner, Republicans are upset that Schumer forced the shutdown in the first place.
Many liberals, meanwhile, think the Democrat Party caved on DACA, as they doubt that McConnell will keep his promise to address the issue.
In the days following the end of the shutdown, there has been a lot of back and forth between Schumer and President Donald Trump, as both sides look to get their way on a long-term immigration deal.
Trump has port forth a proposal that would offer amnesty to DACA recipients, in return for border wall funding and limits on legal immigration.
But Schumer has rejected this plan, claiming that the president is simply using DACA recipients “as a tool to tear apart our legal immigration system and adopt the wish list that anti-immigration hardliners have advocated for for years.”
As we have been urging him to do for months, the President has finally put pen to paper to show us where he stands on immigration. Unfortunately, this plan flies in the face of what most Americans believe. 1/2
While @realDonaldTrump finally acknowledged that the Dreamers should be allowed to stay here and become citizens, he uses them as a tool to tear apart our legal immigration system and adopt the wish list that anti-immigration hardliners have advocated for for years. 2/2
Though Trump and Schumer have both blamed each other for the deadlock, Manchin said Sunday that their “bantering” is nothing more than “New Yorkers talking to each other.”
“I don’t understand that language. But that’s how they talk. Now when Chuck and I talk we talk West Virginian to New York. That’s a little different,” he added.
Todd also asked whether Schumer backed down on the government shutdown because Manchin threatened not to run for re-election. Manchin denied that was true, though he did claim to have told Schumer that the Senate “sucks.”
“If it sucks, why are you running for re-election,” Todd asked.
“Because I think I can make it better. I think I can contribute to bringing people together. I’m not giving up on it. This is a small price to pay for the great country I’ve had the privilege of living in and being an American,” Manchin replied. (For more from the author of “Top Democrat: Chuck Schumer Didn’t Have ‘the Stomach’ to Fight Trump over Shutdown” please click HERE)
First Lady Melania Trump is firing back after being dogged by rumors that she’s living separately from the president and cancelled a planned trip to Davos, Switzerland, with her husband after news broke that he’d allegedly paid adult film star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about an affair.
Stephanie Grisham, a spokeswoman for Mrs. Trump, posted on Twitter that the First Lady is fed up with the “false” attacks.
“BREAKING,” she wrote, according to the Associated Press. “The laundry list of salacious & flat-out false reporting about Mrs. Trump by tabloid publications & TV shows has seeped into ‘main stream media’ reporting.”
The past week’s reporting has indeed been “salacious.” After the Stormy Daniels story broke earlier in January, several outlets have been cataloging the First Lady’s every move, reporting that she’d moved out of the White House and into a “posh D.C. hotel,” that she had dropped off the president’s schedule, and then that she’d avoided the trip to Davos to take a private holiday in Mar-a-Lago. (Read more from “First Lady’s Office Fires Back, Blasts Report Melania Trump Living in D.C. Hotel” HERE)
Opening this weekend, “12 Strong” is a movie depicting the first military offensive against the Taliban in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks — a tale of 12 Army Green Berets who befriend members of the Afghan Northern Alliance and go into battle outnumbered and on horseback.
The film is about heroes, but like many modern examples of American military might, it has triggered those on the far left, some of whom are now insisting that in the post-#MeToo era, Hollywood abandon films about war because they promote “backwards” ideas and “glorify outdated models of masculinity.”
Now, the “toxic masculinity” defeated an international terror organization on the sands of an unfamiliar country, sending its leader into the wilds of Pakistan and destroying the Al Qaeda network which had just killed more than 3,000 American citizens on United States soil.
But, according to The Intercept, it’s time to put an end to glorifying heroics demonstrated during war.
“Hollywood has shown itself capable of making excellent war movies (think ‘Three Kings,’ ‘Paths of Glory,’ and ‘The Best Years of Our Lives’), but most are problematic,” writes Peter Maass. “Some of the biggest war movies of the post-9/11 era don’t just show violence in ways that are often gratuitous and occasionally racist. They model a cliched form of masculinity that veers from simplistic to monstrous.” (Read more from “No More War Movies: Leftists Angry Post-9/11 Movie ’12 Strong’ Promotes ‘Toxic Masculinity'” HERE)
In a bizarre video posted to Twitter Friday night, Hillary Clinton gave a “shout out” to her fellow feminists, thanking all the “activists bitches for supporting bitches.”
It’s not clear when the video was recorded — all we know is that Clinton was speaking to Huffington Post commentator and Bros4Hillary founder Alex Mohajer at the time, and that it’s enough to, quite possibly, scar most Americans for life.
The video was apparently, a “thank you” to her supporters. When asked to deliver a message to her fellow feminists Clinton expresses gratitude for “your feminism, your activism” and instructs her supporters and fellow resisters to “keep up the really important good work.” (Read more from “‘Activist B****es Supporting B****es:’ Bizarre Hillary Clinton Video Surfaces” HERE)
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said Saturday that he had fired his chief of staff after receiving allegations of improper conduct.
Rubio said in a statement that he had “sufficient evidence” to conclude that his chief of staff had “violated office policies regarding proper relations between a supervisor and their subordinates.” Clint Reed, who has been identified as the senator’s chief of staff, first began working for Rubio as his Iowa state director in October 2015.
“I further concluded that this led to actions which in my judgement amounted to threats to withhold employment benefits,” Rubio said.
The Florida senator said he was made aware of these reports Friday and immediately began investigating the matter. Rubio said he traveled from Florida to Washington D.C. on Saturday evening to fire his chief of staff.
Rubio’s office said that, in accordance with the wishes of those who made the complaints, it would not be disclosing any further details about the incidents. (Read more from “Former Presidential Candidate Fires Chief of Staff for ‘Improper Conduct'” HERE)
An ambitious new program known as Healing the Wounds is underway to build up and mentor the children of fallen military service members and law enforcement officers, combining the Alaskan wilderness with career and leadership training to last a lifetime, according to its founder.
The year-long program will be geared towards children aged 12-17.
Healing the Wounds President Jeffrey Epstein spent years leading wilderness experiences for families and groups in Alaska and strongly believes the changes he saw in those clients could also do a world of good for young people trying to chart a path forward following the loss of a parent in service to the nation or their community.
“I’d like to roll this out for the children of our nation’s fallen heroes – and that includes both law enforcement and the military – and provide them with the same opportunities, but actually help mentor them with unprecedented opportunities to blossom and lead productive lives,” said Epstein.
“We really want to have an impact. We want to help create the next generation of responsible young adults,” he added. (Read more from “Alaskan Wilderness Experience Planned for Children of Fallen Service Members” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/27652266952_2e19298709_b.jpg6781024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2018-01-28 15:38:422018-01-28 15:39:58Alaskan Wilderness Experience Planned for Children of Fallen Service Members
By WND. Discrimination against Christian ideas has been handed a big reprimand by the Washington state Supreme Court.
The justices ruled Thursday a former fire captain who was fired for sending emails with religious content through his work account can sue the Spokane Valley Fire Department for damages because his First Amendment rights were violated.
Jon Sprague pointed out other employees used the same email system for a variety of other purposes, such as seeking babysitting and selling concert tickets. There also were discussions of substance abuse and conflicts with children.
But when Sprague shared thoughts from the Bible, he ended up unemployed.
The high court previously returned the case to the lower courts because of unresolved issues over the fire department’s violation of Sprague’s First Amendment rights. (Read more from “Court Backs Right to Express Christian Views at Work” HERE)
Washington Court Rules Fire Department Violated Firefighter’s Free Speech
By CN. A fire department violated a firefighter’s free-speech rights when it restricted his ability to include religious comments in work emails and forums, the Washington Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
The fire department now has the burden of showing it would have fired the firefighter even without his protected First Amendment actions . . .
Sprague used the department’s email to send messages about the Christian fellowship, which often incorporated Bible passages and topics to be discussed at meetings, according to court documents . . .
Eventually, the department suspended and fired him after a mediation process failed.
Sprague claimed in state court he was the victim of religious discrimination and free speech violations. (Read more from “Washington Court Rules Fire Department Violated Firefighter’s Free Speech” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/101117-F-4485H-018.jpg520780Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2018-01-28 15:24:512018-01-28 15:24:51Court Backs Right to Express Christian Views at Work
