Prosecutors charged a former Walmart employee from Haiti with murder after he allegedly waited outside a Pennsylvania store and shot his estranged wife as she left work.
The post Report: Migrant Marriage Fraud Leads to Murder appeared first on Breitbart.
A Pennsylvania man put up Halloween decorations around his property. He had no idea they would unleash the horrors of government jawboning.
Mark, whose real name is being withheld, is a homeowner in Bristol Borough, a suburb near Philadelphia. He decorated his home with a small graveyard, two monster scarecrows, and five mannequins hanging from a large tree on his property. One additional mannequin was lashed to the tree. The faux bodies were wrapped in black plastic secured with duct tape.
Now local officials are haunting Mark.
At an October 12 borough council meeting, a neighbor complained about Mark's decorations, concerned the display looked too close to lynching. Karla Scott said the decorations are "very offensive, not just to the black people in the community, but the community as a whole." Scott told FOX 29 that her "mind went back to what my ancestors went through being hung from trees with nooses around their neck." (In the televised story, the reporter gives a trigger warning and then blurs the very decorations viewers are supposed to judge as either offensive or old-fashioned spooky fun.)
After Scott voiced her concerns, Council President Ralph DiGuiseppe said Mark had broken no ordinance and that Mark told the borough he would not take the decorations down. "They're just Halloween decorations," Mark told the Bucks County Courier Times. "I think it's been blown out of proportion."
Despite acknowledging that Mark had violated no ordinance, DiGuiseppe noted a zoning inspector nevertheless visited his house immediately after the decorations went up.
"Our borough inspector did stop there and talk to him. But we were unsuccessful….[Mark] feels they're Halloween decorations, and he won't take them down," DiGuiseppe told Scott at the meeting. DiGuiseppe then turned to another official who said, "We'll continue our efforts."
The decorations have divided the community, with some residents saying they're simply Halloween decorations and others saying they're racially insensitive. After receiving a complaint from a resident, the local NAACP chapter said in a statement on Facebook, "Something can be legally permissible and still be profoundly harmful." The statement also called for "continued engagement by borough leadership and voluntary reconsideration of the display. This is not about restricting Halloween celebrations or freedom of expression. It is about historical awareness, empathy, and respect for our neighbors."
But Mark's insistence that he would not take them down hasn't been respected by the borough. He was also contacted by Bristol Borough Manager James Dillon and other members of the council, according to Fox News Digital, which also did not publish any pictures of the display. Mark again said he would not take the decorations down. When the mayor of Bristol Borough, Frank Peranteau, reached out to him, Mark invited the mayor to have dinner with his family to discuss the matter. In an email to Reason, Peranteau said he wasn't there to try and change Mark's mind and "found him to be a genuinely caring person with no signs of prejudice."
Nevertheless, things get spooky when government officials won't take no for an answer when contacting a law-abiding resident to "voluntarily" take down his constitutionally protected expression on his own property. This behavior by borough leadership and staff looks very much like jawboning, which is when government officials try to chill private citizens from exercising their constitutional rights through pressure or indirect threats.
While Scott and other community members may prefer there be a rule to prevent such decorations, an ordinance banning "offensive" lawn displays would be dead on arrival, constitutionally speaking. It would be viewpoint discrimination and a direct violation of the First Amendment.
Mark says he may have considered removing the display if Scott would have approached him and explained how she felt, according to Peranteau. "He told me that he was upset at the way things were handled in the beginning and he may have considered removing the display then had it been different," the mayor said, "but it was a matter of principle at that point."
Talking with your neighbor may resolve more than summoning government ghouls.
The post Government Officials Admit His Halloween Decorations Are Legal. Why Won't They Leave Him Alone? appeared first on Reason Magazine.
© Jillian Vordick/The New York Times
Katharine Viviano, a first-grade teacher at Pleasant Valley Elementary School in Peters Township, Pennsylvania, faces a charge of public drunkenness after officials said she became intoxicated at school and left her students unattended. According to police, Viviano left during the school day to buy alcohol, and when she returned, she hit another vehicle in the school parking lot. She later went into the bathroom attached to her classroom and refused to come out; another teacher found her in the bathroom semi-conscious. School staff initially believed Viviano was having a medical emergency, and they moved her students to another classroom and then to a playground while they dealt with the situation. Viviano reportedly smelled of alcohol, with slurred speech and bloodshot eyes. Authorities say she admitted drinking vodka earlier in the day.
The post Brickbat: Teaching While Intoxicated appeared first on Reason Magazine.
Pennsylvania’s 7th District, the Lehigh Valley region that includes Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton, is one of the most competitive House races in the country. Democrat Bob Brooks, a firefighters union president, is challenging Republican incumbent Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, and how voters here feel could help decide who controls the House. Taya Graham and Stephen Janis spent several days in the district talking to the people who will determine the outcome.
Voters say high prices, a lack of affordable housing, and a Washington disconnected from working people are driving their vote. Two more specific issues are also shaping the race: proposed data centers, which residents say are being imposed on their communities without adequate review, and the Epstein files, which arrived in Bethlehem aboard the “Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Bookmobile,” a traveling archive of the documents released to date. Underneath it all is a darker worry: that their votes won’t be counted.
Producers: Taya Graham and Stephen Janis
Writer: Stephen Janis
Editing/Post-Production: Stephen Janis
Taya Graham: Pennsylvania’s 7th District is a diverse community stretching across the Lehigh Valley, but just before the midterm election, there is a common theme from residents that we spoke to.
Kathy: We are not liking what we see in our country.
Taya Graham: Anger and the desire for change.
Kathy: We’re not liking the effects of the things that are taking place in Washington, and therefore people are out trying to make a change.
Taya Graham: And how voters feel here could be critical to who controls the House. It is one of more than a dozen battleground districts, which is why we spent several days speaking to the people who will determine the outcome. Many said high prices, lack of affordable housing, and a disconnect between Washington and the concerns of working people were motivating their vote.
Valerie: But from what I see, a lot of people, including people that were always Trumpers or used to be always Trumpers, are actually changing their mind. They’re really upset. When they go to the grocery store, my grocery bills in the last year have tripled.
Taya Graham: But we also learned there are other more specific issues that could sway the election. Data centers have become a national issue, but the impact is truly local. Last week, the Bethlehem City Council met to approve more restrictive zoning regulations for data centers. The law would create wider setbacks from residential neighborhoods and limit noise levels. For some, data centers were the deciding factor on how they would vote.
Darcy: I actually see this as it being forced on us, it being forced on us quickly, it being forced on us without the proper studies and concern about the environment that honestly, I think it’s across the board, people don’t want them. And this is an issue that I think Republicans, Independents, and I think this is our stamp act.
Taya Graham: A unifying issue in an otherwise fractured electorate.
Mary Collier: Doors and on the phones across our turfs in Pennsylvania right now, affordability, housing and data centers are the top issues. I think there’s a lot of reasons to hate data centers, but the fact that 40% of Pennsylvanians can’t afford their bills right now, knowing that these things are going to raise their utility bills is a huge reason that it’s on people’s minds and they’re thinking about it going into this election.
Taya Graham: The race between Democrat Bob Brooks and Republican Ryan McKenzie is tight. The Cook’s political report gives Brooks a five point lead, but 16% of voters remain undecided. Neither attended the hearing. Brooks did make an appearance when the Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial bookmobile visited Bethlehem. It’s a moving repository of Epstein investigatory files and emails that has traveled across the country. We asked Brooks if he thought that the Epstein scandal would impact voters.
Bob Brooks: I think they’re a huge factor. People of all walks and want to see these things released. I think it’s a huge issue. I know within my union, I’ve watched my union members feel like they’ve been lied to, and this is one of the big topics that they voted that way in the beginning and now they’re feeling lied to. So I think you’re going to see it be a really big factor.
Taya Graham: At another stop, residents agreed.
Krista: I wanted to see the 3.5 million books. I wanted to see what it was all about and that I can’t believe our leaders in our country are saying this is a hoax.
Taya Graham: However, looming over the district were other more foreboding concerns that democracy itself was on the ballot and that their vote would not be counted.
Cathy: I am going to vote by mail, but I’m going to put my ballot in a drop box as opposed to the mail because I don’t trust that process, which is ridiculous. The United States Postal Service, we feel like we can’t even trust that anymore.
Thomas: I think that there’s a strong possibility that they would block as many votes as possible.
Taya Graham: We will continue to be on the ground in this critical district as the midterms unfold. This is Taya Graham and Steven Janis reporting for you.
Login