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Jerry Sandusky, former Penn State Football Coach, Convicted of 45 Counts of Child Sexual Abuse

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A child sex abuse case that has shocked the country and tarnished the reputation of one of the most celebrated college football programs in America has just witnessed the first conviction of arguably many more trials to come  

After a short trial that began on June 11 that had charged former Penn State football defense coach Jerry Sandusky with sexual abuse of 10 boys, the jury delivered a verdict tonight finding Sandusky guilty of 45 counts of sexual abuse that could potentially sentence him  up to 442 years.

The sex abuse scandal that has tarnished Penn State University, also resulted in the firing of Joe Paterno, who had led the celebrated football program for 46 years.

Sandusky was immediately taken into custody and will spend his first night in jail after months of media reports that revealed sordid details about Sandusky’s serial pedophilia of male children during a 15-year period while working at Penn State University where many of his criminal sexual acts were committed in the football program’s athletic facilities.

Sandusky is married and the father of six children.  His wife Dottie testified on his behalf and denied evidence that Sandusky was a  pedophile.  His son Matthew reported that he was sexually abused by his father after the trial was completed on Thursday.

The jury deliberated for nearly 21 hours and sentencing is expected within 90 days.  Sandusky is now being processed for incarceration at a local jail in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania and will most likely be placed under a 24-hour suicide watch.

Penn State Child Sex Abuse Scandal Will Hasten Paterno Retirement 

The Sandusky conviction was delivered on the five-month anniversary of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno’s death.  Paterno lamented his failure to effectively report Sandusky to Penn State officials after he was notified by Mike McQueary, an assistant football coach in December 2001, who witnessed Sandusky naked and standing behind a naked boy in a Penn State shower facility.

Paterno said he wished he had done more to have addressed the allegations against Sandusky.  He died five months ago of lung cancer.

Sandusky’s arrest in November led the Penn State trustees to fire Paterno as head coach, saying he exhibited a lack of leadership after fielding a report from McQueary. The scandal also led to the ouster of university president Graham Spanier, and criminal charges against two university administrators for failing to properly report suspected child abuse and perjury.

The two administrators, athletic director Tim Curley and now-retired vice president Gary Schultz, are fighting the allegations and await trial.

 

Tanya L. Domi is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University who teaches human rights in East Central Europe and former Yugoslavia.  She is a Harriman Institute affiliated faculty member. Prior to teaching at Columbia, Domi was a nationally recognized LGBT civil rights activist who worked for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force during the campaign to lift the military ban in the early 1990s. Domi has also worked internationally in a dozen countries on issues related to democratic transitional development, including political and media development, human rights, gender issues and media freedom.  She is chair of the board of directors for GetEQUAL. She is currently writing a book about the emerging LGBT human rights movement in the Western Balkans.

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‘Concerns From Mar-a-Lago’: Speaker Johnson Boots Pro-Ukraine Intel Chair in ‘Big Shakeup’

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January 15, 2025

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Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has taken the unusual step of removing U.S. Representative Mike Turner (R-OH) as Chair of the House Intelligence Committee. Turner, a center-right lawmaker, is well-regarded on both sides of the aisle for his strong commitment to traditional Republican principles, particularly in matters of national security and defense.

Punchbowl News first reported the move, which CNN’s Annie Grayer is calling a “big shakeup.” Punchbowl’s Andrew Desiderio adds that “Turner is one of the biggest Ukraine supporters among Republicans on the Hill and is also very involved with NATO. Much more hawkish than Trump-aligned R’s would like.”

CBS News’s Margaret Brennan reports Turner told her that Speaker Johnson “cited ‘concerns from Mar a Lago’ as justification for the removal.”

Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Jim Himes (D-CT) weighed in with concern on the removal of his colleague: “I have confidence that Mike Turner would do the right thing. The fact that he may have been removed just sends a shiver down my spine,” he said, as Semafor’s Kadia Goba reported.

READ MORE: Marjorie Taylor Greene Targets Former Biden Official’s Religious Faith in House Hearing

Politico called Turner “an outspoken advocate for Ukraine funding and other hawkish national security stances.”

Axios noted that Turner “has at times broken with party leadership in a way that angered his GOP colleagues.”

“Most notably, he put out a jarring but cryptic statement last February warning of a ‘serious national security threat’ that turned out to be about Russian nuclear anti-satellite weapons.”

Last year, then-Chairman Turner agreed that Russian propaganda was a problem in the GOP, and that some Republican members of Congress had even spread it on the House floor.

“There are members of Congress today, who still incorrectly say that this conflict between Russia and Ukraine is over NATO, which of course it is not,” Turner told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly made that same false claim.

Turner was one of the few Republicans to oppose then-Congressman Adam Schiff’s censure. He also did not sign Johnson’s U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election.

READ MORE: Pam Bondi Refuses to Say Trump Legitimately Lost the 2020 Election in Confirmation Hearing

In 2022, Turner was one of just 47 House Republicans who voted to pass the Respect for Marriage Act, protecting existing same-sex and interracial marriages.

Heath Mayo, founder of the pro-democracy center-right group Principles First observed, “Demoting some of the few serious and competent people the House GOP conference has to offer. That’s Trumpism, though. Intelligence and expertise are threats. As a result, American leadership gets dumber and weaker.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump Vowed ‘100%’ to End Ukraine War Before Inauguration — Now He Says It’s ‘Up to Putin’

 

This article has been updated to add reporting from CBS News.

Image: U.S. Space Force photo by Tiana Williams via Wikimedia Commons/public domain

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Marjorie Taylor Greene Targets Former Biden Official’s Religious Faith in House Hearing

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January 15, 2025

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During a House Oversight Committee hearing on Wednesday, U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) invoked God and religion to harshly question Martin O’Malley, the former Commissioner of the Social Security Administration and a former Governor of Maryland, about his personal views on abortion and his Catholic faith.

In her highly confrontational interrogation of O’Malley, a longtime Democrat who also served as Governor of Maryland for eight years and ran for president in 2016, Congresswoman Greene, a self-avowed Christian nationalist, invoked his Catholic faith to attack his beliefs about abortion.

“Since you’re very interested in being DNC chair, you are after all a lifelong Democrat politician — I don’t even know if you had a job in the real world, but you have been an elected politician for years,” Greene accused (video below). “Mr. O’Malley you’re also a Catholic, are you not?”

“I am,” O’Malley confirmed.

READ MORE: Trump Vowed ‘100%’ to End Ukraine War Before Inauguration — Now He Says It’s ‘Up to Putin’

“Do you serve God or do you serve the Democrat Party?” Greene asked.

“I serve God,” O’Malley responded.

An off-camera committee member interjected: “Mr. Chairman, as a Roman Catholic, I take offense at the suggestion that somebody has [inaudible] to God and their service as a Catholic.”

Greene tried to talk over the objection, which went unaddressed by the Republican majority chair.

“Mr. O’Malley, will you be supporting the murder of the unborn up until the day of birth like your party does? As DNC chair, will you be supporting the murder of innocent unborn people? Is that in line with your faith in God and the Catholic Church?” Greene said, appearing to grandstand.

“I trust the judgment of women and doctors over the judgment of government,” O’Malley patiently replied.

“Now, do you trust God’s judgment?” Greene continued. “Do you trust God that he loves and has created every single human being? Do you support the murder of unborn children and are you going to uphold that evil practice that the Democrat Party wants to continue? You see, abortions over 95% of them are unintended pregnancies. They use abortions as birth control. So are you going to continue the birth control practice of murdering the unborn children as chair of the DNC? Will that be, that be a policy?”

READ MORE: Pam Bondi Refuses to Say Trump Legitimately Lost the 2020 Election in Confirmation Hearing

O’Malley, appearing to near the end of his patience, replied, “I am pro-choice, and I trust the judgment of women and their doctors over judgments of government.`

“Well, thank you for letting God know where you stand with the murder of —” Greene snapped back before O’Malley interjected.

“I talk to God every day,” he declared.

“Yeah, well you might want to talk to him a little bit more, Mr. O’Malley, because you’re definitely in the wrong,” Greene charged.

The Republican from Georgia was not finished.

Minutes later she posted a short clip of her attack on O’Malley to social media, and wrote: “WATCH: ‘Catholic’ Martin O’Malley confirms abortion is the sacrament of the Democrat Party.”

O’Malley has been called “a Pope Francis Democrat” and a “a pray-every-morning, church-every-Sunday” believer, according to a 2015 Religion News Service article.

Watch the video below or at this link.

RELATED: ‘Antisemitism Is Wrong, But’: Marjorie Taylor Greene Pilloried for Promoting Antisemitic Claim

 

Image via Shutterstock

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Trump Vowed ‘100%’ to End Ukraine War Before Inauguration — Now He Says It’s ‘Up to Putin’

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January 15, 2025

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On the campaign trail last year, candidate Donald Trump, time after time, not only suggested he could swiftly bring an end to Russia’s unlawful war against Ukraine, but at times even insisted he could—and would—do it before being sworn into office. But with Inauguration Day fast approaching, President-elect Donald Trump has washed his hands of a peace settlement, instead declaring that any resolution is now entirely in the hands of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I would fix that within 24 hours, and if I win, before I get into the office, I will have that war settled. 100% sure,” Trump said on Fox News in March 2024, HuffPost reported.

“Before I even arrive at the Oval Office, shortly after we win the presidency, I will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine settled — we’re going to get it settled and stop the death,” Trump adamantly told supporters in June 2024.

READ MORE: Pam Bondi Refuses to Say Trump Legitimately Lost the 2020 Election in Confirmation Hearing

“I would fix that within 24 hours, and, if I win, before I get into the office, I will have that war settled. 100% sure,” Trump vowed as far back as March 2023.

“If I’m president, I will have that war settled in one day, 24 hours,” Trump said again just months later, at a CNN town hall in May 2023, as TIME reported. “It will be over. It will be absolutely over.”

These are just a few of the many times Trump promised to personally end Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Now, he has an entirely different set of promises.

Sunday night, during an interview with Newsmax, Trump was asked, “You’ve said you want the Ukraine war ended in 6 months. What is the strategy to do that?”

“Well, there’s only one strategy,” Trump replied, “and it’s up to Putin. And I can’t imagine he’s too thrilled with the way it’s gone, because it hasn’t got exactly well for him either. And I know he wants to meet and I’m gonna meet very quickly.”

READ MORE: Torture? Shoot Protesters? Greenland? Question After Question, Hegseth Refused to Answer

“I would’ve done it sooner but…you have to get into the office. For some of the things, you do have to be there,” Trump conceded, Reuters reported.

At a press conference last week, Trump went from promising peace before he took office, to six months after.

“I hope to have six months,” Trump told reporters, USA Today reported, before adding, “I hope long before six months.”

Trump has named Keith Kellogg to be his Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia.

Kellogg, appearing to attempt to split the difference, settled on a timeline for peace of just over three months.

“Let’s set it at 100 days and move all the way back and figure a way we can do this in the near-term to make sure that the solution is solid, it’s sustainable, and that this war ends so that we stop the carnage,” he said, HuffPost reported.

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Loyalty to a Tyrant’: Cheney Invokes Jack Smith’s Report to Warn Senate on Trump Nominees

 

Image via Reuters

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