tvc184

it probably should be June 13, not the 15th. That’s when the actual battle started with the shelling. Just as important is debatable as it was a continued steppingstone. This was unlike the invasion of Normandy where it was the beginning but certainly it was very important. I think the biggest by far accomplishment of the turkey shoot was the forward air bases and allowing to B29’s to basically level Japan. I read a book many years ago (before the Internet) I believe called, A Torch To The Enemy by Martin Caidin. It was about the B 29 bombing campaign over Japan. I cannot remember the exact statistics but basically any city that has at least a 20,000 population in the entire country, was at least 50% destroyed. Many cities were virtually leveled. While people talk about the atomic bomb and destruction, the fire bombing of Tokyo in March 1945 what is the most destructive rate in history. I am going off of memory but I think something like 140,000 people were killed in one night in about 20 square miles of the city was completely destroyed. Well over 1 million people were left homeless. Because the destruction of Japan by air before their surrender was so devastating, the Americans chose a couple of cities to be completely spared. This was for the upcoming atomic bomb raids. They wanted to see the effectiveness of the weapon but could not in most cities because they had already been leveled. That is why Hiroshima and Nagasaki were basically untouched before the atomic bombs. They were preserved as a test case because the rest of my Japan had already been leveled.

Do they know about Pointe du Hoc? Do they know why one of the American landing beaches was called bloody Omaha? Do they know it well over 4,000 American, British and Canadian troops were killed in one day with many thousands of more wounded? Do they know......

I wonder how many adults, even that kind of know the significance of the day (they know it’s called D-Day), actually know what happened.

If they make rules, and the two kids in question signed contract saying that they would not do what they did, and they do not punish them, then what? To school rules become voluntary? How many comments do we see on here where people say, we need to hold people, students, whoever accountable? If this was anything other than the military, some of the same people protesting would be up in arms with the opposite opinion. Being in the military does not give you a pass or earn special privileges. Actually it should be quite the opposite.

And what just popped up on Facebook on the KBMT website? [Hidden Content] A student in North Carolina was not given his diploma for wearing a Mexican flag. Get ready for it. If you start exempting one person, you are going to have to exempt everyone. Will there be students wearing LBGTQ flags? Support Antifa buttons? Down with Israel banners? MAGA caps?

Should Nederland change the rules? Sure, that’s OK. Maybe they could just recognize them by having them stand or mention it as they’re walking up to get their diploma. However.... In several threads about this topic in different forums, including Facebook, there were mentions of lawsuits. I don’t think there are any grounds to force a school district to have a mandatory policy to allow future members of the military for example, to wear a different recognitions. There might be a double edged sword in the change of policy or a lawsuit to try to sue however. As long as no one complains everything will be OK. The allowing of certain recognitions outside of school functions could bring problems though. Due to my interest and my job I have read many lawsuits over the years from both state and federal courts. I am talking about cases that went on to appeal all the way up to the US Supreme Court, the federal circuit courts or of the state appeals courts. The problem arises from discrimination such as under the 1st Amendment and the 14th Amendment under “equal protection”. Here could be the potential problem. If the members of the military are a certified school function such as a junior ROTC then I do not think it will be an issue. If it is something they did outside of the school, it could cause issues if someone wishes to sue. This case a question brings up exactly that point because apparently one kid got the same punishment for wearing a Mexican flag the same way the military guys wore the sashes. At that point you get into freedom of expression issues and when you do, you cannot limit or in most cases cannot limit one person’s right over the other. There can be limits for threats or some vulgar language, etc. from what I have seen. If a person says I wish to show my future in the military that has nothing to do with the school, can you then deny a person to say, I wish to show which country I came from or which political party I support? An easy example would be if a school district said you could wear a vote Democrat button to graduation but could not wear a vote Republican button (equal protection). That would be an obvious discrimination. There are in federal laws in place to ban discrimination due to sex, race, national origin, ethnicity, religion of age. If the same rules apply across-the-board, it is usually not discrimination. It is like the current issue with the masks and a private business. A private business has the right to set whatever rule they want to as long as the rule does not discriminate. It is OK to say everyone must wear a mask however they cannot say Muslims must wear a mask or people with weaves in their hair must wear one. I was reading a case from California that went to a federal Court on appeal. A woman firefighter complained that a male firefighter in her unit was reading some kind of sexually oriented magazine like Playboy. He was not showing the pictures or that anyone could see and was merely reading it in his bunk. There was no claim of him making noises or any kind of lewd comments that would create a hostile work environment. It just offended the woman firefighter that she knew what he was reading. The fire department had a policy that when the firefighter’s duties for the day has been done, he/she could read non-work related material. I know that my Police Department generally bans reading for entertainment purposes and restricts reading to duty reading related. Firefighters have a somewhat different job where they might be on duty for 24 or 48 hours and have in many cases less restrictions. So the fire department (I think LA or San Diego) told the male firefighter do not read the girly magazines. Poof!! Here comes the lawsuit. The male firefighter won his case. He was being discriminated against due to his sex and the government/fire department was improperly restricting what could be read. If I remember the decision correctly, the department could restrict reading to duty related or they can allow non-duty related but if they did, it had to be open. The fire department did not by policy get to approve what was read if it was not duty related. Can you imagine if the fire department said you can read Christian literature but you cannot read about Judaism? That in a fact is what they did against the male firefighter. So my question is, if a school district allows the representation of something outside of a school function, can then limit what is allowed? Now if no one complains, they could do anything that they wish. There was a US Supreme Court ruling that says you will not have a prayer over the public address system such as as at a high school football game. We all know there is some school districts that continue to do this against that ruling. Why is that allowed? Because nobody has filed a claim. Once someone does, it will be an easy lawsuit to win, possibly with monetary damages. I see there are claims that Lumberton and others allow such representation for a non-school function or opinion (the military sash example). If someone wishes to file a lawsuit, and I can guarantee somewhere someone will, what will be the outcome?

They get their diplomas, they were earned. They simply don’t give them the piece of paper that night but hold it for a few days in kind of a, “we told you so”. It is a punishment of inconvenience.

A federal judge has ruled that the California ban on various assault weapons and magazines is unconstitutional. He brings up the obvious point that more people are killed with hands, feet and knives than with all types of rifles combined, much less whatever they deem as assault rifles. I. the judges opinion, true military weapons such as bazookas, artillery, machine guns, etc., can be banned but not what millions of Americans use in sporting activities and home defense. This will obviously go to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California where the judge’s ruling will probably be overturned. The next step will be the Supreme Court of the United States. [Hidden Content]

That’s why I get (or got) the big money. 😀

It can easily be made a racial incident if no arrest has yet been made. All you have to do is flip the script and say, if a black man had killed a white child, he would have been arrested at the scene. A black man kills a black child in the police don’t care. And if the ATV driver turned out to be white… It is unlikely that any suit against the city of Beaumont or the police department would be successful. There is no constitutional right of protection by the police. The US Supreme Court in Castle Rock v. Gonzales in a 7-2 decision said that unless there is a specific state law requiring a police action, they have no constitutional grounds for a lawsuit. Two of the biggest words in law enforcement are “may” and “shall”. May it discretionary it means that a person or the police can act legally but it’s not required to. Shall means that an action will take place or a law will be violated. There are some but very few requirements on the police in Texas and actually in most states. Most laws say that a policeman “may” for example, make a report, make an arrest, investigate an accident, etc. With no required mandatory traffic enforcement under Texas law and no United States Constitution requirement to protect, I doubt that lawsuit lawsuit would be successful. If that was true then every person ever injured in a traffic accident could successfully sue the city or the state. I can think of at least a couple of criminal charges they could possibly be filed against the driver of the ATV. It is not much of a criminal charge but there is one called reckless driving that says if a person is driving recklessly in a public place, it is a crime. I think it only carries up to 30 days in jail. With this accident happened is definitely a public place. Assuming it happened on the roadway, is a crime to drive an ATV on the roadway because Beaumont does not have an ordinance allowing golf carts or certain ATVs on the roadway. In Either situation, I would think it would be easy to prove that the ATV driver acted recklessly because he has driven a vehicle in an area that is deemed not safe be it the road or a prohibited area. But....... To recklessly kill a child, it is the felony crime of Injury to a Child. Also the crime of Aggravated Assault can be to recklessly cause serious bodily injury or death. Again, I think they could probably make the case even if the child ran in front of the ATV driver who is operating that vehicle in an area that is deemed to be unsafe.

It’s from the Fourth Amendment under an unreasonable seizure. The Supreme Court has ruled that it is unlawful to use deadly force for a crime it is not using or threatening to use deadly force. I don’t know that I disagree with that. In Texas using a credit card without permission is a felony. If a 16-year-old kid uses a stolen credit card to buy $10 worth of gas, should I be able to shoot him (as a police officer) in the back to stop him? In my opinion I should not. Arson might be a bad example because in arson you could always say that it might seriously injure or kill someone in or near a building. When it is clearly a non-violent crime however, I don’t think the police should be able to shoot people, especially in the back. For apprehending a violent criminal, that is absolutely a different issue.

Which part?

In some cases, yes. For the police it is lawful to shoot someone running away who has committed a violent crime and there’s a further danger to the community or the officer. For a citizen under Texas law, deadly force is justified in stopping someone from escaping with property from a burglary, robbery or theft during the night time if there is a reasonable belief that the property would not be recovered by other means or would endanger of the person trying to cover the property. The use of deadly force to recover such property is absolutely not authorized for a police officer.

In Texas, stopping an arson in progress is justification for using deadly force as is theft in the nighttime.... but not for the police unless it is directly endangering someone’s life.

Yes, a mob could potentially justify deadly force if a serious threat to officers or someone beyond the officers that they were trying to protect. Like always, we have to look at the facts or reasonable beliefs known to the officers at that moment. Where were are the people who are being protected? Where are they trapped and nearby? Did they have a means of evacuation (which I thought they did) such as through a passageway or tunnel so therefore not in an immediate threat? Was the small window on the door that she was crawling through the only means of entry rather than the reenforced doors themselves which could not have been breached at that moment? Looking at these likelihoods which was surely known to the capital police, why did apparently only one officer feel threatened enough to draw a weapon? There might be some very reasonable answers to justify the use of force however they are not very forthcoming in explanation, which police agencies and governments normally do in other similar situations. This one has been marked by silence including not even discussing policy, which I find very strange.

You have way more right of self defense under state law to protect your home than the government (in this case; police) does both under state law, federal law and US Constitution by way of Supreme Court decisions. Your use of deadly force to protect your (or your neighbor’s) home is regulated by state law. A police officer cannot use deadly force to prevent crimes as by state law and the Constitution. The police can only use deadly force to stop a risk of serious injury or death. So someone coming through “your” window and protecting your home is not even in the same discussion as the police use of deadly force to stop a crime. Can an officer use deadly force for someone going through your window? Yes if it is to prevent the criminal’s use of force against you and there is a reasonable belief to back that up. For example, a criminal going into your home with a weapon or who might be about to kidnap someone can justify the use of deadly force by the police to protect the victims inside of the home. It is not to prevent the crime but to prevent injury or the threat of serious injury. State law however gives a person the right to protect his home almost without question from a burglary (called breaking and entering in some states). In Garner v. Tennessee from the Supreme Court, an officer shot and killed a burglar who was committing the crime of Burglary of a Habitation (in TX at that time A first-degree felony or equal to murder in penalty) at night, fleeing with property in his hands. There is no doubt the crime was at night, that it was a felony in progress, that the police were not likely to catch him and he was escaping with property. With all of those established facts, The Supreme Court ruled and it was unlawful for the officer to use deadly force to stop the crime. At the time the suspect was not endangering anyone and even though a homeowner could have lawfully shot and killed a suspect to get the property back, it was completely unconstitutional for the officer to do so. So when you ask, what would you do when someone is breaking in your home with a mob behind have them, it does not even matter if it’s a mob. A single person entering your home could lawfully justify the use of deadly force. That in no way translate to a police officer standing his ground and using deadly force against an unarmed person to prevent a crime. Add to that the fact that if an officer is standing with several other officers, even the use of deadly force to protect themselves must be taken into consideration the reasonableness at that moment. An unarmed 250 pound man coming at a lone 120 pound female police officer is much more likely to justify deadly force than the same 250 pound unarmed man coming at three 200 pound male officers. The Supreme Court has said you have to look at what is reasonable at that time. In this case, if there are several police officers and at the moment being approached by an unarmed 130 pound female, is deadly force justified under the circumstances? I think that would be tough to prove however if it is or if it is not, it has nothing to do with a person coming through “your” window. As far as the police shooting a person who is fleeing, that can be justified if the person has committed a violent crime because there is a reasonable belief that the person will commit another violent crime in order to escape or possibly grab a hostage. And example from this area about 15 years ago, a man had just shot his ex-wife and her current boyfriend. One of them died and the other was seriously injured. After a high-speed car chase the suspect ran on foot it was shot and killed by the police. That was ruled to be justified by the grand jury because of the violent crime that was just committed and the likelihood of another violent crime. It is the violence or threat of violence that justifies the government/police deadly force intervention, not because there was a serious crime in progress. That was stated in Garner. In Garner the Supreme Court through out the police use deadly deadly force to even stop a fleeing felon. To make sure that is clear, the Supreme Court said that the police cannot use deadly force merely to stop a felony.

No. There is no evidence of any crime except trespassing which is a misdemeanor. A citizen, not the police, have the defense to prosecution in Texas that they were stopping a burglary (breaking and entering) in progress IF deadly force was reasonably needed. The police absolutely do not have that authority as demonstrated by SCOTUS in Garner. The police can use deadly force to stop a threat of deadly force. In Garner SCOTUS said there had to be a violent act or the threat of violence for the police to justify deadly force. Maybe she had something that looked like a weapon in her hand and was screaming “I am going to kill you #%£{@!!!”. If that is true, they need to release at least the claim and an explanation. At least from what I have seen, the officer doing the shooting was the only one with a gun drawn. Why with several officers with him trying to stop a small and likely unarmed woman coming through a window, was he the only one to even draw a weapon? According apparently to their prosecutors, it does not even warrant a trial which means it had to be so clear-cut it it was obviously self-defense. It should not matter but again, swap the roles and see what the outcome would be. A white cop, surrounded by other officers, none of who feel threatened enough to draw their weapon, shoots an unarmed small black female coming through a window.

Breaking and entering is not a violent crime. In the US Supreme Court case of Garner v. Tennessee they ruled that the police could not use force to stop by non-violent crime. In fact Garner was a breaking and entering case. The police are not allowed to use deadly force to stop a crime.

This one would again cause riots and more calls to defund the police if the roles were reversed.

Defund the police comes from an overthrow tactic used since Marx. If you say something enough times, people will start to believe it. You can call it brainwashing, indoctrination, re-education or whatever. In some ways it is almost like the Stockholm Syndrome where hostages start siding with the criminals that take them hostage and threaten their lives. The police are not the problem in any neighborhood but they are portrayed to be such for political gain. Like in the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, MO. It was put out as a story that he was surrendering on his knees. The facts, witnesses and physical evidence completely refuted that claim. The US Department of Justice and the FBI spent a year and a few million dollars and ended up with the same conclusion that the county DA did in a few days. That was there was no evidence of wrongdoing by the officer. The police were not the problem there either yet it caused nationwide riots. Even with this defund the police mantra we need to ask ourselves, does the Black community feel the same way as they are portrayed? Do the protesters represent the entire Black community? Let’s see what the Gallup Poll survey says about that in a poll released in August 2020. [Hidden Content] According to Gallup 81% of Blacks want as much police presence “or more”. Compare that to 88% of Whites and 83% of Hispanics. That seems like very similar options especially considering the beating that the police receive in the press in the Black community. Maybe even more telling is that 20% of Blacks and 24% of Hispanics want “more”’ police in they neighborhoods as opposed to 17% of Whites. So the minority communities (who the narrative is that hate the police), actually wants more of them than the White population. I can guarantee from experience, those minority communities in most cases already have a larger police presence and yet they want more. I am glad that they want more but that isn’t the narrative put out by the media who gets clicks and money by controversy and some segments that promote their own political status. From Gallup I believe it shows what I think, that there is very little differences in communities but there is no benefit to saying that in some people’s opinions. In fact it hurts some political opinions to say, we are pretty much all the same. If you look at the Gallup survey, you will find what I believe. People have very little differences and want the same things regardless of race or community including a police presence. The problem comes from people that go to great lengths to try and convince others that they are different and that “they” (elected or unelected political figures) are the answer. The only thing they are the answer to is their own power. In my opinion....

From what I just read on the Texas legislature website, both houses passed the amended bill which means it now sits on the governor’s desk.

I “think” that I read the final version of the bill and most of the Senate amendments stayed put. When I read them several days ago I didn’t understand the uproar other than just politics. Some people said that the Senate was trying to KILL THE BILL with these horrible amendments! I read them and thought that most were good or needed and others could go either way but weren’t bad Here goes with the Senate amendments that stayed... 1. The free online classes on gun safety that are NOT mandatory stayed. 2. A felon in possession of a firearm penalty was increased from a 2-10 year sentence (3rd degree felony) to 5-20 (2nd degree felony). 3. In addition to a felon in possession or a person convicted of family (domestic) violence from being prohibited from carrying, they added assault with injuries, terroristic threat or disorderly conduct with a firearm (if within the previous 5 years) from lawfully carrying. 4. Removed the House prohibition from having an officer question a person based solely on the open carried handgun. 5. Kept the Senate amendment of the wording of trespassing on a business property... "Pursuant to Section 46.03, Penal Code (places weapons prohibited), a person may not carry a firearm or other weapon on this property". This doesn’t leave it to the discretion of an officer but spells out what a warning is So basically almost all of the Senate amendments stayed if I read the correct final version. The bill also changed the language of a shoulder or belt holster like under the LTC to simply a “holster”.

Not to me either. It sure looks like they are hiding something.

Awesome. It is always great to see someone make it to the finish line!!

I wish these big cities would completely do away with the police or that the office themselves would walk off the job. I have talk to police officers all over the country and most of them would however obviously, they need a paycheck. I have been on a forum with almost 60,000 police officers and just say there was an attempted mass exodus from certain areas would be an understatement. Most of the officers have families and obviously cannot simply quit but if we don’t think they are looking to go elsewhere, we are sorely mistaken. Officers in Washington, Oregon, California and other places are looking to go to the south or the west I am doing so in droves. we might have all seen news articles where a particular police department has lost so many officers in the last year for retirement and resignations. What the news reports do not cover and they simply cannot find out the truth (because individual officers aren’t making it public) is how many ounces would leave if given the opportunity. I know at my police department and I’m sure most, there is always information on which officers are seeking employment elsewhere. At certain times it can be a fairly significant percentage. The officers are not wanting to give up the job but the location and public support of a particular location. So I wish that the cities that claim they don’t need the police or need way fewer of them, get their wish. I am positive that they are not going to like the results. Some cities have already found that out.