Teens kill Australian student in Oklahoma for "The Fun Of It"

Growing up in Hawaii, I remember getting beaten up by 6 guys one night simply because I was from a different part of the island. And yes, there is the fact that though I was a "local boy" - I was not real dark complected.

Later, I found out that they beat the crap out of me "just for the fun of it."

But honestly, getting your butt kicked is a far cry from getting shot dead for "the fun of it."

And no, I don't know what sort of mentality it takes to say, "We're bored, let's go out and kill someone" as has been reported.

Lack of humanity, lack of conscience, no moral compass, not accepting that there are things that are right and wrong, not accepting that there are consequences for their actions, thinking that life has no value, all play a role in this sort of horrible act.

Christopher Lane, shown in an undated picture above, was attending school in Oklahoma on a baseball scholarship when he was gunned down for the "fun of it."

Three teenage suspects accused of gunning down an Australian student in Oklahoma for the "fun of it," according to police, are expected to face first-degree murder charges in court today.

Christopher Lane, 22, who was visiting the U.S. on a baseball scholarship at East Central University, was jogging along a road in Duncan, Okla., after visiting his girlfriend on Friday when he was shot in the back, allegedly by the teens.

A woman tried CPR and paramedics arrived on scene, but Lane was pronounced dead an hour later.

"He went by a residence where these three boys were, they picked him as a target, they went out and got in a vehicle and followed him," Duncan Police Department Chief Danny Ford told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, according to AFP.

Yes, they picked him out not to threaten or to fight him - but to execute him!
"They came up from behind and basically shot him in the back with a small caliber weapon, then sped away," Ford added.

Richard Rhodes, a builder who discovered Lane lying face down, said he was targeted with a .22 caliber revolver.

Police tracked the teens down using surveillance video from a business that is near the shooting scene, KOCO reports.

If the three teenagers arrested are charged with first-degree murder and convicted, they face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

The teens, ages 15, 16 and 17, can be tried as adults, but they can't face the death penalty since they are under the age of 18, a spokesperson for District Attorney Jason Hicks told the Sydney Morning Herald.

So they would face the "possibility" of life in prison, with computers, television, medical and dental services, food, clothing, and "conjugal visits," while Christopher Lee is still dead.

But really, why can't they be hanged for what they did? Or better yet, why can't they be simply taken out and shot in the same way that they shot an innocent man just out jogging?

I know real well that someone out there is going to write and say that studies show that the death penalty does not deter crime, and that it does not stop it from happening after a prisoner (inmate) has been released.

Since my first college degree was in the Administration of Justice (Criminal Justice), I'll give those folks the same argument that I did almost 30 years ago: it does stop murders from taking place if only by a factor of one.

Statistics show, that if released, a killer or rapist or pedophile is apt to act out his crime again after his release.

So by just removing that one person who did do the crime, we save a life that will most likely be taken by that killer.

The teens in this case have not been identified by police and remain in custody at Stephens County Jail in Duncan. They are expected to appear in court Tuesday afternoon.

My belief is that teens who do adult crimes should be treated as adults in every way.

For example, Trayvon Martin was 17 years old when he attacked George Zimmerman by breaking his nose than getting on top of him and tried to beat his head into a concrete sidewalk.

If Trayvon Martin was successful in killing George Zimmerman, and if someone would have actually gave a shit that Zimmerman was killed, shouldn't Martin have been tried for murder as an adult?

Police revealed Sunday that one of the teens confessed to the crime and said he did it for the "fun of it," KOCO reports.

"The boy who has talked to us said, 'We were bored and didn't have anything to do, so we decided to kill somebody,'" Ford told the Associated Press.

After the teens were arrested, Ford said the driver, who is 17, told police they were all at the scene of the slaying and that the 16-year-old suspect pulled the trigger.

On one of the alleged killer's Facebook pages, investigators found the message: "Bang. Two drops in two hours," Sky News reports.

Yes, there was another unnamed victim.

"They wanted to be Billy Bob Badasses," said Chief Ford. "I think they were on a killing spree. We would have had more bodies that night if we didn't get them."

Ford wouldn't say how many times Christopher Lane was shot. Autopsy results are pending.

Now, here comes the parents who can't believe that there son could do such an evil act.

The mother of the 16-year-old accused in the killing said her son and his two friends were part of a “wannabe gang,” but insisted that he is not a killer, KOCO reports.

It was being reported that the teens liked to emulate the "gangsta" lifestyle. 

The father of the 15-year-old also denied his son had a role in Lane’s death, but said the boy had run-ins with the law before, News.com.au reports.

You ever notice how, even with their own confessions in hand, parents still refuse to face the facts that their kid is a killer?

In fact, no one has ever asked Trayvon Martin's parents what they thought of their poor little boy (who looked so much like president Obama if he had a son) trying to smash George Zimmerman's head into the cement pavement?



These are the "wannabe gangstas" who decided to carry out their Hate Crime and kill for fun.

And really, where is President Obama and Oprah Winfrey on this horrible act? Probably nowhere to be found.

In my opinion, racists like the president and Oprah simply don't put any importance on a young white man getting killed in an unprovoked "Hate Crime" by blacks who sought pleasure in the murder of an unarmed white guy.

No hoodie and Skettles here, no one except the killers would look like the president if he had a son, just a white guy out jogging pass a few racist killers.

The news report said that Christopher girlfriend, Sarah Harper, wrote a tribute on Facebook after he was killed.

"I love you so much babe," she said, according to Sky News. "From 2009 until forever you will always be mine and in a very special and protected place in my heart."

Christopher grew up in Oak Park in Melbourne, Australia. He was studying at East Central University (ECU), where he had won a scholarship to be the team's catcher, and had been back in the US for just three days after visiting his family in Australia, along with girlfriend Sarah Harper. The pair had been together for four years.

East Central University is setting up a fund so Lane’s parents, who are still in Australia, can come to Oklahoma.

"Chris was a well-liked young man here on campus. His teammates thought a lot of him. Seemed to be a bright, promising student," Dr. Jeff Williams, the athletic director at East Central University, told KOCO.

East Central University is in Ada, about 85 miles west of Duncan. Lane started 14 games at catcher last year and was entering his senior year.

The killing of Christopher Lane has rattled the quiet town of 24,000, where Ford said he couldn't recall the last time there was a murder.

"I don't think we average one [murder] a year," said Duncan chief of police Danny Ford. "Basically, we're a rural Oklahoma community."

Peter Lane, Christopher's dad, told the Sydney Morning Herald that his son was "a kid on the cusp of making his life."

"There's not going to be any good come out of this because it was just so senseless," Mr Lane said.

"He was an athlete going for a jog like he would do five or six days a week in terms of his training schedule," he said. "It's happened, it's wrong and we just try and deal with it the best we can."

My heart goes out to those close to Christopher. I can't imagine what they are going through, the loss, the senselessness of this.

According to the laws of the state of Oklahoma, the teenagers who did this can't be put to death.

But really, I want to know why not? Those teenagers are not human, they are worse than cold and completely numb - it made them happy. They killed for "fun". 

To me, they are worse than rabid dogs. At least a rabid dog has an excuse for doing what it does. They are not responsible for their sickness.

The animals who killed Christopher Lane saw enjoyment in killing him.

That alone should be reason enough to give them the death penalty. They knew better but did what they did for the "fun of it" - just for pleasure.


Story by Tom Correa

More Evidence of Global Warming Data Fixed?

A story on August 13, 2013, says because of distorted data, the Federal Government closed 600 weather stations.

This came amid criticism they're situated in such a way that they can only report "warming."

For example, a weather station in Hot Springs, Virginia, sits next to the wall of a steam power plant and is overgrown with weeds, yet NOAA still operates it. 

This is just one of many flawed sites, critics complain.

I've read where these "collection instruments" were placed next to extremely hot airport runways, in the heat of parking lots, next to factories, in congested areas, even along side busy urban freeways, all "to ensure" that the data they recieved shows an increase in heat.

To measure weather, volunteers take readings at different times of day, round to the nearest whole number, and mark up paper forms they mail in monthly.

Recently, data from hundreds of weather stations located around the U.S. appear to show the planet is getting warmer - but some are asking how that data is being taken?

Some critics say it's the government's books that are getting cooked -- thanks to temperature readings from sweltering parking lots, airports and other locations that distort the true state of the climate.

Now the NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has closed some 600 out of nearly 9,000 weather stations over the past two years that it has deemed problematic or unnecessary, after taking note of the problems of using unreliable data.

Back in 2009, the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) email controversy (also known as "Climategate")began in November with the hacking of a server at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) by an external attacker.

The disclosure of the email debunked the data, the data collection methods, and made public the fraud behind the whole UN Global Warming conspiracy meant to control both souvereign governments and free people.

This took place several weeks before the Copenhagen Summit on climate change, when an unknown individual or group breached CRU's server and copied thousands of emails and computer files to various locations on the Internet.


Global Warming critics, both lay people and from the scienticfic communty, deny the significance of human caused Global Warming.

They argued that the emails showed that Global Warming was a scientific conspiracy, in which Environmental Extremsts groups along with cohort scientists manipulated climate data to falsefy facts in an attempt to suppress critics.

And yes, don't kid yourself into thinking that there was not a whole lot of money atr stake if Global Warming was found to be a fraud, subsequently it was not surprise that the accusations were quickly rejected by the CRU - who said that the emails had been taken "out of context."


NOAA now says the closure of the 600 sites will help improve gathering of weather data, but critics like meterologist and blogger Anthony Watts say it is too little, too late.
"The question remains as to why they continue to use a polluted mix of well-sited and poorly-sited stations," Watts told FoxNews.com.

'They continue to use a polluted mix of well-sited and poorly-sited stations.'
- Anthony Watts

Watts has for years searched for weather stations that have flaws.

And he points to a still-open station at Yosemite park as an example of one with “heat sinks” – objects that store heat, and then release it at night.

Heat sinks can cause stations located in or near them to give off useless data - generally in the form of inflated temperatures not representative of the broader area.

“The heat sinks are a road, a building, and stacked metal pipe and beams surrounding the station,” he said.

After the heat sinks were added at Yosemite, temperature readings show a curious trend: minimum nighttime temperatures increased more than daytime temperatures.

Watts says that's because the concrete structures store heat that is released at night, and that such a trend backs up the idea that the "heat sinks" are having an effect.

But the government agency that compiles the temperature data says that such concerns are unfounded because of statistical methods used to adjust the data.

"There is no doubt that NOAA's temperature record is scientifically sound and reliable," NOAA spokesman Scott Smullen told FoxNews.com.

"To ensure accuracy of the record, scientists use peer-reviewed methods to account for all potential inaccuracies in the temperature readings such as changes in station location, instrumentation and replacement and urban heat effects."

Smullen added that the recent station closures, which were made after "an extensive six-month review by all National Weather Service forecast offices," make the system even better.

He said the agency considered several factors in shuttering stations, including whether their data was redundant, whether urban growth had rendered data invalid and if sites were transmitting reliable data.

But Watts says that the closures are something of a vindication of a years-long project to identify stations with problems.

Some of the first official notice of Watts’ findings were in the leaked “Climate-gate” emails from 2009, in which the director of the National Climatic Data Center at the NOAA appeared to take Watts’ findings seriously.

“He has a website of 40 of the USHCN [weather] stations showing less than ideal exposure. He claims he can show urban biases and exposure biases. We are writing a response for our Public Affairs. Not sure how it will play out,” Thomas Karl, the director, wrote in an internal email.

Then the Government Accountability Office -- the government agency which issues reports evaluating other agencies -- looked into the issue of inappropriately-sited stations, interviewing Watts twice.

In an August 2011 report titled “NOAA Can Improve Management of the U.S. Historical Climatology Network” the GAO concluded that “NOAA has not developed an agencywide policy… whether stations that do not adhere to siting standards should remain open… or should be moved or closed.”

NOAA spokesman Scott Smullen said that the NOAA’s recent review and closure of stations over the last two years is far more extensive than the investigation Watts conducted.

“While some of the 600 sites we targeted for closure may overlap with some sites Mr. Watts has questioned, we understand that his study looked only at siting criteria at a 1,200-site subset of our overall network, while we reviewed the entire network, and siting criteria was just one factor we considered.”

So how serious is the problem of poorly-sited stations for the overall historical climate record? And does it have implications about the extent of manmade global warming?

Watts says it does, and that if one looks only at pristine stations, they show a temperature increase of 1.1° Fahrenheit over the years 1979 to 2008. That is noticeably lower than the government estimate of 1.7° Fahrenheit, which includes readings from all stations, including those with potential problems, which it tries to adjust for statistically.

But many scientists concerned about global warming say that the statistical adjustments work, and they point out that many other measurements of temperature match closely with NOAA’s historical data.

“Watts' analysis is an outlier… Analyses by several groups using global land temps, ocean temps, and satellite-inferred temps (no thermometers there!) show very similar warming rates [to the NOAA data],” Scott Mandia, a professor of physical sciences at SUNY Suffolk, said.

Watts says he doesn’t dispute the satellite data.

“I don’t dispute the satellite measurements, but they are measuring temperature of the atmosphere above the Earth, and that includes all cities and populated areas as well as rural open space…

My premise is this: if you want to see the effect of CO2 on warming, you need to look in areas that have not been affected by urbanization to find the true signal.”

In other words, Watts says the data show that global warming is due relatively more to increased urbanization than to greenhouse gases. Such a finding would be relevant for whether government should further restrict greenhouse gasses.

“Questions should then be asked about… decisions all the way up the food chain,” Watts said.

California lawmaker pulls son from class over transgender law

A Republican state lawmaker says a new California law allowing transgender students to choose which restroom and locker room they use is part of the reason at least one of his sons will not return to his local public school this fall.

Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, who lives in the Southern California mountain community of Twin Peaks, described his family's decision in a column published on WND (World Net Daily).

He wrote that under the bill from Ultra-liberal Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, Democrat from San Francisco, the privacy rights of California students "will be replaced by the right to be ogled" and will encourage inappropriate behavior among hormone-driven teenagers.

"While trying to address a concern of less than 2 percent of the population, California is now forcibly violating the rights of the other 98 percent," Donnelly wrote.

Gov. Jerry Brown signed the bill into law Monday, making California the first state to put such transgender/gay preferences into law.

Donnelly told The Associated Press on Friday that his 13- and 16-year-old sons, who attend Rim of the World Unified School District in the San Bernardino Mountains, were "horrified" to learn they might have to share a restroom with female students.

He is pulling one son out of middle school, while another son is uncertain if he will return to his public high school.

The decision is one that his family already had been discussing before the bill was approved.

"If it doesn't change his school experience, he may still stay," Donnelly said of his high-school student. "We don't know yet how this policy is going to affect our town."

The law, which will take effect January 1st of 2014, gives students the right "to participate in sex-segregated programs, activities and facilities" based on the gender which they identify on any particular day.

As of right now only in Communist Queer California can a child who is in their forming years and unable to completely reason what is taking place - can oppose to their birth gender if they want to.

Those programs also include sports teams.

The resaon is to reduce bullying? Discrimination?

Really, you upset the whole applecart by changing how every student has to go to school because 1% of the 6.4 million students faces bullying and possible discrimination because they are queer (as in strange)?

Fact is that allowing students of one gender to use facilities intended for the other could invade the other students' privacy - and bring about serious problems for girls and boys who don't want to change in a lockerroom or use the bathroom when the opposite sex is present.

Donnelly, who is exploring a bid for governor next year, said he is hearing concerns from a growing number of parents across the state.

Some of those parents have told him they also plan to remove their students from public school, although he said the parents he has spoken with have declined to speak publicly about their decision.

Donnelly's comments Friday came as two conservative groups opposed to the law, the Sacramento-based Pacific Justice Institute and Capitol Resource Institute, filed language for a ballot referendum with the state attorney general's office seeking to repeal AB1266.

The justice institute also is distributing a form that parents can send to school districts, stating that their child's rights include the right to privacy from students of the opposite gender in situations such as changing clothes.

Brad Dacus, the institute's president, said the organization has drawn significant interest from parents who are upset by the new law.

He said the form "puts the school district on notice that students aren't surrendering their rights to privacy."

One reader sent me this cartoon, saying they think this is what will take place in our schools now that Governor Brown has lifted the protections that were in place.

I agree.

Great Country Music Voices - Jim Reeves

His full name was James Travis Reeves, but the world knows him simply as Jim Reeves.  

He was born on August 20, 1923, in Galloway, Texas, a small rural community near Carthage. 

Because he was a pretty good baseball player in High School, he won an athletic scholarship to the University of Texas - but quit after only six weeks to work in the shipyards in Houston during World War II to build Victory ships.

Victory ships were a later version of the Liberty ships.

He later resumed playing baseball and was actually in semi-professional league before being contracted with the St. Louis Cardinals "farm" team as a right-handed pitcher.

He played for the minor leagues for three years before severing his sciatic nerve while pitching, that ended his baseball career.

One biography says he tried boxing for a while, but found that there were better and smarter ways to make a living.

As a radio announcer, and had sing advertising jiggles live between songs. Yes, that's how he got his start as a singer.

During the late 1940s, he was contracted with a couple of small Texas-based recording companies, but without success.

Influenced by such Western swing-music artists as Jimmie Rodgers and Moon Mullican, as well as popular singers such as Bing Crosby, Eddy Arnold and Frank Sinatra, it was not long before he was a member of Moon Mullican's band, and made some early Mullican-style recordings like "Each Beat of my Heart" and "My Heart's Like a Welcome Mat" from the late 1940s to the early 1950s.

He eventually obtained a job as an announcer for KWKH-AM in Shreveport, Louisiana, home of the popular former radio program, the Louisiana Hayride.

Jim Reeves once said, in an interview on the RCA album Yours Sincerely, that Hank Williams (Sr.) missed a performance and Reeves was asked to substitute.

One of his breakthrough singles was "Mexican Joe" in 1953.   Accompanying Jim Reeves on "Mexican Joe" were the Circle O Ranch Boys and was Jim Reeves' debut single on the country charts. "Mexican Joe" hit number one on the country charts for six weeks with a total of twenty six weeks on the chart.

Featuring "Big" Red Hayes on the fiddle and Floyd Cramer on the piano, "Mexican Joe" was a rollicking, Western swing-influenced tale of a bandito and drifter who engages in a lifestyle of women, carousing and gambling.

Though he had released a few singles prior to "Mexican Joe," none attained the level of national success needed to reach any of Billboard's country music component charts in use at the time.

"Mexican Joe" became Reeves' first major success nationally and would eventually pave the way to super-stardom.

                                                                Mexican Joe

   

                                                                     Bimbo  

The short version of his life is that he was an American country and a popular music singer-songwriter. And yes, both here and around the world, he was also a living legend.

With records charting from the 1950s to the 1980s, his songs were a mixture of older country-style music with elements of popular music.

On July 31st, 1964, Jim Reeves died at age 40 in the crash of a private airplane.

Known as "Gentleman Jim", his songs continued to chart for years after his death.

Today, he is a member of both the Country Music and Texas Country Music Halls of Fame. But more importantly, his style of singing an beautiful voice are surely missed.

In his day, the bands would let the singer show off his or her vocal abilities and not drown out the lyrics of a song.

Because of that fact, I believe that there is not a single singer today that can hold a candle to the smooth voice of Jim Reeves.

Take a look at these videos and hear for yourself, then ask yourself "other than George Strait, why aren't there great male voices in country music today?" 

"Have I Told You Lately"

                                                             Distant Drums


      "I Love You Because"      (Oslo, Norway, 1964)

 The Blizzard

             Snowflake

                                          "Have I Told You Lately"

          He'll Have To Go

"Waltzing On Top Of The World"

            "Adios Amigo"

    (Oslo, Norway, 1964)

Songs from his appearances on

The Grand Ol' Opry

                        "Danny Boy"

"Where We'll Never Grow Old"

          Streets of Laredo

               "May The Good Lord Bless And Keep You"

And may God bless the great Jim Reeves for all he gave us.

Story by Tom Correa