Stupid people of the week

Watch this photo for a while, and eventually you’ll see there’s a ’56 Pontiac hidden behind the girl.

Watch: Thieves drag ATM through Texas convenience store in Christmas Eve theft attempt

Poor guys just wanted to take the ATM for a walk, and the po-lice are trying to harass them.

Thieves attempted to steal an ATM on Christmas Eve by dragging it through the front of a Texas convenience store with a stolen SUV and a metal cable, but the machine broke free as they fled, police said.

The White Settlement Police Department posted footage of two suspects towing an ATM through the front glass doors of a 7-Eleven in Fort Worth before driving away.

The failed heist happened just before 4 a.m. Wednesday and may be connected to a string of similar convenience store crimes reported across North Texas in recent weeks, police said.

Investigators are asking for the public’s help identifying the suspects as they attempt to determine whether the incident is part of a broader crime pattern.

White Settlement police said in a statement that two men traveled to the store parking lot in the stolen SUV wearing dark-colored clothing with their faces covered.

One of the men smashed the front door with a metal object and attached a cable to the ATM that was already hooked to the vehicle, investigators said.

Officers found extensive damage to the storefront, with debris, shelving and merchandise scattered throughout the store and into the parking lot.

Police said it took two attempts for the thieves to get the ATM out of the store.

The ATM was dislodged from the vehicle as the suspects fled and was later recovered by police.

The black SUV had been stolen in Dallas, investigators added.

Police used license plate readers and city cameras throughout the city to try and locate it about a half-mile from the store.

Source; Fox News

Kentucky lawmaker sparks firestorm for saying she doesn’t ‘feel good about being White’

She’s AWFL (Affluent White Female Liberal). AWFL people are the worst.

A Kentucky Democrat went viral this week after admitting she felt guilty about her skin color in a speech defending diversity, equity and inclusion programs in public schools.

“I’m going to be honest,” state Rep. Sarah Stalker said during a meeting of the Kentucky General Assembly’s Interim Joint Committee on Education Tuesday. “I don’t feel good about being White every day, for a lot of reasons.”

Stalker was responding to comments from Republican state Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, who presented a draft of a bill to end DEI programs in K-12 schools in Kentucky, according to the Kentucky Lantern.

In her remarks, Stalker said being White was a “point of privilege” that gives her opportunities that many of her colleagues, friends, family members and community don’t get to experience. She said removing DEI programs from schools would deny White students the “opportunity” to expose them to their own “privilege.”

“If I was a White man, I would be functioning from a point of even greater privilege,” she continued. “I think we’re missing an opportunity. When kids have a moment to reflect about how the color of their skin does and does not allow them to move through the world — running to them and trying to stifle that and trying to say you shouldn’t feel bad, so, we don’t ever want to expose you to something that is going to make you have to pause and have maybe some internal feelings — it’s a missed opportunity for some really good dialogue.”

Stalker denied DEI efforts are about “making people feel bad about being White,” instead arguing they are about recognizing the “historical privilege that White people have always had in this country,” which she said still exists today.

She pointed to the diversity within the state’s largest school district — Jefferson County Public Schools — which she said represented 145 languages spoken and where 63% of students qualified for free and reduced lunches. She argued DEI is really about “including everyone,” not excluding White people.

“What the efforts of DEI are trying to do within a school setting now is to pull in other students,” Stalker continued. “Their stories are relative. Their culture, their history, those things are important to see reflective in the reading material. And if we don’t allow those things to come into our textbooks and to come into our conversations in the classroom in a constructive way, then we are simply just trying to whitewash things and I find that to be incredibly problematic.”

Stalker’s comments drew attention online — and a strong reaction from Elon Musk.

“What an evil woman,” Musk posted on X. His comment drew more than 1 million views in less than 24 hours.

Tichenor, the anti-DEI bill’s sponsor, said the legislation would be narrowly tailored and would not “affect instruction on the historical oppression of a particular group of people,” according to the Kentucky Lantern.

Tichenor also criticized Jefferson and Fayette counties for declining to comply with Trump administration directives to end DEI programs in schools. She argued that, despite receiving funding under the Biden administration, those programs have not improved minority students’ academic outcomes.

“DEI reinforces division rather than unity, and encourages students, teachers and staff to see each other through the lens of identity and creating groupthink instead of creating independent thinkers,” Tichenor said.

Stalker did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Source; Yahoo!

Minnesota judge’s ‘highly unusual’ decision tossing $7.2 million fraud verdict draws mounting scrutiny

Minnesota’s really on a streak of…just…absolute winning lately. The whole state’s going full retard Walz.

Lawmakers and the legal community are raising questions after a Minnesota judge took the uncommon step of overturning a unanimous jury verdict in a massive $7.2 million Medicaid fraud case, a move experts say is rarely seen in white-collar prosecutions.

The ruling, handed down late last month by Hennepin County Judge Sarah West, comes as Minnesota is engulfed in a series of major welfare and human services fraud scandals that have drawn national attention and shaken confidence in the state’s oversight systems.

West’s decision has triggered broader doubts about Minnesota’s resolve to prosecute white-collar and welfare fraud at a time when billions in public funds could be vulnerable.

JaneAnne Murray, a University of Minnesota law professor who studies criminal procedure, said she was surprised by the decision.

“It is highly unusual for a judge to reject a jury’s verdict in any case, much less a white-collar one, where issues of intent will almost always be circumstantial,” Murray told Fox News Digital.

Minnesota’s circumstantial-evidence standard, she noted, is among the strictest in the country and requires prosecutors to “exclude any reasonable hypothesis of innocence.”

Legal experts say Minnesota’s unusually stringent rule gives judges broader authority to vacate convictions if prosecutors cannot rule out every reasonable alternative explanation for the defendant’s conduct. The Minnesota Supreme Court is reviewing the decades-old standard, but Murray said West was applying the law as it stands today.

“The judge in the Medicaid fraud case was applying the current law,” Murray said.

Until now, West had maintained a low profile on the bench with no prior rulings that attracted substantial controversy. But last month’s decision was derided by Republican Minnesota Sen. Michael Holmstrom, who labeled her a “true extremist.”

West, a former public defender appointed to the bench in 2018 by Gov. Mark Dayton, previously handled juvenile and child protection cases in Hennepin County. She also held leadership roles in the Hennepin County Bar Foundation, which funds legal aid and community justice programs.

She presided over the prosecution of Abdifatah Yusuf, found guilty by a jury of six counts of aiding and abetting theft after he and his wife were accused of stealing $7.2 million from the state’s Medicaid program while running a home healthcare business, according to the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office.

Prosecutors said the business lacked a real office, operated “for years out of a mailbox” and that Yusuf allegedly used the money to fund a “lavish lifestyle” that included shopping sprees at luxury retailers such as Coach, Canada Goose, Michael Kors, Nike and Nordstrom.

But West tossed the conviction, ruling that the state’s case relied heavily on circumstantial evidence and failed to eliminate other reasonable inferences about Yusuf’s personal involvement in the billing scheme.

“There is a reasonable, rational inference that Mr. Yusuf was the owner … but that his brother, Mohamed Yusuf, was committing the fraud … without Mr. Yusuf’s knowledge or involvement,” West wrote in her ruling.

She said the scale and nature of the fraud was “of great concern” but ruled the state failed to prove Yusuf knowingly participated in it.

Andy McCarthy, a former assistant U.S. attorney and Fox News contributor, said the ruling veered far beyond what trial judges are normally permitted to do, underscoring how exceptional the move was.

“It is highly unusual for a judge to overturn a jury verdict in a criminal case,” McCarthy told Fox News Digital, noting that a judge who believes the evidence is legally insufficient is supposed to stop the case before it ever reaches the jury.

McCarthy said the reported rationale for vacating the verdict “seems untenable,” arguing circumstantial evidence is routinely strong enough to sustain convictions.

“The fact that a case is circumstantial — meaning there is no central witness who saw the crime — is not a reason to overturn it,” he said. “Very often, circumstantial cases are much stronger than cases that rise or fall on the testimony of witnesses of dubious credibility.”

He added that judges are required to instruct jurors to view evidence as a whole rather than in isolation.

“The judge is only permitted to vacate a guilty verdict if it is obviously irrational and against the full weight of the evidence,” McCarthy said.

Because West waited until after deliberations to overturn the verdict, McCarthy said the state may still have the ability to appeal, a procedural opening that does not exist when a judge tosses a case before the jury deliberates.

Ben Walfoort, the jury foreperson, told KARE he was “shocked” by West’s decision and said the jury’s conclusion “was not a difficult decision whatsoever.”

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has filed an appeal.

The decision has also triggered a political fight, with Holmstrom sending a formal letter to Judge West demanding she unseal key exhibits — and the entire case record — arguing that the public “must know what is happening in their courts and in their welfare programs.”

Holmstrom called the ruling “unprecedented” and said locking away documents produced in open court violates Minnesota’s tradition of transparency.

Source; Yahoo!

Category: Crime, Stupid Criminals, WTF?