Christmas Eve Updates

Start with 81-year old Kay Granger (R- Dallas). She hasn’t cast a vote in Congress since July this year, and according to the Dallas Express, she is living at a care home dealing with dementia issues.

And beginning in January 2023 she spent more than a year as the chairperson of the powerful House appropriations committee.

But months after announcing her plans to retire when her term ended in early 2025, Granger largely disappeared from the public eye. Her congressional website shows her last vote was on 24 July,…https://www.yahoo.com/news/absent-republican-congresswoman-living-memory-153727202.htmlThe Guardian

Her son says she is just at the assisted-living part of the facility, not an inpatient at the memory-care facility. She may be retiring next month, but  after missing 6 months of House votes you have to wonder why the Republican leadership hasn’t addressed that, especially in view of the excoriation Joe Biden took for his mental decline.

Next up, the Navy always says the Marines are part of their service, not a separate branch.So why don’t they seem to talk?

The U.S. Navy’s Medium Landing Ship (LSM), a platform many view as crucial to transporting Marines among remote islands in a future war against China, is dead in the water for the time being. Reports emerged this week that sea service leaders balked at high cost estimates that have come in from industry to build the vessel.

Navy and Marine Corps leaders have called for between 18 to 35 LSMs that would range in length from 200 to 400 feet, with a 12-foot draft, each crewed by about 70 sailors, according to an August Congressional Research Service (CRS) report. The LSM would provide 8,000 square feet of deck cargo space, carrying 50 Marines and nearly 650 tons of equipment.  The War Zone

Guess the Marines could depend on Littoral Combat Ships? Oh, wait…

Tiffany Henyard, the embattled wild-spending mayor of Dolton, IL, has moved into rarefied territory, identifying herself as a Rosa Parks.

“I am history. I am the 21st Century History,” Henyard said. “I am your Rosa Parks, your Harriet Tubmans. [sic] I am that person. Somebody has to say never, never ever give up.”

Within the Thornton Township in Illinois, an ongoing insurance dispute between supervisor Henyard and local board members Carmen Carlisle and Chris Gonzalez has escalated into a government shutdown. As a result, many services are unavailable due to a lack of liability insurance, including access to pay bills amid the gridlocked government.  Fox News

Pretty much all government services there are shut down.

The Cowards of Broward strike again. During the Parkland school shooting, the Broward County Sheriff’s Department took extensive (and well deserved) grief for failing to aggressively take out the school shooter. Today we learn they can be aggressive when they want to be. They arrested Jennifer Heath Box on Christmas Eve ’22 as she debarked from a cruise ship based on  Harris County, TX’s warrant. Her Marine son was departing December 27   ’22 for a three year Okinawa tour.

Police had a warrant for “Jennifer Delcarmen Heath,” who was 23 years younger and nearly half a foot shorter than the “Jennifer” who had just gotten off a cruise ship.

According to court filings from July 2022, Jennifer Delcarmen Heath was accused of endangering her children, ages 1 and 3.

Jennifer Heath Box, who was 48 years old at the time, had no minor children. The suspect on the warrant was younger than one of her daughters.

“Endangering a child? What child would I endanger?” Box asked, stunned.

Box’s attorneys at the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit civil liberties law firm, said Broward County deputies overlooked at least 10 significant discrepancies between Box and the subject of the warrant, including the vast age and height disparities, different Social Security and FBI numbers and contrasting eye, hair and skin colors. The only information that implicated Box was a copy of her DMV photo that had been attached to the warrant.

Officials with Harris County said they needed BSO to send over the warrant and Box’s fingerprints for comparison, but BSO refused, according to the suit.

Finally, the evening of Dec. 26, Box was able to file a complaint, asking BSO to compare her fingerprints to those of the suspect.

Box walked out of jail around 10 a.m. on Dec. 27. Her son was boarding his flight.

Each sheriff’s department blames the other – Harris for providing her driver’s license info to Broward (there almost 160 other Jennifer Heaths in Texas alone), Broward for not even taking rudimentary steps to confirm that she did not match the real fugitive’s characteristics.

Institute for Justice attorney Jared McClain said that while Harris County and CBP also made mistakes in the case, it “does not excuse the behavior of Officer Peraza and the Broward County Sheriff’s Office.”Fox News II

The discrepancies?

The Jennifer that police wanted was 23 years younger and five inches shorter than the Jennifer they arrested. She also lived in a different county, had a different driver’s license number, had different hair and eye colors, and even had a different last name—all information that police and jail personnel ignored. Institute for Justice

She filed suit. As well she should.

Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Congress sucks, Crime, Navy