Los Angeles Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell said this week that an arson suspect who was arrested Tuesday in Pacoima told police he had started small fires because he "liked the smell of burning leaves."
Police detained a suspect around 5:15 p.m. Wednesday after a citizen extinguished a fire and held him near Glenoaks and Van Nuys boulevards, according to ABC7.
The man, whose name was not released, was booked on suspicion of arson. Later, around 9:30 p.m., firefighters responded to reports of multiple trash fires near Vermont Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard in East Hollywood.
"The suspect admitted to setting multiple fires that day and stated that she enjoyed causing chaos and destruction," McDonnell said.
New York funnels more money into its schools than any state in the nation — with only mediocre results to show for it, a withering report released Friday reveals.
Spending on education has gone up — to a whopping $89 billion on New York school districts this academic year — even as both enrollment and test scores have plummeted, according to the analysis by the Citizens Budget Commission.
The statewide average of spending per student came to an eye-popping $36,293, a 21% increase since the 2020-21 school year, the report by the budget watchdog group found.
That’s even as the scores of New York schoolkids on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — the one common test taken by students from across the US — dipped further than the national average.
We noted here that CNN and Jake Tapper are on trial in Florida, in a defamation case brought by former serviceman Zachary Young. Young helped people escape from Afghanistan; CNN smeared him as an “illegal profiteer” operating within a “black market.” Apparently it is now conceded that this was false. Young alleges that CNN’s smear destroyed his business.
We noted in the post linked above, at the jury selection stage, that there were six prospective jurors who said they think CNN purveys fake news, and only one who said he regularly watched CNN. The trial is now nearing its conclusion, and things have not gotten better for the cable network:
CNN reporter Katie Bo Lillis conceded she was intentionally vague when she messaged Navy veteran Zachary Young about his efforts to evacuate Afghans fleeing their home as the Taliban took control of the country in 2021. In response, jurors on Wednesday asked Lillis a series of unflattering questions, suggesting they may be poised to put CNN on the hook for defaming Young through a piece he says destroyed his business. *** Lillis defended her conduct, telling the court, “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.” She also said she stood by the story and did not “mislead” Young. Jurors, however, didn’t appear to agree. They peppered Lillis with questions like, “Do you feel Americans are obligated to speak to you?” and, “To what length must someone go to in order not to speak to you?” Another juror asked, “At what point do you accept someone not wishing to speak or comment?” A fourth said, “A chance to make your case to keep your name out of it sounds akin to guilty until proven innocent.”
I assume the jurors “peppered” the witness with questions by writing them out and submitting them to the judge, who then read them. Allowing jurors to ask questions is an innovation; I think I only tried one jury case, in Colorado, where this was done. If there is a court where jurors are literally permitted to question witnesses, it is a whole new world of trial practice.
The questions suggest the jurors are hostile to CNN and sympathetic to Young, a troubling development for the left-wing network as it awaits a conclusion to the trial that is expected to come on Friday. Young argues that the report irreparably harmed his reputation and ruined his business, Nemex Enterprises, and is seeking a 10-figure payout—one that jurors appeared open to during jury selection last week.
There are good reasons why CNN is in trouble. The network sent Young a series of questions and arrogantly told him he had two hours to respond. One of them was about whether he had a prior relationship with the CIA. He did, but he would not have been able to answer that question without getting clearance from the Agency, which he couldn’t possibly do in that time frame.
And some at CNN knew the segment was bad:
Senior CNN editor Tom Lumley said Marquardt’s story was “full of holes like Swiss cheese” and suggested killing it entirely.
CNN’s lawyer is not popular with the judge, either:
And it wasn’t just the jury that heckled CNN on Wednesday. [Judge] Henry scolded the network’s lead attorney, David Axelrod, for repeatedly calling Young a “liar” and said he owed the veteran an apology.
“Now your credibility with me, Mr. Axelrod, is about none,” Henry said.
Ouch. Based on news reports, it sounds as though CNN is in line for a large judgment. Young’s lawyer suggested in voir dire that he might ask for a billion dollars in punitive damages. He won’t get that much, but it seems possible that CNN could face bankruptcy, depending on the extent of its insurance coverage for defamation.
UPDATE: The Free Beacon has more, some of which is laughable.
The key CNN employee in this case is Alex Marquardt, the network’s chief national security correspondent. He has testified in the Florida trial:
“I don’t feel the need to apologize to him,” Marquardt said repeatedly on the stand Monday. Shortly after, he touted his various honors. “I’ve won a few Emmy awards. That’s kind of the main award in television news.”
I am sure the jury was deeply impressed. Marquardt’s story turns out to be mostly fiction:
He called Young a “war profiteer” during his testimony and said “everything” in his story was “factual,” “accurate,” and “fair.” But he also admitted he had “no evidence” of Young taking advantage of any Afghans and said the veteran was “exploiting the situation and not the people.”
Marquardt also admitted that he did find evidence of legitimate scams targeting Afghan evacuees, but he didn’t follow up on those scams because they weren’t related to Young.
Marquardt is a self-parody of an out of touch lefty:
In 2022, Marquardt married his fiancée Amanda McClements in Mallorca, Spain, on his family’s 400-year-old estate, People reported. The couple met on Raya, a dating app reserved exclusively for the rich and famous, and were engaged on an uninhabited island in Greece.
Sure. Just like you and me.
“I don’t do hit pieces,” Marquardt testified. Jurors were later shown a message in which Marquardt told a CNN assistant editor, “we gonna nail this Zachary Young mfucker.”
Marquardt also agreed with a text that described the veteran Zachary Young as having a “punchable face.” Some observers might disagree as to whose face is “punchable.” Some of those observers might be on the jury.
The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState.com.
It all seems as if it’s almost timed to coincide with the return of Donald Trump’s return to power. The failure of progressive leadership has been exposed in a way that it has never been before as disastrous wildfireswipe out entire neighborhoods in deep-blue Los Angeles, a result not only of natural forces like unusually high winds and dry conditions but by the epic breakdown of any real leadership in the Golden State and the misplaced priorities of elected officials like LA Mayor Karen Bass and camera-addicted Gov. Gavin Newsom.
We have covered the seemingly endless perversions of what passes as official management in this one-party state, but it just keeps getting worse. For every fiasco we report, another one quickly comes in. While Newsom and his ilk scold us endlessly for our gas-powered cars, the wildfires—that could have arguably been prevented by competent stewardship of our forests—have now caused far more damage than one million of my Ford Explorers could possibly ever do.
And now that clean, green technology he so touts is coming back to haunt him—there’s a huge fireThursday night at a lithium battery plant in northern Monterey County. What’s a little lithium smoke in the air in the name of progress, right?
Highway 1 is closed and evacuations were ordered in Moss Landing and the Elkhorn Slough area after a major fire erupted Thursday afternoon at a battery storage plant in Moss Landing in northern Monterey County.
The fire, which was raging out of control Thursday night, sending up huge flames and clouds of hazardous black smoke, was reported around 3 p.m. at the plant, located on Highway 1, Monterey County spokesman Nicholas Pasculli said.
Evacuations of about 1,500 people were ordered for areas of Moss Landing south of Elkhorn Slough, north of Molera Road and Monterey Dunes Way, and west of Castroville Boulevard and Elkhorn Road to the ocean, he said.
The decision by the Israeli government to make significant concessions to the Hamas kidnappers should never be called a "deal." It was an extortion.... The kidnapping was a crime. And the extortionate demand was an additional crime.
When a terrorist group "negotiates" with a democracy, it always has the upper hand. The terrorists are not constrained by morality, law or truth. They can murder at will, rape at will, torture at will and threaten to do worse. The democracy, on the other hand, must comply with the rules of law and must listen to the pleas of the hostage families.
Especially complicit, with blood on their hands, are supporters of Hamas on university campuses who chant for intifada and revolution. Also complicit are international organizations, such as the International Criminal Court, that treat Israel and Hamas as equals.
[L]et us put the blame for ALL the deaths in Gaza where it belongs: on Hamas and the useful idiots and useless bigots who support murderous terrorists.
According to Sacramento Sheriff's Office records, 49-year-old Darrin Bell was arrested on Wednesday at his south Sacramento home. Bell is being held at the Sacramento County Jail on $1 million bail.
'Donald Trump, like his friend Jeffrey Epstein, is a predator who grooms his victims.'
The Sacramento Bee reported that Bell was charged with suspicion of possession and creating child pornography.
The Sacramento County Sheriff's Office said in a statement that law enforcement was tipped off to possible child sex crimes by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Police said the child porn files led them to an account "owned and controlled" by Bell. Investigators said they discovered a total of 134 child pornography videos on Bell's account.
Detectives executed a search at Bell's home, where they recovered the illicit files but also AI-generated child porn.
Officials noted that this was the first arrest by the Sacramento Valley Hi-Tech Task Force/Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force involving the possession of a computer-generated/AI CSAM. The law to charge individuals with AI-generated child porn went into effect on Jan. 1, 2025.
According to a LinkedIn profile, Bell was a member of the Washington Post Writers Group for nearly 20 years until March 2023. The profile shows that Bell is currently a cartoonist at King Features Syndicate — a unit of the Hearst Corporation.
Bell was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2019.
The Washington Post featured a profile of Bell in June 2023, which highlighted him having "the talk" with his three young children about racism and police violence against black people.
Bell regularly attacked Donald Trump in his cartoons, including an image depicting the president-elect attempting to grope the Statue of Liberty and several that compared him to Adolf Hitler.
When Trump was re-elected, Bell wrote: "Convicted felon, rapist, con-man and white supremacist Donald Trump decisively defeats Kamala Harris to become the 47th president of the United States. And this time he won the popular vote. The voters in the USA chose this Neo-Confederate president with their eyes open."
Bell said of Trump in February 2024, "He’s a racist, treasonous, autocrat-admiring career criminal and rapist. Being desperate to stop him from getting back into the White House is the normal reaction that every decent person should have."
In October 2020, Bell wrote on the X social media platform: "Donald Trump, like his friend Jeffrey Epstein, is a predator who grooms his victims. He’s grooming his supporters to refuse to accept any election outcome other than a Trump victory. And he’s grooming the rest of us to tolerate whatever he & red states may do to flip results."
In a cartoon titled "The Groomer," Bell drew the GOP's elephant and had the Republican symbol cornering young children and exposing itself to the kids.
In one of his cartoons, Bell compared rabid Trump supporters using the term "groomer" to Nazis.
Grooming is when a sexual predator builds a relationship with typically a child, but it can be an adult, to abuse and exploit them by manipulating them to reduce the risk of them being caught.
Another one of Bell's cartoons spotlights the sexual assault accusations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
In 2011, Bell wrote on the X social media platform: "To a child, 'rape' & 'rapist' are merely words. If you explain it calmly it's simply a lesson. A valuable one."
Bell is also known for his comic strip “Candorville,” which features three childhood friends.
Bell is scheduled to appear in court on Jan. 17.PAUL SACCA
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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