WWLTV Reports
Attorneys selected four jurors Monday in the second murder trial of rapper Corey "C-Murder" Miller.
Miller is charged with the second-degree murder of a 16-year-old in a now-closed nightclub in Harvey back in 2002.
The judge began questioning potential jurors individually to see how much they've heard about the case that has twisted and turned in court, and in the public spotlight, for seven years.
After a month-long trial, a Jefferson Parish jury convicted Miller of second-degree murder in 2003. But the judge in the case, Judge Martha Sassone, threw the conviction out. Her handling of the case was the subject of her heated re-election bid last year when her challenger, Ellen Kovach, criticized Sassone’s handling of the C-Murder case. Kovach won the election and later recused herself from it.
It was just one of the many turns of events in the murder of 16-year-old Steve Thomas that generated publicity.
Over the years, Miller made a rap video from inside the Jefferson Parish jail, drawing the ire of the late Sheriff Harry Lee.
Lee said during a 2002 press conference, "He just wants to be a gangster and it may very well be that he's living out his lyrics, or he wants to live 'em out and write another song or whatever he's doing.”
Publicity played a role in Miller’s second murder trial, as his attorney tried to get it moved to another parish.
“It really hasn't been publicity about the substance of the case as much as it has been about the name of the defendant,” said Loyola Law Professor Dane Ciolino.
Miller's attorney, Ron Rakowsky, tried once again to get the case moved out of Jefferson Parish before jury selection began Monday. Rakowsky told the judge in court, "As much as we try, I think it's going to be impossible to get a fair jury here."
Prosecutors argued that enough time has lapsed between the murder and the trial that publicity isn't as much of an issue.
Publicity swirled again three months ago when Miller pleaded no contest to two counts of attempted second-degree murder in a Baton Rouge nightclub shooting, where the rapper was caught on surveillance video.
“If it turns out throughout this voir dire process that so many jurors know so much about the case that it prejudicially affects their ability to sit as a fair and impartial juror, I don't think the judge would have much of a choice other than to try this case in some other judicial district,” Ciolino said.
The professor continued, saying Rakowsky's attempts to move the trial were likely legal maneuvers as much as they are attempts at fairness.
“Jefferson Parish juries are typically more conservative. It's not a very defendant-friendly jurisdiction. And for that reason alone, I'm sure defense lawyers would like to be in another parish,” he said.
Miller’s last trial depended solely on eyewitness testimony, and often featured conflicting eyewitness testimony from the defense. hat could by why defense attorneys said in court Monday that the prosecutors filed notice that they may call as many as 85 witnesses in the case.
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LATimes Reports
Ryan O'Neal admits that he was so frazzled at Farrah Fawcett's funeral that he hit on his own daughter, Tatum O'Neal.
“They had just put the casket in the hearse and I was watching it drive away when a beautiful blonde woman comes up and embraces me," Ryan tells Vanity Fair. "I said to her, 'You have a drink on you? You have a car?' She said, 'Daddy, it's me -- Tatum!' I was just trying to be funny with a strange Swedish woman, and it's my daughter. It's so sick."
But the bigger question is whether Ryan's devotion to Farrah in her last days was just an act.
His son Redmond thinks it was.
"All those crocodile tears! ... My dad's only goal was to make sure he would be in the will,” Redmond tells Vanity Fair. "It was so disgustingly transparent as soon as he found out she was terminal. I consider him a vulture presiding over a carcass. Ryan thought he was going to get everything."
Farrah reportedly left almost her entire estate to Redmond. And nothing to Ryan.
Both Tatum and her brother Griffin O'Neal also speak to Vanity Fair of Ryan's failures as a father, his rages and his drug use.
"My father is afraid of me because I know the truth," Griffin says. "That's the part that absolutely scares him to death." Griffin suggests that the family's problems might have something to do with the fact that Ryan plied his children with drugs -- "My father gave me cocaine when I was 11 and insisted I take it. ... He was violent all the way through my upbringing," says Griffin. "He was a very abusive, narcissistic psychopath. He gets so mad he can't control anything he's doing."
Tatum wrote a book about her childhood, much to her father's annoyance.
"No parent wants to hear their kid saying [awful] things about them. ... But what I wrote in the book was true. I've got a battle with drugs, but I'm a strong, independent person, and I fight for myself, and my father and I butt heads. When I was 16 years old, he and Farrah moved in together, and after that I saw my dad periodically, and that took a long time for me to get over."
About being hit on by her dad, Tatum sighs and says: "That's our relationship in a nutshell. You make of it what you will." It had been a few years since we'd seen each other, and he was always a ladies' man, a bon vivant."
The documentary, "Farrah's Story," about the actress' fight against anal cancer, has been nominated for an Emmy and there will be a tribute to her during the Sept. 20 awards show.
Will Ryan and Farrah's friend and documentary producer Alana Stewart appear together?
Are they living off Farrah's limelight? What do you think?
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After watching this insane "birther" I had to look further into who they are and what they represent. Here is an interesting article I found
Who Are the Birthers?
Conspiracy theories often flourish in the wake of traumatic or game-changing events – the Sept. 11 attacks, the moon landing, the Kennedy assassination – and the election of America's first black president has been no exception.
Almost as soon as Barack Obama emerged as a serious candidate for the presidency, rumors about whether or not he is really an American, and thus eligible for the presidency, began popping up online. In response, the Obama campaign posted his birth certificate (Here It Is) showing that Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961.
But that did not quiet the skeptics, a group that has been come to be known as the "birthers." If anything, it encouraged them. They argued that the birth certificate is a fake, and that Mr. Obama is not the "natural born citizen" he claims to be. Mr. Obama, many birthers say, was actually born in Kenya, though there are a number of theories that fall under the birther umbrella.
The din eventually got loud enough that some reputable organizations checked out the birthers' claims – and they found no evidence to support them. In fact, there was overwhelming evidence against such claims, including Mr. Obama's 1961 birth announcement, printed in two Hawaii newspapers. Here's one detailed investigation, and here's another.
PolitiFact wrote after its extensive look at the claims a year ago:
It is possible that Obama conspired his way to the precipice of the world's biggest job, involving a vast network of people and government agencies over decades of lies. Anything's possible.
But step back and look at the overwhelming evidence to the contrary and your sense of what's reasonable has to take over.
Yet the birthers' claims have not simply survived into Mr. Obama's presidency – they've actually gained steam. Liz Cheney, talk show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Michael Reagan and even CNN's Lou Dobbs are among those taking the birthers' theories seriously. Former presidential candidate Alan Keyes and others have pushed the argument in court; earlier this month a soldier challenged his deployment to Iraq based on birther claims.
The birthers are a passionate bunch, as this video of a birther angrily confronting Delaware Republican.Rep Mike Castle handily illustrates "Why are you people ignoring his birth certificate?," the woman asks, prompting cheers from the crowd. "He is not an American citizen, he is a citizen of Kenya."
Some Congressional Republicans have also taken up the birther cause: California Rep. John Campbell co-sponsored a bill (with at least nine others) requiring presidential candidates to submit a birth certificate, a wink and a nod action that he maintains is somehow not related to the birthers' claims. When MSNBC's Chris Matthews asked Campbell if he believed Mr. Obama is a natural born citizen, Campbell hedged, saying, "As far as I know, yes, OK?" He told Matthews, "it doesn`t matter whether I have doubts or not."
To find out why the birthers' claims have endured, Hotsheet contacted Michael Barkun, an expert in conspiracy theories and professor of political science at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University.
"There are people out there who firmly believe that the truth is always hidden, regardless of whether it's about politics or science or any other subject," he said. "That whatever is presented as public knowledge is necessarily false. That the truth is always hidden from them, regardless of what the subject is."
Pressed on why that is the case, Barkun pointed to the ability of the Internet and to a lesser extent television to disseminate conspiracy theories far more easily than ever before. He also said that, "in a strange way, conspiracy theories are comforting."
"They give people a feeling that we know the truth," Barkun said. "That we have secret knowledge, and that we know how the world really works. In a sense, we're part of a kind of elite of those who know and everybody else is misled or are trapped by illusions."
The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder, CBS News' chief political consultant, notes along these lines that "birthers now wear the term 'birther' as badge of honor, as if they were a persecuted minority -- which, come to think of it, is one mechanism for solidarity in the face of evidence to the contrary."
As Ambinder suggests, the birther phenomenon goes to the heart of the dilemma now facing the Republican Party.
"Republican presidential candidates need to figure out how to diffuse angry birthers who are bound to show up and demand their attention," he writes. "…If they give credence to the birthers, they're (not only advancing ignorance but also) betraying the narrowness of their base. If they dismiss this growing movement, they might drive birthers to find more extreme candidates, which will fragment a Republican political coalition."
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NYDailyNews Reports
Boxer Rob Newbiggin will fight for the last time Aug. 14 - as a man, that is.
The Southport, England, boxer will undergo a sex change operation, after which he will be a female known as Mercedes, The Southport Visiter reported.
Newbiggin, born in Pennsylvania in 1964, had the anatomy of a male but high levels of the female hormone estrogen, which mean he could not be definitively classified as either sex.
His parents abandoned him, and he was adopted at age 2 1/2 by Ted Newbiggin and his wife, who had immigrated to Canada from Manchester, England.
Around age 12, Newbiggin picked up boxing, after his father encouraged him to act more masculine.
“My dad said that I had to act like a man because people wouldn't accept me as anything else,” the younger Newbiggin told the Southport Visiter.
“He was trying to protect me. I didn't find out I was adopted until I was 16, and then about how I was born, but then it all started making sense to me,” he said.
Newbiggin's announcement was first printed in the daily tabloid The Sun, and he said afterward he had “lost every friend I have ever had in the world in this town.”
“My friends don't want to know me. I’ve got people winding their windows down shouting abuse at me while I go for my run – that’s why we are having to relocate. I have to think about my kids,” the boxer said.
As far as his kids are concerned, Newbiggin says sex will have no bearing on his ability to be a parent, and he might even do better as a woman.
“When it comes to my kids, it doesn't matter whether I’m a mother or a father as long as I’m a good parent,” he said. “And I think I'll be a better parent as a woman. I haven't provided enough financial stability in my male life for my children.”
He and his wife, Emma, who have been married for three years, are going to stay together, Newbiggin said, and added that she has been extremely supportive.
“I am so lucky in that respect because she understands what I'm going through.”
After becoming Mercedes, Newbiggin said, he hopes to have a future in modeling, painting and interior design. He also said he plans to apply for a boxing license as a female to continue his career.
Newbiggin said he has been flooded with supportive correspondence from people whom his story has moved to come forward.
“So our family’s sacrifice of our privacy is already working to help others, and that’s what this whole things is about.”
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Southside Jamaica & Far Rockaway Queens collabo as Bynoe from The Riot Squad links up with G-Unit's Tony Yayo !
This joint is off of Bynoe's new mixtape "Live Bad,Die Famous"
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NYDailyNews Reports
A sweet tooth may have been the least of this guy's guilty pleasures.
A Mister Softee ice cream truck driver was busted in Long Island for making one of his stops at a drug dealer's house to score dope, cops said on Sunday.
Kenneth Leiton, 22, of Elmont, parked his ice cream truck on Newton St. in Westbury at 4:18 p.m. Saturday, according to Nassau County police.
There was no playground in sight and Leiton was not hawking frozen desserts - he was the one making the buy.
After plainclothes officers spotted him make the illicit exchange, Leiton was stopped and several bags of a powder presumed to be cocaine and a bag of marijuana were found in his truck, cops said.
The ice cream man was charged with numerous counts of possession of a controlled substance and with endangering the welfare of a child.
Also arrested was Randall Surmanek, 23, of Elmont, who was riding on the truck with him.
Cops later collared the alleged drug dealer, Kerri Collins, 27, and Luis Castro, 29, who was at the same house with her.
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AllHipHop Reports
Hip-Hop group Slum Village is remaining resilient despite dealing with the sudden death of 35-year-old group member Titus “Baatin” Glover.
Baatin was found dead on Saturday (August 1) on Anglin Street in Detroit.
Police confirmed today (August 2) that the rapper’s death is not being treated as a homicide and there was no trauma found on his body.
While the cause of death has not been released due to pending toxicology reports, a source close to Baatin told AllHipHop.com the rapper may have died from a crack addiction or from complications related to crack cocaine use.
While funeral arrangements have not been set as of press time, a public remembrance is set to take place tonight at 5 E Gallery.
Despite Baatin‘s death, Slum Village took to the stage yesterday during the Rock The Bells Festival at Deer Lake in Vancouver, Canada.
“It's actually quite amazing," Rock The Bells founder Change Weisberg told the Calgary Sun. "I don't know that I'd be on stage right now. I might be back home with the family, but they're committed. It's probably the best thing they could do right now to keep their minds off things."
Cypress Hill has been flown in to give the second Calgary Rock The Bells stop at Shaw Millennium Park a boost of positive energy, as rap fans across the world mourn Baatin’s untimely death.
In addition to Cypress Hill, Nas, Damian Marley, Big Boi, The RZA, Reflection Eternal, Tech N9ne, Slaughterhouse and The Knux will perform today (August 2).
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