Louisiana Surgically Castrates Child Molester, $500B Over 10 Years to Ukraine?, Deadliest Day for Law Enforcement Since 2016 (The Five for 04/30/24)
Plus, Columbia University locks down campus. The odd controversy around the new Minnesota State Flag.
Hey, welcome to The Five, a publication about the stories that matter, but don’t always make the front page.
Let’s dive into The News.
[one]
Will the U.S. be financially supporting Ukraine until 2034?
From The Daily Wire:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an address on Sunday that he is working on an agreement with U.S. leaders that would provide military, financial, and political support for Ukraine for the next 10 years.
Last week, Congress passed a bipartisan foreign aid package that appropriates an additional $61 billion to help Ukraine in its war effort against Russia, and the legislation was promptly approved by President Joe Biden. In his speech over the weekend, Zelensky specifically thanked U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) along with “all” U.S. congressmen “for their support of our country and personal leadership in advancing a new package of assistance to Ukraine.”
The legislation will face an unlikely opponent in the House, the only Ukranian-born member of Congress opposes ongoing aid.
From The Associated Press:
U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz, the first and only Ukrainian-born member of Congress, emerged early on as a natural advocate for supporting her native country in its war with Russia. But when $61 billion in additional support for the war effort came up for a vote in the House recently, she voted against it.
Spartz said she is “kind of appalled” at the notion that her heritage should dictate support for the Ukrainian cause if she feels the money would be wasted.
“My responsibility is the protection of American people,” she said during a recent interview.
On a recent episode of the Valuetainment Podcast, Spatz stated that she believes President Zelensky is personally enriching himself from the war.
[two]
The ongoing Israel/Hamas war protests at Columbia University in New York escalated when students were told to leave their encamptment…or be shut out of campus and classes for the semester.
Students broke into a building and are now forcibly occupying it, according to the New York Times:
Hamilton Hall, a Columbia building with a history of student takeovers, was seized early Tuesday, shortly after demonstrators marched to chants of “Free Palestine.” Hours earlier, administrators said they had begun suspending students who refused to leave an encampment on the lawn where more than 100 students had been arrested on April 18, setting off a cascade of campus activism nationwide..
Similar protests (although not as dramatic, are popping up all over the country, the NYT notes:
Around 6 a.m. on Tuesday, police officers moved into an encampment at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and began arresting students who refused to disperse, according to local news reports that said upward of 30 people were arrested.
At Yale University, all protesters chose to leave an encampment they had erected on Sunday, after the university issued final warnings to leave or face discipline, including suspension, Yale announced.
In Austin, more than 100 students at the University of Texas were arrested on Monday. Local officials told The Austin American-Statesman that at least 100 protesters would be booked on charges of resisting arrest and assault.
More than 800 protesters have been taken into custody on U.S. campuses since the original roundup at Columbia on April 18, according to a New York Times tally. Here’s where the arrests have happened.
While the protests are spreading rapidly to college campuses, the academic semester typically ends in May, which will likely cool off the trend.
UPDATE: Just before publication time, Columbia closed it’s campus indefinitely to everyone but on-campus students and staff performing essential duties (food prep, public safety and maintenance).
[two]
A rapist in Louisiana signed up for his own surgical castration.
A Louisiana man who repeatedly raped a 14-year-old girl and impregnated her will be physically castrated while serving a 50-year prison sentence as part of a plea deal.
Glenn Sullivan Sr., 54, of Springfield pleaded guilty April 17 to four counts of second-degree rape — and agreed to be surgically castrated, as opposed to chemically castrated, at the request of prosecutors, authorities said.
“I felt that this case was a strong enough case and warranted such action,” said 21st Judicial Assistant District Attorney Brad Cascio in a statement, according to WBRZ.
Sullivan raped his victim and then terrorized her into silence by threatening her and her family, said a statement by 21st District Attorney Scott Perrilloux.
The Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office launched an investigation into Sullivan in July 2022 after the girl came forward and told detectives he had raped her “multiple times” when she was just 14 years old.
In investigating the sordid case, detectives learned Sullivan had “groomed” the victim and “used threats of violence against her and her family” to keep her quiet, Perrilloux wrote.
Just to recap, the perpetrator agreed to be castrated with a knife as part of a plea deal. My first instinct was that he was attempting to avoid the death penalty at trial, but Louisiana’s death penalty for rape was struck down in 2008 by the Supreme Court. But hey, given the horrific nature of his crimes (and threatening the family into silence), no taksey-backseys. And also, no more testes.
To the hero judge, on behalf of a grateful nation, I will now please accept this Drake meme in your honor:
[four]
[]The new Minnesota state flag is a whole can of worms.
Fox News reports:
The Minnesota state government created a commission to try to figure out how to make their flag less "racist" against Native Americans and it is now considering a plethora of "qualifying designs" submitted by the public.
The state flag of Minnesota features a modified version of the seal of Minnesota emblazoned on a blue field. The first version of the flag was adopted in 1893. However, critics on the left have blasted the flag for its depictions of Native Americans.
A professor of urban studies at the University of Minnesota, William Lindeke, called it "our racist and ugly state flag."
He went on to claim it represented genocidal feelings from White people. Specifically, "the dominant feelings of white Minnesotans at the time, most of whom wanted to eradicate Native Americans from their homeland. As such, the seal and flag represent sentiments that led directly to the genocide of Dakota people, and is one that Minnesotans should not celebrate in any way."
"Note that the Minnesota state flag breaks nearly every one of these rules. Minnesota’s flag is so bad, in fact, that it consistently ranks as one of the bottom state flags in the nation, offering a combination of offensiveness and inelegance that’s hard to top," he said. "There’s not much you can say to defend the Minnesota state flag… I guess it’s historically honest, reflecting a deep well of racism that is inseparable from our state history."
A sampling of flags the state put up as “qualifying submissions” apparently represent the a very narrow window of residents who are simultaneously LGBT, Communist, and quite inept at using Microsoft Paint:
In the end, the design that won out is a blue-on-blue scheme with the North Star as the only design element, which some critics have decried as a signal to the state’s growing Muslim population, due to design similarities with the flag of the Ottoman Empire (which ended with the conclusion of World War I…not exactly top of mind).
On the one hand, yeah…it’s kinda weird. Putting a cross or star of David on a government flag probably wouldn’t fly, but there’s a more stringent standard put on Judeo-Christian symbolism in the “seperation of church and state.” On the other, South Carolina has featured a similar crescent moon, and was adopted when the Ottoman Empire was still in existence, and nobody accused that state of being secretly Islamic.
But if outrage around the crescent moon does push South Carolina to adopt a new flag, I suggest the Palmetto State add a truck with the “Carolina Squat” to the design…as eternal punishment for all perfectly good pickups that have been ruined by low IQ white trash idiots.
Starting next week, I’ll be taking donations for my new nonprofit “Let This Be the Last Generation,” which will offer a free case of Keystone Light to all squatted truck owners in exchange for an on-the-spot vasectomy.*
*Sarcasm, obviously. Unless we can make this happen?! Go team!
[five]
Finally, four police officer have died in a shootout in South Carolina in the deadliest day for law enforcement since a sniper attacked police in Dallas in 2016.
A shootout that killed four law enforcement officers and wounded four others in North Carolina began as officers approached a home to serve a warrant for a felon wanted for possessing a firearm, police said.
Some of the officers who rushed to the Charlotte neighborhood Monday afternoon to rescue the first wave of downed officers were wounded as a second shooter began firing on them after they killed the wanted man, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Johnny Jennings said.
“Today we lost some heroes who were out simply trying to keep our community safe,” Jennings said at a news conference.
After a three-hour standoff, the suburban Charlotte home was torn open. Armored vehicles smashed into it, ripping off windows and entire doorways that were left broken. Several armored vehicles were parked across yards, some with tree branches dangling off them.
The U.S. Marshals Task Force was fired on by the wanted suspect as they approached the house and the man was killed in the front yard, Jennings said. Police identified him as Terry Clark Hughes Jr, 39. He was wanted for possession of a firearm by a felon and two counts of felony flee to elude in Lincoln County, North Carolina.
A second person then fired on officers from inside the home where a high-powered rifle was found, Jennings added.
One local TV news station captured the events from a helicopter but refused to release the footage, describing the scene with nine people laying dead or wounded on the front lawn of the home as “too gruesome for the public.”
Until the next one,
-sth