Virginia

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Republican Yesli Vega Falsely Suggests Rape Victims Are Unlikely to Get Pregnant

      by

      A Republican nominee in a closely watched House race in Virginia made bizarre and false comments about rape victims, saying in leaked audio recordings that she wouldn’t be surprised if a woman’s body prevents pregnancies from rape because “it’s not something that’s happening organically,” and that the rapist is doing it “quickly.”The nominee, Yesli Vega, a supervisor and sheriff’s deputy in Prince William County, made the remarks at a campaign stop last month in Stafford County, according to Axios, which published the audio recordings on Monday.The person Ms. Vega is speaking with in the two clips, which together run about a minute long, is not identified and Axios did not reveal the source of the audio.In a statement, Ms. Vega did not dispute the authenticity of the recordings, but said: “As a mother of two children, yes I’m fully aware of how women get pregnant.”The first clip indicates Ms. Vega was speaking in the context of the debate about abortion, as she can be heard saying: “The left will say, ‘What about in cases of rape or incest?’”Ms. Vega cited her experience as a police officer, saying that she had “worked one case” since 2011 “where as a result of rape the young woman became pregnant.”In the second clip, after the unidentified woman said she heard that it is “harder for a woman to get pregnant if she’s been raped,” Ms. Vega replied: “Well maybe, because there’s so much going on in the body, I don’t know. I haven’t, haven’t, you know, seen any studies but if I’m processing what you’re saying it wouldn’t surprise me, because it’s not something that’s happening organically, right? It’s forcing it.”After the unidentified woman said the body “shuts down,” Ms. Vega replied: “Yeah, yeah, and then the individual, the male, is doing it as quickly, it’s not like, you know, and so I can see why maybe there’s truth to that.”Ms. Vega’s statement did not say directly whether she stood by her comments. “Liberals are desperate to distract from their failed agenda,” the statement reads. She also said her political opponents “would rather lie and twist the truth” than explain their stance on abortion.Her campaign did not explain what “lie” her comment was referring to.Ms. Vega won a June 21 Republican primary to take on the Democratic incumbent Abigail Spanberger in Virginia’s Seventh Congressional District, a newly drawn, Democratic-leaning district. Ms. Spanberger supports abortion rights.On Twitter, Ms. Spanberger called Ms. Vega’s comments “extreme and ignorant” and “devoid of truth.”Ms. Vega’s recorded comments are similar to remarks made in August 2012 by Representative Todd Akin, who, as the Republican Senate nominee in Missouri, said pregnancy from rape is “really rare” because, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”Leading Republicans called on Mr. Akin to drop out of the race, which he rebuffed. He went on to lose the race to the Democratic incumbent, Senator Claire McCaskill, by nearly 16 percentage points. More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      John Hinckley gains full freedom 41 years after Ronald Reagan assassination attempt

      by

      John Hinckley gains full freedom 41 years after Ronald Reagan assassination attemptHinckley, who shot and wounded the president in 1981 but was acquitted by reason of insanity, had decades of mental health supervision John Hinckley, who shot and wounded US president Ronald Reagan in 1981, has been freed from court oversight, officially concluding decades of supervision by legal and mental health professionals.“After 41 years 2 months and 15 days, FREEDOM AT LAST!!!,” he wrote on Twitter shortly after noon on Wednesday.The lifting of all restrictions had been expected since late September. US district court judge Paul L Friedman in Washington had said he would free Hinckley on 15 June if he continued to remain mentally stable in the community in Virginia where he has lived since 2016.Hinckley, who was acquitted of trying to kill the then US president by reason of insanity, spent the decades before that in a Washington mental hospital.Close calls: when American presidents diced with deathRead more Hinckley has gained nearly 30,000 followers on Twitter and YouTube in recent months as the judge loosened Hinckley’s restrictions before fully lifting all of them.But the greying 67-year-old is far from being the household name that he became after shooting and wounding the 40th US president and several others outside a Washington hotel. Today, historians say Hinckley is at best a question on a quiz show and someone who unintentionally helped build the Reagan legend and inspire a push for stricter gun control.“If Hinckley had succeeded in killing Reagan, then he would have been a pivotal historical figure,” HW Brands, a historian and Reagan biographer, wrote in an email to the Associated Press. “As it is, he is a misguided soul whom history has already forgotten.”Barbara A Perry, a professor and director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, said that Hinckley “would be maybe a Jeopardy question”. But his impact remains tangible in Reagan’s legacy.“For the president himself to have been so seriously wounded, and to come back from that that actually made Ronald Reagan the legend that he became … like the movie hero that he was,” Perry said.Reagan showed grace and humor in the face of death, Perry said. After being shot, the president told emergency room doctors that he hoped they were all Republicans. He later joked to his wife Nancy that he was sorry he “forgot to duck”.When the president first spoke to Congress after the shooting, he looked “just a little bit thinner, but he’s still the robust cowboy that is Ronald Reagan”, Perry said.‘Honey, I forgot to duck’: the attempt to assassinate Ronald Reagan, 40 years onRead moreThe assassination attempt paralyzed Reagan press secretary James Brady, who died in 2014.In 1993, president Bill Clinton signed into law the Brady bill, which required a five-day waiting period for handgun purchases and background checks of prospective buyers. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence are named after Brady and his wife Sarah.The shooting also injured Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy and Washington police officer Thomas Delahanty.Hinckley was 25 and suffering from acute psychosis at the time of the attack. When jurors found him not guilty by reason of insanity, they said he needed treatment and not a lifetime in confinement. He was ordered to live at St Elizabeths hospital in Washington.In the 2000s, Hinckley began making visits to his parents’ home in a gated community in Williamsburg. A 2016 court order granted him permission to live with his mother full time, albeit under various restrictions, after experts said his mental illness had been in remission for decades.Hinckley’s mother died in July. He signed a lease on a one-bedroom apartment in the area last year and began living there with his cat, Theo, according to court filings.Over the years, the court restricted Hinckley from owning a gun or using drugs or alcohol. He also couldn’t contact the actor Jodie Foster, with whom he was obsessed at the time of the shooting, or any of his victims or their families.TopicsUS newsVirginiaRonald ReaganUS gun controlUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 175 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Mark Meadows is still registered to vote in South Carolina and Virginia, officials say

      by

      Mark Meadows is still registered to vote in South Carolina and Virginia, officials sayDonald Trump’s former chief of staff was removed from voter rolls in North Carolina earlier this month Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff to Donald Trump who was removed from North Carolina voter rolls earlier this month, is still a registered voter in two other states, according to officials.Chris Whitmire, a spokesperson for the South Carolina elections commission, said the former Republican congressman and his wife registered as voters in the state in March.“That’s when he became active,” Whitmire said, noting that neither Meadows had yet cast a vote in the state. “From our perspective, it just looks like any new South Carolina voter.”Ginni Thomas urged Trump’s chief of staff to overturn election resultsRead moreThe South Carolina registration was first reported by the Washington Post, which noted that Meadows had been a registered voter simultaneously in three states – the Carolinas and Virginia – until North Carolina removed him from its rolls earlier this month. Meadows remains a registered Virginia voter, the paper reported.Mark and Debra Meadows bought a home on Lake Keowee for $1.6m in July, according to records for the property, which was listed on their South Carolina voter registration records.The former North Carolina congressman appeared in South Carolina earlier this week with members of the state legislature’s newly formed Freedom Caucus, an offshoot of a conservative group Meadows helped found in the US House.A representative for Meadows declined to comment on the South Carolina voter registration.Last month, the office of the North Carolina attorney general, Josh Stein, asked the state bureau of investigation to look into Meadows’ voter registration in that state, which listed a home he never owned and may never have visited as his legal residence.Public records indicated Meadows had been registered to vote in Virginia and North Carolina, where he listed a Scaly Mountain mobile home he did not own as his legal residence weeks before casting an absentee 2020 presidential election ballot in the state.Trump, for whom Meadows was chief of staff at the time, won the battleground state by just over one percentage point.Marjorie Taylor Greene appears in court over attempt to bar her from CongressRead morePublic records indicate Meadows registered to vote in Alexandria, Virginia, about a year after he registered in Scaly Mountain and just weeks before Virginia’s high-profile governor’s election last fall.Meadows frequently raised the prospect of voter fraud before the 2020 presidential election as polls showed Trump trailing Joe Biden and in the months after Trump’s loss, to suggest Biden was not the legitimate winner.Judges, election officials in both parties and Trump’s own attorney general have concluded there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. Experts point to isolated incidents of intentional or unintentional violations of voter laws in every election.Through the Electronic Registration Information Center, a consortium through which states exchange data about voter registration, Whitmire also said officials periodically pull voter lists and remove those who have more recently registered in a new state.TopicsMark MeadowsUS politicsNorth CarolinaSouth CarolinaVirginianewsReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      IS terrorists who kidnapped James Foley ignored efforts to negotiate, court hears

      by

      IS terrorists who kidnapped James Foley ignored efforts to negotiate, court hearsFoley’s brother and mother testify at Virginia court trial of El Shafee Elsheikh, accused of kidnap and murder of US journalist The Islamic State terrorists who kidnapped American journalist James Foley never made serious attempts to negotiate a ransom before brutally executing him, family members have told a court.Foley’s brother and mother took the witness stand at US district court in Alexandria at the terror trial of El Shafee Elsheikh, a Briton accused of playing a leading role in a hostage-taking scheme that resulted in the deaths of Foley and three other Americans – Steven Sotloff, Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller.James Foley, a freelance photographer who grew up in New Hampshire, left for Syria in October 2012. He was well aware of the potential dangers having spent more than a month in captivity in Libya while on assignment during that country’s civil war.Diane Foley, his mother, testified that she became deeply concerned about her son when he failed to call them as he usually would on Thanksgiving.It wasn’t until late November, after Thanksgiving, that they actually received an email from James’s captors seeking to establish a line of communication.Michael Foley, James’s brother, said the emails exchanged in November 2012 and January 2013 sought either the release of Muslim prisoners or €100m .“We had no ability to secure either of those demands,” he said. “It’s not a reasonable demand. It’s not a negotiation, in my mind.”The captors did provide evidence that they were in possession of Foley and that he was still alive by giving personal details about James’s life that would have been known only to him and his family.But despite repeated efforts to engage the hostage-takers in talks, the Foleys received no replies to multiple emails for roughly eight months. Finally, in August 2013, they received an email titled: “A message to the American government and their sheep-like citizens.”The email criticized the US for a recent bombing campaign that had been undertaken against the Islamic State.It promised retaliation, “the first of which being the blood of your American citizen, James Foley. He will be executed as a DIRECT result of your transgressions towards us!”A few days later, Foley was beheaded in a gruesome video broadcast across the Internet.Parents of journalist James Foley: US government and media failed our sonRead moreBoth Foleys testified that they first learned of James’s death from reporters calling for reaction. Michael Foley said he found the video readily available on the Internet and watched it repeatedly. Diane Foley said she kept hoping it was a cruel joke. She called the FBI and other government officials she’d been in contact with, but none would respond throughout the day. The first official confirmation she received was on the evening news, when then President Barack Obama confirmed the beheading.The refusal to negotiate in serious terms stands in contrast to earlier testimony, where negotiators for European hostages engaged in lengthy discussions that resulted in the release of hostages. One hostages was released after raising €2m, a negotiated figure that was just a fraction of what was demanded from the Foleys.Elsheikh is better known as one of “the Beatles”, a nickname he and at least two other Brits were given by their captives because of their accents. Elsheikh and a longtime friend, Alexenda Kotey, were captured together and brought to Virginia to face trial. Kotey pleaded guilty last year in a plea bargain that calls for a life sentence.A third Beatle, Mohammed Emwazi, served as executioner in the video of Foley’s execution. Emwazi was killed in a drone strike.There have been conflicting statements during the trial about the existence of a fourth member of the group. An individual previously identified in public discussion as the fourth man, Aine Davis, is serving a prison sentence in Turkey.Defense lawyers have highlighted the discrepancies over the Beatles’ identities, and say there is insufficient evidence to prove Elsheikh participated in the hostage-taking scheme. Prosecutors, though, plan to present evidence later in the trial that Elsheikh confessed to his role under questioning from interrogators and in media interviews.TopicsIslamic StateVirginiaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More