(Via Truth Revolt) The outgoing Governor of Maryland, Martin O’Malley (D)—who also happens to be a possible 2016 presidential candidate—has commuted the sentences of the state’s remaining death row inmates.
Last year, Maryland’s death penalty was repealed, which O’Malley cited in a statement Wednesday as the basis for his decision:
“Recent appeals and the latest opinion on this matter by Maryland’s Attorney General have called into question the legality of carrying out earlier death sentences — sentences imposed prior to abolition,” O’Malley said. “In fact, the Attorney General has opined that the carrying out of prior sentences is now illegal in the absence of an existing statute. The question at hand is whether any public good is served by allowing these essentially un-executable sentences to stand.” (read more)

♦ About 2,500,000 people visit The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York every year. The Last Refuge was viewed about 19,000,000 times in 2014. If it were an exhibit at MoMA, it would take about 8 years for that many people to see it.  Click here to see the complete report.
2014 was a year of numerous researched stories that gained interest from a multitude of media outlets.   The research provided by you was the impetus for several MSM stories that gained attention.  Without your relentless quest for the truth behind the headlines many of these stories would not have been told.
Here’s the Top Five research articles, as selected by us, that made a difference: (more…)

Wringing out 2014 – This is the second time this month that Democrat Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane has appeared in the headlines. In the first example she was the cause of shutting down a bribery and corruption sting operation in Philadelphia because only Black Politicians were taking the bribes. In this example Kane is blaming the victim of workplace rape for not locking her door, the only problem is there were no door locks.

PENNSYLVANIA – The Pennsylvania attorney general’s office is blaming a woman for getting raped by an inmate while at work at a state prison, saying she should have locked the door to her office. The prisoner has a history of rape, including of a woman at another jail.
The 24-year-old state prison clerk is suing over her rape at a central Pennsylvania prison. The defendants include the state Department of Corrections and three employees. The woman worked at the Rockview prison near Bellefonte in 2013 when she was attacked by inmate Omar Best, a criminal with three prior convictions for sex-related crimes. Best had been transferred to Rockview after committing a felony assault on a female prison worker at a different facility. (more…)

If you are going out, be careful.  Apparently there are numerous locations where FTP riots/protests and events are planned for tonight.  My recommendation would be to stay home and be safe this year.

(Via BizPac) Cops are going to have to watch out for more than drunk drivers New Year’s Eve celebrations around the country promise to be even more raucous – and potentially dangerous — than usual this year, with race-mongering radicals planning mass disruptions to protest what they call routine police abuse of blacks. The group behind the website Stop Mass Incarceration has helpfully put together a listing of planned “actions” nationwide under the heading, “Rock in the New Year with Resistance to Police Murder.” There’s a whole nonsensical bill of particulars about the reasons for protesting, starting with “business as usual in Amerikkka includes wanton police murder of Black people.” (more…)

Typical progressive.  When faced with blistering criticism -of his own creation- from the New York Police Department, team De Blasio works feverishly to get people to stand up attack the police and defend him publicly.
NEW YORK CITY – While Mayor Bill de Blasio was personally coaxing the city’s police union presidents to meet with him, his top aides were on the phones with lawmakers urging them to blast PBA President Patrick Lynch and other officers for turning their backs on the mayor following the assassinations of two of New York’s Finest, DNAinfo New York has learned.
As late as Monday afternoon — the same time de Blasio was speaking with police union leaders to set up Tuesday’s détente to possibly mend their fractured relationship — the mayor’s government affairs honchos were privately cold-calling the city’s Democratic delegation of city and state elected officials, asking them to publicly criticize Lynch and those officers who dissed the mayor. (more…)

Given the contrast evident amid the racial grievance industry, and the more recent violent tendencies exhibited, it should come as no surprise that Lesley McSpadden would be heralded as a representative for hatred, violence and poor decision making.
Strange, strange times…...
SAINT LOUIS – The St. Louis County NAACP recognized Lesley McSpadden, mother of Michael Brown Jr., during the branch’s fifth annual Jazz Brunch on Saturday, December 20. McSpadden, joined at the event by several members of the Brown family, was privately presented with a check for an undisclosed amount.
It was a small “love token” of their appreciation, said John Gaskin III, local NAACP youth leader and national NAACP board member, “to let her know that she’s loved and that the county civil rights organization is remaining true to the fight for justice for her and her family.”
The event was held at the Ritz-Carlton in Clayton – a short distance away from where a St. Louis County grand jury chose not to indict then Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson in Brown’s fatal shooting on August 9. (more…)

It would appear the teddy bear and soccer ball crowd grabbed their goodies and disappeared into the 57 forests.

(Via National Review Online) Once again, local-TV investigative reporters are showing up their national counterparts.
Recall that this summer the administration insisted the thousands of Central American illegal immigrants it was waving across the border would be put into deportation proceedings and those who did not qualify for asylum would be removed. You’d think, then, that there’d be bigshot D.C. journalists interested in finding out how many actually bothered to attend their immigration hearings.
You’d be wrong. (more…)

(New York Daily News) President Obama said he was left in the dark about pushing an Army couple from their wedding venue when he took over a Hawaii golf course Sunday.
“I feel terrible. Nobody told us,” Obama told the newlyweds, Army captains Natalie Heimel and Edward Mallue Jr., about forcing them to relocate their nuptials at the Kaneohe Klipper Golf Course, located on Marine Corps Base Hawaii.
Heimel and Mallue, an avid golfer, had planned to say “I do” on the 16th hole Sunday — until Obama decided to stop by the links.
In 24 hours, the ceremony was moved to another grassy section on base that overlooked the coast.
“We knew there were two things that could mess up the wedding. One was weather and the other was the President,” the bride told NBC News. (read more)

FTP Activists / Protesters gathered Monday night in Los Angeles at 65th Street and Broadway, where Ezell Ford, a 25-year-old black man who family members said was mentally ill, was killed by two LAPD officers on Aug. 11. That vigil soon turned violent with some of the FTP demonstrators threatening members of the media covering the vigil.

(Via MediaIte) One of the most unintentionally-entertaining parts of covering the cable news business is seeing to what lengths an executive will go to spin the numbers at the end of a given quarter or year. In the case of MSNBC — which had what one would generously call a challenging 2014 —network President Phil Griffin certainly took the spin to a whole new level.
Before we continue, please note: The internal memo Mediaite obtained written to MSNBC by Mr. Griffin was exactly what one would expect from someone in his position: Ratings are way down in a year (Ferguson, midterm, Ebola) they should have held steady or gone up. Per Stephen Battaglio’s column in today’s L.A. Times:
“Through December 21, MSNBC averaged 169,000 prime-time viewers in the category, down 17% from 2013 and its worst performance since 2005. Fox News is averaging 302,000 for the year in the demographic, a 3% increase, while CNN is down 1% with 181,000. MSNBC is a distant second behind Fox News in overall viewers, but it’s down in that category as well.” […] (more…)