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John Crawford III went shopping at WalMart. John Crawford III was going to buy a pellet gun. He picked one out. He called his girlfriend on the phone and was chatting casually. He was shot dead by a policeman before he reached the checkout line. He was black. The officer who killed him with two rounds from an AR-15 was white. According to both a grand jury and a special prosecutor appointed by Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, no crime was committed other than a man shopping while black.
DeWine had refused to release the store surveillance video (above) to the public prior to the grand jury being empaneled, claiming that would contaminate the jury pool. Crawford's family had seen the videotape and claimed that DeWine had promised to release it. This did not stop the special prosecutor, Mark Piepmeier, from showing the video to a key witness prior to the grand jury, enabling that witness, Ronald Ritchie, to possibly change his story.
Take two of Saturday Night Live’s funniest alumni and cast them in a drama. And no ordinary drama, but one permeated with so much despair that each of their characters attempts suicide within the first few minutes.
That’s not exactly a formula for box-office success, which helps to explain why The Skeleton Twins is opening at only two Columbus theaters this weekend. Nor is it a surefire formula for artistic success, but that’s where the flick fools us.
This second feature by director Craig Johnson (True Adolescents) is astoundingly good. So are stars Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader, who play siblings Maggie and Milo.
The troubled offspring of a father who killed himself and a mother who’s never there for them, the two been separated for the past 10 years due to an old grudge. They’ve spent that decade trying to build fulfilling lives—Milo as an aspiring actor in Los Angeles, Maggie as a dental technician and wife in their New York hometown—but both have failed to find happiness.
NEW YORK — The massive People’s Climate March, the most hopeful, diverse, photogenic, energizing, and often hilarious march I’ve joined in 52 years of activism — and one of the biggest, at 400,000 strong — has delivered a simple message: we can and will rid the planet of fossil fuels and nuclear power, we will do it at the grassroots, it will be demanding and difficult to say the least, but it will also have its moments of great fun.
With our lives and planet on the line, our species has responded.
Ostensibly, this march was in part meant to influence policy makers. That just goes with the territory.
But in fact what it showed was an amazingly broad-based, diverse, savvy, imaginative, and very often off-beat movement with a deep devotion to persistence and cause, and a great flair for fun.
Because what must happen most of all is organizing from the grassroots against each and every polluting power plant, unwanted permit, errant funding scheme, stomach-turning bribe, planet-killing frack well, soon-to-melt reactor, and much much more.
Two vans and a big bus filled with truly great people—the new Climate Riders—on their way to New York City for the People’s Climate March pulled up to the First Watch for breakfast this morning in Columbus, Ohio.
Twenty-four hours on the road each way to march for a few hours against the corporations that are killing our planet.
Kansas/Missouri Climate Riders stop for breakfast in central Ohio on their way to NYC. Local author Harvey Wasserman is kneeling in front in his “Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth” t-shirt. Photo credit: Samantha Allen
“I hate the Koch Brothers,” one of them tells me over pancakes. “They are wrecking the Earth for all of us.”
Another, Chris, borrows my bike to ride down the street to a bakery, then does it a second time to feed the drivers.
Bob Hart, Green Party Congressional candidate for twelfth district of Ohio came out in opposition to an expanded American military role in combating ISIS in Syria. The Press release read in part “President Obama and Congress have chosen to sacrifice additional U.S. troops, and further degrade our economy and constitution, by illegally broadening the ongoing wars in the Middle East to include Syria.”
Hart's statement referred to the recent announcement by President Obama that airstrikes targeting ISIS would be carried out in Syria. The President also has asked Congress to grant the military the authority to arm and train friendly militias inside Syria.
The friendly militias are on the short end of a three way struggle between themselves, ISIS and the Assad regime which is allied with Iran. Both Iran and the United States have special operations troops assisting Iraqi forces combating ISIS in Iraq.
Are you in the mood for a sensitive, thoughtful and beautifully acted film about sibling relationships? Well, you’ll have to wait. The Skeleton Twins doesn’t open till next week.
Meanwhile, we have This Is Where I Leave You, which addresses the same topic with an adolescent sensibility. Unfortunately, the siblings in question are all adults.
The comedy is based on a novel by Jonathan Tropper, who also wrote the screenplay—and that’s part of the problem. A friend of mine refused to see the film because she’d read the book and found it totally lacking in merit.
This helps to explain why director Shawn Levy (A Night at the Museum) fails to mine the tale for familial gold despite being blessed with a top-shelf cast.
Justin Bateman (Arrested Development) plays Judd Altman, who leaves his wife (Abigail Spencer) after finding her in bed with his boss. As luck would have it, he then learns his father has died, and he has to face his extended family while attempting to hide his marital problems.
The first question you have to ask about The Last of Robin Hood is: Why is it called The Last of Robin Hood?
OK, it’s about the final two years of film star Errol Flynn’s life, and Robin Hood was one of Flynn’s most popular roles. But couldn’t they have come up with a title that’s a bit less awkward?
The only good thing you can say about the name is that it fits in with the rest of the film, which addresses an uncomfortable situation in such an awkward manner that it leaves us feeling even more uncomfortable.
The situation is the real-life affair between Flynn (Kevin Kline) and Beverly Aadland (Dakota Fanning), an aspiring actor who is only 15 when they meet in 1957. Flynn, who’s in his late 40s, obviously knows Beverly is less than half his age, but he doesn’t know she’s underage until after he’s seduced her. That’s because Beverly’s mother, Florence (Susan Sarandon), is so eager to push her daughter toward stardom that she lies about the girl’s age.
They wandered and they loitered. They appeared to shop. They ate ice cream. They hung around for much of the day by political booths including the Spore Infoshop, an anarchist bookstore and community space, and the Ohio Rights Group, an organization attempting to place a pro-medical marijuana and industrial hemp initiative on the ballot. They were not, however, your average Comfest attendees. They were agents of the Ohio Investigative Unit (OIU) of the Ohio Department of Public Safety (ODPS) who may have been working for or with the Department of Homeland Security.
When a Comfest visitor took a camera phone picture of a badly handmade Harley Davison T-shirt stretched over the central girth of one of the agents, the other agents swarmed and the unfortunate photographer was arrested.
The Comfest visitor was charged with disorderly conduct for taking photos of the agent.
In May Ohio’s Eighth District Court of Appeals in Cuyahoga County upheld a common pleas court’s decision ordering the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (“BWC”) to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to up to 264,000 businesses. Under the decision in San Allen v. Buehrer, some businesses were owed more than $1 million, and many were owed six-figure amounts.
A few weeks after appealing the decision to the Ohio Supreme Court, BWC agreed in July to settle the class-action lawsuit for $420 million.
The appeals court said the case involved a “cabal” of lobbyists and BWC bureaucrats who “rigged” the workers’ compensation premium rates paid by Ohio employers. It found that BWC developed and maintained “an unlawful rating system under which excessive premium discounts were given to group-rated employers at the expense of nongroup-rated employers.”
The common pleas court said BWC “even admitted” to violating statutory requirements in setting premiums. The court also said BWC was “aware of the inequity in the system” and “aware it was violating the statutory mandate.”