20 year old woman wants parents prosecuted for treating the hole in her heart at birth with faith instead of getting her the medical help that she needed.

Courtesy of The Friendly Atheist:  

Mariah Walton, a 20-year-old woman awaiting a heart and lung transplant, said she thinks her parents and other faith healers should face criminal charges for “treating” her with prayer instead of medicine.

It’s a tale as old as time: girl is born with a small hole in her heart, her parents refuse to get it fixed and instead ask God to oversee her well-being, girl is now permanently disabled due to years of being refused care. The twist, however, is that Walton — unlike many faith healing victims — lived on to call for her parents’ prosecution and to condemn the practice in general. 

“It would have been solved. If I had a surgery when I was one year old, I would have been just fine,” Walton said in an interview with KTVB News. She said she can’t run, misses a lot of school, and gets sick easily because of her weakened immune system.

Instead of getting her the simple medical procedure that she needed Mariah's parents subjected her to "alternative medicines" and faith healing which allowed her condition to worsen until it was life threatening. 

Oddly enough her parents did not "trust" modern medicine, but had no problem trusting that God existed and would heal their child if only they had enough faith.

Fortunate this young woman survived, and now those same parents can pray that they do not end up in jail for condemning their daughter to a lifetime of unnecessary suffering.

Arkansas parents charged with manslaughter after two year old son finds loaded handgun, shoots self in head.

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

An Arkansas couple has been charged with manslaughter after their 2-year-year old son accidentally shot himself with a .45 caliber pistol and died of a wound to his head, authorities said on Tuesday. 

The parents, Phillip and Tabitha Ashley, 27 and 23 respectively, were arrested on Monday. Local media said the couple left a loaded gun unattended in the house. 

Police declined to release any details but said additional charges are possible. The two, who are being held without bond in jail, have not commented on the incident.

Manslaughter seems like the appropriate charge here.

I am glad that we are seeing people like this punished for their negligence and no longer given a pass due to the fact that "they have already suffered enough."

No, they haven't. At least not yet.

There has been a rather dramatic uptick in the number of toddler related gun deaths.

 Courtesy of the Washington Post:

This week a 2-year-old in South Carolina found a gun in the back seat of the car he was riding in and accidentally shot his grandmother, who was sitting in the passenger seat. This type of thing happens from time to time: A little kid finds a gun, fires it, and hurts or kills himself or someone else. These cases rarely bubble up to the national level except when someone, like a parent, ends up dead. 

But cases like this happen a lot more frequently than you might think. After spending a few hours sifting through news reports, I've found at least 43 instances this year of somebody being shot by a toddler 3 or younger. In 31 of those 43 cases, a toddler found a gun and shot himself or herself.

I don't even know what to say here. 

My first thought is that I wonder what mental illness the NRA will suggest drove these babies to kill themselves or their loved one.

But then I just get so angry that I want to type a long string of expletives and leave it at that.

This is what results from being told time and time again that guns are a tool for self defense, and not a weapon designed to take lives.

This is the world that we live in today.

And that should shame us all. 

13 year old boy fatally shoots 12 year old girl with gun he found in home.

Courtesy of Chron: 

A 13-year-old boy deliberately shot and killed a 12-year-old girl outside a foster home in rural southwest Missouri where they both lived using a gun he had taken from the house, the local sheriff said Friday. 

Officers tried to revive the girl, Teresa J. Potts, but she died Thursday evening near the town of Jasper, which is about 130 miles south of Kansas City, Jasper County Sheriff Randee Kaiser said. 

Kaiser said the boy ran into the nearby woods after shooting the girl and he was arrested there. He is being held by the Jasper County Juvenile Office, Kaiser said at a news conference in nearby Carthage, adding that the boy is expected to be charged in the shooting soon. The sheriff's comments were reported by The Joplin Globe and Springfield, Mo. TV Station KY3. 

"It was not a situation where they were playing. It does not appear to be a situation where it was an accident," Kaiser said.

The report goes on to say that the two children lived in the foster home, and that the father was home.

There was more than one weapon missing when the search of the home started but now all have been accounted for.

Currently there is no information of whether or not the boy took all of the weapons, how many times he shot the girl, or the nature of their relationship.

It is conceivable that they are both foster children unrelated to each other, biological siblings, or that one is  a foster child and the other the father's biological child.

What the police seem to be saying is that the boy shot the girl intentionally with a weapon that he found unsecured within the home.

These incidents are happening with such frequency that it is becoming difficult to keep up.

And that may be one of the saddest things I have ever typed. 

Look, more evidence that the Secret Service does not take their responsibility to protect the President and his family seriously enough.

Courtesy of Radar Online:  

An exhaustive probe dug up the shocking revelation that the married agent assigned to protect Michelle was busy trying to hook up with a prominent female Washington D.C. staffer and ignored his duties. 

Racy text messages and a graphic “selfie” that the agent snapped and sent to the woman were also discovered during the probe. 

Agents brought the woman who received the incriminating phone messages to Secret Service HQ in Washington D.C., where she spent “three hours answering questions,” the source tells Radar. 

“They went through her phone and pulled every pertinent text and photo related to the agent,” continues the source, who notes agents “asked the woman if she planned to go to the media” and “made her sign a non-disclosure agreement.” 

“They are in cleanup mode now because they know it’s about to be a bigger story somehow,” says the source.

Seriously folks WTF? 

This Secret Service agent is trying to get his wick wet rather than protect the First Lady of the United States of America?

If I were the President I would rip this guy a new one, and make sure he never worked in any law enforcement capacity for the remainder of his life.

And this is not the first time, by any means, that the Secret Service has dropped the ball.

Here is a laundry list of Secret Service screw-ups since President Obama took office.

I swear if any harm befalls this family the very first place the investigation should start is within the Secret Service itself. Either through incompetence or malice, that is where the trail will likely start.

Louisiana man attempts to fix gun which accidentally fires and kills the babysitter. Well at least he knows his gun works.

Courtesy of The Advocate:  

A Baton Rouge man was working on his handgun Saturday night when it accidentally discharged, killing a 13-year-old boy who was baby-sitting his kids. 

The incident began when 25-year-old Adonis Forbes was out celebrating an anniversary with his wife. The couple decided to check on their kids at about 9 p.m. before heading out again, said Cpl. L’Jean McKneely, a Baton Rouge police spokesman. W

hile they were at their house at 2014 Tennessee St., Forbes decided to check on his gun and found it was malfunctioning — and while trying to fix it, the gun fired, McKneely said. 

The bullet struck the baby-sitter, Murrain Hawkins, of 3405 Myrtlelawn St., in the abdomen. 

When police arrived, they found Hawkins lying on the ground with a bullet wound and Forbes trying to administer aid, McKneely said. The teen was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Well the one thing good that can be said about this incident is that at least the man was charged with negligent homicide and is now out on $10,000 bail. 

I have to say that there are a lot of weird circumstances surrounding this "accident."

Such as why did this guy decide to check on his gun right after arriving home with his wife? How did he know it was malfunctioning? And why didn't he unload it before starting to work on it?

Personally I think the cops might want to take a very careful look at the facts of this case. 

Mississippi may soon be able to imprison women for stillbirths and miscarriages. Yeah, you heard that right.

Courtesy of Mother Jones:  

On March 14, 2009, 31 weeks into her pregnancy, Nina Buckhalter gave birth to a stillborn baby girl. She named the child Hayley Jade. Two months later, a grand jury in Lamar County, Mississippi, indicted Buckhalter for manslaughter, claiming that the then-29-year-old woman "did willfully, unlawfully, feloniously, kill Hayley Jade Buckhalter, a human being, by culpable negligence." 

The district attorney argued that methamphetamine detected in Buckhalter's system caused Hayley Jade's death. The state Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments on the case on April 2, is expected to rule soon on whether the prosecution can move forward. If prosecutors prevail in this case, the state would be setting a "dangerous precedent" that "unintentional pregnancy loss can be treated as a form of homicide," says Farah Diaz-Tello, a staff attorney with National Advocates for Pregnant Women, a nonprofit legal organization that has joined with Robert McDuff, a Mississippi civil rights lawyer, to defend Buckhalter. If Buckhalter's case goes forward, NAPW fears it could spur a wave of similar prosecutions in Mississippi and other states. 

Mississippi's manslaughter laws were not intended to apply in cases of stillbirths and miscarriages. Four times between 1998 through 2002, Mississippi lawmakers rejected proposals that would have set specific penalties for damaging a fetus by using illegal drugs during pregnancy. But Mississippi prosecutors say that two other state laws allow them to charge Buckhalter. One defines of manslaughter as the "killing of a human being, by the act, procurement, or culpable negligence of another"; another includes "an unborn child at every stage of gestation from conception until live birth" in the state's definition of human beings. 

The cause of any given miscarriage or stillbirth is difficult to determine, and many experts believe there is no conclusive evidence that exposure to drugs in utero can cause a miscarriage or stillbirth. Because of this, prosecuting Buckhalter opens the door to investigating and prosecuting women for any number of other potential causes of a miscarriage or stillbirth, her lawyers argued in a filing to the state Supreme Court—"smoking, drinking alcohol, using drugs, exercising against doctor's orders, or failing to follow advice regarding conditions such as obesity or hypertension." Supreme Court Justice Leslie D. King also raised this question in the oral arguments last month: "Doctors say women should avoid herbal tea, things like unpasteurized cheese, lunch meats. Exactly what are the boundaries?"

In these mostly red states all over the country lawmakers have been passing law after law to slowly create an environment where women are once again reduced to nothing more than breeding stock. Late term abortion restrictions, personhood amendments, vaginal probes, enforced waiting periods, defunding Planned Parenthood, all done to take back control of women's bodies.

After all in many of these places it is understood that those bodies do not belong to the women who operate them, they belong to God. And only He can determine what a woman can, and cannot do with it. And, of course, his will is determined by his representative on earth, the man.

So little by little, restriction by restriction, legislation by legislation, and now conviction by conviction, women are being reduced to property. Property of God, property of the state, or property of their men, no matter how you see it, you cannot help but see freedoms being stripped away from the woman.

And all of this has been happening in 2013, right before our eyes. But member, there is NO war on women.

Five year old boy kills his two year old sister with a rifle designed for children. Because remember, guns don't kill kids, kids kill kids, with guns designed specifically for them. Update!

Courtesy of Kentucky.com: 

A 5-year-old boy who was playing with a .22-caliber rifle accidentally shot and killed his 2-year-old sister in Cumberland County on Tuesday afternoon, according to a news release from the state police. 

The shooting happened just after 1 p.m. at a home on Lawson's Bottom Road. 

The 2-year-old was taken to Cumberland County Hospital, where she was later pronounced dead. An autopsy has been scheduled for Wednesday. 

Cumberland County Coroner Gary White identified the girl as Caroline Starks. 

He said the children's mother was at home when the shooting occurred, and the gun was a gift the boy received last year. 

"It's a Crickett," he said. "It's a little rifle for a kid. ...The little boy's used to shooting the little gun." 

White said the gun was kept in a corner, and the family did not realize a shell had been left in it. He said the shooting will be ruled accidental. 

"Just one of those crazy accidents," White said.

Yes it's "just one of those crazy accidents" that happen when you buy your five year old a gun and then leave it lying around the house, unattended and loaded.

Who could possibly have seen this coming?

To me this Cricket rifle seems like a bad idea all around.

For one thing it looks like a toy.

And for another it seems to me that if you are not old enough to hold an actual adult size rifle, perhaps you are not old enough to be trusted to understand just how deadly this weapons really is.

But that is almost beside the point, since the real fault for this unfortunate incident lies with the parents who left a loaded weapon in a houseful of children, within easy access.

How THAT is not considered neglect I don't really understand.

Though perhaps if you live in Kentucky, on Lawson's Bottom Road, the parenting standards are somewhat more lax than in other parts of the country.

Update: Well it looks like Alaska has its own version of this tragedy.