A Map Like This Doesn't Exist for Any Other Country in the World -

http://www.policymic.com/articles/83545/a-map-like-this-doesn-t-exist-for-any-other-country-in-the-world

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a Wednesday interview with PolicyMic that although President Obama has had his share of tough days over the past couple of years, there is one that stands out in particular.

"He talks about Sandy Hook as being the worst day of his presidency."

School shootings, Duncan said, are "by far the hardest issue we deal with. ... We've been able to accomplish nothing legislatively." According to an analysis published on Feb. 12, in the 14 months since Sandy Hook, there have been 44 school shootings in the United States.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action jointly released the report, which classifies a school shooting as an incident in which a firearm is discharged inside a school building or on school or campus grounds, as documented in public news accounts. 

The 44 shootings — which took place between Dec. 15, 2012 and Feb. 10, 2014 — include fatal and nonfatal assaults, suicides and unintentional shootings. 

The incidents reportedly resulted in 28 fatalities: 19 homicides and nine suicides. 

Twenty-eight of the shootings occurred in a K-12 school; 16 were in a college or university. The youngest shooter, whose firearm discharged accidentally inside his backpack at his elementary school in Memphis, Tenn., was 5 years old. No one was killed or injured.

The oldest shooter, who killed two people in West Palm Beach, Florida, was 53. The deadliest incident occurred at Santa Monica College on June 7, when five people were killed.

Although the map and list below include only shootings that occurred specifically on school grounds, Duncan emphasized, "This is not a schools problem; this is a societal problem" —one with "devastating, devastating impact." But schools cannot be "inoculated from society," he said.

the NRA and it's republican whores don't care about a map showing the deaths of school kids by gun they are just collateral damage, a by-product of responsible gun ownership freedom, 2nd amendment which IMO none of them constitute a A well regulated militia, but a unregulated mob of racist, bigot, haters.

c'mon who's zoomin' who?

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/second_amendment

Gun violence is an appalling problem particular to the U.S. "Other countries just don't have this," Duncan said. He cites the access and availability of guns as the primary cause. To him, there's no excuse for not keeping our children safer.

"We can love the Second Amendment and still keep our babies safe," he said. "We have not had the courage to protect our babies." 

For many people, it's outrageous and disappointing that Sandy Hook didn't incite national change that they hoped it would. So Duncan posed a question that was equally as appropriate as it was upsetting:

"What will it take?"

 indeed what will it take???

These 5 Lies Were Broadcast to Millions of People -

http://www.policymic.com/articles/81925/these-5-lies-were-broadcast-to-millions-of-people

When this meme of Michele Bachmann started making rounds on the Internet earlier this month, after the now-famous Coca-Cola Super Bowl commercial aired (that featured people singing America the Beautiful in different languages), lots of people believed it was real.

The Minnesota congresswoman and former Republican presidential candidate never said that Jesus wrote the Bible nor that he did so in English, but it's understandable why people would think she had. Bachmann has made plenty of spurious statements in the past.

Here are some of the really dumb and misleading remarks Bachmann and others have made over the years, mostly going unchallenged on the right-wing outlets on which they aired. It's a list that will surely leave you longing for the Federal Communications Commission to re-institute the Fairness Doctrine.

this is the primary reason Americans are so befuddled, the republicans propagandize their rants and seemingly no one on the Progressive side feels a need to debunk immediately so it fly's and more hear it with out rebuttal silence is a quiet ok.

1. A nation friendly to the Soviet Union helped design Obamacare

2. Immigrants are spreading leprosy

3. Global warming is fake because it is snowing right now

4. The Keystone XL pipeline will create a million jobs

5. Trickle-down economics works

this is what we hear from the right as wrong and misleading as they are we find crickets on our side of the road. we saqy republicans shoot themselves in the foot on a daily basis, but by sitting quietly are we not doing the same thing?  please read the article it explains those 5 myths/bald faced lies

WAKE UP EVERYBODY!!!    

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJgxJ6JrPkc

'Ag Gag' Bill Takes Effect In Idaho; Bans Undercover Filming At Farms

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/02/28/284118937/-ag-gag-bill-takes-effect-in-idaho-bans-undercover-filming-at-farms

Idaho's Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter has signed a bill that criminalizes the act of secretly filming animal abuse at agricultural facilities. The move comes days after the state's legislature approved the measure.

"Otter, a rancher, said the measure promoted by the dairy industry 'is about agriculture producers being secure in their property and their livelihood,'" according to the AP.

Under the law signed today, anyone caught making secret video recordings of agricultural operations could face a year in jail and a $5,000 fine. The legislation refers to "the crime of interference with agricultural production."

Idaho is one of at least 10 states that have taken up so-called "ag gag" legislation after "videos revealing apparent cruel treatment of farm animals went viral" in recent years, as Kathleen Masterson reported for NPR in 2012.

being secure in their livelihood what about us be secure in what they are passing off as edible food, if there were not violations of some kind why hide, think of the free ads showing Americans that your farm is following the law and looking out for their well being.

The Idaho legislation was introduced after "Los Angeles-based vegetarian and animal rights group Mercy for Animals showing workers at Bettencourt Dairy beating, stomping and sexually abusing cows in 2012," the AP says.After today's signing, Mercy for Animals executive director Nathan Runkle issued a statement that read in part

:"Governor Otter has failed Idaho and the American people. By signing this bill into law, he has sided with those who seek to keep Idaho's corrupt factory farming practices hidden from public view and created a safe haven for animal abuse and other criminal activity in the state. Mercy For Animals is exploring all legal avenues to overturn this dangerous, unconstitutional, and un-American law."

ahh another red state and another republican governor not looking out for the people. but they keep voting for them i keep going back to Joan Walsh's book "WHAT'S WRONG WITH WHITE PEOPLE".

on the sexual abuse why aren't the republicans all over that could they be killing a hybrid baby with rights to own property, they should be on this like a lion on a pork chop, unless they are faking concern for unborn babies.

Fox News Host: Government 'Hands Out Spoils Based On Skin Color'

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2014/03/02/3350091/carlson-segregation-race/#

and now today's whack a mole nut job,

is this wannabe planning on running for something other than the toilet, he is one of the most idiotic players on the Fox team not at the top but a second count might be in order.

While discussing political and racial discourse in the U.S. last Friday, Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed that the federal government is guilty of a kind of reverse racism, making policy to favor people of color.

“The federal government takes sides and hands out spoils based on skin color,” Carlsonclaimed while speaking on the radio show of Alex Jones, conspiracy theorist and head of Infowars.com.

Carlson expressed his disgust of the country’s previous segregation, and likened present-day “handouts” to the government “[taking] sides based on race” as it did in the past.

Carlson is far from the first conservative to argue that the government goes out of it way to curry favor from people of color, as opposed to just focusing on those most in need.

In 2012, for example, presidential candidate Mitt Romney blamed his loss to President Obama on “the gifts the administration had given to blacks, Hispanics and young voters during Obama’s first term.”

he like Palin need to read something other than Roger Ailes talking points leaping before reading is a natural fault of republicans their hasty actions to denigrate and bemoan the Pres. gets them in more trouble every day.

http://www.yourblackworld.net/2013/03/black-news/white-people-make-up-42-of-the-poor-but-take-in-whopping-69-of-government-benefits/

Since the 2012 election, the Republican National Committee (RNC) has emphasized the need to appeal to minority voters by changing its messaging. In its Growth & Opportunity Project, a set of recommendations to correct GOP missteps during the election cycle,

the RNC stressed that national demographics have transformed and pressed for increased “engagement” of minority voters. Last year, Chairman Reince Priebus launched an outreach campaign worth $10 million to expand the GOP’s message to communities of color.

Priebus explained, “It will include hundreds of people – paid – across the country, from coast-to-coast, in Hispanic, African American, Asian communities, talking about our party, talking about our brand, talking about what we believe in, going to community events, going to swearing-in ceremonies, being a part of the community on an ongoing basis, paid for by the Republican National Committee, to make the case for our party and our candidates.”

This rebranding effort has not been a great success. Members of the GOP and conservative pundits like Carlson continue to polarize the voters they desperately want to attract, opting for policies that are particularly detrimental to communities of color, and using racially charged words or assertions to try to rally their supporters.

this did not work for several reasons first we know they are lying and disingenuous, we also know that regardless to what they say they are not to be trusted 2019 proved that in stone, and again regardless to what they say there is a daily rising of whack a moles which take whatever was promised back a few miles. you can't claim change while saying you can keep your "PRINCIPLES" formerly known as "VALUE" because that is why your ratings are "WE HATE YOU"  levels.

Ted Cruz Used a Senate Aide to Book Speaking Gigs for His Firebrand Father

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/02/ted-cruz-office-books-rafael-cruz-speaking-engagements

Last October, Sen. Ted Cruz's father, Rafael, was thrust into the spotlight when Mother Jonesrevealed that the septuagenarian businessman-turned-pastor had made a series of inflammatory remarks during several speaking engagements. These comments included the assertions that the United States is a "Christian nation," that President Barack Obama is an "outright Marxist" who seeks to "destroy all concept of God" and should be sent "back to Kenya," and that "social justice is a cancer." At the time, Sean Rushton, a spokesman for Sen. Cruz, a Texas Republican, said, "Pastor Cruz does not speak for the senator."

But documents obtained by Mother Jones show that an aide to the senator serves as a scheduler for the elder Cruz and books his speaking gigs, including those for which Rafael Cruz might be paid.

on the right we are seeing those who regurgitate the most rancid rhetoric are either "preachers or use to be preachers", haven' read the whole Bible but really Jesus never sanctioned despicable acts like these guys. seems

ahh the golden boy double dipping on our dime but it's ok the base well not turn as long as they both continue to fill the feeding troughs.  but the rest of us need to push this and any other exposure of skulduggery and basic thievery of taxpayer money.  seems this apple didn't fall off thr tree at all still hanging.

When an activist, who has asked not to be identified, requested Rafael Cruz's presence at an event, Lela Pittenger, a Ted Cruz aide, replied and forwarded a three-page "Pastor Rafael Cruz Event Request Form." Pittenger, according to 2013 Senate records, was a regional director on Cruz's Senate staff. She made $48,666 in salary working for Ted Cruz in the first nine months of last year.

Her Facebook page identifies her as the Central Texas regional director for the senator and notes she lives in Austin. (In 2012, she ran against Ted Cruz in the Republican Senate primary as a "Rand Paul Republican"; she received 1.28 percent of the vote.)

Rushton says that Pittenger is now a full-time staffer for Ted Cruz's campaign operation. But Pittenger, according to Cruz's Senate office in Austin, was part of his Senate staff until last month, and a message posted on Rafael Cruz's Facebook page last November (when Pittenger was on the Senate payroll) refers to Pittenger as the senator's aide who books Rafael Cruz's appearances.

Brenda Cash, president of Republican Women of Yoakum in Texas, tells Mother Jones that when she booked Rafael Cruz for a November speaking gig with her group, she did so through Pittenger. "I happen to know [Rafael Cruz's] scheduler," she says. "I spoke to Lela Pittenger…She was working for Sen. Cruz."

The "Pastor Rafael Cruz Event Request Form" Pittenger sent to the activist asks a series of questions. Who will introduce Pastor Cruz? Will a podium be provided? Who will be in the audience? Will VIPs or members of the media attend? Will expenses be covered? It also asks, "Does the organizing group normally provide an honorarium to speakers? If yes, what is the expected honorarium for Pastor Cruz?"

There are strict—and sometimes complicated—rules governing how Senate and political campaign funds can be spent, and Pittenger's role as Rafael Cruz's scheduler raises obvious questions. Did she handle his scheduling details—which might have included booking him paying gigs—while on the Senate clock?

well with testimony in favor of yes who will be the whistle blower or are they as loyal/afraid of him as those other state officials are of Christie?  how do they call themselves pastor when they are as criminal and racist as the bunch they vote for, where is their God?

What Will It Take For Fox To Let The Benghazi Stand Down Order Myth Die? |

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/03/02/what-will-it-take-for-fox-to-let-the-benghazi-s/198303

Fox News host Chris Wallace admitted that Fox's "stand down order" narrative about the 2012 Benghazi attacks was false, but still allowed disreputable source Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) to desperately try and redefine the debunked claim into a new attack on the Obama administration

Fox News has persistently pushed the myth that the administration had issued a "stand down" order to stop reinforcements from coming to the aid of American diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya during the September 11, 2012 attack. Though the claim was rapidly discredited,

by June 2013, the network had repeated the charge at least 85 times in prime time segments, and the allegations didn't stop there. In early February, a House Armed Services Committee report and a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report put the myth to rest.

On the March 2 edition of Fox Broadcasting Network's Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace admitted that the Senate report had thoroughly debunked claims of a "stand down" order

and reported that The Washington Post Fact Checker had given Issa "four pinocchios" -- the rating it issues for "whoppers" -- for his suggestion that "Secretary Clinton told [then-Defense Secretary] Leon [Panetta] to stand down, and we all heard about the stand-down order for two military personnel. That order is undeniable."

But Fox's focus on the facts was short lived. Though Wallace's acknowledgement of the facts led Issa admit that the term "stand down" was not "used in some sort of an explicit way,"

 Wallace made no move to question Issa's attempt to spin the administration's supposed "failure to react" to the attack as the kind of thing that could "represent a stand down":

well that clinches it there are real facts and there are Issa contrivances and those are the ones Fox and republican will let stand.  my thought was given bot sides does their base choose the facts or the witch hunt, i'm sure they find the thrill of a snipe hunt more enthralling.

WALLACE: But to be honest, you do not have any evidence that Secretary Clinton told Leon Panetta to stand down.

ISSA: Well, the use in answering questions in a political fundraiser -- that was in response to a question -- the term "stand down" is not used in some sort of an explicit way.

But rather the failure to react, the fact that only State Department assets and only assets inside the country were ever used, that members arms forces, gun carrying, trained people were not allowed to get on the aircraft to go and attempt to rescue.

Those kinds of things through State Department resources represent a stand down. Not maybe on the technical terms of "stand down, soldier," but on the American people believe is a failure to respond what they could have.

WALLACE: All right.

we saw Bush have laws rewritten so he could torture "legally" or was that bush"  now this crazed zealot who has yet to find anybody guilty of anything mainly because he's investigating the wrong party.  he now wants to change the interpretation of the English language to fit his hysteria, now maybe some of their base didn't catch it but millions did.

for a party that has hounded Pres. for 5 years about money they signed off on being spent why are they allowing Issa to go on the multi million dollar tirade and inquisition that has proven fruitless, guess it's their spending alone that is ok after all they do tend to do over multiple times ObamaCares 49 times or so.  

we know who is wasting money and our time money that could extend unemployment, kids lunches, infrastructure jobs, and yet they are content to complain about how bad it is and how slow recovery is while doing nothing about it and smiling as they blame Pres. Nov.4th be there.

Even Issa's effort to repackage his attack falls flat. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has already debunked claims that further assistance could have been sent from U.S. military bases, 

criticizing the conservative media's "cartoonish impression of the military" which has ignored the need for "planning and preparation before we send people in harm's way."

As Gates said: Given the number of surface to air missiles that have disappeared from Qaddafi's arsenals I would not have approved sending an aircraft, a single aircraft, over Benghazi under those circumstances.

and Issa and the gang either push Benghazi or impeachment, still having trouble making up your mind for Nov. 4th?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Yoo

OUTRAGEOUS: Church Blames Mother for Pedophile Priest Molesting Her Two Sons |

http://www.alternet.org/belief/outrageous-church-blames-mother-pedophile-priest-molesting-her-two-sons

Talk about a major abdication of responsibility.  A Minnesota mother says that Catholic Church officials are blaming her for the sexual abuse her sons endured at the hands of their priest,Raw Story reported. 

In 2012, Rev. Curtis Wehmeyer, a former pastor of Blessed Sacrament Parish in St. Paul, pleaded guilty to abusing the boys aged 12 and 14 as well as possessing pornography.

Wehmeyer had lured the boys into his home in a white camper and given them drugs and alcohol.  He instructed the boys to touch themselves as well as touching the boys on multiple occasions.

this is a perfect example of what i was talking about in another post, "RIGHTS" we are a country of paper rules, what we think is a real freedom to do is subject to those in your space and what their intent is.

sure women should not be assaulted and raped because of a revealing dress, you should be able to walk the streets without fear, you should expect the elected officials to do the job you put them there to do, you should expect the police to protect and serve, and you should feel safe around your priest with out fear of assault, but in this real world no you don't you have as much right to those things as those who would attack you have to do what they do.

sure there are consequences but they do not take the hurt or trauma off you do they?

Their mother, who has remained anonymous to protect her children, said she never suspected her boys were abused, although they did begin to struggle and school and got into fights.

The family subsequently sued the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis for the abuse.  Earlier this month, Archdiocese lawyers said in court that she should not have allowed her children to spend time alone with Wehmeyer.

“She was aware of the time (her son) spent with Mr. Wehmeyer, and she knew that such interaction was contrary to established Archdiocese policy,” the Archdiocese said in its filing.

are they really warning the parishioners to avoid pedophile priest instead of firing or sending them for therapy. it's like live with it they are telling them their children are in peril of the church's established policy???????

http://taylormarshall.com/2013/09/80-catholic-youth-leave-the-church.html

O'Reilly Wants First Lady To Come On His Show To Lecture Young Women On Abstinence |

http://mediamatters.org/video/2014/02/27/oreilly-wants-first-lady-to-come-on-his-show-to/198270

i've got one thing in mind Bill Maher said it last night,

O'Reilly wants first ladie on his show so she can talk to young poor and disadvantaged girls on abstinence, how many of those girls sit down and watch his show to hear her? paraphrased.

he can't get away from the negatives he's pushed for years drugs, gangsta rappers and the entire Black and Hispanic culture just like Sylvia's.

http://mediamatters.org/research/2007/09/21/oreilly-surprised-there-was-no-difference-betwe/139893

the sooner they realize they don't know JACK about other cultures and deny their own, no creds here or there just opinionated White racist rhetoric

Hannity Complains That Obamacare May Allow Mothers To Spend More Time With Their Children | Video |

http://mediamatters.org/video/2014/02/27/hannity-complains-that-obamacare-may-allow-moth/198273

Hannity misleading and inserting is assumption for what VP Biden says on the view, check out the video.

h3e is implying that women who have the option of working just to get insurance Hannity tries to make it a welfare issue, women know whether they need to work or not families have another bread winner so she can be with the kid and the bills still get paid,

he is misinforming those who listen to him and blaming Biden for creating welfare moms and at the end he admits if it were his situation he would take a second job. he implies that we would have to take care of those moms who stay home.

this is a fox standard MO take the part they can twist and make their stand probably why every one of those times the failed.

Hannity isn't he the guy that had 3 fake disgruntled ObaaCares on his show that were later proven to be frauds?

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/18/inside_the_fox_news_lie_machine_i_fact_checked_sean_hannity_on_obamacare/

From "Subhuman Mongrel" To "Jim Crow" Laws: Conservatives Can't Stop Fighting Lost Cultural Battles

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/02/28/from-subhuman-mongrel-to-jim-crow-laws-conserva/198274

It may be the shortest month of the year, but the right wing packed February's 28 calendar days with two notable, and bigoted, defeats.

Between campaigning with Ted Nugent in the wake of the conservative columnist and National Rifle Association board member denouncing President Obama as a "communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel,"

and aRepublican-led efforts in mostly red state houses to protect religiously-motivated business owners who refuse service to gay customers, conservatives vigorously volunteered for duty to fight their favorite cultural wars this month. Except these are battles they have already fought and lost. Over and over again.

Obama's an historic monster ripping liberties away from citizens and deliberately driving the country into ruin?

He's a "piece of @!$%#" "gangster" surrounded by Nazis, as professional name-caller Nugent insists? Voters have already rejected that dark premise, twice, easily propelling Obama to two electoral landslide victories.

Gays don't deserve the everyday rights and protections as fellow Americans because they might infringe on Christians' "religious freedom"?

As openly gay athletes are cheered while breaking down new barriers, as activists string together a prodigious record of court victories in favor of marriage equality,

and with poll after poll showing a deepening acceptance of gay Americans, particularly among young voters, the foolhardy attempt to unleash new discrimination ended as a resounding failure in Arizona this month.

the country has changed not saying Pres. did it but can you say all the bigotry that created laws of discrimination would have been torn down if Romney or i dare say Hilary were in the big chair.

that is why the gangster references to his admin are circulating lawless, "we can't trust him to enforce our laws" note they said our not the law, and the constant assaults have gone on for 5 years and no end in sight maybe not so much Nov. 4th has potential.

during their insurrection nothing got done the recession they put us in they did nothing to get us out and blocked all Pres. did to that end and still we advanced to their rants of not fast enough. 

Cheered on by pockets of the right-wing media, and led by outrage-obsessed Fox News, some conservatives can't admit defeat. They can't move on. They cannot admit the country has turned away from their intolerant preaching about Obama and gays, among others.

Fueled by divisiveness, and increasingly unconcerned with public policy or even the remnants of a Republican legislative agenda (remember those?), hardcore conservatives time and again retrench and then unfurl their failed cultural war battle plan.

It's a blueprint drawn up by conservative media voices who benefit from the manufactured outrage. For right-wing carnival barkers, these recent controversies equal content. For conservative leaders and Republicans, the controversies equal dead-end excursions.

It's a truly ceaseless cycle. February simply presented the sequence in vivid, stark contrast, with the Nugentdebacle immediately followed by the Arizona gay bias, public relations calamity.

their pick of the worst America has to offer to denigrate the Pres. backfired and looks like the Klan minus the funny hats and sheets.  the racist rants that no one rebutted tells the world what the republicans keep denying they are racist, bigoted and will lay down with anybody willing to spread the hate and vitriol they say Pres. is trying to divide the country, well read what they say and what Pres. says and see who really is behind door number 1, with that filthy, crap encrusted, lice infested, foul mouth, Vietnam dodger, patriot huh too what or who?

Bill O'Reilly Isn't "Buying This Inequality Business" On The Gender Wage Gap

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/02/28/bill-oreilly-doesnt-buy-this-inequality-busines/198275

Bill O'Reilly dismissed the significance of the gender wage gap, saying he isn't "buying this inequality business," and claiming that women can overcome wage inequality simply by working hard. 

However, O'Reilly ignores the true impact and scope of the gender wage gap, which plagues women at all stages of their careers regardless of education or experience level.

well as Fox's chief bloviator and bigot he would say that he's not running for anything, his base will miss in insult and take it as a lie by the Dems.  

i wonder what those armed and gullible would do once they realize they have been played for decades, and those stats of rich vs. wage earners are real but in true Fox fashion they are ignored and replaced by their own set of facts.

On the February 27 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly criticized President Obama's 2014 State of the Union statements on the importance of closing the gender wage gap. During a conversation with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, O'Reilly initially acknowledged that the wage gap exists even after accounting for career and life choices.

 However, soon after he resorted to mocking the gap, saying, "I'm not buying this inequality business," and dismissing pay inequality as a mere political maneuver, "not a reality." O'Reilly concluded that Bartiromo's successful experience in the stock exchange was sufficient evidence that motivation and hard work can eliminate the gender wage gap, a message O'Reilly says he hopes "gets out to other women that, look, [the gender pay gap is] not perfect but it's good."

and this from a guy who regularly touts how rich he is while his listeners are the very ones his party is killing with food stamps and other social nets. and the right wing once again tells us what is good for us and why we should be thankful for the crust of bread and such. 

there should be criminal charges for charlatan's who mislead and misinform masses of Americans is this a freedom the right by the right to lie and dissuade you from things like health care and what is really being done and what and who is actually obstructing, we need NEW RULES.

http://www.trivisonno.com/food-stamps-charts

In Texas, a New Law Lets Defendants Fight Bad Science Scientific evidence can be the most convincing element of a criminal trial. But sometimes it's wrong—and for the first time, a state's justice system has recognized that and adjusted accordingly.

 http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/02/in-texas-a-new-law-lets-defendants-fight-bad-science/283895
 

Avila, a 40-year-old death row inmate in Texas, was supposed to be executed by lethal injection on January 15, 2014. He owes the past six weeks of his life to a groundbreaking new Texas law, the only one of its kind in the nation, which recognizes that science can get it wrong.

The crime that Avila was convicted of, and that he has steadfastly claimed he didn’t commit, is truly difficult to fathom: the murder of a 19-month-old boy. On the night of March 29, 2000, Avila, then 27, was babysitting his girlfriend’s two sons, 19-month-old Nicholas and 4-year-old Dylan. Avila told police that he’d been watching a basketball game in another room when Dylan, visibly scared, told him from the hall that Nicholas wasn’t breathing. Avila ran to the back bedroom where the brothers had been playing alone and found the toddler lying on the floor, next to a child-sized bed. He carried the boy to the living room and called 911. The operator walked him through CPR. It didn’t work. Nicholas died on his living room floor.

Dylan told investigators that he and Nicholas had been roughhousing when Nicholas stopped breathing; Avila was not in the room. Police and doctors, however, had an alternate version of what happened, informed by a large bruise on Nicholas’s torso and by his devastating and irreparable internal injuries, so severe that his organs were ripped from his spine, his pancreas ruptured and his colon torn.

 They believed that Avila intentionally, maliciously stomped on the toddler’s stomach. Just over a year later, Avila was in court. The trial took only three and a half days; he was convicted of murder and, on July 19, 2001, was sentenced to death.

i can see where it was possible if the med examiner was correct about the tearing of organs, it would indicate violent altercation.

Avila had supposedly confessed to the crime. In his first statement to police, Avila said that he’d been in another room when Dylan told him that Nicholas was hurt. But in a second, much-contested statement, he allegedly admitted that he was jealous of the little boy and that he stomped on him in a rage: “I saw him laying on the floor,” the second statement reads. “I don't know what came over me, but I walked over to him and stamped on him with my right foot.”

 Avila claims that the detective who took both statements made up the second, and that he only signed it because the detective told him it was a “clarification” of the first. “He didn’t realize until after that it contained this very incorrect story,” said his lawyer, Cathryn Crawford of the Texas Defender Service; Avila testified as much in court. Notably, the second statement was not recorded, while the first was, and it was only signed by Avila, whereas he initialed all of the paragraphs in the first.

i just to believe he was jealous of a baby and the mom was not aware at some point, this is Texas given his surname he's presumably Hispanic, and ripe for railroading, Texas does have a rather large rate of executions that Perry and the state seem to be proud of
 regardless of how many were innocent.

The medical examiner and pediatrician who examined Nicholas didn’t know what forensic pathologists, a physicist, and a biomechanical engineer would later find: A child, even a 40-pound 4-year-old, jumping directly on to the abdomen of a 19-month-old could have most certainly inflicted the kinds of injuries that killed Nicholas.

 As forensic pathologist John Plunkett explained in an April 2013 affidavit, few scientists at the time were capable of understanding the biomechanics involved in Nicholas’s death, in part because little research had been done on these kinds of injuries. Plunkett said it was imperative that a qualified biomechanical engineer or physicist perform the necessary experiments to investigate Nicholas’s injuries.

So Avila’s legal team found someone to do just that. In May 2013, biomechanical engineer Chris Van Ee conducted an experiment envisioning what could have happened if Dylan had jumped on Nicholas from a height of 18 inches – the same height as the small bed next to which Nicholas was found lying unresponsive. Van Ee, summing up his conclusion in a report that accompanied Avila’s writ, found that a child of Dylan’s size jumping from that height could produce a force as great as 400 to 500 pounds.

it was a Blessing he escaped the Texas slaughter house rules of justice, wonder how many other cases of child brutality could and will be re-examined, not holding out for that but in light of the new forensic evidence who knows?