A Maryland Episcopal Bishop Suffragan has been indicted on 13 counts connected to a fatal hit-and-run accident last year.
Heather Cook was indicted by a Baltimore-based grand jury on charges including “driving while under the influence of alcohol per se …, driving under the impairment of alcohol, texting while driving, reckless driving and negligent driving.”
“The original criminal charges included manslaughter by vehicle, criminal negligent manslaughter by vehicle, homicide by driving a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol per se and homicide by driving a motor vehicle while impaired by alcohol,” reported Mary Schjonberg of Episcopal News Service.
Cook is accused of killing 41-year-old Thomas Palermo after she hit the cyclist while driving drunk. She then fled the scene but was chased down by other cyclists and brought back to the crash site.
Witnesses say there’s no way Cook didn’t know she struck someone.
“The windshield was completely smashed in, with a hole on the passenger side, and from the damage of the car, there was no doubt in my mind that was the car,” said a witness to the AP.
Episcopal church officials have asked Cook to resign.
Three young white Mississippi men are heading to federal prison after being convicted of what one person called violence as evil as the worst of pre-civil rights days.
James Craig Anderson, 20, was killed by a group of men who has been targeting blacks they believed were homeless or drunk. Anderson was in a parking lot of a hotel in Jackson, Mississippi when he was deliberately run over by a man driving a Ford truck. The murder was caught on surveillance video.
The driver of the truck, Deryl Paul Dedmon, will spend 50 years in prison after being convicted of the hate crime. He will serve that sentence concurrent with whatever a Mississippi state judge issues as punishment for Dedmon’s guilty plea to capital murder and a hate crime.
The family of the victim decried the evil of the “strangers with eyes full of hatred.” Barbara Anderson Young, sister of the victim, told the killers, “My God have mercy on your sinful souls.”
Dedmon’s associates also are heading to prison. John Aaron Rice was sentenced to 18 ½ years, and Dylan Wade Butler to seven years.
Seven others are still awaiting sentencing for their role in targeting blacks and homeless people for physical assault and abuse.
A New Jersey teenager who stood up to atheists trying to have “one nation under God” removed from the Pledge of Allegiance has declared victory when a state judge dismissed the case.
Samantha Jones, a senior at Highland Regional High School, said it’s her right to keep reciting the pledge in its entirety.
“I’m so grateful the court decided that kids like me shouldn’t be silenced just because some people object to timeless American values,” said Jones, in a statement released by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty who represented her.
“Ever since I was little, I’ve recited the Pledge of Allegiance because it sums up the values that make our country great. The phrase ‘under God’ protects all Americans — including atheists — because it reminds the government that it can’t take away basic human rights because it didn’t create them.”
The judge dismissed the case brought by the anti-Christian organization American Humanist Association after the testimony of Jones and her family.
“The message today is loud and clear: “God” is not a dirty word,” noted Eric Rassbach, deputy general counsel for the Becket Fund in a press statement. “The Pledge of Allegiance isn’t a prayer, and reciting it doesn’t magically create an official state religion.”
The family of Redeemer Episcopal Church in Houston were still reeling from the news their pastor and his family had been murdered when they suffered a second blow.
The son of Pastor Israel Ahimbisbwe has been arrested in the murder of his father, mother and brother.
Houston police say that 19-year-old Isaac Tiharihondi has been charged with two counts of capital murder and was being held in custody in Mississippi where he fled after the killings. He covered the bodies with blankets and towels in the back bathroom of the apartment where the victims were found Monday.
A member of the church told a local TV station that she had lunch with the accused killer after police say he committed the crime.
“It’s devastating. It’s sad. It’s unexplainable,” Nancy Taylor, who attends Church of the Redeemer, told KHOU. “We had lunch, we sat, we chatted, we talked, we laughed. It was just a real enjoyable experience and time together. … Good kid, polite, nice, respectful, grateful.”
“While I am relieved authorities have found Isaac, I am heartbroken that he has been charged with capital murder. This only adds to the tragedy of their deaths and raises more questions than it answers,” Rt. Rev. C. Andrew Doyle, Episcopal Bishop of Texas said in a statement.
A New York woman has announced that she is going to marry her biological father after two years of dating according to New York Magazine.
The 18 year old woman says that her father, who had left her life when she was a toddler, reconnected with her when she was 17 and still in high school.
“We didn’t know what was going on, but admitted that we had strong feelings for each other,” the woman told New York Magazine. “We discussed whether it was wrong and then we kissed. And then we made out, and then we made love for the first time. That was when I lost my virginity.”
“I didn’t regret it at all. I was happy for once in my life,” she stated. “We fell deeply in love.”
The couple plans to move from New York to New Jersey where adult incest is not illegal. They say that while the father’s side of the family knows about the incestuous relationship, the girl’s mother and her side of the family do not know about it. They plan to tell them after they move to New Jersey.
New Jersey enacted a new criminal code in 1979 that left the section planned for incest blank. Before that passage, incest was a crime with a maximum of 15 years in prison. Legal marriage between adult relatives is still illegal, so the “wedding” will have no legal standing.
“I just don’t understand why I’m judged for being happy. We are two adults who brought each other out of dark places. People need to research incest and GSA because they don’t get it and I don’t think they understand how often it happens,” the woman said to the magazine.
Several media watchdogs say the story could be a hoax because the woman is not identified by name.
The Canadian Supreme Court is preparing to rule on the country’s ban on assisted suicide.
“Every one who … aids or abets a person to commit suicide, whether suicide ensues or not, is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years,” states the Criminal Code of Canada.
The court is looking at the appeal of a ruling form the British Columbia Court of Appeals which overruled a lower court ruling approving euthanasia. A woman suffering from ALS who has died since the filing of the suit, claimed that denying her the right to have someone assist her in dying violated her rights and discriminates against the disabled.
“If the Supreme Court strikes down our laws against assisted suicide/euthanasia, then it will be up to parliament to come up with a new law,” said MP Maurice Vellacott. “If the Supreme Court of Canada strikes down Canada’s current laws on euthanasia or assisted suicide, then CPSO’s policy would mean Ontario’s physicians would have a ‘duty to refer’ patients for treatments intended to kill the patient.”
Two Canadian senators have introduced a bill that would remove any criminal penalties to doctors who help a patient end their lives. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario has also crafted a policy that would require doctors to participate in the process regardless of their personal beliefs.
A boy who claimed that he went to heaven after a 2004 car accident has recanted his story and now says that he only claimed he went to heaven for the attention.
Alex Malarkey was the subject of the book “The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven.” He was paralyzed in the accident and doctors said he would likely never come out of a coma. When he woke up two months later, he told those around him that he had angels take him through the gates of heaven to meet Jesus.
Now, he says that was entirely false.
“I said I went to heaven because I thought it would get me attention. When I made the claims that I did, I had never read the Bible,” he explained. “People have profited from lies, and continue to. They should read the Bible, which is enough. The Bible is the only source of truth.”
Alex now is speaking out about the true path to salvation.
“It is only through repentance of your sins and a belief in Jesus as the Son of God, who died for your sins (even though he committed none of his own) so that you can be forgiven may you learn of Heaven outside of what is written in the Bible… not by reading a work of man,” he stated.
The boy’s mother told the Christian Post that Alex has not made any money from the book telling the story and that he never wanted the book published.
The FBI has arrested a man from Butler County, Ohio in connection with a plot to kill House Speaker John Boehner.
Michael Robert Hoyt, 44, is facing charges of threatening to murder the Congressman that revolved around his poisoning the Congressman’s drinks at a country club where Hoyt worked as a bartender.
“Hoyt told the officer he was Jesus Christ and he was going to kill Boehner because Boehner was mean to him at the country club and because Boehner is responsible for Ebola,” United States Capitol Police (USCP) Special Agent Christopher M. Desrosiers said. “Hoyt advised he had a loaded Beretta .380 automatic and he was going to shoot Boehner and take off.”
FBI agents say that Hoyt had typed up an 11 page document outlining his claims against Boehner and the plot to kill him.
Agents admit that Hoyt is showing signs of mental illness but say that doesn’t mean he was not taking active steps to carry out his plan to kill Boehner. Police searched Hoyt’s home on Oct. 31 and seized an SKS assault rifle magazine, two boxes of 7.62 ammo, 35 loose rounds, a speed loader and a box of .380 rounds.
Hoyt faces 30 years in prison.
Anti-pornography group Morality in Media is calling out the Motion Picture Association of America for giving the upcoming Fifty Shades of Grey an R rating despite the explicit sex scenes in the film.
MIM says that the rating given by the MPAA cites “unusual behavior” but ignores the fact that “behavior” is glorifying sexual violence.
“What the term ‘unusual’ does not account for is the coercion, sexual violence, female inequality, and BDSM themes from which the entire Fifty Shades plot is based,” MIM said in a statement. “Such a vague evaluation puts viewers at risk, sending the message that humiliation is pleasurable and that torture should be sexually gratifying.”
“We’d like to change the MPAA rating for Fifty Shades of Grey to read: ‘Promotes torture as sexually gratifying, graphic nudity, encourages stalking and abuse of power, promotes female inequality, glamorizes and legitimizes violence against women.’”
The movie is expected to be one of the biggest grossing films of the first quarter of 2015 and will be released around Valentine’s Day.
A group of anti-Christianists is attacking a Christian Good News Club being held at an elementary school in New York with what they call the “Better News Club.”
“The organization was created first as an alternative to the Good News Club, a Christian evangelical group who enters public schools to proselytize to children and, according to their own materials, declares them all sinners in need of salvation,” the website for the group outlines.
The anti-Christianists say the Good News Club is “a form of psychological abuse, akin to telling small children they’re flawed or evil, and must subscribe to a dogma in order to avoid eternal punishment.”
Child Evangelism Fellowship sponsors the Good News Club meeting at Fairbanks Elementary School in Churchville, New York. The children in the Club must have permission of their parents to attend meetings.
“Our ministry is dedicated to helping children in 150 countries around the world to know God and learn from the Bible,” the group says on their permission slip.
“Listen, the message of the gospel, the teaching of the core Christian tenets of the Christian faith that have been taught for 2,000 years in the Bible is what we’re teaching,” CEF Vice President of Ministries Moises Esteves told local television station KOIN. “There’s nothing new here.”
