Oklahomans were not happy to discover this week that Gov. Mary Fallin's (R) daughter has been living in a trailer on the grounds of the governor's mansion for months.

“Is it true that Mary Fallin’s daughter is living in a trailer on the Governor’s mansion property?" one concerned resident wrote local TV station KFOR. "That is state property! Who is paying her bills? Oklahoma taxpayers?”

The governor's office told KFOR that Christina Fallin, 28, has been living in an RV on the property since April. The trailer was hooked up to the governor's mansion for utilities, according to the news station.

Mary Fallin herself appeared Tuesday on KFOR to explain her daughter's living situation. She said she had directed her staff to look into whether having the trailer on mansion grounds violated any codes. It turned out that the Capitol Medical Center Improvement Zoning Commission forbids having a trailer on state property in an area that includes the governor’s mansion, according to KFOR.


http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/christina-fallin-trailer-oklahoma-governors-mansion

Bernie Sanders emailed supporters earlier this month, calling for "Americans from across the country to come together for a series of conversations about how we can organize an unprecedented grassroots movement that takes on the greed of Wall Street and the billionaire class." The date for those organizing meetings, as the campaign called them, was July 29 -- Wednesday night. The campaign created an elegant map displaying the locations of the various events around the country.

There's just one thing. There are more organizing events set up in San Francisco and just across the Bay than in the entire state of Iowa.

We pulled every event in Iowa using Sanders' site's tool, and mapped them. There are 50 in total, covering the state's 3.1 million residents.

In San Francisco, over a much smaller area, there are more events serving fewer people.




http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/07/29/there-are-more-bernie-sanders-organizing-events-near-san-francisco-than-in-all-of-iowa/

SANTA CRUZ >> Adrian Jerry “A.J.” Gonzalez, a 15-year-old boy from Santa Cruz, has been charged as an adult for the killing, sexual assault and kidnapping of 8-year-old Madyson Jordan Middleton.

Santa Cruz County District Attorney Jeff Rosell said the severity of the case, in which Maddy, according to the charging document was tied up, beaten, strangled, raped, killed and dumped in a garage recycling bin, merited a charge in superior court rather than juvenile court.

“We’re confident in the charges we filed and that’s what justice demands,” Rosell said, crediting law enforcement for the quick resolution of the case.

Rosell said, “I can’t remember any 15-year-old with these specific charges,” which include six felonies including murder, forcible rape with great bodily injury and kidnapping by lying in wait.



http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/general-news/20150729/santa-cruz-teen-charged-as-adult-in-brutal-homicide-of-8-year-old

OAK HILL, Fla. —A Port Orange man was hit by a large piece of shrapnel after he and his friends blew up an old clothes dryer.

he three friends, aged between 20 and 25, brought the old appliance for target practice to some woods on Maytown Road, near Interstate 95, in Oak Hill on Saturday afternoon.

The men filled the dryer with two pounds of explosive material and shot at it with a rifle.

A jagged piece of the dryer door hit one of the men in the stomach, causing a laceration that had to be treated at a hospital.


http://www.wesh.com/news/man-hurt-after-using-old-dryer-for-target-practice/34378466#.VbaEvASRVDg.twitter

The California lawmker who made it harder for parents to opt out of vaccinating their children, a stance that earned him death threats, is now launching a campaign to save his job, days after the state certified a recall effort against him.

Democratic State Senator Richard Pan, a Sacramento pediatrician who introduced a measure eliminating California’s personal beliefs exemption to vaccination requirements for schoolchildren in response to a measles outbreak at Disneyland, plans to go public on Wednesday with a website and social media campaign aimed at fighting off the recall drive, a spokeswoman said.

“I won’t be detoured from taking on the tough issues that are important to people in my district simply because there are some that use anti-science rhetoric to ignite division and fear,” Pan said in a text message to Reuters.

The successful bill he introduced, which was signed last month by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown, repealed a portion of the health code that had allowed unvaccinated children to attend school if their parents opted out based on their personal beliefs, whether those beliefs were religious or not.


http://www.rawstory.com/2015/07/anti-vaxxers-try-to-recall-calif-lawmaker-behind-bill-eliminating-personal-belief-exemptions/

A 72-year-old military veteran was arrested for allegedly bringing a gun into an Army recruitment office in Conyers, Georgia last week to "keep the guys on their toes," according to the Rockdale News.

Harry Tracey was arrested on suspicion of bringing a weapon onto government property, according to the Rockdale News.

According to a police report reviewed by the newspaper, Tracey entered the office and began asking unusual questions.

"He asked if he felt safe, if he was armed and if he could protect himself against an attack like the one that happened in Chattanooga," an officer wrote in the police report.

He lifted his shirt, revealing a black pistol tucked into his waistband, and left the office. Police located Tracey nearby, according to the Rockdale News.

He reportedly told police that he brought his weapon to the office because of the shooting in Chattanooga, Tennessee that left two dead and others injured. Tracey said he did not mean harm, but wanted to "keep them aware of their surroundings," according to the Rockdale News.


http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/harry-tracey-conyers-georgia-gun

Not only did President Barack Obama get to explore his genetic roots during his visit to Africa — he got to explore Republican presidential candidate and well-documented "birther" Donald Trump's too.

Dr. Zeresenay Alemseged, the head of the California Academy of Sciences, introduced Obama to Lucy, the female hominid found in Ethiopia who shows evidence of bipedalism and other characteristics which extended the evolutionary chain, at the National Museum of Ethiopia on Monday, according to pool reports.

“It shows that every single person here, 7 billion people, including Donald Trump, came down through the chain," Alemseged said, according to pool reports.

The President got to touch one the vertebrae that links him to every political rival, even a man like Trump, who continually questions Obama's birthplace of Hawaii.



http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/obama-trump-ethiopa-lucy

An Atlanta group is leading a national coalition of progressive organizations in urging employees to symbolically clock out of work at 2:07 p.m. on Tuesday, July 28th in order to help bring attention to the wage gap faced by black women in the workplace.

Both the time and the date of the clock out are significant, according to Atlanta Women for Equality (AWE) Executive Director Lisa Anderson. Black women only make $0.64 for every dollar earned by white men, and 2:07 p.m. is approximately 64 percent of an average workday — which is when a black woman could leave work if she were paid the same as her white peers. For a black woman to earn the same income as her white male counterparts in 2014, she would need to work an extra 208 into 2015 — or July 28, 2015, which just happens to be tomorrow.

The wage gap between black women and white men demonstrates why both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have sought to link the issues of racial injustice and economic inequity in the past week — both have a significant impact on black lives, which shouldn’t only matter after they’ve been taken. As Clinton said, “Black Lives Matter” shouldn’t be “just a slogan, it should be a guiding principle.”

AWE hopes to further that principle by asking participants to download a printable time card and post a picture of themselves holding it on social media. The idea is generate conversations about the wage gap both on AWE’s Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram accounts and social media at large using the hashtags #BlackWomenEqualPay and #ClockOut4EqualPay.


http://www.salon.com/2015/07/27/group_calls_for_black_womens_equal_pay_day_to_call_attention_to_wage_gap_between_between_black_women_white_men/

On Monday’s edition of “Fox & Friends,” Elisabeth Hasselbeck speculated that an “irritated” Sandra Bland could have “attacked” Officer Brian Encinia with her cigarette, because the co-host is “sure someone has, in the history of this land, used a cigarette against a police officer.”

Putting aside the fact that “the history of this land” contains a nearly infinite number of otherwise innocent objects that could, in a pinch, be used by someone, somewhere as a weapon. At this very moment, I have access to pens, a lamp, a cup of rapidly cooling green tea, not to mention the very keyboard on which I type these words — any one of which could conceivably be used to attack another human being.

Just because I could toss a cup of lukewarm green tea at any police officer who walks into my office doesn’t mean that, should a police officer actually enter my office, he or she should feel immediately threatened by my Bigelow. There’s no logic to that logic — it’s effectively a license to live in perpetual fear of everyday objects, and Hasselback wants to grant it to law enforcement.

But Hasselbeck continued, albeit oddly, stopping and starting almost as if her brain didn’t want allow her mouth to eject the words it’d ordered her to say. “What if, I mean, there are times, I’m sure, someone has, in the history of this land, used a cigarette against a police officer,” Hasselbeck said. “Maybe chucked it at him — pushed it at him?”


http://www.salon.com/2015/07/27/fox_news_elisabeth_hasselbeck_justifies_sandra_blands_arrest_she_could_have_used_cigarette_as_a_weapon/