WASHINGTON — In a bid to break the shutdown stalemate, President Donald Trump offered to extend temporary protections for young people brought to the U.S. illegally as children and those fleeing disaster zones in exchange for his long-promised border wall.
Over the weekend, republican members of the Kansas congressional delegation offered their support of the proposal.
I applaud @realDonaldTrump for moving this forward & hope my Democrat colleagues will join in reopening the government with this assured border security.
Today, President Trump delivered a thoughtful offer to secure our border and reopen government. The president was clear that he is willing to find common ground to solve this problem by addressing points Democrats have long called for.
Once again, the President is showing an extreme amount of patience and desire to work with Democrats on a reasonable solution to the crisis on our southern border. We are waiting for Democrats to act in good faith and get onboard with these negotiations.
Democrats were quick to dismiss the proposal as a “nonstarter.” Kansas Third District Congresswoman Sharice Davids has not released a statement on the President’s proposal.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The only total lunar eclipse this year and next came with a supermoon bonus.
On Sunday night, the moon, Earth and sun lined up to create the eclipse, which was visible throughout North and South America, where skies were clear. There won’t be another until the year 2021.
It was also the year’s first supermoon, when a full moon appears a little bigger and brighter thanks to its slightly closer position.
The entire eclipse took more than three hours. Totality — when the moon’s completely bathed in Earth’s shadow — lasted an hour. During a total lunar eclipse, the eclipsed, or blood, moon turns red from sunlight scattering off Earth’s atmosphere.
In addition to the Americas, the entire lunar extravaganza could be observed, weather permitting, all the way across the Atlantic to parts of Europe.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The celestial curtain will be rising soon on a lunar extravaganza.
Sunday night, the Earth will slide directly between the moon and the sun, creating a total lunar eclipse. There won’t be another until 2021.
It will also be the year’s first supermoon, when a full moon appears a little bigger and brighter thanks to its slightly closer position.
The entire eclipse will exceed three hours. Totality — when the moon’s completely bathed in Earth’s shadow — will last an hour. Expect the eclipsed, or blood moon, to turn red from sunlight scattering off Earth’s atmosphere.
Everyone everywhere can catch the supermoon, weather permitting. But the entire eclipse will be visible only in North and South America, and across the Atlantic to western and northern Europe.
KANSAS CITY – A Kansas man has been sentenced in federal court for illegally possessing crack cocaine and a firearm, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.
Willis -photo MDC
Antonio E. Wills, 43, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Roseann Ketchmark on Thursday, Dec. 20, 2018, to 19 years in federal prison without parole. Wills was sentenced as a career offender due to his prior felony convictions. The court ordered the federal sentence to be served consecutively to the upcoming sentence in the District of Kansas for violating his supervised release in a separate federal case.
On Feb. 9, 2018, Wills pleaded guilty to possessing cocaine with the intent to distribute and to being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Wills was a passenger in a vehicle that attempted to avoid a DUI checkpoint on March 19, 2016, by making a U-turn in the middle of Main Street.
Kansas City, Mo., police officers stopped the vehicle and directed the driver back to the checkpoint. Officers at the checkpoint smelled a strong odor of marijuana and observed Wills trying to conceal something inside his front hoodie pocket. Wills and the driver were both instructed to get out of the vehicle, at which time an officer saw a clear plastic baggy that contained cocaine in Wills’s hand. An officer instructed Wills to drop the clear bag. Wills failed to comply and placed the bag back in his front hoodie pocket. The officer attempted to take Wills into custody, but he refused to comply and a struggle ensued. Additional officers responded to assist with taking Wills into custody.
When officers searched Wills, they found another clear plastic baggy that contained cocaine in his cargo shorts pocket and a loaded Glock .45-caliber handgun (with an obliterated serial number) in his waistband. They also found marijuana and $2,186 in Wills’s pocket. Wills was in possession of 71.5 grams of powder cocaine and 7.7 grams of crack cocaine.
At the time of his arrest, Wills was on supervised release after being convicted in a separate drug-trafficking case and serving more than 10 years in prison. A federal warrant had been issued for his arrest, based on his absconding from supervision.
Under federal law, it is illegal for anyone who has been convicted of a felony to be in possession of any firearm or ammunition. Wills has prior felony convictions for possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine, possession of a controlled substance and driving while a habitual violator.
FULTON, Mo. (AP) — The Missouri museum honoring Winston Churchill will mark its 50th anniversary in May with events that include relatives of the famed British prime minister.
Relatives of presidents Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon also are scheduled to take part in the celebration May 3-5 at the National Churchill Museum on the campus of Westminster College in Fulton, the town where Churchill delivered his famous “Iron Curtain” speech in 1946.
The museum opened in 1969 and was formally recognized by Congress as America’s permanent tribute to Churchill in 2009.
The anniversary celebration will include a parade, lectures about Churchill, and exhibits of paintings by Churchill, Eisenhower and presidents John Kennedy and George W. Bush.
Locked up for life at 15, Norman Brown remains defined by the crime that put him behind bars. His is currently in Missouri’s Potosi Correctional Center.
photo courtesy MDC
Twenty-seven years ago, Brown joined a neighbor more than twice his age to rob a jewelry shop in Chesterfield, Missouri, and the man shot the owner to death. The shooter was executed. But state officials, bound by a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, pledged to give Brown an opportunity to get out — then rejected parole in a process a federal judge ruled recently must be overhauled.
Three years after the Supreme Court gave inmates like Brown a chance at freedom, the justice system is gaining speed in revisiting scores of cases. About 400 offenders originally sentenced to life without parole as juveniles have been released nationwide, and hundreds of others have been resentenced to shorter terms or made eligible for release by law.
But most remain behind bars as prosecutors and judges wrestle with difficult cases. Tensions have mounted and lawsuits have been filed in states like Missouri, while in 21 others, life-without-parole sentences are prohibited for those 17 and younger. About a third of those bans have been approved since 2016, according to the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth.
“The national trend is certainly one where states are moving away from these sentences, whether by legislation or through the courts,” said Jody Kent Lavy, executive director of the group. But “there are still some outliers that in many ways are refusing to comply with the court’s mandate.”
In Missouri, lawmakers decided the more than 100 inmates serving life for adolescent crimes would get a parole hearing after 25 years. But the state is in court because the parole board has denied release in 85 percent of cases it has heard and has yet to free anyone.
Parole hearings have been brief and focused on inmates’ crimes, with little, if any, attention on the circumstances preceding them or what offenders have done to rehabilitate themselves, a lawsuit filed by the MacArthur Justice Center alleges.
The board’s actions violate the constitutional requirement that inmates be provided a “realistic opportunity for release,” a federal judge determined in October, ordering changes. Missouri’s corrections agency and attorney general’s office declined comment.
After Brown’s hearing in May 2017, the board cited his crime in denying parole. The state has since argued he is not yet eligible because he received consecutive sentences. Brown, now 42, said he hopes the board will eventually recognize his remorse, as well as his thousands of hours in restorative justice programs and work as a prison hospice caretaker and training rescue dogs.
In a telephone interview from Potosi Correctional Center, Brown recounted what he did that night in 1991.
“It’s shameful. … Because I’m an adult now, I know what it is to love your family,” he said. “I can definitely see where (opposition to release) comes from, and I think it comes from a place of pain.”
Florence Honickman’s husband, Stephen, was killed by Brown’s companion, and she vividly recalls the teen snatching a pendant off her neck as she lay bleeding from bullet wounds. She lives in Florida but returned to Missouri to oppose Brown’s parole.
“My family was turned upside down and inside out,” she said in an interview. “Do you really know deep down that this man — he’s a man now, not a child — has he really, really changed?”
The high court’s 2016 decision, one of four in recent years focused on the punishment of juveniles, hinged partly on research showing the brains of adolescents are slow to develop, making teen offenders likelier to act recklessly but capable of rehabilitation. The court said they must not be punished with the same severity and finality as adults, and that a life-without-parole sentence should be reserved for those inmates deemed beyond rehabilitation.
At the time, more than 2,000 inmates were serving mandatory life-without-parole sentences, most for murder convictions. And most cases were clustered in a few states.
In Pennsylvania, 399 of more than 500 juvenile lifers have been resentenced and 163 have been released, according to the Department of Corrections. Bradley Bridge, of the Defenders Association of Philadelphia, said the last of that city’s 325 lifers could be resentenced this spring. Judges have recently rejected some negotiated sentences as too light. The last of their deliberations are complicated by the fact that many still awaiting resentencing have served less time and have less of a prison record to assess, or they have mental illnesses or a history of prison violations.
“The cases we have remaining are probably the toughest ones,” Bridge said.
In Louisiana, after years of resistance by courts and prosecutors, the state is reconsidering the sentences of roughly 300 offenders. Through December, 45 had come before a parole committee, with 37 approved for release and 31 of those now out, according to the Board of Pardons and Parole.
Ivy Mathis was released in December after serving 26 years for killing a man during a home robbery. Mathis said that in prison she outgrew the rebelliousness of her teen years, worked in hospice care and got culinary training. She now works as a cook in two restaurants.
“I’m just thanking God, and I made up my mind, I will never return to prison. … I’m not taking this second chance for granted,” she said.
Henry Montgomery, whose case was at the center of the Supreme Court’s 2016 ruling, has not been so lucky. Montgomery, 72, was denied parole last year. He was 16 when he killed a police officer who caught him skipping school. Montgomery, who worked in a prison silk screening shop and founded a boxing association for inmates, will be eligible for another hearing in February 2020.
“He’s stoic,” said Keith Nordyke, a lawyer with the Louisiana Parole Project. “You know one of the things that prison teaches you — 54 years of prison — is patience.”
Louisiana prosecutors are seeking new life sentences for 80 other inmates; the state recently approved $1.3 million for inmates’ defense.
In Michigan, where a case before the state Supreme Court delayed reconsideration of many cases, more than 140 inmates have been resentenced, and about half of them have been freed. But prosecutors are pursuing new life-without-parole sentences for about 200 others.
Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker has sought no-parole terms in about half of his 24 cases, and judges so far have agreed for four inmates — including Damon Jackson, 39, convicted in the death of his infant son. The boy was shaken, sexually abused and left blind and deaf before dying 2½ years later.
“We tried to take the worst of the worst, the most depraved ones,” Becker said.
In some cases, judges have rebuffed prosecutors’ bids for new life terms.
In another Kent County case, a judge recently resentenced inmates Chad Maleski and Joshua Rogers to 35 to 60 years, making them parole-eligible in about 17 years. Maleski and Rogers were 17 when they joined two others in abducting 66-year-old Willie Jones outside a Grand Rapids bowling alley. Jones was stuffed in the trunk of his car, repeatedly stabbed and left to die in a field. The judge cited Rogers’ remorse and participation in prison self-improvement programs and Maleski’s cooperation that led authorities to Jones’ body. Both men apologized.
James Jones, the victim’s nephew, had planned to speak harshly about Rogers at his resentencing. But after praying and hearing of the inmate’s progress, he offered forgiveness.
“Who knows what God has (in store) for this young man?” Jones said.
While the Supreme Court’s decision has prompted change, the justices have shown little appetite for revisiting the issue of juvenile sentences, leaving unsettled what to do with the thousands of other former teen offenders who are legally entitled to parole but serving such lengthy terms they are unlikely to ever get out.
In April, the court declined to hear the case of Missouri offender Bobby Bostic, who was 16 when he and a friend held up people delivering donated Christmas gifts to a poor St. Louis family. Bostic fired a shot that grazed one man. The teens also forced their way into a woman’s car and demanded cash at gunpoint. Bostic’s friend groped the victim before the two teens released her.
Bostic, who turned down a plea bargain, was sentenced to 241 years and won’t be eligible for parole until he turns 112. He unsuccessfully appealed his sentence to Missouri’s top court. And despite an earlier ruling banning life sentences for juveniles who did not kill, the high court declined to take the case.
“I’m not the victim,” said Bostic, 40, who dreams of publishing six nonfiction books and nine volumes of poetry if released. “But a teenager dying in prison, what lesson do you teach him? He’s got nothing to hope for.”
In Maryland, the American Civil Liberties Union alleges in a lawsuit the state’s parole system is unconstitutional because the release of juvenile offenders is rare and decided in secrecy. When the case was filed in 2016, no juvenile offender had been paroled for nonmedical reasons in two decades, said Sonia Kumar, an ACLU lawyer.
State law requires the governor to approve parole for any inmates sentenced to life. Gov. Larry Hogan has granted parole to three former juvenile offenders since taking office in 2015, all for medical reasons, and has granted clemency to two others.
Kumar argues there still is no meaningful opportunity for the state’s 200-300 juvenile lifers to get out, even if they have evidence of rehabilitation. She represents two inmates recommended for clemency in 2017 whose cases are still pending with the governor. Both have served more than 35 years, have almost perfect prison records and have taken education classes, held jobs and won praise from corrections officers. Hogan’s spokeswoman said these decisions require a “thorough deliberative process.”
Other governors have recently approved inmates’ release.
Before exiting office, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam granted clemency this month to Cyntoia Brown, who was 16 when she got life for fatally shooting a Nashville real estate agent after he picked her up and paid her for sex. Brown’s lawyers contended she was a sex trafficking victim who not only feared for her life but also lacked the mental capability to be culpable in the slaying because she was impaired by her mother’s alcohol use while she was in the womb.
Under Tennessee’s sentencing laws, Brown, now 30, would not have been eligible for parole until after serving 51 years — a mandate the governor said was “too harsh, especially in light of the extraordinary steps Ms. Brown has taken to rebuild her life.”
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper granted clemency last month to Curtis Brooks, serving life for his role in a 1995 fatal carjacking at the age of 15. Brooks already has served about 24 years; if he’d been resentenced per the Supreme Court’s ruling, he would have faced at least six more before becoming eligible for parole.
Brooks was homeless when he met three boys and joined in a plan to steal a car in exchange for a place to stay, according to his former public defender, Hollynd Hoskins, who shepherded his clemency petition. Christopher Ramos, 24, was killed in the carjacking; Brooks was not the shooter.
Brooks’ release was championed by a juror who convicted him, the trial judge, the lead detective in the case and his former elementary school teacher, now a Maryland legislator. He plans to work for her after his release in July. The victim’s family had opposed clemency, however, and Brooks said he would not presume to ask for their forgiveness.
“It’s not that I don’t want it. I don’t know if I am deserving,” he said in a phone interview from prison. “I want them to see in the way I live my life that I do understand the impact of what happened that night. … I want them hopefully one day to see the person I was, not the person I am.”
Around 20,000 state employees in Kansas now qualify for paid parental leave.
Baby steps, say groups that advocate for families and women. They’re celebrating, but they really want Kansas to join the six states and Washington D.C. that make private-sector companies give paid leave, too.
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
The Women’s Foundation and Kansas Action for Children want paid family leave that Kansans can use for everything from bonding with babies to taking an elderly mom or dad to a doctor’s appointment.
“Even a few weeks’ flexibility,” lobbyist Adrienne Olejnik says, can help parents in line for coveted slots at infant daycares. “It can then allow parents greater choice in where they end up putting their infant.”
Her organization, Kansas Action, is revving up for a concerted push in the Statehouse in 2020. This year, staff will crisscross the state, talking to families and businesses in search of a sweet-spot proposal that could win broad support.
Critics will likely fight back.
In an email, Kansas Chamber spokeswoman Sherriene Jones-Sontag said the group’s members “oppose any efforts to put Kansas employers at a disadvantage by placing costly mandates which go above and beyond what is required by federal law.”
“Government should not,” she added, “set personnel policies for (the) private sector.”
Here’s what Kansas does now, and what other states are doing:
On his way out the door, then-Gov. Jeff Colyer — quietly, some would argue — signed off on parental leave for more than 17,000 executive branch jobs. Up to six weeks of full pay. The judiciary followed suit.
Expect word from public universities as early as next month on whether they’ll jump on the bandwagon. That would more than double the number of public employees in Kansas with access to paid leave.
Colyer’s move puts Kansas in the company of six states with similar rules: Delaware, Indiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri and Virginia. Arkansas and Ohio offer their state employees a more limited version. That’s according to the Women’s Foundation, which lobbied for Kansas to come on board.
Six states and D.C. have extended paid leave to the private sector:
Rhode Island requires four weeks.
California and New Jersey, six weeks.
New York and D.C., eight weeks.
Washington and Massachusetts, 12 weeks.
Of course, there’s fine print. Not everyone qualifies, and the amount of reimbursable pay varies.
Nationally, most jobs come with unpaid family leave, though many families say they can’t afford to use it. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates 15 percent of private-sector jobs come with a paid version.
The Cato Institute warns workers could end up with lower wages, employers might lean toward hiring men, and families could redistribute more household work onto women. Women, employers might assume, are more likely to use the paid leave.
Cato also suggests far more companies may already offer paid parental leave than the federal government realizes.
No word yet from newly minted Gov. Laura Kelly on whether she would support a law on private-sector paid leave. Nor from the heads of the Kansas House and Senate.
But the Legislature could extend paid parental leave during this legislative session to its year-round employees (of which there are fewer than 100).
“This is important to us,” House Speaker Ron Ryckman said at a recent legislative meeting on the logistics. “We’re ready to take action when all of our i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed.”
STONE COUNTY — One person died in an accident just before noon Saturday in Stone County.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a 2004 Honda Accord driven by James D. Haase, 30, Reed Spring, was westbound on Route OO one mile west of Kimberling City.
The driver lost control in the snow. The vehicle slid into the path of an eastbound 2016 Dodge Ram driven by John A. Williams, 55, Reed Spring.
Haase was transported to Cox Branson where he died. A passenger in the Honda Britany A. Haase, 25, Reed Spring, was transported to Mercy in Springfield. Williams was not injured.
JOHNSON COUNTY — A Kansas Department of Transportation employee died in an accident just after 6:30a.m. Saturday in Johnson County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2011 Freightliner truck driven by Stephen N Windler, 25, Paola, was southbound on U.S. 69 Highway in the outside lane just south of 207th Street.
My heart is breaking for the family of this dedicated employee. Our KDOT personnel work very hard, at all hours, in dangerous conditions to make our roads safe for their fellow Kansans. My thoughts are with his family, friends and the entire KDOT family. https://t.co/DpjUn65d6s
The vehicle traveled to the right traversing the shoulder, traveled into the grass, rotated counter-clockwise and became broadside as it started to tip.
Traffic diverted near the Saturday morning just north of the accident investigation- photo KC Scout
The truck overturned, emptied its salt load, ejected the driver and rolled on top of the driver.
Windler was pronounced dead at the scene and he was transported to Frontier Forensics, according to the KHP.
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JOHNSON COUNTY —Authorities are investigating the cause of a fatal crash in Johnson County that took the life of a Kansas Department of Transportation snow plow driver just after 6a.m. Saturday on southbound U.S. 69 south of 207th Street in Johnson County.
On their twitter account, Kansas Secretary of Transportation Julie Lorenz said, “our thoughts and prayers go out to the family members and the co-workers of our driver. KDOT is one big family, and we know there are many people impacted by this.”
No other vehicles were involved in the crash. The KHP has not released the driver’s name.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on the partial government shutdown (all times local):
President Trump makes comments from the White House Saturday-image courtesy the White House
President Donald Trump is offering to extend temporary protection for people brought to U.S. illegally as children in a bid to secure border wall funding.
Trump has struggled to find a way out of a four-week partial government shutdown over his demand to construct a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
Trump promoted his plan Saturday as a way to “break the logjam and provide Congress with a path forward to end the government shutdown.”
Trump is also offering to extend protections for immigrants who came to the U.S. as a result of war or natural disasters in their home countries.
Trump says Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will bring the proposal for a vote in the Senate this week. But Democrats, who control the House, are already saying they find the president’s offer unacceptable.
KANSAS CITY, KAN. – Troy L. Bechtel, 49, of Overland Park, Kan., is charged in a federal indictment with two counts of major program fraud against the United States and two counts of lying to federal investigators, according to U.S. Attorney Stephen McAllister.
The indictment alleges that from August 2009 to April 2013 Bechtel aided and abetted other persons unlawfully to obtain more than $12.7 million from a contract with the Department of Defense.
The indictment alleges Bechtel and other persons falsely represented that United Medical Design Builders, LLC, of Merriam, Kan., was controlled by co-defendant Joseph David Dial, Jr., a disabled veteran of the U.S. Army.
In fact, UMDB was a pass-through company that Dial did not control. The company received a contract through the Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business program that was awarded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for the design and construction of healthcare facilities at Langley AFB, Andrews AFB, Hanscom AFB, and McGuire AFB.
The indictment alleges Bechtel ran the daily operations for UMDB and made project decisions without reporting to or consulting with Dial. Dial was rarely in the office. He also signed a blank sheet of paper that was scanned for use on official letters and correspondence.
Co-defendant Dial pleaded guilty to one count of major program fraud and one count of wire fraud. He is set for sentencing Jan. 28.
If convicted, Bechtel faces up to 10 years in federal prison on each count of defrauding the government and up to five years on each count of lying to investigators, as well as fines and forfeiture judgment representing the amount of proceeds obtained by committing the offenses set out in the indictment. Investigative agencies include the Small Business Administration – Officer of Inspector General, General Services Administration – Office of Inspector General, Defense Criminal Investigative Service and the Army CID Major Procurement Fraud Unit.
