End Times broadcaster Rick Wiles spoke with Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel on his "Trunews" program yesterday about what will happen to the United States if the Supreme Court strikes down bans on same-sex marriage. Unsurprisingly, neither was optimistic.

"Now the communists rule this nation," Wiles said in a monologue before his interview with Staver, "and everywhere communism takes control, they go after the churches and they kill the pastors and they demolish the church buildings and they reeducate the church children. That's what's coming to America. It's already started."

"We are at the end of the road as a nation," he warned. "If the Supreme Court dares to defy Almighty God one more time, I'm telling you it will be the last time."

"I believe I am speaking under the unction of the Holy Spirit," he continued. "I'm telling you there will be swift, sudden and devastating consequences for the United States of America. America will be brought to its knees, there will be pain and suffering at a level we've never seen in this country. The word that I hear in my spirit is `fire.' I do not know if it refers to riots or looting or war on American soil or a fireball from space. I simply know that a sweeping, consuming fire will come across the United States of America and this country will be charred and burned."

The Baltimore Sun was granted exclusive access to the task force and monitored the investigation for days. The Sun agreed not to publish details about the investigation until Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby decided whether to prosecute any of the officers involved in the Gray incident, though reporters continued to use other sources for information. On Friday, she announced charges against six officers.

[...]

Officers assigned to the task force had been working for two weeks to complete an investigation that might otherwise have taken months. They canvassed West Baltimore for witnesses and mapped out the locations of security camera footage. To recreate Gray's 45-minute ride in a police van, plainclothes officers rolled a $250,000 laser imaging system on a tripod down potholed roads and cracked sidewalks, ready to tell residents who questioned them that they were city surveyors.

At least 30 members of the Police Department were pulled onto the task force, including staff from the crime lab, Force Investigation Team, Internal Affairs, Homicide, and automobile CRASH team. Each brought with them an expertise to help answer the questions a volatile city desperately needed: how Gray sustained the severed spine and other injuries that led to his death on April 19, a week after his arrest.

Too much in the article to reproduce here, but having read it, I am left feeling that this was not some slap-dash investigation.

This:

On Friday, more remained. The task force was planning to go full-bore straight through the weekend, feeding supplemental reports to Mosby's office, and the investigation was to remain active indefinitely, according to Brandford.

"Important that the state's attorney continue to get things as we collect them," Brandford told his tired members Friday morning.

would suggest that perhaps the "report" that was delivered to the SA's office on Thursday comprised information they had already delivered to prosecutors, and in fact, in Mosby's statement - link below - she says,

I'd also like to thank the Baltimore City Police department particularly Major Branford of the homicide unit and Rodney Hill of the Internal Affairs Division for providing us with a hard copy of the investigative material yesterday, information we already had.

I continue to have questions about the route of the police wagon after Gray was placed in it.  From Mosby's statement:

Upon arrival of the transport wagon driven by Officer Caesar Goodson. Lt. Rice Officer Miller and Officer Nero loaded Mr. Gray into the wagon and at no point was he secured by a seatbelt while in the wagon contrary to a BPD general order. Lt. Rice then directed the BPD wagon to stop at Baker Street. At Baker Street, Lt. Rice, Officer Nero and Officer Miller removed Mr. Gray from the wagon, placed flexi-cuffs on his wrists, placed leg shackles on his ankles and completed required paperwork.

Baker Street is one block from where Gray was originally placed in the van.  They had only to continue south on Mount Street to get to the station.  If they were, in fact, going to Central Booking, that could explain the route they took.

Instead:

From Baker Street, Officer Goodson proceeded to the vicinity of Mosher Street and Fremont Avenue

Then:

Several blocks later, Officer Goodson called into dispatch that he needed to check on the status of his prisoner and requested additional units at Dolphin Street and Druid Hill Avenue.

From there:

Officer Goodson in a grossly negligent manner chose to respond to the 1600 block of West North Avenue with Mr. Gray still unsecured by a seatbelt in the wagon without rendering to or summoning medical assistance for Mr. Gray.

And finally:

After completing the North Avenue arrest and loading the additional prisoner into the opposite side of the wagon containing Mr. Gray, Officer Goodson then proceeded to the Western District Station

Why didn't they head back in the direction of  Central Booking?  Why did they backtrack to Western District?

Look at a map - maybe you will have the same questions.  Here's a good start.  Central Booking is located at 300 E Madison St, Baltimore, MD 21202.  

And for those still asking questions about whther Gray's medical condition might have occurred at the hospital:

By the time Officer Zachary Novak and Sgt. White attempted to remove Mr. Gray from the wagon, Mr. Gray was no longer breathing at all. A medic was finally called to the scene where upon arrival, the medic determined Mr. Gray was now in cardiac arrest and was critically and severely injured.

What ever happened to blogclogging being against the rules?  

"Effective immediately, I have rescinded my order instituting a city-wide curfew," Rawlings-Blake said in a written statement. "My goal has always been to not have the curfew in place a single day longer than was necessary. My No. 1 priority in instituting a curfew was to ensure the public peace, safety, health and welfare of Baltimore citizens."

Rawlings-Blake said she was thankful for the patience of Baltimore residents while city leaders tried to restore calm after the death Freddie Gray triggered protests.

Link

Promising to "make Scotland stronger at Westminster," Ms. Sturgeon is now being considered by Fleet Street as a potential powerbroker and kingmaker in Parliament. 54% of Scots have told pollsters that they're voting for the SNP, which thus appears well poised to win all 59 of Scotland's seats in the House of Commons.

Were such an unprecedented sweep to occur in Scotland, heretofore a longtime Labour stronghold, the SNP would effectively deny both major parties anything close to an outright majority. Nicola Sturgeon might well hold the balance of power in London in that event, and I'd look for her to drive a very hard bargain in the formation of any coalition government with the Labour Party.

While Mosby said Friday that the officers had made an illegal arrest because a knife Gray was carrying was not a "switchblade," a violation of state law, the police task force studied the knife and determined it was "spring-assisted," which does violate a Baltimore code.

The report further says that Freddie "fled unprovoked upon noticing police presence".

In any and every jurisdiction that flight from police gives the police lawful Probable Cause to pursue, detain and search Freddie -- which they did and found the knife.

If Gray didn't have this thusly-described knife on him, then there should have been a further charge against an officer for falsifying state's evidence and filing a false police report.

But there wasn't and there isn't in the list of charges.

From Colin Campbell at the Baltimore Sun:

Meanwhile, a police investigation continues as Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby builds her case. The separate investigations have some conflicting findings.

While Mosby said Friday that the officers had made an illegal arrest because a knife Gray was carrying was not a "switchblade," a violation of state law, the police task force studied the knife and determined it was "spring-assisted," which does violate a Baltimore code.

The "police task force" is Ms Mosby's handpicked unit.

GARLAND, Texas -- Two suspects were killed after they opened fire Sunday in a parking lot outside a provocative contest for cartoon depictions of the Prophet Muhammad, authorities said.

Garland's city government issued a statement saying that as a Muhammad Art Exhibit event was coming to a close at the Curtis Culwell Center, "two males drove up to the front of the building in a car'' and started shooting at a security officer.

A group called the American Freedom Defense Initiative hosted the Muhammad Cartoon Exhibit and $10,000 cartoon contest.

Early on Freddie's complaining that he can't breathe, but he is breathing all the way through the van ride and asphyxiation is not what eventually killed him.

The cutting of the spinal cord by the cracked vertebrae after his head hit the backdoor of the van was the cause of death.

They put him in headfirst at the scene -- head away from the backdoor of the van .

He's thrashing around so they take him out at the first stop, put legirons on him, then put him back in the van on the floor -- head away from the backdoor.

At the second stop he's still in the position they placed him -- on the floor head away from the backdoor.

At the third stop -- head still away from the backdoor -- Freddie says he can't breathe so the officers physically lift him from the floor of the van and put him on the bench.

This action would fall into the category of "providing medical assistance" since sitting Freddie up would help him to breathe better, right???

If his problem at that point had been a cracked vertebrae in his neck, moving him to the seat with or without seatbelt would have been the worse thing they could have done for him.

Furthermore since seatbelts have a restraining effect on breathing, without a seatbelt on Freddie is able to breathe better, right???

Afterall his complaint is difficulty breathing -- not bumps and bruises or broken bones or a sore neck from bouncing around in the back of the van.

At the next stop then at North Avenue where they pick up the second person, they open the backdoor and he is on the floor again -- but his head this time is now toward the backdoor of the van.

Had he cracked his head against the backdoor at this point or was that still to come, since after this stop, the picked-up prisoner says that he was moving around and banging his head against the van wall.

"there is always that concern for anyone who goes up against the Clinton machine that they could be Vince Fostered" and asked if he considered that possibility when "getting himself security." Schweizer replied: "Yeah, I mean look -- there are security concerns that arise in these kinds of situations."

Schweizer added that the security decision was made by his group, the Government Accountability Institute, and the "reality is we've touched on a major nerve within the Clinton camp. They are very, very upset, and they are pulling out all the stops to attack me in an effort to kill this book off."

For cities, shadows present both a technical challenge -- one that can be modeled in 3-D and measured in "theoretical annual sunlight hours" lost -- and an ethereal one. They change the feel of space and the value of property in ways that are hard to define. They're a stark reminder that the new growth needed in healthy cities can come at the expense of people already living there. And in some ways, shadows even turn light into another medium of inequality -- a resource that can be bought by the wealthy, eclipsed from the poor.