A former Colorado funeral home owner was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison on Tuesday for defrauding relatives of the dead by dissecting 560 corpses and selling body parts without permission.

Megan Hess, 46, pleaded guilty to fraud in July. She

operated a funeral home, Sunset Mesa, and a body parts entity,

Donor Services, from the same building in Montrose, Colorado. The 20-year term was the maximum allowed under law.

Her 69-year-old mother, Shirley Koch, also pleaded guilty to fraud and was sentenced to 15 years. Koch’s central role was chopping up the bodies, court records show.

“Hess and Koch used their funeral home at times to

essentially steal bodies and body parts using fraudulent and

forged donor forms,” prosecutor Tim Neff said in a court filing. “Hess and Koch’s conduct caused immense emotional pain for the families and next of kin.”

The federal case was triggered by a 2016-2018 Reuters investigative series about the sale of body parts in the United

States, a virtually unregulated industry. Former workers told

Reuters that Hess and Koch conducted unauthorized dismemberments

of bodies, and a few weeks after a 2018 story was published, the

FBI raided the business.

In their filing, prosecutors stressed the “macabre nature”

of Hess’ scheme and described it as one of the most significant

body parts cases in recent U.S. history.

“This is the most emotionally draining case I have ever experienced on the bench,” U.S. District Judge Christine M. Arguello said during Tuesday’s sentencing hearing in Grand

Junction, Colorado.

“It’s concerning to the court that defendant Hess refuses to assume any responsibility for her conduct.”

Hess’ lawyer said she has been unfairly vilified as a

“witch,” a “monster” and a “ghoul,” when instead she is a

“broken human being” whose conduct can be attributed to a

traumatic brain injury at age 18. In court on Tuesday, Hess declined to speak to the judge.

Koch told the judge she was sorry and took responsibility for her actions.

Twenty-six victims described their horror at discovering what had happened to their loved ones.

“Our sweet mother, they dismembered her,” Erin Smith said, selling her shoulders, knees and feet for profit. “We don’t even have a name for a crime this heinous.”

Tina Shanon, whose mother was dismembered against her will, told the court, “I’ve worn many masks to cover the pain. I’ll never be OK.”

It is illegal in the United States to sell organs such as

hearts, kidneys and tendons for transplant; they must be

donated. But selling body parts such as heads, arms and spines –

which is what Hess did – for use in research or education is not

regulated by federal law.

Hess committed crimes, prosecutors said, when she defrauded

relatives of the deceased by lying about cremations and by

dissecting bodies and selling them without permission. The

surgical-training companies and other firms which bought the

arms, legs, heads and torsos from Hess did not know they had

been fraudulently obtained, prosecutors said.

At her funeral home, Hess charged families up to $1,000 for

cremations that never occurred, prosecutors said, and she

offered others free cremations in exchange for a body donation.

Prosecutors said she lied to more than 200 families, who

received cremated ashes from bins mixed with the remains of

different cadavers.

U.S. Soccer on Tuesday said it had launched an investigation into U.S. men’s national team head coach Gregg Berhalter over an incident in 1991 where he kicked his wife in the legs.

Berhalter and his wife Rosalind released a joint statement acknowledging that the “shameful” incident had occurred 31 years ago, with Berhalter saying he had learned from it.

“In the fall of 1991, I met my soulmate. I had just turned 18 and was a freshman in college when I met Rosalind,” said Berhalter, who attended the University of North Carolina.

“One night, while out drinking at a local bar, Rosalind and I had a heated argument that continued outside. It became physical and I kicked her in the legs.

“There are zero excuses for my actions that night; it was a shameful moment and one that I regret to this day.”

He said law enforcement were never involved and that he voluntarily sought out counselling to help “learn, grow and improve.”

The couple split up for seven months before reconciling. They recently celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary and have four children together.

Berhalter said the investigation came about after an individual contacted U.S. Soccer during the World Cup last month saying they had information that would “take him down”.

U.S. Soccer thanked the couple for speaking about the incident. It added that it had launched a technical review of the men’s national team program and would announce who will lead the January men’s national team camp in the coming days.

The U.S. were knocked out of the World Cup by the Netherlands in the last 16.

Russia’s defence ministry blamed the illegal use of mobile phones for a deadly Ukrainian missile strike that killed 89 servicemen, raising the reported death toll significantly.

* Some protesters in Germany are calling on Berlin to reconsider its support for Ukraine, tapping into deep connections from the legacy of Soviet ties to Communist east Germany and decades of German dependency on Russian gas.

* French President Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed that Ukraine “needs our support more than ever”. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak also said Ukraine can count on long-term support.

* Young acrobats from circus schools across Ukraine dazzled audiences in Budapest at a circus festival to showcase the talents of children forced by the war to train underground or without electricity.

* Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to talk to Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday.

* Russia’s defence ministry said that 89 servicemen were killed in the Ukrainian attack on Makiivka in the Moscow-controlled parts of the Donetsk region, adding the main reason for the attack was unauthorised use of mobile phones by the troops.

* A little known patriotic group which supports the widows of Russian soldiers has called on President Vladimir Putin to order a large-scale mobilisation of millions of men and to close the borders to ensure victory in Ukraine.

* A Russian missile attack destroyed an ice arena in the town of Druzhkivka in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Ukraine’s ice hockey federation said, following earlier reports of a missile hitting the town and injuring two people.

* Combing the battlefields of eastern Ukraine, volunteers have made it their mission to search for bodies of fallen soldiers and return them to families.

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Retail pharmacies will be allowed to offer abortion pills in the United States for the first time under a regulatory change made by the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday, the New York Times reported.

Social media platforms and search engines have increasingly become a major information hub. These platforms allow users to receive information while also sharing materials with a wide range of individuals.  Yet, it is not clear how much responsibility these sites bear for the material published or the search recommendations made by their algorithms. In 1996, Congress enacted legislation that shields internet providers from legal liability for information published on their sites. For the past two decades, most judges have taken a broad view of that legal liability shield and have made rulings that exempt platforms from legal responsibility.  

Now, there is a case coming before the Supreme Court that will test the scope of existing laws. The case, Gonzalez v. Google, could have profound consequences for social media sites and content moderation policies.  However, the possibility exists that the Supreme Court could weigh in on challenges to state laws in Florida and Texas aiming to impose certain obligations on social media companies.  

 To discuss these important questions, vice president of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, Darrell West, is joined by two distinguished experts. John Villasenor is a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings and a professor of Engineering, Law, and Public Policy at UCLA. Mark MacCarthy is a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings and a senior fellow at the Institute for Technology, Law, and Policy at Georgetown University. Listen to their discussion of the legal issues facing the court and possible ramifications for users and businesses.    

You can listen to the episode and subscribe to the TechTank podcast on Apple, Spotify, or Acast.

Most of us have had fantasies about how we would behave in certain scenarios. We flatter ourselves that we would be the ones to stand up to the Nazis had history put us in Germany in the 1930s. We tell ourselves that we would be the ones to stand up to the racists had circumstance and chance placed us in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. It’s a hypothetical no one can answer definitively and therefore a claim that cannot be repudiated. But if statistics are any indication the answer is we are, most of us, probably wrong about our own courage. If we’re like most people we’d go right along with everyone else.

Whatever that something is, that X factor, the rare human ingredient that makes the difference between people of courage and conscience and the rest of us, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger have it. Most of us have never been faced with true tests of actual courage in the name of righteousness in opposition to the cowardice of our peers. We can only claim what we would do, given the chance. Cheney and Kinzinger have actually done it.

Today (as I write this) marks the official end of their respective careers in Congress. Adam Kinzinger by choice and Liz Cheney by the consequence of an election in which she was primaried. Both former Representatives were officially censured by the Republican Party.

You read that right. On February 4, 2022, in a craven act of self-abasement to the disgusting shit-weasel Donald Trump, the repulsive members of the Republican National Committee gaslighted the nation when they proclaimed the mob-fuelled events of January 6, 2021, as “legitimate political discourse.” They then overwhelmingly voted by voice vote to censure Kinzinger and Cheney for taking part in the House investigation of the Capitol assault.

Read the previous paragraph again in case you missed its outrageous implications. Now permit me to say it another way: For participating in an investigation into a violent assault on the nation’s Capitol building, for being part of a legitimate select committee that interviewed Republicans about what happened on January 6, 2021, Cheney and Kinzinger were formally and publicly condemned. Members of Congress who have been censured are required to give up any committee chairs they hold.

It should also be noted by contrast that on January 29, 2021, Democratic Representatives Nikema Williams and Sara Jacobs introduced a resolution to censure representative Marjorie Taylor Greene for making threatening comments to her colleagues. That resolution went nowhere. Nobody was interested in censuring Greene for threatening her colleagues. Cheney and Kinzinger, on the other hand, were censured for daring to find out why American Democracy was violently assaulted.

So Cheney and Kinzinger have had to endure official condemnation by members of their own party. It is known through leaked conversation and private confessions that many of the people who voted to condemn Cheney and Kinzinger secretly agreed with them. But they didn’t want to lose their jobs and they didn’t want to be made pariahs of their own party. They were also terrified of Donald Trump and his rancorous and hateful retribution. So they shamefully kept silent and went along with the crowd.

But then, who among us hasn’t kept silent when a colleague at work was being unfairly persecuted by management? Who among us hasn’t looked the other way or crossed the street at the approach of a homeless person? Courage like Cheney’s and Kinzinger’s, deserves to be acknowledged and praised for its scarcity. Yes, they are Republicans. But they have something most of us don’t. They have real performative courage. And for that they deserve to be recognised and commended. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.

The post Profiles in courage appeared first on Palmer Report.

At no point during the past few months has it appeared that Kevin McCarthy was even close to having the votes to become Speaker of the House. The only question heading into today’s vote was whether McCarthy’s recent flurry of wheeling and dealing was going to land him the votes at the last minute. Now we’ve gotten that answer, in resounding fashion.

In the first round of voting, McCarthy came up several votes short. In fact so many House Republicans declined to vote for him, Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries actually led the vote total. In the second round of voting, McCarthy came up short by the same embarrassing vote total. Then in the third and final round of voting for the day, McCarthy actually lost a vote and came up even more short.

This means Kevin McCarthy really did go into today knowing that he didn’t have the votes, and with no plan for getting holdout House Republicans to cave on the second or third ballot. He really is that weak and clueless. It also means that a significant number of House Republicans are so intent on sowing chaos, they’d rather risk having no Speaker at all than fall in line behind McCarthy.

The kicker is that regardless of how the process plays out from here, House Republicans have already done a significant amount of damage to themselves. They’ve taken an already weak Kevin McCarthy and further weakened him to the point that he’ll be completely powerless even if they do end up belatedly relenting and making him Speaker. And they’ve ensured that tonight’s and tomorrow morning’s media headlines will be all about how the House Republicans are inept idiots.

Some of McCarthy’s biggest critics publicly insisted weeks ago that they had a secret dark horse Speaker candidate lined up. But if that’s the case, why wasn’t this candidate put forward on the second or third ballot? It makes you wonder if they even have a candidate, even before getting to the question of whether or not that candidate could get to 218 votes.

Regardless of what bumbling and babbling idiots these Republicans may be, there’s always been the presumption that they must know what they’re doing on some level, and have at least some semblance of a strategy. But today’s humiliating debacle suggested that Kevin McCarthy really is just a clueless deer in the headlights with no strategy behind his actions, and that a number of House Republicans really are loony enough to be willing to sabotage their own party’s prospects just for kicks.

We’ll see what happens tomorrow. It’s hypothetically possible that some faction of House Republicans quietly has some kind of savvy plan in place that’ll result in someone getting elected Speaker. But up to now we’ve seen no evidence that any such plan exists – and if such a plan were to be revealed, today should have been the day.

Meanwhile House Democrats are more united than ever. With the House Republicans caucus in chaos, it’s a near certainty that House Democratic leadership is spending the evening attempting to convince the six least-crazy House Republicans to join them in electing a compromise Speaker. This would be an extraordinarily difficult needle to thread. But if House Democrats can somehow pull it off, it would be the political move of the century. Stay tuned.

The post Three strikes and you’re Kevin McCarthy appeared first on Palmer Report.

Russia’s defence ministry on Wednesday blamed the illegal use of mobile phones for a deadly Ukrainian missile strike that killed 89 servicemen, raising the reported death toll significantly.

Moscow previously said 63 Russian soldiers were killed in the weekend strike. The ministry’s reaction came amid mounting anger among some Russian commentators, who are increasingly vocal about what they see as a half-hearted campaign in Ukraine.

Most of the anger on social media was directed at military commanders rather than Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Russian defence ministry said four Ukrainian missiles hit a temporary Russian barracks in a vocational college in Makiivka, twin city of the Russian-occupied regional capital of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

Although an official probe has been launched, the main reason for the attack was clearly the illegal mass use of mobile phones by servicemen, the ministry said.

“This factor allowed the enemy to track and determine the coordinates of the soldiers’ location for a missile strike,” it said in a statement issued just after 1 a.m. in Moscow on Wednesday (2200 GMT Tuesday).

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy made no mention of the attack in a video address on Tuesday in which he said Russia was set to launch a major offensive to improve its fortunes.

“We have no doubt that current masters of Russia will throw everything they have left and everyone they can round up to try to turn the tide of the war and at least delay their defeat,” Zelenskiy said in a video address.

“We have to disrupt this Russian scenario. We are preparing for this. The terrorists must lose. Any attempt at their new offensive must fail,” he continued.

Ukraine’s military has said it launched a strike that resulted in Russian loss of equipment and possibly personnel near Makiivka. But it has given no further details.

Russian nationalist bloggers and some pro-Russian officials in the region put the Makiivka death toll in the hundreds, though some say that those estimates are exaggerated.

The attack was another blow to Putin and what he calls a “special military operation” to deter threats to Russian security and to protect Russian speakers. Ukraine and its allies accuse Moscow of an unprovoked imperialist-style grab for territory.

General Valery Zaluzhny, commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, said the situation on the front line near the eastern town of Bakhmut was particularly tough.

Russian forces have repeatedly tried to take Bakhmut and the surrounding area, in some cases literally advancing over the corpses of their own soldiers, Zaluzhny wrote on the Telegram messaging app, saying Ukrainian forces were hanging on.

A little known patriotic group which supports the widows of Russian soldiers is calling on Putin to order a large-scale mobilisation of millions of men and to close the borders to ensure victory in Ukraine.

Zelenskiy reiterated Ukrainian assertions that Moscow is planning a full-scale mobilisation, a step that Russian officials say is not currently being considered.

A U.S. State Department spokesperson said Washington had seen reports “that the Ukrainian military struck a Russian military barracks that stored ammunition inside of Ukrainian territory” and led to many Russian deaths. “We have also read reports that many of these soldiers were new recruits.”

Putin plans to talk to Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Interfax, the latest in a series of conversations the two men have had since the start of the war.

Turkey acted as mediator alongside the United Nations last year to establish a deal allowing grain exports from Ukrainian ports but the chances of serious peace talks look remote, especially as fighting continues to rage.

Ukraine’s General Zaluzhny, summarising a Tuesday call with U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, thanked the American for helping ensure the provision of anti-missile weapons systems that Kyiv says is knocking out more and more of the Russian missiles aimed at power-generating plants.

Zaluzhny said he had discussed what equipment Ukraine needed to increase its chances against Russia, a message that senior officials have hammered on a daily basis.

“Right now is the moment when, together with our partners, we should strengthen our defence,” said Zelenskiy.

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told Zelenskiy that he can count on Britain for support over the long run “as demonstrated by the recent delivery of more than 1,000 anti-air missiles”, Sunak’s office said on Tuesday.

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