It’s official: Biden tosses hat in presidential ring

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Vice President Joe Biden formally joined the crowded Democratic presidential contest today, declaring the “soul of this nation” at stake if President Donald Trump wins re-election.

In a video posted on Twitter, Biden focused on the 2017 deadly clash between white supremacists and counter protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia. Biden noted Trump’s comments that there were some “very fine people” on both sides of the violent encounter, which left one woman dead.

“We are in the battle for the soul of this nation,” Biden said. “If we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation — who we are. And I cannot stand by and watch that happen.”

The 76-year-old Biden becomes an instant front-runner alongside Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is leading many polls and has proved to be a successful fundraiser . Biden has legislative and international experience that is unmatched in the Democratic field, and he is among the best-known faces in U.S. politics. He quickly racked up endorsements this morning, becoming the first Democrat running for president with the backing of more than one U.S. senator.

Still, Biden must compete in a field that now spans at least 20 Democrats and has been celebrated for its racial and gender diversity. As an older white man with occasionally centrist views, Biden has to prove he’s not out of step with his party.

He’s yet to outline his positions on the issues defining the 2020 Democratic primary, most notably “Medicare for All,” the universal health care plan authored by Sanders that has been adopted by virtually the entire Democratic field.

But the native of Scranton, Pennsylvania, is betting that his working-class appeal and ties to Barack Obama’s presidency will help him win over progressive skeptics. Obama hasn’t explicitly endorsed Biden’s bid, but the former president took the unusual step of weighing in on today’s announcement.

“President Obama has long said that selecting Joe Biden as his running mate in 2008 was one of the best decisions he ever made,” Obama spokeswoman Katie Hill said. “He relied on the vice president’s knowledge, insight, and judgment throughout both campaigns and the entire presidency. The two forged a special bond over the last 10 years and remain close today.”

Trump welcomed Biden to the campaign in a tweet calling him “Sleepy Joe.”

Privately, Trump allies have warned that Biden might be the biggest re-election threat given the former vice president’s potential appeal among the white working class in the Midwest, the region that gave Trump a path to the presidency.

Biden is paying special attention to his native Pennsylvania, a state that swung to Trump in 2016 after voting for Democratic presidential candidates for decades. While Biden represented Delaware in the Senate for 36 years, he was often referred to as Pennsylvania’s third senator.

The former vice president will be in the state three times within the opening weeks of his campaign. He’ll be in Philadelphia this evening headlining a fundraiser at the home of David L. Cohen, executive senior vice president of Comcast. Biden is aiming to raise $500,000 at the event.

He will hold his first public event as a 2020 presidential candidate in Pittsburgh on Monday. Then it’s off to Iowa, home of the leadoff nominating caucuses on Tuesday and Wednesday, followed by two days in South Carolina. He’ll visit the other two early-voting states, Nevada and New Hampshire, in early May, before holding a major rally in Philadelphia.

Biden’s first media appearance is set for Friday morning on ABC’s “The View,” a move that may help him make an appeal to women whose support will be crucial to winning the primary.

As he neared his campaign launch, Biden’s challenges have come into greater focus.

He struggled last month to respond to claims that he touched 2014 Nevada lieutenant governor nominee Lucy Flores’ shoulders and kissed the back of her head before a fall campaign event. A handful of other women have made similar claims, though none has alleged sexual misconduct.

Biden, a former U.S. senator from Delaware, pledged in an online video to be “much more mindful” of respecting personal space but joked two days later that he “had permission” to hug a male union leader before addressing the group’s national conference.

Biden also has been repeatedly forced to explain his 1991 decision, as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, to allow Anita Hill to face difficult questions from an all-male panel about allegations of sexual harassment against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, who later was confirmed to the high court.

He has since apologized for his role in the hearing. But in the #MeToo era, particularly after the contentious confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the episode remains a significant political liability.

Likewise, Biden once played a key role in anti-crime legislation that had a disproportionately negative impact on African Americans. And while several 2020 Democratic contenders have embraced the possibility of reparations to African Americans for slavery in recent weeks, Biden last month struggled to explain comments he made as a freshman senator in 1975 about the school busing debate.

His first White House bid in 1988 ended after a plagiarism scandal. He dropped out of the 2008 race after earning less than 1% of the vote in the Iowa caucuses. Later that year, Obama named Biden as his running mate.

Boyd Brown, a prominent South Carolina Democrat backing Beto O’Rourke, said Biden’s opening salvo stands out.

“This is very strong out of the chute. Well done. Biden just sucked the wind out of the sails for much of the field,” he said.

But he noted that announcement bumps fade and said Biden still has “to campaign the same aggressive way for the next nine months.”

Nashville gets its chance for the NFL draft

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Broadway in downtown Nashville is as lively a place as any in America. The Las Vegas Strip, Times Square and Bourbon Street have nothing on it.

Particularly this week.

For the first time, the NFL draft is in Music City, and even in the days leading up to tonight’s opening round, Broadway has been buzzing.

Sure, the honky tonks tend to be full of revelers who don’t care if it’s New Year’s Eve or, well, a weekday in late April. The difference now: Nearly everyone is talking football while the bands on stage are working through their repertoires of Carrie Underwood and Blake Shelton songs.

“This weekend, Nashville, Tennessee, is, in fact, Football City,” declared Mayor David Briley. “This wouldn’t be happening if the league and team had not seen what we already knew about the city of Nashville.”

How much have the locals embraced the draft? Well, 100,000 or more are expected to attend the opening round, with thousands more projected to turn out on Friday and Saturday. Although, by the look of things Wednesday on Broadway — which has been shut down to traffic for several blocks, a fact that might bottle up traffic but doesn’t seem to bother pedestrians a bit — many of those attendees aren’t from middle Tennessee. An informal survey of NFL team jerseys being worn showed 17, including from as far away as Seattle and Buffalo.

Rain, however, is in the forecast for Thursday night, something that didn’t plague Chicago, Philadelphia and Dallas in the last four years as the draft has become a traveling circus. That could put a damper on outdoor festivities, though it’s unlikely to affect the business in the restaurants and bars downtown. Might even help.

As NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has noted, the bar — a different sort of bar from those on Broadway — for the draft has been set high by previous cities, particularly Philadelphia. But as Briley and other Nashville residents point out, this isn’t exactly a city of strangers to big events, including the CMA Music Fest in late spring that is even more crowded.

Taking particular interest in this week’s events are representatives from Las Vegas, which has next April’s draft. In several ways, Las Vegas and Nashville have commonalities. Both have a centerpiece street — of course, closing down much of The Strip in Nevada would be much more of a chore and much more unlikely than doing so with a significant portion of Broadway here. Both have a solid entertainment base. Both have become destination vacation spots.

That’s a year off, though. Right now, Nashville and the NFL are joined at the hip. Goodell believes “This is going to be a great platform for the city of Nashville.” The mayor simply smiled at that statement.

Feds: Coast Guard officer targeted judges, too

ROCKVILLE, Md. (AP) — A Coast Guard lieutenant accused of stockpiling guns and compiling a hit list of prominent Democrats and network TV journalists looked at other targets: two Supreme Court justices and two executives of social media companies, according to federal prosecutors.

Those new allegations are contained in a court filing Tuesday in which prosecutors urge a magistrate judge to keep Christopher Hasson, 49, detained in custody pending trial on firearms and weapons charges.

The filing doesn’t name the two justices and two company executives but says Hasson searched online for their home addresses in March 2018, within minutes before and after searching firearm sales websites.

“The defendant conducted an internet search for ‘are supreme court justices protected’ approximately two weeks prior to searching for the home addresses of the two Supreme Court justices,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Windom wrote in a footnote.

Hasson, who is due back in court today for a detention hearing, is renewing his request to be released from custody while awaiting trial. A lawyer who represented Hasson at a Feb. 21 detention hearing accused prosecutors of making inflammatory accusations against Hasson without providing evidence to back them up.

Prosecutors haven’t charged him with any terrorism-related offenses since his Feb. 15 arrest and subsequent indictment in Maryland. Hasson’s attorney, Liz Oyer, wrote in a court filing last week that prosecutors recently disclosed that they don’t expect to seek any additional charges.

In an email to The Associated Press, Oyer declined to comment Wednesday on the prosecutors’ new allegations.

In a February court filing, prosecutors called Hasson a “domestic terrorist” and said he “intends to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country.” They also said he is a self-described white nationalist who espoused extremist views for years and drafted an email in which he said he was “dreaming of a way to kill almost every last person on the earth.”

Hasson’s internet search history “lays bare his views on race, which in turn inform his criminal conduct,” Windom wrote.

In November 2017, according to the prosecutor, Hasson searched for “please god let there be a race war.” And the defendant did an internet search for guns with a search term that used a racial slur for blacks in March 2018 before visiting firearm sales websites.

Prosecutors have said Hasson appeared to be planning attacks inspired by the manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian right-wing extremist who killed 77 people in a 2011 bomb-and-shooting rampage. Windom said “it cannot go unnoticed” that the terrorist who perpetrated the deadly New Zealand mosque attacks in March also was a “devotee” of Breivik.

In 2017, Hasson sent himself a draft letter he had written to a neo-Nazi leader and “identified himself as a White Nationalist for over 30 years and advocated for ‘focused violence’ in order to establish a white homeland,” prosecutors said.

That letter also refers to “Missouri,” a person with whom Hasson has a “long history,” Windom wrote. In 1995, according to federal prosecutors, Hasson and “Missouri” went to a home in Hampton, Virginia, where the homeowner arrived by car and asked them why they were there. The victim identified Hasson and Missouri as “skinheads.”

“Missouri,” wearing a black jacket with Swastika patches, aimed a handgun at the victim’s face and pulled the trigger, according to a police report cited by prosecutors. When the gun didn’t fire, “Missouri” beat the victim with it.

“Chris Hasson was standing there with the suspect when this occurred,” Windom wrote.

Investigators found 15 guns, including seven rifles, and over 1,000 rounds of ammunition at Hasson’s basement apartment in Silver Spring, Maryland, prosecutors said. Hasson’s Feb. 27 indictment also accuses him of illegal possession of tramadol, an opioid painkiller.

Prosecutors claim Hasson drew up what appeared to be a computer-spreadsheet hit list that included House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and presidential hopefuls Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris. Several network TV journalists — MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and Joe Scarborough and CNN’s Chris Cuomo and Van Jones — also were mentioned.

During the February detention hearing, U.S. Magistrate Judge Charles Day agreed to keep Hasson held in custody but said he was willing to revisit his decision if prosecutors didn’t bring more serious charges within two weeks.

Hasson pleaded not guilty last month to charges of illegal possession of firearm silencers, possession of firearms by a drug addict and unlawful user, and possession of a controlled substance. He faces a maximum of 31 years in prison if convicted of all four counts in his indictment.

“The silencers serve one purpose: to murder quietly. The defendant intended to do so on a mass scale, and his detention has thwarted his unlawful desire,” Windom wrote.

Hasson, a former Marine, worked at Coast Guard headquarters in Washington on a program to acquire advanced new cutters for the agency. A Coast Guard spokesman has said Hasson will remain on active duty until the case against him is resolved.

Today in history

Today is Thursday, April 25, the 115th day of 2019. There are 250 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On April 25, 1507, a world map produced by German cartographer Martin Waldseemueller contained the first recorded use of the term “America,” in honor of Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci.

*****

In 1945, during World War II, U.S. and Soviet forces linked up on the Elbe River, a meeting that dramatized the collapse of Nazi Germany’s defenses. Delegates from some 50 countries gathered in San Francisco to organize the United Nations.

*****

In 1972, Polaroid Corp. introduced its SX-70 folding camera, which ejected self-developing photographs.

*****

Thought for Today: “It’s the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.” — Marlene Dietrich, German-American actress (1901-1992).

Humboldt track team competes at Fredonia

Humboldt track competed at the Fredonia Relays on Thursday and came away with a top 10 finish for the Cub boys.

Led by top marks from Drake Harrington and Tucker Hurst, the Humboldt boys placed eighth overall out of 18 teams. The girls were 15th out of 16 teams.

Hurst set a personal record while winning the javelin, throwing for 168’8”.

Harrington took first in the 400 with a time of 54.69. 

Isiah Coronado finished fourth in the 100 with a time of 12 seconds and fifth in the 300-meter hurdles with a time of 46.17. 

The 4×400 team of Harrington, Seth Barlow, Caleb Coronado and Isiah Coronado took fourth with a time of 3:47.83 and the 4×800 team of Barlow, Luke Yokum, Caleb Coronado and Harrington finished fifth (8:59.97).

For the girls, Savanna Puckett took second in the 400 with a time of 1:03.61. She also finished sixth in the long jump with a distance of 14’11.5”. 

The 4×400 team of Madi White, Jessica Myers, Emma Johnson and Puckett finished sixth overall with a time of 4:45.51 and the 4×800 team of the same girls finished fifth with a time of 11:28.78.

 Humboldt will compete at Neodesha today. 

ANW Co-op and Allen County Special Olympics teams compete at Southeast Area Track Meet

The ANW Co-op Special Olympics Team and the Allen County Special Olympics team attended the Special Olympics Kansas, Southeast Area  Track Meet on April 17 at PSU Robert W. Plaster Center’s Indoor Track in Pittsburg. 

For the ANW Co-op, Ethan Ballin took second in softball and first in 50-meter dash, Lacey Brown took first in running long jump and first in 100-meter dash, Xavior Burrow took second in standing long jump and third in 50-meter dash, Cody Chastain took third in tennis ball and first in the 25-meter assist walk, Beau Clements took fifth in soft ball and first in the 100-meter dash, Noah Dorr took first in tennis ball and third in 100-meter dash, Aiden Fraier took second in the tennis ball and second in 50-meter dash, Dakota Fry took first in the tennis ball and first in the 10-meter wheelchair, Keegan Hedman took first in the tennis ball and first in the 50-meter dash, Ty Johnson took fourth in shot put and fifth in the 50-meter dash, Joel Kincaid took first in tennis ball and second in the 100-meter dash, Mark McCullough Jr. took second in shot put and second in the 200-meter dash, Conner Merando took first in softball and fourth in the 100-meter dash, Alex Morris took second in the shot put and first in the turbo javelin, Page Riley took second in the tennis ball and first in the standing long jump, Courtland Sager took fourth in the standing long jump and fourth in the 200-meter dash, Fayth Simpson took first in the tennis ball and second in the 200-meter dash, Ian Spoor took third in the standing long jump and third in the 100-meter dash and Nickales Stogsdill took fourth in the softball and first in the standing long jump, Wolfgang Ian Webber took third in the standing long jump and fourth in the turbo javelin and Breanna Yates took second in the tennis ball and second in the 50-meter dash. 

The athletes also competed in a four-team relay. The middle school team of Ty Johnson, Ian Spoor, Jacob Stokes and Wolfgang Ian Webber took second, the Lincoln Elementary team of Xavior Burrow, Joel Kincaid, Nickales Stogsdill, Aiden Fraker and Keegan Headman took third, the high school team of Corey Sager, Lacey Brown, Mark McCullough, Paige Riley and Fayth Simpson took first and the Yates Center team of Conner Merando, Ethan Ballin, Noah Dorr and Beau Clements took first. 

Lastly, for the Allen County Special Olympics Team, Tina Craft took first in the Tennis Ball and fist in the 50-meter walk, Brandon Griggs took fifth in softball, first in the 400-meter walk and first in the standing long jump, Casey Riebel took first in softball and first in the 50-meter walk, Steven Riebel took second tennis ball and second in the 25-meter assisted walk and Tom Weide took first in softball and first in the 50-meter dash. 

Feds: Coast Guard officer targeted judges, too

ROCKVILLE, Md. (AP) — A Coast Guard lieutenant accused of stockpiling guns and compiling a hit list of prominent Democrats and network TV journalists looked at other targets: two Supreme Court justices and two executives of social media companies, according to federal prosecutors.

Those new allegations are contained in a court filing Tuesday in which prosecutors urge a magistrate judge to keep Christopher Hasson, 49, detained in custody pending trial on firearms and weapons charges.

The filing doesn’t name the two justices and two company executives but says Hasson searched online for their home addresses in March 2018, within minutes before and after searching firearm sales websites.

“The defendant conducted an internet search for ‘are supreme court justices protected’ approximately two weeks prior to searching for the home addresses of the two Supreme Court justices,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Windom wrote in a footnote.

Hasson, who is due back in court today for a detention hearing, is renewing his request to be released from custody while awaiting trial. A lawyer who represented Hasson at a Feb. 21 detention hearing accused prosecutors of making inflammatory accusations against Hasson without providing evidence to back them up.

Prosecutors haven’t charged him with any terrorism-related offenses since his Feb. 15 arrest and subsequent indictment in Maryland. Hasson’s attorney, Liz Oyer, wrote in a court filing last week that prosecutors recently disclosed that they don’t expect to seek any additional charges.

In an email to The Associated Press, Oyer declined to comment Wednesday on the prosecutors’ new allegations.

In a February court filing, prosecutors called Hasson a “domestic terrorist” and said he “intends to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country.” They also said he is a self-described white nationalist who espoused extremist views for years and drafted an email in which he said he was “dreaming of a way to kill almost every last person on the earth.”

Hasson’s internet search history “lays bare his views on race, which in turn inform his criminal conduct,” Windom wrote.

In November 2017, according to the prosecutor, Hasson searched for “please god let there be a race war.” And the defendant did an internet search for guns with a search term that used a racial slur for blacks in March 2018 before visiting firearm sales websites.

Prosecutors have said Hasson appeared to be planning attacks inspired by the manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian right-wing extremist who killed 77 people in a 2011 bomb-and-shooting rampage. Windom said “it cannot go unnoticed” that the terrorist who perpetrated the deadly New Zealand mosque attacks in March also was a “devotee” of Breivik.

In 2017, Hasson sent himself a draft letter he had written to a neo-Nazi leader and “identified himself as a White Nationalist for over 30 years and advocated for ‘focused violence’ in order to establish a white homeland,” prosecutors said.

That letter also refers to “Missouri,” a person with whom Hasson has a “long history,” Windom wrote. In 1995, according to federal prosecutors, Hasson and “Missouri” went to a home in Hampton, Virginia, where the homeowner arrived by car and asked them why they were there. The victim identified Hasson and Missouri as “skinheads.”

“Missouri,” wearing a black jacket with Swastika patches, aimed a handgun at the victim’s face and pulled the trigger, according to a police report cited by prosecutors. When the gun didn’t fire, “Missouri” beat the victim with it.

“Chris Hasson was standing there with the suspect when this occurred,” Windom wrote.

Investigators found 15 guns, including seven rifles, and over 1,000 rounds of ammunition at Hasson’s basement apartment in Silver Spring, Maryland, prosecutors said. Hasson’s Feb. 27 indictment also accuses him of illegal possession of tramadol, an opioid painkiller.

Prosecutors claim Hasson drew up what appeared to be a computer-spreadsheet hit list that included House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and presidential hopefuls Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris. Several network TV journalists — MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and Joe Scarborough and CNN’s Chris Cuomo and Van Jones — also were mentioned.

During the February detention hearing, U.S. Magistrate Judge Charles Day agreed to keep Hasson held in custody but said he was willing to revisit his decision if prosecutors didn’t bring more serious charges within two weeks.

Hasson pleaded not guilty last month to charges of illegal possession of firearm silencers, possession of firearms by a drug addict and unlawful user, and possession of a controlled substance. He faces a maximum of 31 years in prison if convicted of all four counts in his indictment.

“The silencers serve one purpose: to murder quietly. The defendant intended to do so on a mass scale, and his detention has thwarted his unlawful desire,” Windom wrote.

Hasson, a former Marine, worked at Coast Guard headquarters in Washington on a program to acquire advanced new cutters for the agency. A Coast Guard spokesman has said Hasson will remain on active duty until the case against him is resolved.

Headed to nationals

Iola High School’s Isabella Duke took home a state title in public speaking at the State FBLA career event held in Topeka earlier this month, one of three IHS students to earn qualifying marks for the national event scheduled for June 27-July 2 in San Antonio.

Others qualifying from Iola were Ella Taylor, who finished third in cyber-security and eighth in business calculations, and Alexandria Vega, who placed fourth in impromptu speaking. 

IHS sticks close to home for after-prom

Iola High School juniors and seniors won’t have to venture too far for their after-prom festivities Saturday night.

The annual affair in recent years had been capped with chartered bus trips to places like Kansas City.

This year, the junior class parents decided to keep the action within walking distance — Iola Middle School, to be precise.

That’s intentional, explained Carla Nemecek, one of the after-prom organizers.

“One of our big decisions came from thinking it was better to spend our money locally,” Nemecek said. “There are a lot of businesses who support after-prom.”

Keeping the fun in Iola allows the students to return the favor, she noted.

There are several ripple effects.

Because organizers do not have to fund a charter bus to tote the 180 or so prom-goers hundreds of miles, the savings will allow organizers to once again give out special prizes to the students, such as flat-screen TVs, mini-fridges or microwaves. 

“They hadn’t been able to do that the past few years,” Nemecek said.

All prom-goers who make it to after-prom also will be given gift cards to local businesses and T-shirts.

Safety played a role in the decision as well, because students will not need to get back out on the road between the dance and after-prom.

 

THE FUN factor will still be dialed up to 11.

Large inflatable attractions will be set up in the IMS gymnasium, where a hoop shot contest also is in the works. A casino is being set up in the commons area, alongside a photo booth and Plinko game.

Plenty of food is on the menu, too.

“We don’t want to lose track of what after-prom is about,” Nemecek said. “It’s about giving the juniors and seniors a fun, safe activity. That we’re able to keep it local is a plus. There’s a lot to offer in a town like Iola; more than people realize.”

 

SATURDAY’S activities begin with the Grand March arrival, with prom-goers showing up in all manners of transportation.

The menagerie will follow a path in front of the school in full view of anybody who wants to watch at about 6:30 p.m. Grand March line-up will start at about 6 o’clock.

The dance begins at 8.

 

 

Harlan Murphy

Harlan Udell Murphy, age 86, passed away on Tuesday, April 23, 2019, at Wesley Medical Center, Wichita.

Harlan was born Sept. 4, 1932, in Le Roy, the son of William Murphy and Ada Linna (Weston) Murphy.  He grew up in Le Roy and attended Le Roy schools, graduating with the class of 1950. He joined the United States Air Force in 1952. He was stationed in Duluth, Minn.; Belozi, Miss.; Marysville, Calif.; and Taque, Korea. He served for four years.

Harlan worked at the Le Roy elevator, built homes in California, Iola, and Chanute, and worked at the Kansas Army Ammunition Plant, Parsons. In 1957 he married Marilyn Carlson. In 1961 he bought a farm west of Elsmore where he farmed for more than 55 years. He was a member of the Friends Home Lutheran Church, Savonburg. He served on the church board and was a member of the church council.

Harlan was preceded in death by his wife, Marilyn; his parents; sisters, Deloris Maxine Hilliard, Thelma Dean Murphy, Mina Delphine Murphy; and brothers, George Murphy, Myrl Murphy, William Murphy, and Wendall Murphy.

Harlan is survived by his four children, Kimberly Voth, Wichita, Lisa VanRoekel and husband, Cameron, Silver Springs, Md., Harlan Lee Murphy and wife, Jackie, Orlando, Fla., Gina Murphy, Chanute; and two grandchildren, Collin and Caleb VanRoekel, Silver Springs, Md.

A funeral service will be at 10 a.m. on Friday at Friends Home Lutheran Church, 3797 Arizona Rd., Savonburg. Burial will follow in the Le Roy Cemetery, 1801 K-58, Le Roy.

Memorials are suggested to Friends Home Lutheran Church, and may be left with Feuerborn Family Funeral Service, Iola.

Condolences for the family may be left at www.feuerbornfuneral.com.