Category Archives: Holmes

Fabulous New Blood Test Technology Not Quite as Fabulous as Advertised

by PhillisLqs Posted on October 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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Last year, when I was getting my blood drawn with dismaying frequency, I sang the praises of Elizabeth Holmes, a young billionaire who founded a company that promises to perform lab tests with only as much blood as you get from a finger prick. That sounded great.

My blood tests have gotten much less frequent these days, and I’ve mostly gotten over my needle phobia anyway,1 so I haven’t paid much attention to Theranos, the Silicon Valley darling Holmes founded. But this morning, John Carreyrou of the Wall Street Journal reported that Theranos was basically a house of cards. It actually does very little testing using its “Edison” finger-prick technology, and has had trouble getting FDA approval for its tests due to questions about the accuracy of its results.

Tonight, Carreyrou reports that things are even worse than that:

Under pressure from regulators, laboratory firm Theranos Inc. has stopped collecting tiny vials of blood drawn from finger pricks for all but one of its tests….That test detects herpes and was cleared by the FDA in July.

….Theranos has since nearly stopped using the lab instrument, named Edison after the prolific inventor, according to the person familiar with the situation. By the time of the FDA inspection, the company was doing blood tests almost exclusively on traditional lab instruments purchased from diagnostic-equipment makers such as Siemens AG , the person says.

….Most of Theranos’s blood-drawing sites, which it calls “wellness centers,” are located inside Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. drugstores….A blood-drawing technician at a Walgreens in the Phoenix area, reached by phone late Thursday, said Theranos had “temporarily suspended” finger-prick draws and was only drawing blood from patients’ arms with needles at that store.

That doesn’t sound very promising. I have a feeling that Elizabeth Holmes might not make the Forbes list of billionaires next year. She might be lucky if Theranos even still exists.

1So far, the upsides of my chemotherapy have been (1) better hair, (2) weight loss2, (3) less dread of blood draws, (4) forbidden to clean the litter box,3 and (5) the purchase of a powered bed, which is really cool.

2Though, sadly, I’ve gained most it back.

3Though, sadly, I’ve since been given permission to do this again.

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Fabulous New Blood Test Technology Not Quite as Fabulous as Advertised

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It’s a Coder! It’s a Teacher! It’s a Kick-Ass Graphic Novelist!

by CliftonBisdee Posted on September 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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One sunny morning after the kids had split for the summer, I sat down with Gene Luen Yang in an iMac-filled classroom at Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland, California, where he was training his replacement after 17 years as a computer science teacher. I was kind of surprised he had a day job. In 2006, Yang’s American Born Chinese became the first graphic novel ever named a National Book Award finalist—it also won an Eisner (the Oscar of comics) and the prestigious Michael L. Printz Award, bestowed by the American Library Association on the best book for teens “based entirely on literary merit.”

He repeated the feat in 2013 after landing on the bestseller lists for a matched pair called Boxers & Saints—character-driven takes on the Boxer Rebellion from opposing perspectives. Yang kept teaching, he told me, because (a) he likes kids—and has four of his own to support, and (b) “I was really worried that sitting at home by myself in front of a computer was going to make me crazy.” Among his other notable extracurriculars are Prime Baby (a hilarious serial comic for the New York Times Magazine) and 2014’s The Shadow Hero, wherein Yang and illustrator Sonny Liew revive the Green Turtle, a 1940s character they believe may have been the first Asian American superhero. Yang also writes the Avatar: The Last Airbender comic book series and recently signed with DC Comics to author the new iteration of Superman.

The latter, as it happens, was Yang’s first comic book—purchased by his mom when he was in fifth grade. (“It was a trustworthy brand,” he explains.) Who’d have guessed that the Man of Steel’s fate would one day lie in the hands of a son of Chinese immigrants? Certainly not Yang, who (like his protagonist in American Born Chinese) struggled with his ethnicity after moving to a white suburb going into first grade. He endured teasing in elementary school, and later at his middle school, where a gang of kids (“the stoners”) would yell racist taunts in the hallways. “I began to wonder if this group was voicing things that everybody thought, but they were the only ones brave enough to say it,” Yang told me. “That’s when I started to feel uncomfortable hanging out with non-Asian friends.”

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It’s a Coder! It’s a Teacher! It’s a Kick-Ass Graphic Novelist!

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You Can’t Unsee This Video of Donald Trump Groping Rudy Giuliani

by SherrieJess Posted on August 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump has long had a boorish reputation when it comes to his treatment of women, something that is now back in the spotlight thanks to the real estate mogul’s tense exchange with Megyn Kelly at Thursday’s GOP debate and subsequent tirade against the Fox News host.

It turns out that even Trump ally Rudy Giuliani, who recently termed Trump’s candidacy “refreshing,” once called out The Donald for his loutish behavior. Of course, Giuliani, then New York’s mayor, was also dressed in drag at the time and was appearing with Trump in a skit filmed for the Inner Circle press dinner in 2000. In the clip, Trump full-on gropes Giuliani, who exclaims, “Oh, you dirty boy,” and slaps the tycoon. Warning: You can’t unsee this.

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You Can’t Unsee This Video of Donald Trump Groping Rudy Giuliani

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BREAKING: James Holmes Sentenced to Life in Prison Without Parole in Aurora Massacre Trial

by Betty97Lvo Posted on August 7, 2015

Mother Jones

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After less than seven hours of deliberation, a jury has sentenced James Holmes to life in prison without the possibility of parole for killing 12 people and injuring 70 others three years ago in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado in one of the worst mass shootings in US history.

The victims’ families were sitting in the courtroom when the verdict was read and will be given the chance to address the judge about their losses at a later formal sentencing hearing. Jordan Ghawi, whose sister Jessica was killed during the shooting, reflected on the jury’s decision shortly after the verdict was read.

State Rep. Jovan Melton, whose district includes an area near the theater where the shooting occurred, took a moment to reflect on the death penalty.

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BREAKING: James Holmes Sentenced to Life in Prison Without Parole in Aurora Massacre Trial

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BREAKING: James Holmes Found Guilty in Aurora Massacre Trial

by ShelliHollars Posted on July 16, 2015

Mother Jones

Three years after he killed 12 people and injured 70 more in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, a jury has found James Holmes guilty of first degree murder.

The jury concluded that Holmes was not legally insane at the time he committed the crimes, despite evidence of mental illness. Holmes’ mental state will come into play again in the penalty phase of the trial, in which jurors will hear testimony and decide whether he is eligible for execution.

Which raises the question: How crazy is too crazy to be executed? Here’s how capital defense lawyer and occasional Mother Jones contributor Marc Bookman put it in a remarkable essay with precisely that title:

There is no simple answer to this question. State courts across the country have struggled to define “intellectual disability” (also known as mental retardation) since 2002, when the Supreme Court ruled that retarded people are exempt from capital punishment. The high court has also banned the execution of anyone who was under 18 at the time of his crime, but no court has ruled that severe mental illness makes a person ineligible for the death penalty.

The Supreme Court’s latest foray into the issue involved the case of Scott Louis Panetti, another Texas death row inmate. Panetti, a diagnosed schizophrenic who killed his in-laws, defended himself in court wearing a purple cowboy suit. As if that weren’t enough, he asked to subpoena Jesus, John F. Kennedy, and the pope. While the justices didn’t offer any clear standard on how crazy is too crazy, they suggested that severe mental illness might render someone’s “perception of reality so distorted” that he cannot be constitutionally executed.

As it stands, a person cannot be put to death if he or she is deemed “insane,” but that’s a narrow legal distinction. Whether at trial or on the eve of execution, an insanity defense hinges on a defendant’s inability to connect his crime with the consequences. Absent that connection, neither deterrence nor retribution is served by execution. As the legal scholar Sir William Blackstone put it more than 200 years ago, madness is its own punishment.

Almost every state now utilizes some version of what is known as the M’Naghten Rule. Daniel M’Naghten, an Englishman, was put on trial in 1843 for fatally shooting a civil servant he apparently mistook for the prime minister. He had delusions of persecution, and a number of doctors testified that he was unable to hold himself back. When the prosecution produced no witness to say otherwise, M’Naghten was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He spent most of the rest of his life at the State Criminal Lunatic Asylum in London’s Bethlem Royal Hospital, which locals pronounced “Bedlam.”

Thus was coined a word we associate with chaos—and it was chaos that ensued when M’Naghten was acquitted and the public took the verdict poorly. What emerged amid the outcry was the generally applied law that an insanity defense would only be available to someone who cannot understand the “nature and quality” of his act.

In a more recent piece focusing on the Panetti case, staff reporter Stephanie Mencimer digs deeper into the high court’s thinking, and demonstrates in a followup analysis why it is so difficult, once a case gets to this stage, to reverse momentum toward a verdict of death.

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BREAKING: James Holmes Found Guilty in Aurora Massacre Trial

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Chattanooga Attacks Kill 5 People Including Gunman

by LucienneCorey Posted on July 16, 2015

Mother Jones

On Thursday morning, a gunman shot and killed four Marines after opening fire at two separate military sites in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The attacker, identified as 24-year-old Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez by both NBC and CBS, was also killed. Authorities are currently investigating the shootings as a possible act of domestic terrorism.

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The gunman reportedly first opened fire Thursday morning at a military recruitment facility. The attacker then traveled to a Navy reserve center roughly six miles away and opened fire again. A police officer was also injured.

This is a breaking news post.

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Chattanooga Attacks Kill 5 People Including Gunman

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Capture the Flag: A Brief History of Defacing Confederate Banners

by TimNIYCoxxwclyjq Posted on June 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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Bree Newsome was tired of watching the Confederate battle flag fly on the grounds of the South Carolina statehouse. So on Saturday morning, the 30-year-old African American activist and singer-songwriter from North Carolina put on a harness, climbed 30 feet, and took down the flag herself. She was arrested and charged with defacing a state monument, while the flag was promptly returned to its place atop the pole. But at the end of a week in which the Confederate flag was removed for good from the Alabama statehouse, banned by many retailers, and condemned by politicians in Mississippi and South Carolina, the symbolism of Newsome’s ascent was hard to miss. An IndieGoGo account for her bail and legal defense fees raised $113,000 in three days. The internet quickly did its thing:

The photo of Newsome perched atop the pole may beckon to historians for another reason—deja vu. For about as long as the Confederate flag has flown, people have been trying to tear it down.

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Capture the Flag: A Brief History of Defacing Confederate Banners

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NRA Leader Blames Slain Charleston Pastor for Slaughter of His Congregants

by Kristia70N Posted on June 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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Gun rights activists have been out in force since the massacre at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, once again blaming the slaughter on so-called gun-free zones, and claiming that an armed citizen could have otherwise stopped the attack. It’s an argument that the gun lobby has used for many years, but on Thursday afternoon it was marked by a brazen new low with comments from Charles Cotton, a longtime board member of the National Rifle Association. Cotton wrote on a Texas gun-rights forum that slain pastor and South Carolina state Sen. Clementa Pinckney was responsible for the murders of his congregants because of his opposition to looser concealed-carry laws.

“Eight of his church members, who might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in church, are dead,” Cotton said. “Innocent people died because of his political position on the issue.”

Screen shot: TexasCHLforum.com

It’s unsurprising that debate over gun laws flared up in the aftermath of Charleston, on both sides of the issue. Speaking from the White House on Thursday, President Obama said, “At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries…with this kind of frequency. And it is in our power to do something about it.”

Yet, Obama also spoke of the “dark part of our history” evoked by an attack on a historic black church in the South. No one who has watched the horror unfold in Charleston doubts that the killer’s motivation was infused with racial hatred. And to suggest that gun restrictions were the root cause of the bloodbath isn’t just callous—it’s also plain wrong.

As Mother Jones has previously reported, there has never been any evidence that mass shooters picked their targets based on gun regulations; to the contrary, data from scores of cases shows perpetrators had other specific motivations for where they attacked, including racial hatred. The idea that armed citizens stop crimes in the United States has also been wildly exaggerated by the gun lobby, as a new study based on federal data reaffirms.

Cotton has long led pro-gun lobbying efforts in Texas: He was at Gov. Greg Abbott’s side last weekend when Abbott signed a new open-carry bill at a Texas gun range.

Cotton’s comments have since been deleted from TexasCHLforum.com, where he is listed as a site administrator. He did not reply to a request for further comment. In a statement on Friday to Politico, the NRA distanced itself from Cotton’s rhetoric, saying individual board members “do not have the authority to speak for the NRA.”

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NRA Leader Blames Slain Charleston Pastor for Slaughter of His Congregants

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The Gun Lobby Blames the Charleston Mass Shooting on "Gun-Free Zones"

by cazaresibiuieftina Posted on June 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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In the aftermath of the massacre at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, gun rights activists and their allies in the conservative media are once again blaming “gun-free zones,” arguing that an armed citizen could have otherwise been at the church to stop the attack. As Mother Jones has previously reported, there has never been any evidence that mass shooters picked their targets based on gun regulations; to the contrary, data from scores of cases shows perpetrators had other specific motivations for where they attacked, including racial hatred, as is strongly suspected to be the case in Charleston. The idea that armed citizens stop crimes in the United States has also been wildly exaggerated by the gun lobby, as a new study reaffirms.

One of the gun lobby’s key talking points is that firearms are frequently used in self-defense—as often as 2.5 million times per year. The widely repeated claim has its origins in a 1993 telephone survey conducted by a pro-gun researcher, and while the numbers have since been walked back to some degree, the National Rifle Association asserts there are at least three-quarters of a million defensive gun uses per year. But a new report from the Violence Policy Center analyzing federal data shows that even this claim is way overstated. America’s legions of “good guys with guns,” in other words, are a myth (and not least when it comes to mass shootings).

Using FBI data, the study shows citizens are far more likely to use guns to commit violent crimes than to defend against them. The FBI’s 2012 “Supplementary Homicide Report” tallied 8,342 criminal gun homicides nationwide, while finding only 259 justifiable gun homicides from around the country, as identified in reports from state and local law enforcement agencies.

Moreover, 13 states reported no justifiable gun homicides at all in 2012, according to the report. That included states with large urban regions like New York and New Jersey, as well as rural states such as North Dakota and Wyoming. Notably, Wyoming, which has a small population, lax gun laws, and a high gun-ownership rate, also led the nation in 2012 for gun suicides and had the highest per capita costs from gun violence. (You can read more about that in Mother Jones’ groundbreaking investigation of the $229 billion annual cost of gun violence in America.)

In the five-year period between 2007 and 2011, there were a total of 29,618,300 violent crimes committed, according to the study. Among those, people used guns in self-defense 235,700 times.

Even with an additional 103,000 defensive gun uses related to property crimes over the same five-year period, the total still comes to fewer than 70,000 a year—less than 10 percent of the amount claimed by the NRA and other gun rights advocates.

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The Gun Lobby Blames the Charleston Mass Shooting on "Gun-Free Zones"

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5 Chilling Pages From the Aurora Mass Shooter’s Diary Debunk a Favorite NRA Talking Point

by KristiPulsford Posted on May 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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It’s an argument we hear frequently from gun rights activists and conservative lawmakers: Mass shooters select places to attack where citizens are banned from carrying firearms—so-called “gun-free zones.” All the available data shows that this claim is just plain wrong. As I reported in an investigation into nearly 70 mass shootings in the United States over three decades, there has never been any known evidence of gun laws influencing a mass shooter’s strategic thinking. In fact, the vast majority of the perpetrators have indicated other specific motivations for striking their targets, such as employment grievances or their connection to a school.

Most recently, the marquee villain used to decry gun-free zones is James Holmes, who is currently on trial for the July 2012 massacre in Aurora, Colorado. “Out of all the movie theaters within 20 minutes of his apartment showing the new Batman movie that night, it was the only one where guns were banned,” Fox News pundit John Lott wrote not long after the attack. “So why would a mass shooter pick a place that bans guns? The answer should be obvious, though it apparently is not clear to the media—disarming law-abiding citizens leaves them as sitting ducks.”

Now, with the release this week of a detailed handwritten diary that Holmes kept before the attack, we know that there is no evidence to support Lott’s widely parroted claim.

The diary includes five pages in which Holmes laid out his strategy for attacking the Cinemark theater complex. Under the header “Case the Place,” he drew maps and diagrams accompanied by many tactical notes regarding where victims would be located and how they would potentially react. “South side of theater optimal,” he wrote, noting its “15 screens.” He zeroed in on theaters 10 and 12 as the “best targets in complex” and marked the “best parking spot” for his car. Among his lists of “pros” and “cons,” he observed that theater 10 would have “many initial persons packed in single area.” He assessed the many doors and hallways through which people would try to escape.

Nowhere in any of this extensive planning did Holmes make reference to gun regulations at the theater or the potential for moviegoers to be armed. Moreover, he had every expectation that he would not get away with his crime. In one sketch, he drew two other locations not far from the theater: the Aurora Police Department and a Colorado National Guard facility. “ETA response approximately 3 mins,” he noted. In his list of possible methods of attack, where he checked off mass murder using firearms as his choice, he also wrote “being caught 99% certain.”

Additional evidence from the trial underscores that Holmes clearly was not planning to avoid getting shot, killed, or apprehended. On an AdultFriendFinder.com profile he filled out shortly before the shooting, he wrote: “Will you visit me in prison?”

Here are the five diary pages filled with Holmes’ plans, followed by the full document:

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Full diary:

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James Holmes Notebook (PDF)

James Holmes Notebook (Text)

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5 Chilling Pages From the Aurora Mass Shooter’s Diary Debunk a Favorite NRA Talking Point

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