ReportWire

Tag: chief

  • Dick Cheney, the nation’s 46th vice president, dies at 84

    Dick Cheney, the nation’s 46th vice president, has died at the age of 84.Cheney died Monday due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, according to a statement from his family.”His beloved wife of 61 years, Lynne, his daughters Liz and Mary, and other family members were with him as he passed,” the statement said.Funeral arrangements were not immediately available.“Dick Cheney was a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness, and fly fishing,” the statement continued. “We are grateful beyond measure for all Dick Cheney did for our country. And we are blessed beyond measure to have loved and been loved by this noble giant of a man.”Prior to serving as vice president under President George W. Bush, Cheney was also chief of staff under President Gerald Ford, secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush and a congressman from Wyoming for a decade. Cheney was, in effect, the chief operating officer of the younger Bush’s presidency. He had a hand, often a commanding one, in implementing decisions most important to the president and some of surpassing interest to himself — all while living with decades of heart disease and, post-administration, a heart transplant. Cheney consistently defended the extraordinary tools of surveillance, detention and inquisition employed in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.Bush called Cheney a “decent, honorable man” and said his death was “a loss to the nation.”“History will remember him as among the finest public servants of his generation — a patriot who brought integrity, high intelligence, and seriousness of purpose to every position he held,” Bush said in a statement.Years after leaving office, he became a target of President Donald Trump, especially after daughter Liz Cheney became the leading Republican critic and examiner of Trump’s desperate attempts to stay in power after his election defeat and his actions in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.“In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney said in a television ad for his daughter. “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He is a coward.”In a twist the Democrats of his era could never have imagined, Dick Cheney said last year he was voting for their candidate, Kamala Harris, for president against Trump.A survivor of five heart attacks, Cheney long thought he was living on borrowed time and declared in 2013 he now awoke each morning “with a smile on my face, thankful for the gift of another day,” an odd image for a figure who always seemed to be manning the ramparts.His vice presidency was defined by the age of terrorism. Cheney disclosed that he had the wireless function of his defibrillator turned off years earlier out of fear terrorists would remotely send his heart a fatal shock.In his time in office, no longer was the vice presidency merely a ceremonial afterthought. Instead, Cheney made it a network of back channels from which to influence policy on Iraq, terrorism, presidential powers, energy and other cornerstones of a conservative agenda.Fixed with a seemingly permanent half-smile — detractors called it a smirk — Cheney joked about his outsize reputation as a stealthy manipulator.”Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?” he asked. “It’s a nice way to operate, actually.”A hard-liner on Iraq who was increasingly isolated as other hawks left government, Cheney was proved wrong on point after point in the Iraq War, without ever losing the conviction that he was essentially right.He alleged links between the 2001 attacks against the United States and prewar Iraq that didn’t exist. He said U.S. troops would be welcomed as liberators; they weren’t.He declared the Iraqi insurgency in its last throes in May 2005, back when 1,661 U.S. service members had been killed, not even half the toll by war’s end.For admirers, he kept the faith in a shaky time, resolute even as the nation turned against the war and the leaders waging it.But well into Bush’s second term, Cheney’s clout waned, checked by courts or shifting political realities.Courts ruled against efforts he championed to broaden presidential authority and accord special harsh treatment to suspected terrorists. His hawkish positions on Iran and North Korea were not fully embraced by Bush.Cheney operated much of the time from undisclosed locations in the months after the 2001 attacks, kept apart from Bush to ensure one or the other would survive any follow-up assault on the country’s leadership.With Bush out of town on that fateful day, Cheney was a steady presence in the White House, at least until Secret Service agents lifted him off his feet and carried him away, in a scene the vice president later described to comical effect.From the beginning, Cheney and Bush struck an odd bargain, unspoken but well understood. Shelving any ambitions he might have had to succeed Bush, Cheney was accorded power comparable in some ways to the presidency itself.That bargain largely held up.”He is constituted in a way to be the ultimate No. 2 guy,” Dave Gribbin, a friend who grew up with Cheney in Casper, Wyoming, and worked with him in Washington, once said. “He is congenitally discreet. He is remarkably loyal.”As Cheney put it: “I made the decision when I signed on with the president that the only agenda I would have would be his agenda, that I was not going to be like most vice presidents — and that was angling, trying to figure out how I was going to be elected president when his term was over with.”His penchant for secrecy and backstage maneuvering had a price. He came to be seen as a thin-skinned Machiavelli orchestrating a bungled response to criticism of the Iraq war. And when he shot a hunting companion in the torso, neck and face with an errant shotgun blast in 2006, he and his coterie were slow to disclose that extraordinary turn of events.The vice president called it “one of the worst days of my life.” The victim, his friend Harry Whittington, recovered and quickly forgave him. Comedians were relentless about it for months. Whittington died in 2023.When Bush began his presidential quest, he sought help from Cheney, a Washington insider who had retreated to the oil business. Cheney led the team to find a vice presidential candidate.Bush decided the best choice was the man picked to help with the choosing.Together, the pair faced a protracted 2000 postelection battle before they could claim victory. A series of recounts and court challenges — a tempest that brewed from Florida to the nation’s highest court — left the nation in limbo for weeks.Cheney took charge of the presidential transition before victory was clear and helped give the administration a smooth launch despite the lost time. In office, disputes among departments vying for a bigger piece of Bush’s constrained budget came to his desk and often were settled there.On Capitol Hill, Cheney lobbied for the president’s programs in halls he had walked as a deeply conservative member of Congress and the No. 2 Republican House leader.Jokes abounded about how Cheney was the real No. 1 in town; Bush didn’t seem to mind and cracked a few himself. But such comments became less apt later in Bush’s presidency as he clearly came into his own.Cheney retired to Jackson Hole, not far from where Liz Cheney a few years later bought a home, establishing Wyoming residency before she won his old House seat in 2016. The fates of father and daughter grew closer, too, as the Cheney family became one of Trump’s favorite targets.Dick Cheney rallied to his daughter’s defense in 2022 as she juggled her lead role on the committee investigating Jan. 6 with trying to get reelected in deeply conservative Wyoming.Liz Cheney’s vote for Trump’s impeachment after the insurrection earned her praise from many Democrats and political observers outside Congress. But that praise and her father’s support didn’t keep her from losing badly in the Republican primary, a dramatic fall after her quick rise to the No. 3 job in the House GOP leadership.Politics first lured Dick Cheney to Washington in 1968, when he was a congressional fellow. He became a protégé of Rep. Donald Rumsfeld, R-Ill,, serving under him in two agencies and in Gerald Ford’s White House before he was elevated to chief of staff, the youngest ever, at age 34.Cheney held the post for 14 months, then returned to Casper, where he had been raised, and ran for the state’s single congressional seat.In that first race for the House, Cheney suffered a mild heart attack, prompting him to crack he was forming a group called “Cardiacs for Cheney.” He still managed a decisive victory and went on to win five more terms.In 1989, Cheney became defense secretary under the first President Bush and led the Pentagon during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War that drove Iraq’s troops from Kuwait. Between the two Bush administrations, Cheney led Dallas-based Halliburton Corp., a large engineering and construction company for the oil industry.Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, son of a longtime Agriculture Department worker. Senior class president and football co-captain in Casper, he went to Yale on a full scholarship for a year but left with failing grades.He moved back to Wyoming, eventually enrolled at the University of Wyoming and renewed a relationship with high school sweetheart Lynne Anne Vincent, marrying her in 1964. He is survived by his wife, by Liz and by a second daughter, Mary.

    Dick Cheney, the nation’s 46th vice president, has died at the age of 84.

    Cheney died Monday due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, according to a statement from his family.

    “His beloved wife of 61 years, Lynne, his daughters Liz and Mary, and other family members were with him as he passed,” the statement said.

    Funeral arrangements were not immediately available.

    “Dick Cheney was a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness, and fly fishing,” the statement continued. “We are grateful beyond measure for all Dick Cheney did for our country. And we are blessed beyond measure to have loved and been loved by this noble giant of a man.”

    Prior to serving as vice president under President George W. Bush, Cheney was also chief of staff under President Gerald Ford, secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush and a congressman from Wyoming for a decade.

    Cheney was, in effect, the chief operating officer of the younger Bush’s presidency. He had a hand, often a commanding one, in implementing decisions most important to the president and some of surpassing interest to himself — all while living with decades of heart disease and, post-administration, a heart transplant. Cheney consistently defended the extraordinary tools of surveillance, detention and inquisition employed in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

    Bush called Cheney a “decent, honorable man” and said his death was “a loss to the nation.”

    “History will remember him as among the finest public servants of his generation — a patriot who brought integrity, high intelligence, and seriousness of purpose to every position he held,” Bush said in a statement.

    David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images

    Former Vice President Dick Cheney is interviewed for ’The Presidents’ Gatekeepers’ project about White House Chiefs of Staff, July 15, 2011, in Jackson, Wyoming.

    Years after leaving office, he became a target of President Donald Trump, especially after daughter Liz Cheney became the leading Republican critic and examiner of Trump’s desperate attempts to stay in power after his election defeat and his actions in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.

    “In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney said in a television ad for his daughter. “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He is a coward.”

    In a twist the Democrats of his era could never have imagined, Dick Cheney said last year he was voting for their candidate, Kamala Harris, for president against Trump.

    A survivor of five heart attacks, Cheney long thought he was living on borrowed time and declared in 2013 he now awoke each morning “with a smile on my face, thankful for the gift of another day,” an odd image for a figure who always seemed to be manning the ramparts.

    His vice presidency was defined by the age of terrorism. Cheney disclosed that he had the wireless function of his defibrillator turned off years earlier out of fear terrorists would remotely send his heart a fatal shock.

    In his time in office, no longer was the vice presidency merely a ceremonial afterthought. Instead, Cheney made it a network of back channels from which to influence policy on Iraq, terrorism, presidential powers, energy and other cornerstones of a conservative agenda.

    Fixed with a seemingly permanent half-smile — detractors called it a smirk — Cheney joked about his outsize reputation as a stealthy manipulator.

    “Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?” he asked. “It’s a nice way to operate, actually.”

    A hard-liner on Iraq who was increasingly isolated as other hawks left government, Cheney was proved wrong on point after point in the Iraq War, without ever losing the conviction that he was essentially right.

    He alleged links between the 2001 attacks against the United States and prewar Iraq that didn’t exist. He said U.S. troops would be welcomed as liberators; they weren’t.

    He declared the Iraqi insurgency in its last throes in May 2005, back when 1,661 U.S. service members had been killed, not even half the toll by war’s end.

    For admirers, he kept the faith in a shaky time, resolute even as the nation turned against the war and the leaders waging it.

    But well into Bush’s second term, Cheney’s clout waned, checked by courts or shifting political realities.

    Courts ruled against efforts he championed to broaden presidential authority and accord special harsh treatment to suspected terrorists. His hawkish positions on Iran and North Korea were not fully embraced by Bush.

    Cheney operated much of the time from undisclosed locations in the months after the 2001 attacks, kept apart from Bush to ensure one or the other would survive any follow-up assault on the country’s leadership.

    With Bush out of town on that fateful day, Cheney was a steady presence in the White House, at least until Secret Service agents lifted him off his feet and carried him away, in a scene the vice president later described to comical effect.

    From the beginning, Cheney and Bush struck an odd bargain, unspoken but well understood. Shelving any ambitions he might have had to succeed Bush, Cheney was accorded power comparable in some ways to the presidency itself.

    That bargain largely held up.

    “He is constituted in a way to be the ultimate No. 2 guy,” Dave Gribbin, a friend who grew up with Cheney in Casper, Wyoming, and worked with him in Washington, once said. “He is congenitally discreet. He is remarkably loyal.”

    As Cheney put it: “I made the decision when I signed on with the president that the only agenda I would have would be his agenda, that I was not going to be like most vice presidents — and that was angling, trying to figure out how I was going to be elected president when his term was over with.”

    His penchant for secrecy and backstage maneuvering had a price. He came to be seen as a thin-skinned Machiavelli orchestrating a bungled response to criticism of the Iraq war. And when he shot a hunting companion in the torso, neck and face with an errant shotgun blast in 2006, he and his coterie were slow to disclose that extraordinary turn of events.

    The vice president called it “one of the worst days of my life.” The victim, his friend Harry Whittington, recovered and quickly forgave him. Comedians were relentless about it for months. Whittington died in 2023.

    When Bush began his presidential quest, he sought help from Cheney, a Washington insider who had retreated to the oil business. Cheney led the team to find a vice presidential candidate.

    Bush decided the best choice was the man picked to help with the choosing.

    Together, the pair faced a protracted 2000 postelection battle before they could claim victory. A series of recounts and court challenges — a tempest that brewed from Florida to the nation’s highest court — left the nation in limbo for weeks.

    Cheney took charge of the presidential transition before victory was clear and helped give the administration a smooth launch despite the lost time. In office, disputes among departments vying for a bigger piece of Bush’s constrained budget came to his desk and often were settled there.

    On Capitol Hill, Cheney lobbied for the president’s programs in halls he had walked as a deeply conservative member of Congress and the No. 2 Republican House leader.

    Jokes abounded about how Cheney was the real No. 1 in town; Bush didn’t seem to mind and cracked a few himself. But such comments became less apt later in Bush’s presidency as he clearly came into his own.

    Cheney retired to Jackson Hole, not far from where Liz Cheney a few years later bought a home, establishing Wyoming residency before she won his old House seat in 2016. The fates of father and daughter grew closer, too, as the Cheney family became one of Trump’s favorite targets.

    Dick Cheney rallied to his daughter’s defense in 2022 as she juggled her lead role on the committee investigating Jan. 6 with trying to get reelected in deeply conservative Wyoming.

    Liz Cheney’s vote for Trump’s impeachment after the insurrection earned her praise from many Democrats and political observers outside Congress. But that praise and her father’s support didn’t keep her from losing badly in the Republican primary, a dramatic fall after her quick rise to the No. 3 job in the House GOP leadership.

    Politics first lured Dick Cheney to Washington in 1968, when he was a congressional fellow. He became a protégé of Rep. Donald Rumsfeld, R-Ill,, serving under him in two agencies and in Gerald Ford’s White House before he was elevated to chief of staff, the youngest ever, at age 34.

    Cheney held the post for 14 months, then returned to Casper, where he had been raised, and ran for the state’s single congressional seat.

    In that first race for the House, Cheney suffered a mild heart attack, prompting him to crack he was forming a group called “Cardiacs for Cheney.” He still managed a decisive victory and went on to win five more terms.

    In 1989, Cheney became defense secretary under the first President Bush and led the Pentagon during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War that drove Iraq’s troops from Kuwait. Between the two Bush administrations, Cheney led Dallas-based Halliburton Corp., a large engineering and construction company for the oil industry.

    Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, son of a longtime Agriculture Department worker. Senior class president and football co-captain in Casper, he went to Yale on a full scholarship for a year but left with failing grades.

    He moved back to Wyoming, eventually enrolled at the University of Wyoming and renewed a relationship with high school sweetheart Lynne Anne Vincent, marrying her in 1964. He is survived by his wife, by Liz and by a second daughter, Mary.

    Source link

  • Dick Cheney, the nation’s 46th vice president, dies at 84

    Dick Cheney, the nation’s 46th vice president, died Monday night at the age of 84. Cheney died due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, according to a statement from his family.”His beloved wife of 61 years, Lynne, his daughters Liz and Mary, and other family members were with him as he passed,” the statement said.“Dick Cheney was a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness, and fly fishing,” the statement continued. “We are grateful beyond measure for all Dick Cheney did for our country. And we are blessed beyond measure to have loved and been loved by this noble giant of a man.”Prior to serving as vice president under President George W. Bush, Cheney was also chief of staff under President Gerald Ford, secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush and a congressman from Wyoming for a decade. Funeral arrangements were not immediately available. Cheney was, in effect, the chief operating officer of the younger Bush’s presidency. He had a hand, often a commanding one, in implementing decisions most important to the president and some of surpassing interest to himself — all while living with decades of heart disease and, post-administration, a heart transplant. Cheney consistently defended the extraordinary tools of surveillance, detention and inquisition employed in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.Years after leaving office, he became a target of President Donald Trump, especially after daughter Liz Cheney became the leading Republican critic and examiner of Trump’s desperate attempts to stay in power after his election defeat and his actions in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.“In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney said in a television ad for his daughter. “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He is a coward.”In a twist the Democrats of his era could never have imagined, Dick Cheney said last year he was voting for their candidate, Kamala Harris, for president against Trump.A survivor of five heart attacks, Cheney long thought he was living on borrowed time and declared in 2013 he now awoke each morning “with a smile on my face, thankful for the gift of another day,” an odd image for a figure who always seemed to be manning the ramparts.His vice presidency was defined by the age of terrorism. Cheney disclosed that he had the wireless function of his defibrillator turned off years earlier out of fear terrorists would remotely send his heart a fatal shock.In his time in office, no longer was the vice presidency merely a ceremonial afterthought. Instead, Cheney made it a network of back channels from which to influence policy on Iraq, terrorism, presidential powers, energy and other cornerstones of a conservative agenda.Fixed with a seemingly permanent half-smile — detractors called it a smirk — Cheney joked about his outsize reputation as a stealthy manipulator.”Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?” he asked. “It’s a nice way to operate, actually.”A hard-liner on Iraq who was increasingly isolated as other hawks left government, Cheney was proved wrong on point after point in the Iraq War, without ever losing the conviction that he was essentially right.He alleged links between the 2001 attacks against the United States and prewar Iraq that didn’t exist. He said U.S. troops would be welcomed as liberators; they weren’t.He declared the Iraqi insurgency in its last throes in May 2005, back when 1,661 U.S. service members had been killed, not even half the toll by war’s end.For admirers, he kept the faith in a shaky time, resolute even as the nation turned against the war and the leaders waging it.But well into Bush’s second term, Cheney’s clout waned, checked by courts or shifting political realities.Courts ruled against efforts he championed to broaden presidential authority and accord special harsh treatment to suspected terrorists. His hawkish positions on Iran and North Korea were not fully embraced by Bush.Cheney operated much of the time from undisclosed locations in the months after the 2001 attacks, kept apart from Bush to ensure one or the other would survive any follow-up assault on the country’s leadership.With Bush out of town on that fateful day, Cheney was a steady presence in the White House, at least until Secret Service agents lifted him off his feet and carried him away, in a scene the vice president later described to comical effect.From the beginning, Cheney and Bush struck an odd bargain, unspoken but well understood. Shelving any ambitions he might have had to succeed Bush, Cheney was accorded power comparable in some ways to the presidency itself.That bargain largely held up.”He is constituted in a way to be the ultimate No. 2 guy,” Dave Gribbin, a friend who grew up with Cheney in Casper, Wyoming, and worked with him in Washington, once said. “He is congenitally discreet. He is remarkably loyal.”As Cheney put it: “I made the decision when I signed on with the president that the only agenda I would have would be his agenda, that I was not going to be like most vice presidents — and that was angling, trying to figure out how I was going to be elected president when his term was over with.”His penchant for secrecy and backstage maneuvering had a price. He came to be seen as a thin-skinned Machiavelli orchestrating a bungled response to criticism of the Iraq war. And when he shot a hunting companion in the torso, neck and face with an errant shotgun blast in 2006, he and his coterie were slow to disclose that extraordinary turn of events.The vice president called it “one of the worst days of my life.” The victim, his friend Harry Whittington, recovered and quickly forgave him. Comedians were relentless about it for months. Whittington died in 2023.When Bush began his presidential quest, he sought help from Cheney, a Washington insider who had retreated to the oil business. Cheney led the team to find a vice presidential candidate.Bush decided the best choice was the man picked to help with the choosing.Together, the pair faced a protracted 2000 postelection battle before they could claim victory. A series of recounts and court challenges — a tempest that brewed from Florida to the nation’s highest court — left the nation in limbo for weeks.Cheney took charge of the presidential transition before victory was clear and helped give the administration a smooth launch despite the lost time. In office, disputes among departments vying for a bigger piece of Bush’s constrained budget came to his desk and often were settled there.On Capitol Hill, Cheney lobbied for the president’s programs in halls he had walked as a deeply conservative member of Congress and the No. 2 Republican House leader.Jokes abounded about how Cheney was the real No. 1 in town; Bush didn’t seem to mind and cracked a few himself. But such comments became less apt later in Bush’s presidency as he clearly came into his own.Cheney retired to Jackson Hole, not far from where Liz Cheney a few years later bought a home, establishing Wyoming residency before she won his old House seat in 2016. The fates of father and daughter grew closer, too, as the Cheney family became one of Trump’s favorite targets.Dick Cheney rallied to his daughter’s defense in 2022 as she juggled her lead role on the committee investigating Jan. 6 with trying to get reelected in deeply conservative Wyoming.Liz Cheney’s vote for Trump’s impeachment after the insurrection earned her praise from many Democrats and political observers outside Congress. But that praise and her father’s support didn’t keep her from losing badly in the Republican primary, a dramatic fall after her quick rise to the No. 3 job in the House GOP leadership.Politics first lured Dick Cheney to Washington in 1968, when he was a congressional fellow. He became a protégé of Rep. Donald Rumsfeld, R-Ill,, serving under him in two agencies and in Gerald Ford’s White House before he was elevated to chief of staff, the youngest ever, at age 34.Cheney held the post for 14 months, then returned to Casper, where he had been raised, and ran for the state’s single congressional seat.In that first race for the House, Cheney suffered a mild heart attack, prompting him to crack he was forming a group called “Cardiacs for Cheney.” He still managed a decisive victory and went on to win five more terms.In 1989, Cheney became defense secretary under the first President Bush and led the Pentagon during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War that drove Iraq’s troops from Kuwait. Between the two Bush administrations, Cheney led Dallas-based Halliburton Corp., a large engineering and construction company for the oil industry.Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, son of a longtime Agriculture Department worker. Senior class president and football co-captain in Casper, he went to Yale on a full scholarship for a year but left with failing grades.He moved back to Wyoming, eventually enrolled at the University of Wyoming and renewed a relationship with high school sweetheart Lynne Anne Vincent, marrying her in 1964. He is survived by his wife, by Liz and by a second daughter, Mary.

    Dick Cheney, the nation’s 46th vice president, died Monday night at the age of 84.

    Cheney died due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, according to a statement from his family.

    “His beloved wife of 61 years, Lynne, his daughters Liz and Mary, and other family members were with him as he passed,” the statement said.

    “Dick Cheney was a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness, and fly fishing,” the statement continued. “We are grateful beyond measure for all Dick Cheney did for our country. And we are blessed beyond measure to have loved and been loved by this noble giant of a man.”

    Prior to serving as vice president under President George W. Bush, Cheney was also chief of staff under President Gerald Ford, secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush and a congressman from Wyoming for a decade.

    Funeral arrangements were not immediately available.

    Cheney was, in effect, the chief operating officer of the younger Bush’s presidency. He had a hand, often a commanding one, in implementing decisions most important to the president and some of surpassing interest to himself — all while living with decades of heart disease and, post-administration, a heart transplant. Cheney consistently defended the extraordinary tools of surveillance, detention and inquisition employed in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

    David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images

    Former Vice President Dick Cheney is interviewed for ’The Presidents’ Gatekeepers’ project about White House Chiefs of Staff, July 15, 2011, in Jackson, Wyoming.

    Years after leaving office, he became a target of President Donald Trump, especially after daughter Liz Cheney became the leading Republican critic and examiner of Trump’s desperate attempts to stay in power after his election defeat and his actions in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.

    “In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney said in a television ad for his daughter. “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He is a coward.”

    In a twist the Democrats of his era could never have imagined, Dick Cheney said last year he was voting for their candidate, Kamala Harris, for president against Trump.

    A survivor of five heart attacks, Cheney long thought he was living on borrowed time and declared in 2013 he now awoke each morning “with a smile on my face, thankful for the gift of another day,” an odd image for a figure who always seemed to be manning the ramparts.

    His vice presidency was defined by the age of terrorism. Cheney disclosed that he had the wireless function of his defibrillator turned off years earlier out of fear terrorists would remotely send his heart a fatal shock.

    In his time in office, no longer was the vice presidency merely a ceremonial afterthought. Instead, Cheney made it a network of back channels from which to influence policy on Iraq, terrorism, presidential powers, energy and other cornerstones of a conservative agenda.

    Fixed with a seemingly permanent half-smile — detractors called it a smirk — Cheney joked about his outsize reputation as a stealthy manipulator.

    “Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?” he asked. “It’s a nice way to operate, actually.”

    A hard-liner on Iraq who was increasingly isolated as other hawks left government, Cheney was proved wrong on point after point in the Iraq War, without ever losing the conviction that he was essentially right.

    He alleged links between the 2001 attacks against the United States and prewar Iraq that didn’t exist. He said U.S. troops would be welcomed as liberators; they weren’t.

    He declared the Iraqi insurgency in its last throes in May 2005, back when 1,661 U.S. service members had been killed, not even half the toll by war’s end.

    For admirers, he kept the faith in a shaky time, resolute even as the nation turned against the war and the leaders waging it.

    But well into Bush’s second term, Cheney’s clout waned, checked by courts or shifting political realities.

    Courts ruled against efforts he championed to broaden presidential authority and accord special harsh treatment to suspected terrorists. His hawkish positions on Iran and North Korea were not fully embraced by Bush.

    Cheney operated much of the time from undisclosed locations in the months after the 2001 attacks, kept apart from Bush to ensure one or the other would survive any follow-up assault on the country’s leadership.

    With Bush out of town on that fateful day, Cheney was a steady presence in the White House, at least until Secret Service agents lifted him off his feet and carried him away, in a scene the vice president later described to comical effect.

    From the beginning, Cheney and Bush struck an odd bargain, unspoken but well understood. Shelving any ambitions he might have had to succeed Bush, Cheney was accorded power comparable in some ways to the presidency itself.

    That bargain largely held up.

    “He is constituted in a way to be the ultimate No. 2 guy,” Dave Gribbin, a friend who grew up with Cheney in Casper, Wyoming, and worked with him in Washington, once said. “He is congenitally discreet. He is remarkably loyal.”

    As Cheney put it: “I made the decision when I signed on with the president that the only agenda I would have would be his agenda, that I was not going to be like most vice presidents — and that was angling, trying to figure out how I was going to be elected president when his term was over with.”

    His penchant for secrecy and backstage maneuvering had a price. He came to be seen as a thin-skinned Machiavelli orchestrating a bungled response to criticism of the Iraq war. And when he shot a hunting companion in the torso, neck and face with an errant shotgun blast in 2006, he and his coterie were slow to disclose that extraordinary turn of events.

    The vice president called it “one of the worst days of my life.” The victim, his friend Harry Whittington, recovered and quickly forgave him. Comedians were relentless about it for months. Whittington died in 2023.

    When Bush began his presidential quest, he sought help from Cheney, a Washington insider who had retreated to the oil business. Cheney led the team to find a vice presidential candidate.

    Bush decided the best choice was the man picked to help with the choosing.

    Together, the pair faced a protracted 2000 postelection battle before they could claim victory. A series of recounts and court challenges — a tempest that brewed from Florida to the nation’s highest court — left the nation in limbo for weeks.

    Cheney took charge of the presidential transition before victory was clear and helped give the administration a smooth launch despite the lost time. In office, disputes among departments vying for a bigger piece of Bush’s constrained budget came to his desk and often were settled there.

    On Capitol Hill, Cheney lobbied for the president’s programs in halls he had walked as a deeply conservative member of Congress and the No. 2 Republican House leader.

    Jokes abounded about how Cheney was the real No. 1 in town; Bush didn’t seem to mind and cracked a few himself. But such comments became less apt later in Bush’s presidency as he clearly came into his own.

    Cheney retired to Jackson Hole, not far from where Liz Cheney a few years later bought a home, establishing Wyoming residency before she won his old House seat in 2016. The fates of father and daughter grew closer, too, as the Cheney family became one of Trump’s favorite targets.

    Dick Cheney rallied to his daughter’s defense in 2022 as she juggled her lead role on the committee investigating Jan. 6 with trying to get reelected in deeply conservative Wyoming.

    Liz Cheney’s vote for Trump’s impeachment after the insurrection earned her praise from many Democrats and political observers outside Congress. But that praise and her father’s support didn’t keep her from losing badly in the Republican primary, a dramatic fall after her quick rise to the No. 3 job in the House GOP leadership.

    Politics first lured Dick Cheney to Washington in 1968, when he was a congressional fellow. He became a protégé of Rep. Donald Rumsfeld, R-Ill,, serving under him in two agencies and in Gerald Ford’s White House before he was elevated to chief of staff, the youngest ever, at age 34.

    Cheney held the post for 14 months, then returned to Casper, where he had been raised, and ran for the state’s single congressional seat.

    In that first race for the House, Cheney suffered a mild heart attack, prompting him to crack he was forming a group called “Cardiacs for Cheney.” He still managed a decisive victory and went on to win five more terms.

    In 1989, Cheney became defense secretary under the first President Bush and led the Pentagon during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War that drove Iraq’s troops from Kuwait. Between the two Bush administrations, Cheney led Dallas-based Halliburton Corp., a large engineering and construction company for the oil industry.

    Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, son of a longtime Agriculture Department worker. Senior class president and football co-captain in Casper, he went to Yale on a full scholarship for a year but left with failing grades.

    He moved back to Wyoming, eventually enrolled at the University of Wyoming and renewed a relationship with high school sweetheart Lynne Anne Vincent, marrying her in 1964. He is survived by his wife, by Liz and by a second daughter, Mary.

    Source link

  • LAPD spokesperson resigns after U.S. attorney complains about alleged leak, sources say

    The chief spokesperson for the Los Angeles Police Department has resigned amid accusations from the region’s top federal prosecutor that her office was leaking information, according to three sources familiar with the matter but not cleared to speak publicly.

    Jennifer Forkish, the LAPD’s public information director, said she left the department Thursday at the request of Chief Jim McDonnell but vehemently denied making any unauthorized disclosures.

    “Any suggestion that I have ever shared or leaked information to the media is categorically false,” she said in a statement. “No one in the Department, including the Chief has ever raised or discussed this baseless allegation with me, because it simply never happened. Anyone claiming otherwise is lying.”

    The three law enforcement sources said the chief’s concerns about Forkish’s overall performance had been mounting, and that pressure Tuesday from acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli may have prompted her ouster.

    The drama began Tuesday evening after a Times reporter reached out to an official at the U.S. attorney’s office to inquire about plans to schedule a news conference related to the Palisades fire.

    Flanked by McDonnell and other law enforcement leaders, Essayli announced at a briefing on Wednesday that authorities had arrested and charged a 29-year-old Uber driver with intentionally sparking one of the most destructive fires in California history.

    Before the media event, according to the three sources who had been briefed on the matter, Essayli called LAPD senior staff and demanded to know who in the department had tipped the paper off to the news conference, which had not yet been officially scheduled when The Times asked about it.

    It wasn’t immediately clear why Forkish was suspected of revealing details about the news conference, which federal authorities announced to members of the media via email at 5 a.m. Wednesday.

    Forkish had already left work that afternoon when McDonnell summoned her back to his office at LAPD headquarters for a meeting with him and Assistant Chief Dominic Choi, she told The Times. McDonnell did not reference a call with Essayli during the meeting, telling Forkish only that he did not share her long-term vision for the department’s public relations strategy, she said.

    She said the conversation revolved around the difference of opinion about the department’s overall media strategy, adding that “there has never been any conversation with me regarding the possibility of a leak with anyone from the LAPD.”

    Choi would not address any phone conversation between LAPD leadership and Essayli. He told The Times he could not discuss Forkish’s case due to confidentiality around personnel matters but confirmed she submitted her letter of resignation on Thursday morning.

    “We don’t wish any ill will or anything for her,” he said in a brief telephone interview. “We thank her for her service and everything she’s done and for her time with the department.”

    McDonnell did not respond to a phone call and email seeking comment on Thursday. Inquiries to the U.S. attorney’s office and Mayor Karen Bass also went unreturned.

    Forkish expressed gratitude for her time with the LAPD.

    “After much thought, I’ve decided to step down from my role to pursue new opportunities,” she wrote in a statement. “I do so with immense pride in what my team and I accomplished together. We told the hard stories with honesty and balance, supported our officers and our city in moments of crisis, and built a foundation of professionalism that I’ll always be proud of.”

    For months, word has circulated in the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles that Essayli — a Trump appointee — is trying to root out leaks to the media. The LAPD has itself routinely opened investigations into employees who speak with journalists without authorization, and faced lawsuits from employees who claimed they were falsely accused of leaks.

    Forkish began her career working for former Los Angeles City Councilman Dennis Zine, who worked as an LAPD cop for more than three decades before going into politics. She later had stints at PR firms around town, including GCG Rose & Kindel. At the lobbying and crisis communication firm EKA, she worked with Celine Cordero, the future mayor’s deputy chief of staff.

    After working as a vice president of corporate communications for casino giant Caesars Entertainment Corp. in Las Vegas, Forkish served as a spokesperson for former Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón for several months in 2024.

    Eric Rose, a partner at EKA, where he was once Forkish’s boss, said she has made a positive mark at every stop of her career.

    “Jennifer is an accomplished public affairs professional with deep and diverse expertise, having worked with elected officials at the local, state and federal levels for more than two decades,” he said.

    But Forkish’s appointment to the LAPD job was not without controversy. Multiple department sources not authorized to speak publicly said a dispute over Forkish’s salary demands created tension before she started on the job. Then, the sources said, there was a disagreement over strategy between Forkish and her predecessor, Capt. Kelly Muniz, which ended with Muniz’s transfer to another unit.

    Some press advocates say McDonnell’s tenure has been marked by conflict with the local media. The department faces lawsuits for aggressive behavior by officers toward journalists who covered protests against the Trump administration over the summer, and a federal judge has barred police from targeting reporters with less-lethal projectiles during demonstrations.

    Adam Rose, a deputy director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said the department has in recent months been frustratingly unresponsive when confronted with reports of abuses by officers.

    “While I often vehemently disagreed with past PIOs and past department leadership, at least they were responsive,” Rose said. “The fact that McDonnell and his staff are so recalcitrant — and are so reluctant — to do their jobs is shameful.”

    In her statement, Forkish said she is proud of her time at the LAPD.

    “I’ve always approached this work with transparency, respect, and accountability, and that will never change,” she said.

    Times staff writers James Queally and Brittny Mejia contributed to this report.

    Libor Jany

    Source link

  • Women’s rugby final to set record with 80,000 fans at Twickenham

    Source link

  • Portland’s New Fire Chief Sworn In – KXL

    Photo Courtesy City of Portland

    PORTLAND, Ore. –  Lauren Johnson, a longtime assistant chief with Dallas Fire-Rescue, has been sworn-in as the new chief of Portland Fire & Rescue.

    Johnson brings 26 years of experience to the role, having served in various leadership capacities in Dallas. She will oversee 744 employees and a nearly $200 million annual budget.

    “It is truly an honor to be named the next Chief of Portland Fire & Rescue,” Johnson said in a statement. “I’m eager to collaborate with the dedicated team of City staff and elected officials who are passionate about shaping the future of public safety in Portland.”

    Mayor Keith Wilson praised the selection, calling Johnson’s leadership “thoughtful” and her experience “deep.”

    “I look forward to working alongside her as we continue building a safer, more connected city for all Portlanders,” Wilson said.

    Interim Fire Chief AJ Jackson will remain in her position through mid-September to help facilitate a smooth transition.

    Johnson will report directly to Interim Deputy City Administrator for Public Safety Bob Cozzie. She said her initial focus will be on learning the department’s operations and building relationships within the bureau and the community.

    “My family and I are incredibly excited to become a part of such a vibrant and unique community,” she said.

    Johnson holds several professional certifications and is expected to complete her Master’s in Public Service Administration in December.

    More about:

    Grant McHill

    Source link

  • Former British police officer chosen to lead LAPD watchdog

    Former British police officer chosen to lead LAPD watchdog

    As the Los Angeles Police Department holds its breath over the selection of its next chief, officials this week announced the selection of the agency’s new top watchdog.

    Django Sibley, a former police officer in the United Kingdom, was named executive director of the Los Angeles Police Commission. Sibley held the job on an interim basis for nearly six months after the retirement of Richard Tefank, who served in the role for nearly two decades.

    His selection was ratified in a 4-0 vote by the commission on Tuesday.

    Before taking over for Tefank, Sibley spent about two decades in the LAPD inspector general’s office, rising to the rank of assistant inspector general in charge of all investigations of serious police uses of force. He joined the office in 2004 and built a reputation as an effective behind-the-scenes operator with a sophisticated understanding of police affairs.

    In a prepared statement, commission president Erroll G. Southers said that the pick comes at “a critical time in this Department’s history.”

    Django Sibley, 51, held the executive director job on an interim basis for about six months.

    (Los Angeles Police Commission)

    “Mr. Sibley comes to us uniquely qualified with an extensive career in law enforcement and police oversight,” the statement read.

    A commission spokesperson said that Sibley was selected from among 20 applicants.

    As its executive director, Sibley, 51, will act as a liaison between the commission and police department officials. The civilian oversight panel reviews all serious uses of force by LAPD officers and helps craft policies.

    His selection fills one of three vacancies in LAPD leadership and oversight positions: chief, inspector general and executive director of the Police Commission.

    Sibley’s former boss, then-inspector general Mark Smith, left in April after being named as an independent monitor to oversee police reforms in Portland, Ore.

    L.A. Mayor Karen Bass has said she intends to make her chief pick by the end of the month.

    The three finalists for the position, winnowed down from a list of more than 30 candidates, are LAPD deputy chief Emada Tingirides; Jim McDonnell, a one-time LAPD assistant chief and former Los Angeles County sheriff; and Robert Arcos, a former LAPD assistant chief who is a senior official in the L.A. County district attorney’s office.

    The commission remains at four members, after a potential replacement for former commissioner William Briggs pulled out of consideration a day after his confirmation hearing before the City Council’s Public Safety Committee.

    Bass had nominated Karl Thurmond, a co-chair of Rep. Adam B. Schiff’s finance committee. But members of the council committee appeared to grow frustrated with Thurmond over his responses — and non-responses — to questions about his background, police hiring and other issues.

    Before enrolling at graduate school at USC, Sibley worked for Humberside Police, a roughly 4,000-member force that patrols East Riding of Yorkshire, about four hours north of London.

    Sibley’s departure was chronicled in the local newspaper, the Hull Daily Mail, in an article titled, “Bobby packs bags for spell in sunshine state.”

    The story says that Sibley joined Humberside police in 1995 and spent the bulk of his career patrolling areas around Hull, a faded North Sea port in northeast England.

    Sibley had reportedly chosen to attend USC to study geography, taking advantage of a five-year sabbatical granted to all Humberside officers to “pursue other personal activities.” Sibley told the paper that he was looking forward to living in California, but that “the plan is that I will be back in two years.”

    Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.

    Libor Jany

    Source link

  • Police Commission forwards three LAPD chief finalists’ names for mayor’s consideration

    Police Commission forwards three LAPD chief finalists’ names for mayor’s consideration

    The Los Angeles Police Commission has forwarded the names of three finalists for LAPD chief to Mayor Karen Bass — but like much else about the search process, the identities of the front-runners have been kept a secret.

    The announcement came as the commission returned from closed session at the end of a special meeting Wednesday. Commission President Erroll Southers said the board had “discharged its duties as set forth in the city charter…and will be forwarding a list of recommended candidates to the mayor,” according to a recording of the meeting.

    He then made a motion to adjourn the meeting, without further comment. The brief announcement went largely unnoticed outside the commission, which did not issue a news release or otherwise publicly announce the decision.

    The move brings the city one step closer to ending what has been a months-long search for what is widely considered one of the most high-profile and challenging jobs in law enforcement. The post has been vacant since February, when former Chief Michel Moore retired.

    Under the city charter, the commission — a five-member civilian body that acts like a board of directors for the LAPD — is required to select three finalists for Bass to consider. But if the mayor is unsatisfied with the choices, she can ask commissioners to send additional names or continue the search. Whomever she picks will then need to be confirmed by the full City Council.

    Bass has declined through a spokesman numerous requests for comment from The Times about her priorities for chief, and she did not reschedule an earlier interview about the topic that she had canceled.

    Zach Seidl, a spokesman for the mayor’s office, said in a text message there was “[n]othing to share about the search at this time other than the Mayor is continuing to work with urgency on this search and her work to make LA safer.” He did not respond to a follow-up question about whether the mayor had started considering the finalists.

    Wednesday’s announcement squares with a previous timeline given by commissioners, who said they hope to finish evaluating what could be dozens of candidates and offer Bass their top three suggestions by the end of August.

    That hasn’t stopped fevered speculation among LAPD rank-and-file and command staff about who their next leader will be.

    There were at least 25 applicants for the job.

    Among the outside executives who received second interviews, according to sources, were Jim McDonnell, a one-time LAPD assistant chief and former Los Angeles County sheriff; former Houston and Miami chief Art Acevedo; and Robert Arcos, a former LAPD assistant chief who works for the L.A. County district attorney’s office. A high-profile former chief from a West Coast department was also said to have applied, but that name has never been confirmed.

    Those entries, confirmed by multiple sources, add another dynamic to what many consider a wide-open race to be the city’s next top cop.

    The department veterans who received second interviews, sources said, are: Assistant Chief Blake Chow, who oversees LAPD special operations; Deputy Chief Emada Tingirides, commanding officer of the department’s South Bureau; Deputy Chief Donald Graham, who heads the Transit Services Bureau; Deputy Chief Alan Hamilton, head of the Detective Bureau; and Cmdr. Lillian Carranza of the Central Bureau.

    Finding the city’s next police chief is one of the most closely watched decisions made by any mayor.

    Bass and commissioners have in recent months embarked on a citywide listening tour to canvass residents, officers and business owners about what they want to see in the next chief. The mayor has also made regular visits to police roll calls across the city.

    During the community forums, many attendees pushed for the selection of an insider who is attuned to policing in a city as vast and diverse as L.A.

    Others talked about the importance of picking someone who understands the complicated history between the department and the communities it policies. And yet, unlike in other recent chief searches, a growing number of people within the LAPD are pushing for an outside candidate to breathe new life into the organization.

    The process has been shrouded in an unusual level of secrecy.

    Although the names of candidates have occasionally been withheld to protect the identities of those working in other cities, officials this time have also declined to reveal how many people applied for the position, only saying that the number was “more than 25.” Sources have since told The Times that the number was more than 30.

    In the absence of information, the search has been the subject of almost daily rumors inside the department. A LinkedIn post by a former LAPD sergeant-turned-policing consultant went viral after it claimed to reveal a list of semi-finalists. Among those named in the post was Anne Kirkpatrick, the current police commissioner in New Orleans, who quickly issued denials of any interest in the LAPD job.

    At stake is the chance to lead the country’s third-largest local police force at a crucial time in its history. Whoever gets the job will be inheriting a wary department eager for clear leadership and a city worried about crime and the use of force.

    One of the key questions facing Bass is whether an outsider would be better at introducing reforms in the organization, rather than someone who has come up through the ranks here and already understands the political and labor landscape.

    The Los Angeles Police Protective League, the powerful bargaining body for the city’s rank-and-file officers, has not publicly staked out its position on the insider-outsider debate.

    One of Moore’s former assistant chiefs, Dominic Choi, was picked as interim leader. Moore has stayed on as a consultant on the chief search, and Choi has said he will not seek the job permanently.

    More risk management than crime-fighting, the job of running the LAPD — a vast, multibillion-dollar organization with more than 10,000 employees that operates under an intense microscope — involves balancing demands that are often at odds:

    Even though violent crime numbers have started to level out, with the exception of robberies, anxiety over public safety remains high among many Angelenos; the number of police shootings has also increased, raising concerns from the Police Commission. Meanwhile, any new leader, particularly one from the outside, will be expected to be a quick study and hit the ground running.

    Prognosticators have said Bass’ selection will indicate a lot about what direction she thinks the department is headed. Picking someone from within the organization to follow in Moore’s footsteps would signal that the mayor is looking to continue some of the reforms he started but would stop short of the wholesale changes that some have called for.

    Choosing an outside candidate would signal that the mayor is seeking a new direction for the department, some observers say. The city has hired only two outside chiefs in the past 75 years: Willie L. Williams and William J. Bratton. Both selections followed seismic scandals: the Los Angeles uprising in 1992 and the Rampart scandal of the late 1990s that saw more than 70 police officers implicated in unprovoked shootings, assaults and evidence-planting.

    Experts say the LAPD job is one of the toughest in law enforcement.

    Any serious candidate will have to have a proven track record as an experienced leader. The chief must be comfortable speaking extemporaneously — and often in front of cameras — about the work of the police department through the progressive lens of the city’s elected leaders, including the mayor and City Council.

    Whoever gets the job will need to navigate through many challenges at once, while dealing with the myriad issues confronting the city, including homelessness and the fentanyl crisis.

    The next chief will also have to recruit and inspire a new generation of officers, some of whom weren’t even born when the department was forced to undergo sweeping changes in the wake of the Rampart scandal and who grew of age in the Black Lives Matter era.

    The Olympics and the World Cup also loom as security challenges in coming years. Others are keen to see how the next chief will tackle a much-maligned discipline system that, depending on whom one asks, either lets too many bad cops off or has been weaponized to favor the well-connected.

    In March, the city hired the Northern California-based headhunter Bob Murray & Associates to conduct the nationwide chief search — the same firm that helped pick Bratton more than two decades ago.

    Joel Bryden, a vice president for the firm, said he could not discuss the search, referring questions to city officials.

    “It’s our hard and fast rule,” said Bryden, one of the two main recruiters on the chief search. “We at least have kept everything confidential even though leaks have occurred, some accurate, and some not.”

    Libor Jany

    Source link

  • Funeral for NY National Guard member killed in border helicopter crash

    Funeral for NY National Guard member killed in border helicopter crash

    SCHUYLERVILLE, N.Y. (NEWS10) — Friday was a full day of events that culminated in mourners saying goodbye to Chief Warrant Officer 2 Casey Frankoski at Saratoga National Cemetery in Schuylerville. Frankoski was killed in a helicopter crash on March 8 in Texas.

    The day started with a funeral mass at Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Joseph’s Church in Rensselaer. More remembrance took place at the cemetery with a 21-gun salute, a policeman playing taps on trumpet, and a helicopter flyover.

    Frankoski had many ties to the Capital Region. She was born in Albany. She graduated from Columbia High School in 2013 and earned her associate degree in social science from SUNY Schenectady.

    Frankoski enlisted in the Army National Guard in 2016. She became a Chief Warrant Officer in 2019. The same year, she was deployed to Kuwait. And then in 2021, she was promoted to Chief Warrant Officer 2.

    In lieu of flowers, the departed’s family is requesting donations to a scholarship fund in her name. 

    A second New York Guardsman, John Grassia, of Schenectady, was also killed in the crash. A third member, Jacob Pratt, was severely injured and continues to recover in a Texas hospital. The cause for the crash remains under investigation.

    Zion Decoteau

    Source link

  • The Halo TV show making the humans the villains completely misses the point

    The Halo TV show making the humans the villains completely misses the point

    It’s become increasingly clear that the Halo TV show has a villain problem. This may seem impossible for a series that’s supposed to be about a hostile race of aliens led by liars who exploit religious fanaticism, but instead the show can’t stop focusing on human bickering, bizarrely relegating the galaxy-conquering aliens to an afterthought for both the characters in the show and the audience.

    I could talk about how Halo’s centering of humans as the bad guys behind every plot cheapens one of the few fascinating moral complexities of the Halo games and books — that the Spartans were built for fundamentally inhumane treatment of rebel fighters and then accidentally found justification in a surprise alien invasion. But it’s more fair and even more damning to talk about all of this on the Halo TV show’s own terms. And on those terms, I simply have no fucking idea why there are even aliens in this show to begin with.

    In an effort to underline the badness of humanity, Halo has completely sidelined the Covenant, throwing the entire show off course and spinning wildly into space. Even the Covenant’s grand invasion of Reach in the show is just another human plot, one of a thousand ways the TV show wants to prove that the human bureaucrats are evil, something we’ve known since the earliest moments of the show’s first season.

    But all this emphasis on humanity’s sins begs a critical question: Almost two full seasons into Halo, what point is it trying to make, exactly? Season 2’s seventh episode, “Thermopylae,” seems to offer some attempt at answering that question, when Makee (Charlie Murphy) pleads with Chief to stop helping humanity so that the two of them can settle Halo on their own and make it a paradise, rather than letting either side use it as a civilization-destroying weapon. Setting aside the silliness that is this version of Halo being so constantly tempted to recast Master Chief (Pablo Schreiber) as the lead of a domestic drama, Makee’s statement still leaves a gap in our understanding of what this show is doing. If the point is “war makes monsters of us all,” then shouldn’t we see that equally in both the human and Covenant factions? And even more pressingly, why won’t anyone acknowledge that the Covenant are the ones who threatened extinction first and based their whole galactic conquest on the Prophets’ lie about a Great Journey that would take them from the galaxy?

    Photo: Adrienn Szabo/Paramount Plus

    We’re subjected to half a dozen scenes each episode of humanity’s reckless and evil leaders making civilization-shaping choices — particularly the ongoing machinations of Admiral Margaret Parangosky (Shabana Azmi), one of the worst and least compelling characters in recent TV memory, thanks to her consistently baffling decisions and seemingly lack of strategy and communication. (Put simply: She’s here to antagonize every other character, with no real character of her own.) Meanwhile we only get to see the Covenant’s side from the point of view of Makee and the criminally underdeveloped Arbiter. Sure, we hear them say that the Prophets might be full of shit and that the Great Journey might be a lie, but it remains a complete mystery why the alien’s genuinely compelling similarity to Earth’s own corrupt and lying authorities is drawn with such a faint line. Perhaps drawing those connections more clearly would help us make sense of why Master Chief has fought more humans in Halo season 2 than he has Covenant.

    Despite the moment-to-moment conflict rarely making sense, or seeming to lead anywhere, it hasn’t stopped the show from introducing more plot threads or drip-feeding longtime series fans with new bits of recognizable lore. For instance, this latest episode gave us our most meaningful look yet at the Forerunners, though they haven’t been named quite yet. It also hinted at yet another alien faction that could soon arrive, but we’ll have to wait and see if that thread goes anywhere.

    All these new introductions do little to lessen the feeling of narrative cheapness that surrounds Halo, however. As more ideas and plots get introduced, it only serves to underline how little sense any of this really makes. Sure, we know the Covenant are knocking on humanity’s front door, but the sudden diversion of every character in the show now converging on a need to capture “the Halo,” as they keep calling it, feels like it came out of nowhere. Which is a pretty astounding feat of messy storytelling considering it’s the object the entire franchise is named after.

    Halo season 2 is now streaming on Paramount Plus. The season finale will be released on Thursday, March 21.

    Austen Goslin

    Source link

  • Accused thief runs into police station, then gets in fistfight with chief, AL cops say

    Accused thief runs into police station, then gets in fistfight with chief, AL cops say

    A 42-year-old man accused of stealing a vehicle got in a scuffle with an Alabama police chief who tried to take him into custody, authorities say.

    A 42-year-old man accused of stealing a vehicle got in a scuffle with an Alabama police chief who tried to take him into custody, authorities say.

    Getty Images/iStockphoto

    A 42-year-old accused of stealing a vehicle ran from custody — then ended up fighting a police chief, Alabama authorities said.

    On Feb. 28, the Florence Police Department was searching for a vehicle reported stolen when they found it near the station, police said in a Feb. 29 news release.

    An officer tried to take the man in the vehicle into custody, but he resisted arrest, police said.

    The Florence chief of police, Ron Tyler, was in the parking lot when he heard the commotion. He ran over to assist, then the man bolted and ran into the lobby of the station “in an apparent attempt to evade arrest,” police said in the release.

    A scuffle ensued inside the station when the 42-year-old pushed the chief, according to officers.

    Tyler’s head was slammed into a chair, and the fight ended with a hole in the wall, police said.

    “I was literally emailing HR earlier today with some preliminary retirement questions,” Tyler said in the release. “I never imagined I would wind up in a fistfight before the day was out.”

    Other officers arrived to the lobby and were able to take the man into custody, according to the release.

    Now, he’s charged with robbery, theft of property, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and criminal mischief. He was booked in the Lauderdale County jail on $33,500 bond, police said.

    Other than a little blood on the chief’s clothes, he said no one was “too worse for the wear,” and no one needed medical treatment.

    “While my title may be chief of police, above all else, I am a police officer,” Tyler said.

    Florence is in northwest Alabama, about 75 miles west of Huntsville.

    Source link

  • Suspect walks up to 20-year-old, asks if he has marijuana for sale, shoots him, Atlanta police say – WSB-TV Channel 2 – Medical Marijuana Program Connection

    Suspect walks up to 20-year-old, asks if he has marijuana for sale, shoots him, Atlanta police say – WSB-TV Channel 2 – Medical Marijuana Program Connection

    ATLANTA — A man is recovering after officials say he was shot by someone who was looking to buy drugs from him.

    Atlanta police said on Friday at 12:43 p.m., officers received reports of a person shot on Fairburn Road SW.

    [DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]

    When officers arrived, they found a 20-year-old man who had been shot in the leg. He was taken to the hospital to receive treatment.

    The identity of the victim has not been released.

    According to the investigation, the victim was leaving his apartment building when another man walked up to him and asked if he had any marijuana for sale.

    TRENDING STORIES:

    The report said the victim told the man that he did not sell marijuana and turned to leave.

    At that time, authorities said the suspect pulled out a firearm and demanded that the victim give him money.

    The victim said that a struggle began, and he was shot.

    [SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]

    After the shooting, the suspect ran from the scene before police arrived.

    Authorities are still investigating the circumstances surrounding the incident.

    IN OTHER NEWS:

    HOA president turns herself in; leaders host ‘Forum at Camelot’ to discuss solutions for victims

    ©2023 Cox Media Group

    Original Author Link click here to read complete story..

    MMP News Author

    Source link

  • Ghost towers get lease of life, Auckland CBD office vacancies plummet – Medical Marijuana Program Connection

    Ghost towers get lease of life, Auckland CBD office vacancies plummet – Medical Marijuana Program Connection

    The PwC Tower (left) has a zero vacancy factor. Photo / Michael Craig

    Don’t call them ghost towers any longer because the chief of a billionaire landlord and a research boss have cited rising numbers of workers back in Auckland’s heart.

    On Monday, Precinct Properties chief executive Scott

    Original Author Link click here to read complete story..

    MMP News Author

    Source link

  • Woman Arrested For Allegedly Trespassing Outside Taylor Swift’s Beachfront Home

    Woman Arrested For Allegedly Trespassing Outside Taylor Swift’s Beachfront Home

    WESTERLY, R.I. (AP) — A woman who was previously warned to stay away from Taylor Swift’s home in Rhode Island was arrested this week outside the beachfront property, police said.

    The woman was discovered in front of the home and arrested on Monday, said Westerly Police Chief Paul Gingerella.

    TMZ published photos showing someone in handcuffs outside the home’s gates, which had multiple “No Trespassing” signs.

    Overzealous fans have been a problem for Swift over the years, with several arrests at her homes.

    It’s unclear if Swift was home on Monday. She is in the middle of a 52-show stadium tour dubbed “Eras.” On Friday, she released “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version),” a re-recorded version of her third album.

    Source link