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1. Former prison guard says inmates in alleged cellmate murder were never supposed to be housed together


By Todd Shepherd
 

“According to the Delaware County District Attorney’s office, Shad Boccella strangled and killed Eliott Funkhouser in a shared prison cell at Delaware County’s George W. Hill Correctional Facility on April 22, 2022. Media reports said Boccella was wearing Funkhouser’s shoes as he was escorted out of the cell after Funkhouser’s dead body was discovered.

“But a correctional officer who was working that cell block the day the two men were put together says Funkhouser’s death should never have happened, that both of the men were too dangerous to be in a cell with another inmate, yet those concerns were ignored — with deadly consequences.”

 

Why It Matters. “Funkhouser’s death in April was closely followed by two suicides at the GWHCF that June. The families of both suicide victims say they have lingering questions and resentments about how events unfolded — including both families saying they weren’t contacted until one or two days after the incident.

“In all, the GWHCF would see five deaths in 2022, and would repeat that tally in 2023.”


Quotable. “On first shift I got a phone call from the Classification [Officer] Mike Moore stating that he was sending the guy [Funkhouser] from Unit 8 to be a ‘House alone/Rec alone’ on [Unit] 10. My exact words to him were, ‘I have no room on 10A because I’m full,’” former Correctional Officer Norman Passarella told Broad + Liberty in an exclusive interview.

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2. Trump-haters are not serious


By Andy Bloom

“Those of you who think that Donald Trump is going to end American democracy, worse than Hitler and everything else you’ve thrown at him, I can’t take you seriously anymore.

For all the hysteria, handwringing, caterwauling, catastrophizing, and doomsaying, you will be responsible for handing the keys to the White House back to Trump. 

Trump-haters are doing everything but the one thing that could keep him from winning the election.”



Why It Matters. “Because of his infirmity, Biden has done fewer press conferences than any president since the beginning of the television era. Passing on a pre-Super Bowl interview sent a message. Biden’s handlers realize that putting him in front of people is a gamble, as he proved in his press conference disputing Hur’s assertion.

“Telling voters that Biden is a dynamo behind closed doors doesn’t match the reality of the shuffling, frequently confused president they see who often utters unintelligible passages.

“Go ahead, continue to live in denial. You can hope Biden will become more lucid on the campaign trail between now and Election Day.

“But it’s not what voters see, it’s what they experience.”

Quotable. “Trump has impossibly high negative approval ratings. Yet Biden’s are even higher. Go ahead and spend hundreds of millions of dollars on negative advertising. Maybe it raises Trump’s negative scores by a few points, but not many because everybody knows who and what Donald Trump is.”

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3. Podcasts!

4. Lightning Round

What We’re Reading...
Sometimes, numbers are so big that its hard to wrap our heads around them. But we’re going to be hearing a lot about the $7.3 trillion in spending that Joe Biden is proposing during this election year. As Daniel Henninger wrote for the Wall Street Journal this week, that massive spending — more than $22,000 per American — is wildly out of step with the times and the country’s needs.

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