The involuntary manslaughter case against James and Jennifer Crumbley, the parents of the Oxford school shooter (this was last fall, in November, and I know it’s hard to keep them straight these days), continues to grind on. Preliminary hearing after preliminary hearing, we get to see the couple, still being held in the county lockup, sit in court and hear details of the case against them.
The latest was Thursday. Here’s what they’re asking:
James and Jennifer Crumbley also don’t want the jury to hear about their alleged affairs, pot smoking or drinking habits, horse hobby or messy house — all of which has been raised by prosecutors. None of that is relevant to their case, argue their lawyers, who filed five blistering motions with the court late Thursday in which they blasted Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald over her handling of the case, accused her of trying to smear their clients and taint the jury pool by disclosing inflammatory information, and sought to derail the prosecution case.
The “also” is because the lede of the story was that their son had written in his journal — found in his backpack after the shooting — that he hoped his act would result in the impeachment of “Sleepy Joe Biden.” The Crumbleys are afraid their family’s unified Let’s-Go-Brandon politics might influence the jury.
But the “messy house” was the detail that pierced me. I’ve probably mentioned it here about a thousand times, that while my house will occasionally get more cluttered than I like, it’s very very rarely so awful that I would be embarrassed to have someone else walk through it. I vacuum and dust on the regular, and the thought of a pizza box sitting on my coffee table for longer than 10 minutes makes me shudder. I can just imagine what their place looked like, to have the prosecutor mention it in court documents. And then they bought their weirdo 15-year-old boy a handgun. GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY.
Anyway, that’s my prejudice.
Sorry for the scant updates this week. I just took a very leisurely stroll with Wendy and tried to let the calm of the morning penetrate me. I didn’t sleep well last night, and skipped the morning swim. I should do that more often — the calm-infusion part, that is. My pandemic funk deepened over the winter, and hasn’t entirely lifted, even though we’re doing more to get away from the rut we dug for ourselves in the last two years. (Not eating out as much, though — restaurant prices just keep climbing here, and the $50-plus-tip I paid for the last two-bar-cheeseburgers-and-two-beers meal suddenly doesn’t seem worth it.)
And our financial positions have taken a hit, but I’ve ridden the stock-market roller coaster long enough that I’m not too worried. We’re still taking another long trip this fall. Most likely to Spain, so tips and advice are welcome. Madrid and Barcelona will be the home bases; the south is tempting, but every day spent moving between cities is a lost day, so.
I’m an empty cup today, I know. Sorry about that. So I fall back on the Midwesterner’s old faithful parting: Gonna be a hot one today. You turnin’ on that AC?
ON EDIT: Some bloggage that won’t make anyone feel better:
A Virginia lawyer is suing Barnes & Noble for selling a book he disapproves of.
The guy who sold the Buffalo shooter his weapon doesn’t feel guilty, no, why would you ask:
Even if Robert Donald were the rare 75-year-old who watches livestreams on Twitch, he would not have known that the video broadcasting at around 2:30 p.m. on Saturday had anything to do with him. The footage was from a camera attached to a person’s head and showed their point of view as they got out of a car, made their way through the parking lot into a Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo, and started shooting people with an assault rifle. Donald would not have recognized the Bushmaster XM-15 he sold earlier this year, partly because it had been modified to hold more ammo and a racial slur had been painted on the barrel. “I know I didn’t do anything wrong,” Donald told the New York Times, explaining that he did not even remember the person who bought the rifle. “But I feel terrible about it.”
Pennsylvania people: What’s going to happen in the gubernatorial race? Does Mastriano have a chance against Fetterman?
And with that, have a nice weekend. Ha.
Jeff Borden said on May 20, 2022 at 9:06 am
Mastriano is running for governor and he is one terrifying MAGAt.
Fetterman will face McCormick or Dr. Oz, the snake oil salesman created by St. Oprah.
Big news here is Illinois GAINED 250,000 residents between 2010 and 2020, but the under count cost us a Congressional seat. Instead of bleeding people –a popular refrain among our MAGAts– this is the largest population in Illinois history.
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Mark P said on May 20, 2022 at 9:28 am
The guy’s a gun dealer. Is there an independent gun dealer in the country who would willingly give up a sale just because the gun has no practical use other than killing people? I’m surprised he said he feels terrible, but I’m sure he won’t donate the proceeds of that sale to the Brady Campaign.
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Suzanne said on May 20, 2022 at 9:35 am
My house is messy and has been since I was in the hospital in Feb/March. It was a huge mess when I came home and I have slowly been trying to organize things. My husband is a a little overwhelmed between working and caregiving for me. He is a bit of a pack rat and simply doesn’t notice the clutter or dirt. Right now, depending on the day, I don’t have the energy to clean or organize which is very frustrating for me. He will clean things when I ask but he just doesn’t think to do it otherwise.
I am trying to avoid looking at our retirement funds. I haven’t been able to work since February so our income is down. Last quarterly statement, my main retirement account had lost more money than I put in. This is why I am not a fan of the financial services industry, but what choice do we have? They sell us products, make money, and we hold all the risk. I have several friends who are near retirement who have basically stopped putting money in investments, instead are just putting money in a savings account with the assumption that at least they won’t lose money.
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JMG said on May 20, 2022 at 10:17 am
Dear Ms.Nall: If you are going to Spain, I strongly suggest you consider a trip to Basque country based in San Sebastian. You’ll eat well, I guarantee you.
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Mark P said on May 20, 2022 at 10:45 am
A mutual fund grew our retirement pretty well, but I took it out when we got close to retirement. I know we miss all the growth, but we can’t afford to wait it out if there is a crash for a few years. If you have to withdraw during the crash you give up not only the amount you withdraw, but also the growth that disappeared with the crash. If you can wait, great, but if you can wait you don’t need your retirement fund as much as we do.
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Julie Robinson said on May 20, 2022 at 10:56 am
Suzanne, be kind to yourselves and have a one-time cleaning done. You’ll both feel better about life in general, and it should be easier going forward.
Both my parents were slobs, but every now and then Dad would do a big cleaning. Mom would get mad at him because she couldn’t find this or that precious newspaper clipping, etc. The house was never clean enough to have friends over, and apparently I didn’t realize that I COULD CLEAN TOO. Ha.
We clean at least weekly and do our best to keep the messes down, but guess what, both our kids rejected that and became slobs too. Son seems to have reformed, daughter not.
So I think of a messy house (not a temporary situation like Suzanne’s) as a sign of a personality disorder and yes, it should be part of what the jury hears. Along with the affairs and drinking and the rest. They didn’t have the focus they needed on their son.
Am not looking at 401K, despite the desire to travel and fix up house. Am grateful for pension and social security. Am hoping that contractors, loan rates, and building material costs will come down if the housing bubble bursts. Selfishness is me.
A great-nephew is graduating high school and the weekend will be full of parties and family from away. Some we’ll be glad to see, some not.
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JodiP said on May 20, 2022 at 10:57 am
We keep our house reasonably tidy. I’ll admit it doesn’t get the regular vacuuming and dusting it used to because we’re entertaining less.
One kinda amusing thing housework wise happened last weekend: our vacuum was performing very poorly and I assumed the motor was dying. I began researching and finally found something for less than $400.
Later, I lifted the vacuum cannister to empty it and my wife observed “that filter is filthy!”
“We’re supposed to clean that?”
Yes. Done and tested and it’s like new.
Just saved about $400.
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Mark P said on May 20, 2022 at 11:03 am
I can be a pretty messy person but not a dirty person. We have two dogs and (now) one cat. I run a battery-powered vacuum around most of the house at least every other day. It’s hard to believe there is *that* much hair on the floor essentially all the time. I can’t/don’t want to imagine what the house would look like if I didn’t vacuum so much.
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Colleen said on May 20, 2022 at 12:43 pm
We are messy but not dirty, if that makes sense. Like right now, there are an inordinate amount of shoes on the living room floor. I only have two feet…
Bought a robot vacuum to help combat the cat hair, and it really helps.
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alex said on May 20, 2022 at 1:08 pm
The kind of parents who’d buy their 15-year-old a gun and not supervise its storage and usage says plenty enough about them. I don’t doubt that their home and lives exemplify the worst sort of negligence, but whether it’s irrelevant or prejudicial is a matter for the court’s discretion, and I suspect that these things are indeed pertinent.
And I’d bet anything that in the kid’s trial, his counsel will put all of that stuff out there in a bid to present him as a victim of horrid parenting.
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JodiP said on May 20, 2022 at 1:14 pm
Oof, apparently cluttercore is a thing: https://tinyurl.com/bd5w3vnc
Then there’s teenage me, tidying my bedroom before doing homework because I couldn’t concentrate if things were messy!
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Sherri said on May 20, 2022 at 1:27 pm
Oklahoma has now passed a law outlawing abortion from the moment of fertilization, which, if you understand reproductive systems, is before pregnancy. Pregnancy doesn’t occur until the fertilized egg implants in the uterus. I don’t know if this makes the contraceptive pill illegal, since the pill works by making the lining of the uterus hostile to implantation.
Was it abortion when I did two rounds of IVF and failed to get pregnant? After all, there were 8 cell fertilized embryos placed in my uterus during that process, those were babies, right?!?!
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David C said on May 20, 2022 at 2:00 pm
Considering the verdict in the Whitmer kidnapping trial you would think the Crumbleys would be all to happy to let their wingnut freak flag fly.
Our house is tidy as long as you don’t count the garage as part of the house. Our garage is so full of gardening tools and concoctions that I don’t know where I’d start tossing. I guess a good place to start would be the fruit tree sprays I noticed the other day. Our apple tree died two years ago.
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Icarus said on May 20, 2022 at 2:02 pm
Sherri @ 12: my wife was just telling me about the Oklahoma law over lunch a few minutes ago. The medical code for miscarriage is “spontaneous abortion”. How many women have had miscarriages? And if having a miscarriage is a felony, and felons cannot vote…you have now neutered the 19th amendment.
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tajalli said on May 20, 2022 at 2:57 pm
Icarus, it would be prudent to restate that code’s definition as “spontaneous unintended rejection,” which places the responsibility on the body rather than on the person. Ectopic pregnancies will also have to be redefined too – maybe some type of benign tumor, change the definition to a hamartoma, maybe.
(HA-mar-TOH-muh) A benign (not cancer) growth made up of an abnormal mixture of cells and tissues normally found in the area of the body where the growth occurs.
https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-terms/def/hamartoma
Benign tumors are merely not cancers but can still be incapacitating or deadly.
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ROGirl said on May 20, 2022 at 3:03 pm
Some very good news to report…the pcr covid test I took was negative!!! It’s just a strange summer cold, I suppose.
But I had a bone density test the other day and I’m at high risk for spinal fracture. Shit. Getting old really sucks.
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Deborah said on May 20, 2022 at 3:50 pm
So in the rare cases where a twin fetus in the womb absorbs the other twin fetus would be murder by fetuscide?
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Mark P said on May 20, 2022 at 4:00 pm
Was it here that I read the suggestion that Indian reservations in christofascist states could offer abortions despite state law? I have read that Roe v Wade did not apply to reservations, and it appears that an Oklahoma
abortion ban would not effect abortions on reservations. If the Indian clinic were federally-funded it could not provide abortions. If it were privately-funded, it could. However, the state might be able to revoke a doctor’s license if they performed abortions on a reservation. I could see Indian governments allowing non-doctors to perform abortions. It seems like it could be a revenue source for tribes, as well as meeting the needs of the tribes themselves.
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Sherri said on May 20, 2022 at 4:02 pm
“What if” scenarios are useful for testing the boundaries of a policy. I find it telling that those of us who support abortion have no trouble coming up with real-life scenarios that show the absurdity of the anti-abortion policies, while the anti-abortion scenarios are like “what if a pregnant woman comes in with a baby hanging out of her and wants an abortion, then what, huh?”
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Sherri said on May 20, 2022 at 4:07 pm
And the anti-abortion folks never engage with the fact that the largest group of people seeking abortions in this country are *mothers*. That is, they already have one or more children, and can not afford or cope with any more.
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Deborah said on May 20, 2022 at 4:55 pm
I walked 9 miles in San Francisco yesterday, it seems like at least half of that was up steep hills. I’m dragging ass today, it’s not yet 2pm and we’ve walked 3 1/2 miles so far. I think this is going to be a 7 mile day unless we decide to take a Lyft to dinner. That’s looking pretty desirable to me right now. The last time I was in San Francisco was over 20 years ago and the steep climbs didn’t phase me. My husband has my cold, he tested negative on the last Covid test we had brought with us.
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Deborah said on May 20, 2022 at 6:05 pm
This happened at Chicago and State, a few blocks from our place in Chicago https://blockclubchicago.org/2022/05/20/mass-shooting-on-near-north-side-kills-2-people-wounds-8/. The new Whole Foods we walk to a lot is catty corner across the street from this McDonalds. The Redline station (subway) is right there. A few years back they had gangs of youth coming up out of the Redline station and mobbing stores in the area, they called them “wildings”. The city increased police presence on every street corner around there that summer. That was back when Rahm Emmanuel was mayor.
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Sherri said on May 20, 2022 at 7:13 pm
RIP, Roger Angell, best baseball writer ever.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/sports/roger-angell-dead.html
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Sherri said on May 20, 2022 at 8:05 pm
The Archbishop of San Francisco has said that Pelosi can not receive communion in his diocese, because of her position on abortion. I understand the Catholic position on abortion, but what I don’t understand is why abortion gets singled out for denying communion? The Catholic Church is opposed to the death penalty, but I don’t recall Strip Search Sammy ever being threatened with being denied communion, and he never saw a death penalty case that he thought should be overturned.
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Mark P said on May 20, 2022 at 9:23 pm
The Catholic Church’s position on abortion is essentially saying, “Hey! Look over there! Nothing to see here.”
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Sherri said on May 20, 2022 at 9:48 pm
They’re really just saying this stuff out loud now, without shame. “It’s only black women dying that make our numbers look bad.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/05/bill-cassidy-maternal-mortality-rates
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Gretchen said on May 20, 2022 at 11:40 pm
That archbishop moved pedophile priests around and fought letting victims sue the archdiocese. He has plenty of sins of his own to atone for before he worries about Polish.
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Deborah said on May 21, 2022 at 1:37 am
The archdiocese of San Francisco is not that far from our hotel in San Francisco, we were wandering around there yesterday when I wanted to go to a shop on Filmore where I found my shoes.
The archdiocese of Santa Fe has been in big trouble lately selling off property to pay for lawsuits of previous pedo priests. New Mexico was one of those places where the Catholic Church pawned off priests who had gotten into trouble in other states. They figured it was remote enough that they could hide them, plus they didn’t care about brown people who were mostly members of the churches around there.
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A. Riley said on May 21, 2022 at 2:01 am
We have a housecleaner who comes by every two weeks — she vacuums, cleans the bathrooms, scrubs the sink — and I’ll tell you what, hiring a housecleaner is the best thing I ever did. I grew up in the midst of a lot of clutter (my early-widowed working mother raised 4 kids — she once said she couldn’t keep up both her job *and* her house), and I’ve never been a neat freak. But Nadiya’s biweekly visit makes me at least pick up around the place.
Now that I’m retired, I have time to sort out the overstuffed closets and drawers and throw shit out — but do I have the inclination? Hah.
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Dexter Friend said on May 21, 2022 at 3:36 am
Thanks, Sherri; Roger Angell’s “5 Seasons” was a true masterpiece. He could tell of driving to Shea Stadium and searching for a parking spot an interesting, thoughtful tale of its own merit. His articles were great reads; I was, I am, a fan.
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Cullen said on May 21, 2022 at 8:46 am
Casa Botin in Madrid. Hemmingway hangout, thought to be the oldest restaurant in the world, since 1725. It has old energy, and it is not to be missed.
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Jeff Borden said on May 21, 2022 at 10:07 am
The revelations about Ginni Thomas and her efforts to overturn the popular vote in 2020 keep mounting, which makes Clarence’s whining last weekend at a gathering of conservatives and libertarians about the lack of respect for institutions an even sicker joke.
The MAGAts are not simply telling citizens what they plan to do when they regain power. They are shouting it from the rooftops. Will it mobilize enough women voters to show up in November?
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Sherri said on May 21, 2022 at 2:32 pm
There’s a discussion on Twitter about how the Buffalo shooter had a toothache, and had we only had a sufficient safety net in this country, maybe he wouldn’t have become radicalized. The people making this argument are ignoring the fact that we don’t have such a safety net because of white supremacy. White people would rather suffer than have black people get any benefits.
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basset said on May 21, 2022 at 4:34 pm
Had a toothache? Say more about that.
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Jeff Borden said on May 21, 2022 at 5:21 pm
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/19/1099844097/abortion-polling-roe-v-wade-supreme-court-draft-opinion
Trashing Roe v. Wade is very unpopular. Make the MAGAts pay.
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basset said on May 21, 2022 at 5:45 pm
https://www.mediaite.com/online/nbc-reporter-gets-destroyed-for-blaming-racist-buffalo-massacre-on-shooters-toothache-white-people-will-latch-onto-any-thing/amp/
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Deborah said on May 21, 2022 at 10:22 pm
We’re in Ely, NV tonight. It’s about half way up the state north of Las Vegas. The drive here from San Francisco wasn’t bad, much of it on Highway 50, which has signs saying it’s the loneliest highway in the US. We encountered very few cars indeed, which makes for fine driving. Before we left CA we went through Donner Pass so of course I had to read all about the Donner Party, gruesome.
Tomorrow we head back into Utah, then tomorrow night we are in Cortez, CO where Mesa Verde is. We’ve been to MV before so just passing through. We should be in Santa Fe Monday afternoon. Going to relax for a few days before starting projects in SF and Abiquiu.
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Sherri said on May 22, 2022 at 12:27 am
The Republicans in Galveston County couldn’t stand that black and brown people even got one vote on the county commission, even though the GOP had an overwhelming majority. Thanks to Chief Justice Roberts and Shelby County, the GOP could gerrymander those black and brown people out of existence.
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/20/galveston-redistricting-black-voters/
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Dorothy said on May 22, 2022 at 7:44 am
A. Riley @29 – consider making a ‘to-do’ list if you really mean business about sorting and throwing out stuff. What made me do it was moving from a 5 BR house to a 2 BR patio home (well, it’s 3 BR now that we finished the basement). But you don’t need to be moving to make a list and try to make it a goal to cross off everything within a month or two months. Put the list in a prominent place like the fridge with a magnet – or leave a tablet on the dining room table where you can’t miss it.
Even though we’re in our fourth month in the new house, I’m still pitching stuff occasionally. I put on a pair of sandals last weekend and hadn’t worn them in a couple of years. I didn’t know the soles had split and rendered them unwearable. I had donated so many pairs of shoes before the move, and held on to my very favorite shoes that I was positive I’d wear again. It’s very freeing – you seem to feel physically lighter even though it’s not pounds you’re shedding!
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