Stay Outraged: Trump summarily attacks another boat in the Caribbean

A U.S. military strike killed three people and blew up a boat in the Caribbean Sea on Friday, the U.S. Southern Command said, raising the death toll in the Trump administration’s five-month-old campaign against suspected drug smugglers at sea to 133, according to The New York Times.

The attack was the first known strike in the Caribbean Sea since early November and the 39th disclosed by the U.S. government in the campaign, according to a tracker maintained by The New York Times.

The announcement on Friday was accompanied by an 11-second video clip that appeared to show a missile striking the middle of the boat as it traversed open waters, and destroying it.

The command said, citing unspecified intelligence, that the boat had been following “known drug-trafficking routes in the Caribbean” and that it was engaged in narco-trafficking operations.

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Sheriff: 'Guthrie will be found' has operation change form rescue to recovery?

 According to The New York Times:

Officers Block a Street: Late Friday, law enforcement officers came to a neighborhood about two miles from Nancy Guthrie’s home and closed off a street. The police operation is related to the investigation into her abduction on Feb. 1, a Pima County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman said.

Sheriff Discusses the Case: Chris Nanos, the Arizona sheriff leading the search for Nancy Guthrie, described investigators’ disappointment when learning a person they detained this week was not involved. But in an interview with The Times, he said DNA had been discovered on Ms. Guthrie’s property and sent for testing and expressed confidence that Ms. Guthrie would be found. Read more ›

Flood of Tips: The release of security video showing a masked man on Nancy Guthrie’s porch early on Feb. 1, the morning she disappeared, has opened a floodgate of possible leads to law enforcement. More than 4,000 calls were made to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department in the 24 hours after the images were made public this week. Read more ›

Oklahoma executes man involved in drive-by shooting

The 3rd Execution of 2026

Kendrick Simpson who admitted to killing two men in a drive-by shooting in 2006 was put to death February 12, 2026 in Oklahoma, reported The Associated Press.

Simpson, 45, was pronounced dead at 10:19 CST following a three-drug injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, prison officials said. He was convicted of killing Anthony Jones, 19, and Glen Palmer, 20, by firing into their car following an altercation at an Oklahoma City nightclub.

“I love y’all,” Simpson said to his family and members of his legal team while he was strapped to a gurney inside the death chamber. “Thank y’all for being here to support me.”

Simpson’s spiritual adviser, the Rev. Don Heath, read Scripture in the chamber during the execution, which lasted about 12 minutes. A doctor entered the room and declared Simpson unconscious about five minutes after the first drugs began to flow.

Simpson, who had fled to Oklahoma City from the devastated city of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, admitted to the killings during a clemency hearing last month. He apologized to the victims’ families and to a third man who was in the vehicle when Jones and Palmer were shot.

Palmer’s sister, Crystal Allison, witnessed the execution and said she was disturbed to see Simpson smiling at his family members while strapped to the gurney.

“The same smile that had been tormenting me for 20 years, he still smiled that same smile laying on his deathbed,” she said.

Attorney General Gentner Drummond said in a statement Thursday that justice had been served for Palmer and Jones.

“Their young lives were taken tragically and far too soon,” Drummond said. “I hope today brings some measure of peace to their families who have endured unimaginable pain for the past 20 years.”

Simpson had apologized to the victims’ families and accepted responsibility for the killings during last month’s clemency hearing.

“I don’t make any excuses,” Simpson said at the time. “I don’t blame others, and they didn’t deserve what happened to them.”

Despite his apology, the state’s five-member Pardon and Parole Board narrowly voted to deny Simpson clemency.

On Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. Supreme Court had no comment after rejecting a late appeal to block the execution.

Simpson’s attorneys had argued that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from chronic trauma in his childhood years growing up in a New Orleans housing project.

“Kendrick is a man worthy of your mercy and compassion,” his attorneys wrote in his clemency application. “The death penalty is supposed to be reserved for the worst of the worst offenses and offenders. Kendrick and his case represent neither.”

On the night of the killing in January 2006, prosecutors say, Simpson had placed an assault rifle in the trunk of a vehicle he and his friends drove to a club in northwest Oklahoma City. After an altercation at the club between Simpson and Palmer, prosecutors say, Simpson and his friends followed Palmer and Jones from a nearby gas station, and that Simpson pointed the gun out the window and fired about 20 rounds into their car. Both victims were shot multiple times.

The state uses the sedative midazolam, followed by vecuronium bromide to halt breathing and potassium chloride to stop the heart.

Simpson’s scheduled execution was to be the second of the year in the United States. Florida, which conducted a state record of 19 executions in 2025, put Ronald Palmer Heath to death with a three-drug injection on Tuesday for his conviction in the 1989 killing of a traveling salesman he and his brother met at a Gainesville bar.

A total of 47 people were executed in the U.S. in 2025, with Florida leading the way with a flurry of death warrants signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. Alabama, South Carolina and Texas tied for second place with five executions each that year.

Florida is scheduled to carry out the next execution in the U.S. on Feb. 24, the planned lethal injection of Melvin Trotter for the killing of a grocery store owner during a robbery.

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THIEL COLLEGE Comment No. 2

Did the U.S. Supreme Court get it right when they decided Furman v. Georgia in 1972? The decision found that the death penalty was not cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment, but was unconstitutional arbitrary in its application. 

Florida executes a man for murder of traveling salesman

The 2nd Execution of 2026

Ronald Palmer Heath was convicted of killing a traveling salesman he and his brother had met at a bar became the first person executed in Florida this year, according to The Associated Press.

Heath, 64, was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. on February 10, 2026 following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. Heath was convicted of first-degree murder, robbery with a deadly weapon and other charges in the 1989 killing of Michael Sheridan.

When the curtain to the execution chamber went up at the scheduled 6 p.m. start time, Heath was already strapped down with an IV inserted in his arm. Asked by the warden if Heath had any final statement, he said, ”I’m sorry. That’s all I can say. Thank you.”

As the drugs were being administered, Heath showed little outward reaction, closing his eyes and then appearing to fall asleep before becoming motionless. A medic was called in about 8 minutes after the drugs began, and Heath was declared dead 2 minutes after that.

It was the state’s first execution of 2026 and followed a record 19 executions in Florida last year. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis oversaw more executions in a single year in 2025 than any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in the U.S. in 1976. The previous Florida record was eight executions set in 2014.

According to court records, Heath and his brother Kenneth Heath met Sheridan at a Gainesville bar in May 1989. After hanging out at the bar for some time, the three men agreed to go somewhere else to smoke marijuana.

At some point, the brothers plotted to rob the other man, investigators said. Ronald Heath drove the group to a remote area, where Kenneth Heath pulled a handgun on Sheridan. The man initially refused to give the brothers anything, and Kenneth Heath shot Sheridan in the chest.

As Sheridan emptied his pockets, Ronald Heath began kicking the man and stabbing him with a hunting knife, prosecutors said. Kenneth Heath then shot Sheridan twice in the head.

The brothers dumped Sheridan’s body in a wooded area and returned to the Gainesville bar to take items from his rental car, according to the court record. It said the brothers made multiple purchases with Sheridan’s credit cards the next day at a Gainesville mall.

Ronald Heath was arrested several weeks later at his home in Douglas, Georgia, after investigators connected him to the stolen credit cards. Officers recovered clothing purchased with the stolen cards, as well as Sheridan’s watch, according to court records.

Kenneth Heath was also charged with Sheridan’s murder, but was sentenced to life in prison as part of a plea agreement.

More than a dozen family members of victims of Heath’s crimes witnessed his execution.

When Heath was 16, he was convicted of killing teenager Michael Green, and served 10 years in prison.

Days after Sheridan’s death, authorities also found the body of Tony Hammett. Heath was charged with Hammett’s killing, but the case never went to trial.

Sheridan’s brother, Thomas Sheridan, said during a news conference following the execution that his family, as well as the families of Green and Hammett, had been waiting for this day for more than three decades.

“Tonight, Ronald Palmer Heath was released to the custody of his new parole officer. As far as I’m concerned, any forgiveness is between him and God,” Thomas Sheridan said.

The Florida Supreme Court denied appeals filed by Ronald Heath last week. His attorneys had argued that Florida corrections officials had mismanaged its own death penalty protocols, that the state’s secretive clemency process blocked due process, that Heath’s incarceration as a juvenile stunted his brain development and that jurors did not recommend the death penalty unanimously.

On Tuesday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Heath’s appeal.

A total of 47 people were executed in the U.S. in 2025. Florida led the way with a flurry of death warrants signed by DeSantis. Alabama, South Carolina and Texas tied for second with five executions each that year.

Two more Florida executions have already been scheduled for later this month and next month. Melvin Trotter, 65, is scheduled to die on Feb. 24, and the execution of Billy Leon Kearse, 53, is set to follow exactly a week later on March 3.

All Florida executions are carried out via lethal injection using a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.

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CREATORS: Kidnappings Are Rare and Unpredictable

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
February 10, 2026

The desperate search for Nancy Guthrie continues in Tucson, Ariz. Guthrie is the mother of NBC's "Today Show" co-anchor Savannah Guthrie. Guthrie has been missing for over a week, and concern grows about her physical health and the possibility of her kidnapping for ransom.

Kidnapping for ransom is a relic of a bygone era. The most notable kidnappings of the last century have been resolved in various ways, including returned unharmed, battered, deceased and incarcerated. With past kidnappings as a guide, it is anyone's guess as to the outcome of Guthrie's disappearance.

Maybe the most well-known kidnapping of the twentieth century was the abduction of Charles Lindbergh, Jr. The 20-month-old Lindbergh was abducted on March 1, 1932, from his crib in the family's posh New Jersey home.

Lindbergh's father, Charles Lindbergh, Sr., was an international celebrity as a result of completing the first nonstop solo transatlantic flight from New York to Paris. His celebrity made his family a target.

A ransom note was left in the child's crib, and several other notes were sent over several weeks. A ransom was paid in April, and the child was not returned. On May 12, the child's battered body was discovered on the side of a road by a truck driver not more than five miles from the Lindbergh home.

More than two years after Lindbergh's murder, a German immigrant, Bruno Hauptmann, was arrested. He was convicted of first-degree murder and executed in 1936.

Little more than 30 years later, Frank Sinatra, Jr. was kidnapped after a performance in Lake Tahoe in 1963. Sinatra was the 19-year-old son of the renowned singer and actor Frank Sinatra.

The kidnappers demanded a large sum of money. Frank, Sr., gathered the ransom of $240,000 and delivered the money as directed. His son was safely returned.

A police investigation revealed that Barry Keenan, Joe Amsler and John Irwin conspired to kidnap Frank Jr. for ransom. Apparently, Keenan was a former classmate of Frank Jr.'s sister Nancy Sinatra. The conspirators were convicted and sentenced to prison.

About 10 years later, John Paul Getty III, the grandson of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, was kidnapped in Rome, Italy. Getty's abductors had originally demanded $17 million. Getty's grandfather, once the richest man in the world, refused to pay.

After the refusal, Getty's severed ear was mailed to a newspaper. The family relented and paid a renegotiated ransom. Getty was released about five months after his kidnapping. After his return, Getty's life spiraled into alcohol and drug addiction. He overdosed in1981 at the age of 25, leaving him severely disabled for the rest of his life.

Patricia Hearst was kidnapped in 1974. She was the granddaughter of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. Her kidnapping did not unfold like other high-profile kidnappings.

Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). Initially, the SLA had offered to release Hearst if authorities would release a jailed SLA member. When the state of California refused, the SLA demanded that the Hearst family give every needy Californian $70 for food.

However, something strange happened while Hearst was in captivity. She became sympathetic to her captors; she joined the SLA and was involved in criminal activity, including a bank robbery where she appeared on video surveillance with an automatic weapon.

Hearst was later found by police. Instead of being reunited with her family, she was jailed. At her trial, the prosecution suggested that Hearst had willingly joined the SLA. However, she testified that she had been sexually assaulted and threatened with death while held captive.

In 1976, she was convicted of bank robbery and sentenced to 35 years in prison. Her sentence was commuted by former President Jimmy Carter, resulting in her release from prison. She was later pardoned by former President Bill Clinton.

Other than Sinatra, the kidnappings chronicled here — good, bad or tragic — were not resolved for months.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book "The Executioner's Toll," 2010, was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino

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Analyst suggests spending "a lot" of money has altered the arch of violence

Jeff Asher, a crime-data analyst who frequently writes about the crime rates and runs the firm AH Datalytics, which powers the Real Time Crime Index, talked to New York Magazine about falling violent crime:

I would say that the thing that resonates strongest with me is that this has all been national in scope. It went up everywhere, and it’s going down pretty much everywhere. It’s happening in an environment where we didn’t see dramatic increases in policing, and we didn’t see huge increases in clearance rates — they plunged in 2020 and 2021 and have recovered since then, but that largely reflects the fact that we’ve just got fewer crimes, which usually means higher clearance rates. So there hasn’t been some massive improvement from law enforcement. A lot of times activists will talk about the root causes of crime — how you’ve got to fix poverty, you’ve got to fix education. We didn’t fix any of that. And the country is still awash in guns.

The trend started in 2023, so the “why” probably has its roots in things that happened in 2021 and 2022, because these things don’t usually change suddenly. So what are the explanations that fit? An article I wrote last summer focused heavily on investing in communities. We spent a lot of money on a lot of things, some of which had direct crime-fighting benefits to it, like the Department of Justice increasing its budget for grants by a billion dollars between 2021 and 2023 and 2024. A lot of those went to programs specifically designed to reduce violence, and a lot went to things that are not specifically directly tied to violence reduction but that we know have crime-fighting benefits: enormous increases in state- and local-government infrastructure, spending on streets and highways, on lighting, on neighborhood and social centers, on public-safety infrastructure. So a lot of money was available. We threw a lot of crap at the wall and we don’t know what stuck, but some of it undoubtedly stuck.

After writing that piece, I’ve been struck by other stuff that’s also plunging at the same rate. You look at drug overdoses, you look at traffic-accident deaths, alcohol deaths, suicides. And you look at something like carjackings, which I have a piece I’m going to run about in the next few weeks. Carjackings are down an insane amount. In Chicago, they’re down like 70 percent between 2021 and 2025. And carjackings are very specific, because they are, even more than murder, a young person’s crime. The average age of an offender is much younger than that of a shoplifting or a home burglary. So to see carjackings go up so much in 2020 and then plunge since 2022, 2023, suggests more of a societal change to me. You combine the drug-overdose deaths and the alcohol-related deaths and the murders and the carjackings, and it points to something that broke in the U.S. in 2020, and which is now healing. When I think about what’s driving this, it’s a combination of spending a lot of money on a lot of stuff, and some of it working, and that the thing that broke and caused all of this to go up is not as broken anymore.

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