RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Convicted DC sniper Lee Boyd Malvo tells actor William Shatner on a cable TV special that he and his partner tried to recruit fellow shooters for their 2002 spree and that his accomplice killed one man for backing out, according to the program set for airing Thursday.

In a telephone call from a southwest Virginia prison, Malvo told Shatner two men planned to join in the attacks to make them more deadly but reneged. Malvo said his fellow shooter, John Allen Muhammad, killed one of the men in retaliation. Malvo did not identify them in the interview for a show on the cable channel A&E.

Malvo’s revelations came in response to questions about claims by a psychiatrist that the duo had co-conspirators. The psychiatrist, Neil Blumberg, who worked with Malvo before his trial, also said Malvo had confessed to more shootings in addition to the spree that terrorized the Washington region in 2002, when 13 people were hit and 10 of them died.

An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment Thursday on the claims. Malvo’s lawyer during his trial, Timothy Sullivan, did not immediately return a call.

In the TV interview, Malvo initially denies his psychiatrist’s claims that he and Muhammad had co-conspirators. Once pressured, he says someone in Arizona helped them get weapons and explosives, and a man in New York was supposed to help them get out of the country “when it’s all said and done.”

He said both later backed out of plans to help with the shootings.

“There was supposed to be three to four snipers with silenced weapons,” said Malvo, who was 17 at the time of the shootings. “In this way we could do a lot more damage along the entire Eastern Seaboard.”

Blumberg said Malvo told him Muhammad made him shoot two of the co-conspirators once they backed out of the plan. Malvo told Shatner only one of the men was killed, and that Muhammad did it.

Blumberg also said Malvo told him there was a third co-conspirator who was supposed to have joined them in Washington but did not. Malvo does not mention that person during the interview with Shatner.

The one-hour “Confessions of the DC Sniper with William Shatner: An Aftermath Special” premieres at 10 p.m. Thursday on A&E.

Previously, Malvo and Muhammad had been linked to as many as 27 shootings resulting in 17 deaths in 10 states and the District of Columbia.

Blumberg told the show Malvo had confessed to him to at least 42 shootings. When Shatner asked about the number of shootings, Malvo rattles off states where he claims he and Muhammad shot people but doesn’t give an exact number.

Malvo’s statements have been inconsistent in the past, and authorities have cast doubt on some of his reported confessions since he was sentenced to life in prison. Muhammad was executed in Virginia last year.

The sniper-style attacks all but paralyzed the nation’s capital, as people were shot at random while going about their everyday life — pumping gas, buying groceries, and for one young boy, as he went to school. The shooters used a high-powered rifle, firing from the trunk of a modified Chevy Caprice until they were tracked down at a Maryland rest stop.

Authorities involved with the massive hunt and prosecution of the pair are reluctant to say how many shootings they may have been involved in as they drove across the country to the nation’s capital.

Before Muhammad was executed last November, the prosecutor who put him on death row said it may be impossible to ever know how many were killed. Malvo has only confessed to authorities in jurisdictions that promised not to prosecute him.

“I don’t know that you can trust anything Malvo says,” Prince William Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul Ebert said.

Speaking on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Thursday, Shatner said he was fascinated by Malvo’s turnabout, “the fact that remorse creeps into his life.”

“He was a kid who was brainwashed. He was a malleable teenager and lacking love in his life,” Shatner said. “John Muhammad supplies the love and influences him to become a killer, and he becomes a cold-blooded killer at the age of 17. Now he’s in jail and now he begins the turmoil in his mind.”

Malvo, now 25, said he has forgiven Muhammad, who at trial he accused of turning him into a “monster.”

“This is going to be surprising, but I’ve had to forgive him in the same way in which I’ve had to, over time, gradually forgive myself,” Malvo said. “…Every day I get up, somebody’s wife, child, husband is not going to come home tonight. There is nothing that I can say or ever do that will ever change that fact.

“That is my constant reminder. Someone else cannot breathe for you. You can allow someone else to think for you, and when you do these are the consequences.”

Malvo, who lives in segregation at a maximum security prison, said he is filled with “hope and dread” for his future.

“It’s a little bit of both,” he said. “It’s hope and dread because everything has to be repaid.”

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If you are at a point in your relationship where you are checking your spouses phone when something has transpired be smart with the next decision you make. To approach the female can sometimes be a tragic situation. She could create untruths just to spite you or you could get cursed out. So to eliminate all dramas, go straight to the owner of the phone (your spouse), and leave all third parties our of your relationship insecurities. However, you still might get cursed out, LoL.

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From AtlantaPost.com:

When it comes to black hair care products, women of color are rarely faithful to one line. The dilemma can lead to overwhelmed bathroom cabinets for many women but also aid a vast open market market for hair care manufacturers.

That’s what Dr. Tashni-Ann Dubroy and Dr. Tiffani Bailey Lash are counting on. In December 2009 they launched Tea and Honey Blends, a new hair care line specifically for women of color. As chemists with an interest in cosmetology, they took a scientific approach to solving the commitment quandary and asked themselves before creating the products ‘what would make this the last hair care product I would ever buy?’

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Commitment. What is it about this word that places fear through the inner dwellings of some men’s souls? Why does it seem so hard for some males? Could it be because of the whole caveman theory and the idea that men were designed to spread their seed and have more than one woman? Or could it be something much simpler? Something that we all can relate to? FEAR. Fear is a strong emotion. One of the strongest next to love that we can feel and that everyone can relate to.

5 Ways To Take Control Of Your Life

Fear can make you do all types of things. It can also prevent you from your ultimate happiness. Some men fear that if they commit that they will be missing out on all of the other women of the world. That their life is somehow like a rap video and they too can have as many exotic women as T.I. or Young Jeezy does on the big screen. Their reality may be very far from this but I guess wishful thinking is better than facing the harsh reality that you won’t be driving that Maybach full of big booty chicks soon.

Then there is the fear of being emotionally vulnerable for another person. This act in itself is enough to send some men packing. The idea that someone could have control over your thoughts, emotions, and could possibly bring you to an ultimate emotional high or low is too much for some. This is why some men date several women at the same time. It is much easier for them to not develop any true emotions for any woman if they are all treated like an item rather than choosing one and treating her as a partner.

Do Black Men Expect Too Much From Black Women?

Either way all of these fears go back to the idea of a loss of control. There is the thought of the loss of being the top dog or assuming that there might be something better that you have yet to come upon. One could say that these reasons are universal and that women also face this same fear of commitment for the same reasons. What are your thoughts? Are there other reasons why people fear commitment? Do I have it wrong? Do women and men fear commitment equally? Do they fear it for the same reasons?

For More LJ Knight Visit YeahSheSaidIt

From NYPost.com:

You have the right to look ridiculous.

A Bronx judge has thrown out a summons issued against a Bronx man for wearing saggy pants, finding that “the Constitution still leaves some opportunity for people to be foolish if they so desire.”

Judge Ruben Franco said that although Julio Martinez may have offended the fashion police with his low-hanging and underwear-exposing pants, his manner of dress didn’t deserve a ticket from a cop.

“While most of us may consider it distasteful, and indeed foolish, to wear one’s pants so low as to expose the underwear . . . people can dress as they please, wear anything, so long as they do not offend public order and decency,” the judge wrote.

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From WashingtonPost.com:

Ten years ago, many experts thought you couldn’t bring antiretroviral therapy to people with AIDS in poor countries. The drugs cost too much, there weren’t enough doctors, the patients wouldn’t take the medicines correctly, and the risk of creating a resistant virus was too high.

None of that turned out to be true. About 5.2 million people with HIV infections are on lifesaving treatment in low- and middle-income countries. In sub-Saharan Africa, antiretroviral therapy, much of it paid for by the U.S. government, is resurrecting whole communities.

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE TICKETS

WASHINGTON – Congress on Wednesday changed a quarter-century-old law that has subjected tens of thousands of blacks to long prison terms for crack cocaine convictions while giving far more lenient treatment to those, mainly whites, caught with the powder form of the drug.

The House, by voice vote, approved a bill reducing the disparities between mandatory crack and powder cocaine sentences, sending the measure to President Barack Obama for his signature. During his presidential campaign, Obama said that the wide gap in sentencing “cannot be justified and should be eliminated.” The Senate passed the bill in March.

The measure alters a 1986 law, enacted at a time when crack cocaine use was rampant and considered a particularly violent drug, under which a person convicted of crack cocaine possession gets the same mandatory prison term as someone with 100 times the same amount of powder cocaine.

The legislation reduces that ratio to about 18-1.

The bill also eliminates the five-year mandatory minimum for first-time possession of crack, the first time since the Nixon administration that Congress has repealed a mandatory minimum sentence.

“For Congress to take a step toward saying ‘we have made a mistake’ and this sentence is too severe … is really remarkable,” said Virginia Sloan, president of the Constitution Project, which in studies of sentencing practices has referred to crack cocaine mandates as a “‘poster child’ for the injustices of mandatory sentencing.”

Under current law, possession of five grams of crack triggers a mandatory minimum five-year prison sentence. The same mandatory sentence applies to a person convicted of trafficking 500 grams of powder cocaine.

The proposed legislation would apply the five-year term to someone with 28 grams, or an ounce, of crack.

Julie Stewart, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, said 28 grams is about what the average crack dealer might carry around.

She said politicians and the U.S. Sentencing Commission have for years acknowledged the unfairness of the system, “but no one wanted to look soft on crime.” The legislative change, she said, is “much more about being smart on crime.”

She cited Sentencing Commission estimates that almost 3,000 people a year subjected to the mandatory sentence would be affected by the change. The average sentence in these cases would be reduced from 106 months to 79 months.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the main sponsor of the bill in the Senate, said last year close to 1,500 people were convicted for possession of somewhere between five and 25 grams of crack cocaine, subjecting them to mandatory minimum sentences.

Some 80 percent of those convicted of crack cocaine offenses are black.

In the 2008 campaign, Obama said the sentencing disparity “has disproportionately filled our prisons with young black and Latino drug users.” He cited figures that blacks serve almost as much time for drug offenses — 58.7 months — as whites do for violent offenses — 61.7 months.

The Congressional Budget Office said the bill would save the government $42 million over five years because of the reduction in prison populations.

Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, was the only lawmaker to speak against the bill, saying the 1986 law was enacted at a time when the crack cocaine epidemic was bringing a sharp spike in violence to minority communities and it would be a mistake to change it.

“Why do we want to risk another surge of addiction and violence by reducing penalties?” he asked. “Why are we coddling some of the most dangerous drug traffickers in America?”

Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., noted that the bill also requires the sentencing commission to significantly increase penalties for drug violations involving violence. “This way the defendant is sentenced for what he or she actually did, not the form of cocaine involved,” Scott said.

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From ABCNews.com:

Arizona’s tough new immigration law is just hours away from taking effect, but a federal judge has remained silent so far on a request for an injunction that would block the law from being enforced.

The date when the Arizona immigration law is intended to take effect draws near.

The U.S. Justice Department had asked Federal Judge Susan Bolton to issue an injunction against the law, known as SB 1070, during a hearing last week. Attorneys representing Arizona and Gov. Jan Brewer asked that the entire case be dismissed.

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