Kendrick Castillo: "He was extraordinary"

(CNN)After a classmate pulled out a gun in class, Kendrick Castillo couldn't just stay still. He was surrounded by the friends he considered family and they were all in danger.

Kendrick died when he lunged at the shooter, giving other students at STEM School Highlands Ranch enough time to hide, his family and a classmate said.

"I know that because of what he did, others are alive, and I thank God for that. I love him. And he is a hero and he always will be," his dad, John Castillo, said.

"He just loved people that much."

The 18-year-old was watching "The Princess Bride" in his British literature class when the shooter pulled out a gun, demanding that nobody moved. After Kendrick lunged at the shooter, three other students also tackled the gunman and tried to subdue him while the rest of the class fled the room.

Kendrick was an only child, but his friends, including the members of the school's robotics team, were like his siblings, his father said. They would host holiday gift exchanges at his home, shared his toys as a child and would pay for a friend's movie tickets if someone didn't have money.

"Be selfless, that's what my son was, and it got him killed, but he saved others," Castillo said.

Kendrick grew up speaking English and Spanish in suburban Denver and first attended Catholic school. He would also spend time fishing and camping with his late grandfather -- who had been in the Marines.

"Kendrick was proud of him, proud that his grandfather was a hero," Castillo said. "Part of me knows that Kendrick wanted to live that legacy."

The teenager had kept the flag that once draped his grandfather's casket close to him and would pray and kiss his tombstone at Fort Logan National Cemetery.

"He loved the patriotism," Castillo said. "We are Hispanic by nature but we love America to the core."

Castillo and his wife Maria were not surprised to learn that their son ran toward danger. They raised him to be responsible and "to be good."

"This wasn't your average kid," Castillo said. "He was extraordinary."

Kendrick was about a foot away from the shooter and he immediately sprang into action, said Brendan Bialy, one of other students who jumped the gunman.

"Kendrick Castillo died a legend. He died a trooper," Bialy said. "I know he will be with me for the rest of my life."

After Bialy was able to move the gun away from the shooter, he checked on Kendrick and tried to get him to talk, but he wasn't moving. He recalls helping a teacher who came into the room and tried to render medical aid.

Other students had tried to stop the bleeding by applying pressure to Kendrick's chest, Brendan's father told The New York Times.

"I refused to be a victim. Kendrick refused to be a victim. The other students refused to be a victim," he said.

They did exactly what they were supposed to do, according to experts. Where people were once advised to flee or shelter in place, the new mantra for surviving an active shooter situation is "run, hide, fight."

Shortly after the shooting, Castillo and his wife Maria were frantically trying to reach Kendrick on his cell phone. They initially thought their son might have been injured, but grew more concerned when he would not pick up their texts and calls.

"I was a little bit guilty, because as I was trying to call him, I thought, well, maybe this is the wrong thing? Maybe I am putting his life in jeopardy by having the phone ring," Castillo said. "My anxiety and the lump in my chest were growing."

One of Kendrick's friends sent Castillo a text saying Kendrick had rushed toward the shooter, but at the time, he didn't know what to think about it. They watched as other students exited the yellow school buses and reunited with their parents, "and we didn't have that," Castillo said.

"I couldn't believe this was happening to my son," Castillo said.

The couple learned Kendrick was killed when they went to the hospital looking for him and officials told them his body was still inside the classroom. As they waited to see their son, students would come up to them calling their son a hero.

As Castillo and his wife mourn their son, he said they wish for Kendrick's classmates to heal, go to college, get married and start their own families surrounded by love. 

This Student Died Trying to Stop the Colorado School Shooter

The Rule of Law Matters: Impeach Trump

“Americans seem to largely agree that President Donald Trump is a criminal. Recent polling supports that claim: 54 percent of American voters say Trump ‘attempted to derail or obstruct the investigation into the Russian interference in the 2016 election,’ while 72 percent say Robert Mueller conducted a fair investigation. Despite the president’s bluster about how the Russia hoax has ‘stollen’ two years from his presidency, for which he thinks he ought to seek ‘reparations,’ most Americans understand that the president threatened his staffers who sought to cooperate with the Mueller probe. They understand that he tasked others with limiting the scope of the probe and with firing Mueller, and that he instructed his legal counsel to falsify documents to clear him of obstruction. None of this is even disputed. The only question is whether he can be charged for it while he remains in office.

“In an astounding letter released Monday, 400 former prosecutors contend that, were he not president, Trump would have been charged with obstruction. Virtually nobody other than Attorney General William Barr accepts Barr’s analysis that obstruction was never even on the table. Instead, the public is intuitively reaching a similar conclusion to Mueller’s: The president committed crimes, but as a sitting president, he cannot be indicted while in office. Which means that, again, the remaining question is what to do about the fact that the president committed crimes. (One can also ask why criminality is the only bar we have set for ourselves, but that’s perhaps beside the point.)…

“Donald Trump won’t accept a 2020 presidential election loss, whether it’s by a large margin or a small one, for the same reason he never accepted his 2016 popular vote loss—he doesn’t like it, and so he won’t let it be true. He will convince a third of the country that it wasn’t true, because he doesn’t like it. Indeed, that Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 is, by means of his perfectly circular reasoning, the very reason he will not countenance the idea of Russian involvement in the theft of the 2016 election. It’s also the reason he created a fraudulent ‘voter fraud’ commission. His psychological fragility on this matter has meant that he has done less than nothing to deter more meddling in the 2020 election. He wouldn’t even broach the topic with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week, because if you live in Donald Trump’s head, no election loss is legitimate. It’s funny to think that a ‘big’ election loss would make the difference…

“We make the same mistake of not acting on the ongoing threats to congressional oversight, to free and fair voting, and to foreign cyberattacks because an election might solve it at our peril. An election may well become the problem. Doing less than absolutely everything possible to reinstate the rule of law in America today in the hopes that there will be less election interference next time, or more benign election interference, or less purposive election interference, is insane.

“This isn’t a joke. This is a full-fledged crisis of constitutional democracy and the checking function of Congress. It’s heartening to think that in a year and a half we can vote our way out of our predicament, but it’s a bit like suggesting that we have a good long national think about how things are currently going and tend to it all in 2020, when all the systems that were already broken in 2016 are more broken. If Democrats in the House seriously believe that the attorney general has covered up illegal activity and is refusing to accept congressional oversight, they should model seriousness. Which means that they should do something about it, beyond waiting for the problem to be voted away by large margins.

“As Jennifer Rubin noted two weeks ago, Democrats have more than one possible response to Donald Trump’s illegal conduct at their disposal. There is no reason why they need to take any single one of them off the table, and there is certainly no reason why they should announce the plan to do so to the New York Times. Banking on an elections system that is being warped before our eyes is a recipe for disaster, and it’s a lesson that should have been learned by now.

“The challenge Pelosi faces is the same challenge faced by Mueller, and by Eric Holder. Elections matter, and getting out the vote in 2020 matters. But the Rule of Law still matters, and we shouldn’t abandon it because this small problem of Donald Trump might go away in 2020. The fact is that this problem might not go away in 2020, though by then, the argument that obstruction itself is an impeachable offense will have been lost to us. That’s all the more reason to fight for the rule of law today, as if it were sliding away. Because it is sliding away. That isn’t something the country should wait to vote on. The country already knows it is true.” 

For the complete article, The 2020 Election's Approach Is No Reason to Avoid Impeachment, click here.  

"Drain the Swamp"

“In 2016, into this tangle of worry and anger, came a showman who made big promises. A man who swore he would drain the swamp, then surrounded himself with the lobbyists and billionaires who run the swamp and feed off government favors. A man who talked the talk of populism but offered the very worst of trickle-down economics. A man who said he knew how the corrupt system worked because he had worked it for himself many times. A man who vowed to make America great again and followed up with attacks on immigrants, minorities, and women. A man who was always on the hunt for his next big con”― Elizabeth Warren.

Riley Howell, who died tackling UNC gunman, to be buried with military honors (New York Post)

The hero UNC Charlotte student who died tackling a gunman in his classroom will be buried with full military honors following a memorial on Sunday.

Reserve Officer Training Corps cadet Riley Howell, 21, was one of two students killed as gunman Trystan Terrell burst into his anthropology class and opened fire last Tuesday.

“Absolutely, Mr. Howell saved lives,” Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department chief Kerr Putney said of the student who chased down and tackled the gunman.

His bravery sparked a petition on WhiteHouse.gov calling for him to get full military honors — and a rep for his funeral home in Waynesville, N.C., confirmed to FOX 46 that he would be getting them.

“Riley was an ROTC cadet and would have served his country. Instead, he died saving the lives of his classmates,” the petition had stated.

The hero’s send-off started last week when his body was brought home escorted by law enforcement officials from across the county, according to The Mountaineer.

“Riley died the way he lived, putting others first. Our hope is that his example resonates with everyone,” his family said in his obituary. “We hope others will, if ever the need arises, answer the call to be selfless and do the right thing without hesitation.”

Another student Ellis Parlier, 19, of Midland, was also killed by accused gunman Terrel, 22, who was reportedly inspired by the Sandy Hook massacre.

Four others were injured.

New York Post

Study: Memories of music cannot be lost to Alzheimer's and dementia

The part of your brain responsible for ASMR catalogs music, and appears to be a stronghold against Alzheimer's and dementia.

NED DYMOKE

29 April, 2018

Some music inspires you to move your feet, some inspires you to get out there and change the world. In any case, and to move hurriedly on to the point of this article, it's fair to say that music moves people in special ways. 

If you're especially into a piece of music, your brain does something called Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR), which feels to you like a tingling in your brain or scalp. It's nature's own little "buzz", a natural reward, that is described by some as a "head orgasm". Some even think that it explains why people go to church, for example, "feeling the Lord move through you", but that's another article for another time. 

Turns out that ASMR is pretty special. According to a recently published study in The Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer's Disease (catchy name!), the part of your brain responsible for ASMR doesn't get lost to Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's tends to put people into layers of confusion, and the study confirms that music can sometimes actually lift people out of the Alzheimer's haze and bring them back to (at least a semblance of) normality... if only for a short while. ASMR is powerful stuff! 

This phenomenon has been observed several times but rarely studied properly. One of the most famous examples of this is the story of Henry, who comes out of dementia while listening to songs from his youth: 

Jeff Anderson, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor in Radiology at the University of Utah Health and contributing author on the study, says "In our society, the diagnoses of dementia are snowballing and are taxing resources to the max. No one says playing music will be a cure for Alzheimer's disease, but it might make the symptoms more manageable, decrease the cost of care and improve a patient's quality of life."

Study: Memories of music cannot be lost to Alzheimer's and dementia

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