The QueQue: Timothy Poe's act of exaggerated valor, GEO sued over death in custody, A&M-SA did investigate Bradford's claims

As for his service in Iraq, Olson offered the Current this statement, "There is no official Minnesota National Guard record that Mr. Poe deployed to Iraq, as he reports. There is no Minnesota National Guard official record that indicates Mr. Poe sustained injuries in Iraq, as he has reported."

GEO sued over death in custody

The family of an inmate who hanged himself at San Antonio's Central Texas Detention Facility has sued the private prison corporation that runs the facility, claiming the inmate was wrongly taken off suicide watch days before his death in December 2011. The lawsuit, which was filed in a Bexar County court in April but assigned to federal U.S. District Court Judge Xavier Rodriguez this month, accuses private prison company GEO Group and Warden James Coapland of negligence in the death of Darrell Clayton DeLany. Guards at the facility found DeLany hanging in his cell by a bed sheet on Dec. 29, 2011, the day he was set for release. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.

According to an affidavit filed with the court, U.S. Bureau of Prisons sent DeLany off to the San Antonio prison because he failed to meet the conditions that would let him serve out his drug smuggling sentence at a local halfway house.

DeLany, according to the affidavit from former prison warden Brett Bement, had been on suicide watch but signed a so-called "no-self-harm" agreement two days before his suicide. That affidavit says Coapland, who was assistant warden at the time, didn't have the authority to remove inmates from suicide watch. The affidavit doesn't say who approved taking Delany off suicide watch before he took his own life.

A&M-SA did investigate Bradford's claims

Last fall when adjunct Texas A&M University-San Antonio professor Sissy Bradford challenged the placing of crosses on the tower marking the university's entrance, the debate turned toxic. As the response shifted from zealous to ugly, Bradford endured threatening emails and unsettling letters containing lines such as, "do you have the right to live?" or, "you will reign with your father satan."

Bradford's initial compliant over the crosses sparked a short-lived church-state debate across San Antonio and Texas. Then last month, hours after the Current ran a story on Bradford's claims that university police dragged their feet on investigating threats against her, Bradford got notice the university wouldn't have her teach in the fall.

The move drew a strong rebuke from the ACLU of Texas, the American Association of University Professors, which has already sent the university two letters (most recently on June 12) demanding Bradford be reinstated, and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which warned TAMUSA this month they're "prepared to use all resources at our disposal to ensure a just outcome in this case." But Bradford had already sparked an internal university investigation late last year concerning charges she launched against university administrators, including allegations of retaliation by university officials after the tower debacle and claims that they denied her "simple, short-term, nearly cost free safety measures."