Author: Michael Rushford

In the wake of a November 18 Manhattan stabbing spree by a habitual criminal that left three people dead, New York Congressman Ritchie Torres has targeted New York Governor Kathy Hochul as the “New Joe Biden,” for allowing the murderer’s early release. Michael Ruiz of Fox News reports that Congressman Torres, a Democrat, was referring to 51-year-old Ramon Rivera, who had eight priors, before the state’s Department of Corrections released him early from the psych ward at Bellevue Hospital for good behavior, somehow forgetting that while there he assaulted a corrections officer.

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Matt Gaetz, the lightning-rod Florida Congressman nominated by President-elect Trump for Attorney General, has withdrawn his name from  consideration by the Senate. Melissa Quinn of CBS News reports that Gaetz issued this statement on social media this morning: “While the momentum was strong, it is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition.” Gaetz resigned his House seat last week following his nomination, but questions about his qualifications and and a yet unreleased report by the House Ethics Committee on alleged sexual misconduct and drug use put his confirmation at risk. Hopefully, the President-elect will take this opportunity to nominate a strong conservative with recognized legal scholarship and a better understanding of the workings of the Department of Justice. Senator Ted Cruz comes to mind.

The illegal alien who brutally murdered 22-year-old coed Laken Riley last February has been sentenced to life-without-the-possibility-of-parole (LWOP). Steven Vago and Chris Nesi of the New York Post report that Venezuelan gang member Jose Ibarra showed no emotion as Clark County Judge Patrick Haggard announced his sentence. Ibarra ended up in the college town of Athens, Georgia six months before murdering Riley after the Biden Administration flew him there at taxpayers’ expense from JFK airport in New York City.  He was in the U.S. illegally thanks to the Biden/Harris open border policy.

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California Governor Gavin Newsom has decided to postpone a decision on clemency for the two brothers sentenced to life without parole for murdering their parents in 1989. Michael Ruiz of Fox News reports that Erik and Lyle Menendez had asked Newsom to grant their request ahead of a December 11 resentencing hearing in LA Superior Court requested by District Attorney George Gascón. Gascón took up the brothers’ petition for resentencing last month as a publicity stunt he thought would help his reelection campaign. He was mistaken. Challenger Nathan Hochman defeated Gascón by a 2 to 1 vote on November 5. In a statement to the press Newsom said that he will “defer to the DA-elect’s review and analysis of the Menendez case prior to making any clemency decisions.”

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Something remarkable happened in California on November 5.  In several of the state’s most liberal strongholds, voters rejected liberal politicians. Nearly two-thirds of Los Angles voters replaced criminal-coddlling George Gascón with a law-and-order prosecutor. In the East Bay voters recalled Pamela Price, the first black female district attorney in Alameda County history, because she refused to crack down on criminals. Oakland’s ultra-liberal Mayor Sheng Thao has also been recalled. Both votes were by a two-to-one margin. San Francisco voters fired liberal Mayor London Breed and two-thirds of them re-elected crime-fighting DA Brooke Jenkins, who had replaced progressive Chesa Boudin in 2022. Democrats make up 62% of voters in San Francisco, 59% in Alameda County and 52% in Los Angeles. A hell of a lot of them voted with republicans in these races.

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A federal district judge has rejected Alabama murderer Carey Dale Grayson’s petition to block his November 21 execution. Ivana Hrynkiw of the Birmingham News reports that Grayson will be the third murderer that the state has executed by nitrogen gas this year. His attorneys argued before District Judge Austin Huffaker that the execution method violates the Eighth Amendment bar against cruel and unusual punishment.  The judge noted that it had been used successfully and that there was no evidence that it caused any pain. Grayson at 19, was the oldest of four teens who picked up 37-year-old Vicki Lynn DeBlieux who was hitchhiking to her mother’s home in February of 1994. They took her into the woods, beat her to death then threw her body into a ravine. Like the other Alabama murderers executed by nitrogen gas, Grayson chose that method over execution via the electric chair.

Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón threw a “hail Mary” last week announcing that he will seek the resentencing and release of the Menendez brothers.  Phil Helsel and Antonio Planas of NBC news report that at a press conference last Thursday Gascón told reporters, “I believe that they have paid their debt to society.”  Gascón has stated several times that no criminal should spend more than 20 years behind bars.

The cold-blooded shotgun murders of Jose and Kitty Menendez in 1989 by their two sons Erik and Lyle, who were 21 and 18 years old, was among the most notorious murder cases in Los Angeles history. Erik and Lyle snuck into their parents’ house with shotguns and came up behind them while they were watching television, shooting Jose 8 times and Kitty 10 times.  The brothers initially claimed that they discovered their parents’ bodies and suggested that burglars killed them. They later admitted the killings but claimed self defense due to their father’s alleged sexual abuse. The brothers were tried twice for the murders.  At the second trial a jury sentenced them to life-without-the-possibility-of-parole.

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Last week we learned that the FBI grossly under-reported violent crime data for 2022.  In October of 2023 the FBI issued a press release announcing that “national violent crime decreased an estimated 2.1% in 2022 compared to 2021 estimates.” The Biden administration took credit for this decline and, during the September 10 debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, ABC moderator David Muir interrupted Trump’s statement that crime was increasing to tell the audience that the “FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country.”   Recently the FBI quietly revised its data for 2022 with new numbers showing that violent crime actually increased by 4.5% that year, meaning that several thousand more murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults occurred.  Now, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report has blatantly mischaracterized school discipline rates. The report entitled “K-12  Education Nationally, Black Girls Receive More Frequent and More Severe Discipline in School than Other Girls,” suggests that schools systematically punish black girls for misbehavior more severely than girls of other races for the same types of offenses.

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During an interview on ABC ‘s Sunday talk show “This Week”  correspondent Martha Raddatz decided to fact check Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance regarding former president Trump’s indictment of the Biden/Harris administration’s open border policy for allowing the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to take over parts of Aurora, Colorado. “The incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes—apartment complexes and the mayor said, ‘Our dedicated police officers have acted on those concerns,’ ” Raddatz, told Vance. “Martha, do you hear yourself?” replied Vance. “Only ‘a handful of apartment complexes’ in America were taken over by Venezuelan gangs, and Donald Trump is the problem and not Kamala Harris’ open border”?  The exchange highlights the major media’s effort to minimize policies by progressive politicians which have caused unprecedented increases in crime nationwide, and particularly in sanctuary states.

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The following article was published in the October 8, 2024 edition of the California Globe:

There was a time when data compiled by government agencies could be trusted. For generations federal labor statistics, and data on reported crimes, commerce, health, finance, industry, agriculture and even weather were relied upon by both the government and private sector to make policy decisions effecting millions of Americans. It has become apparent in recent years that government data can be manipulated, or even adjusted to favor a political agenda. We learned over the summer, for example, that the U.S. Department of Labor’s monthly jobs report overstated the number of people finding employment by over 818,000 jobs so far this year.

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