Author: Michael Rushford

Imagine your five-year-old daughter was being wheeled into surgery to have a defective heart valve replaced.  What would be the most important qualification for the surgeon about to cut her open?  Would it be the doctor’s race or gender?   When the hospital’s chief administrator decided that it was more important that the members of surgical staff “looked like the community” than their level of competence, he put your daughter’s life at risk.  As a parent, if I suspected that this was the case, I would choose a different hospital.  The U.S. Supreme Court is the last word on what constitutes law in our country.  The exercise of this sweeping power has and will continue to have life-altering consequences on the millions of people who live in America.  What then, should be the most important qualification for the selection of a Supreme Court Justice?  Heather MacDonald’s compelling piece in the City Journal exposes the absurdity of elevating race, gender or any other criteria beyond competence, integrity and temperament governing the selection for membership on the nation’s highest court.  By limiting the selection of the next justice to a black woman, MacDonald notes that President Biden is “rendering 98 percent of all possible candidates beyond consideration because they lack `qualifications’ that have nothing to do with judging.”

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Investigative reporter Andrew Kerr’s piece in yesterday’s Washington Examiner exposes the corruption behind the curtain of Black Lives Matter (BLM), the nation’s most influential social justice organization.  BLM was founded in 2013 by black activists Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, in response to the acquittal of Hispanic neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman after the fatal shooting of black teenager Trayvon Martin in self defense.  The movement gained national exposure after the August 9, 2014 shooting death of black teenager Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.   BLM immediately launched protests which turned into several weeks of riots, with businesses looted and set on fire. The St. Louis Chief Financial Officer estimated a total cost at $20 million.  Months later a grand jury and the Obama Justice Department concluded that the shooting was in self defense.  By the May 25, 2020 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the group had amassed several million in contributions and had a worldwide network of chapters and affiliates.  Within five days of Floyd’s death BLM coordinated protests occurred, almost simultaneously, in 2,000 cities in 60 countries.  Many of the protests, especially in over 200 U.S. cities, devolved into riots with government buildings and businesses burned, police officers, bystanders and reporters attacked, and widespread looting and violence.  In the end the “mostly peaceful” protests took 25 lives and cost at least $1 billion in damage.   So how did BLM get the money to finance these protests and where did it go?

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In an apparent effort to divert money away from the legitimate campaign to recall pro-criminal LA District Attorney George Gascón, a copycat recall effort called Recall Gascón Now (RGN) has been launched.  The group does not have a recall petition and, based upon its website, apparently intends to copy the legitimate petition and circulate it as their own.  The Metropolitan News Enterprise reports that former LA District Attorney Steve Cooley, co-Chairman of the Recall DA George Gascón Committee said those behind RGN are “rogue, gadfly activists,” and that their false campaign was an attempt to “sabotage, undermine and confuse the recall.”   Last December Cooley’s Committee announced that it had raised $2.5 million and hired professional management to begin the recall effort this year.

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For decades liberal and progressive politicians in Washington have funded numerous “studies” on racial profiling and then forced consent decrees on big city police departments to address the disproportionate arrest and prosecution of black and Hispanic criminal offenders.  The purpose of these activities has been to advance the narrative that the American criminal justice system is racially biased, targeting black and brown populations either by having them murdered by racists police officers, or by railroading them into long prison sentences for non-violent offenses while white folks who commit the same offenses get probation.  One of the ways the federal government tries to resolve this systemic racism is through its grant-making policies.  A recent example comes from the Federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, which operates under the authority of Attorney General Merrick Garland.  The agency recently announced a new approach which conditions federal grants to state juvenile justice systems on the elimination of disparities between black and brown juveniles arrested and prosecuted for crimes and non-Hispanic white juveniles.  Attorney Hans Bader discusses this apparent return to government-enforced quotas in this piece in Liberty Unyielding.

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“The disappointment was palpable. As the one-year anniversary of the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot approached, the Department of Homeland Security had warned state and local law enforcement officials that ‘domestic violent extremists’ could strike again. Security forces were on guard and many people were on edge, reported the New York Times. Yet, as a CNN anchor morosely observed during the network’s saturation coverage of the anniversary celebration: `There’s been no violence at the Capitol today.’ “

So begins Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald’s City Journal piece discussing the remarkable show of hypocrisy laid out in wall to wall national coverage of last year’s January 6 “insurrection” by evil Trump supporters. “The media’s Capitol riot anniversary celebration, however, was choreographed to underscore the fictional claim that white supremacy is the biggest impediment to civil order in the U.S. today,” MacDonald says. Continue reading . . .

Last Sunday, (January 2) a woman and her 13-year-old daughter were driving through an intersection in the the LA County town of Norwalk when a speeding car ran a red light and T-boned their car.  Both died from their injuries.  CBS Los Angeles reports that the driver of the speeding car, 26-year-old Brittany Lopez, was driving without a license.  Investigators believe that Lopez was under the influence of drugs and alcohol.  She was arrested on charges of vehicular manslaughter which can be charged as a  felony.  Running a red light through a crowded intersection at high speed resulting in death can be charged as gross vehicular manslaughter, a violent felony.  Depending on the toxicology report, Lopez could have faced charges of “gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated,” which carries a possible sentence of 15-years in prison.  But before the toxicology report was available, Lopez was released from jail after the district attorney’s office refused to file charges against her for any crime.   In Sacramento, Bakersfield or San Diego, this woman would be sitting in jail awaiting trial. In George Gascón’s Los Angeles she is, likely as not, driving around in another car, probably drunk.  And Gascón tells us that his policies are restoring justice and have made LA safer.

Instead of announcing his plans to deal with a New York City crime spike in virtually every major crime category, newly sworn in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has handed down a list of crimes that he won’t prosecute.  Andrew Mark Miller of Fox News reports that Bragg’s plan for “decriminalization / non-prosecution” forbids holding offenders for drug possession, subway turnstile jumping, fighting with cops (resisting arrest), trespassing and prostitution accountable.  He also will not seek prison or jail sentences for any crime other than homicide or violent felonies stating that “reserving incarceration for matters involving significant harm will make us safer.”  Departing slightly from his wokemate, LA District Attorney George Gascon, Bragg vows to never seek a maximum prison sentence, even for multiple murderers, of longer than 20 years and will never seek a sentence of life without parole.  The more sympathetic Gascon will not seek a maximum sentence for any criminal of more than 15 years.

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