Author: Michael Rushford

As of last Sunday, commuters driving into New York City will have to pay a daily $9 congestion toll. The toll signed into law last November by Governor Kathy Hochul was enacted to reduce traffic in Manhattan and raise $15 billion for mass transit according to Rich Calder, Priscilla DeGregory, Georgett Roberts, and Hannah Fierick of the New York Post. The toll was supposed to take effect last June, but Hochul postponed it to protect fellow New York democrats running for Congressional seats from backlash by angry commuters. Commuters who have to go into the city to work are being forced to abandon their cars and ride on a public transit system which is demonstrably unsafe. Continue reading . . .

Outgoing President Joe Biden is commuting the death sentences of 37 of America’s worst murderers, a move praised by death penalty opponents. Each will now serve life in prison without the possibility of parole (LWOP). Elizabeth Pritchett of Fox News reports that several of the murderers were gang members who killed rivals involved in drug trafficking. For example:

Drug lord Kaboni Savage murdered or directed someone else to murder 12 people during a 16-year period–including an arson that killed six members of a federal informant’s family.

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In California’s capital city, police have pounced on thieves and druggies two days after the new tough-on-crime initiative, Proposition 36, became law. Michelle Bandur of KCRA News reports that on Thursday Sacramento deputies arrested 31 suspected thieves for shoplifting with three facing felonies under the new law.

Outside a retail store, deputies arrest a woman they say changed clothes inside the store. She told the deputies she has been arrested before and they explained the new law and how she will be going to jail, instead of getting a ticket. The law also says a previous misdemeanor in another state counts toward the two previous charges.

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An Indiana man who killed four people, including his brother, in 1997 was executed early this morning. CBS News reports that Joseph Corcoran received a lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital and was pronounced dead a few minutes later.

Facts taken from a unanimous Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals decision upholding his death sentence indicate that on July 26, 1997, Corcoran was in a bedroom at his sister’s home in Fort Wayne when he thought he heard his brother, future brother-in-law, and two friends talking about him downstairs.  Angry,  he loaded his rifle and confronted the four men, shooting his brother, his sister’s fiancé, and one friend at close range, he then chased the other friend into the kitchen and shot him in the head. At trial, Corcoran’s defense argued that he was upset about having to find a new home after his sister’s wedding.

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President-elect Donald Trump has picked California Attorney Harmeet Dhillon to serve as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights.  Evan Symon of the California Globe reports that over the past several years Dhillon;

helped lead lawsuits over California violating federal law over not verifying voter citizenship, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, sued the state and Governor Gavin Newsom over COVID school closings and re-openings, as well as over the state giving unemployment funds to illegal immigrants. She even made national headlines once again for helping defeat an outdoor dining ban in Los Angeles County in 2020. In addition, she started up her non-profit group, Center for American Liberty in 2018, taking on many cases that involved violations of free speech and civil liberties.

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In New York City, illegal alien gangs roam the streets looking for people to rob while mentally ill repeat offenders assault innocent commuters on the subways. As this goes on, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg releases repeat offenders hours after they assault or rob someone and typically declines to prosecute them. Yet, if a 61-year-old bodega employee defends himself against a violent repeat offender attacking him and the offender dies, Bragg prosecutes the victim. The attacker was black and the Hispanic employee spent a week in jail until a judge dismissed Bragg’s second-degree murder charge.

Today, a New York City jury acquitted Daniel Penny, who grabbed mentally ill repeat-offender Jordan Neely, who was threatening to attack subway riders.  Penny held Neely in a choke hold until he blacked out. Neely, who was high on drugs, died.

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Last weekend, President Joe Biden explained to the nation that the Justice Department targeted his son, Hunter, for selective prosecution.  In his statement accompanying the President’s pardon of his son, Biden alleged that:

“Hunter was singled out only because he is my son—and that is wrong . . . . Here’s the truth. I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe that raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice . . . .”

The head of the U.S. Department of Justice is Attorney General Merrick Garland, whom President Biden appointed. It would be preposterous to suggest that Garland did not authorize the prosecution of Hunter Biden. He most certainly authorized the unprecedented prosecutions of former president Donald Trump and the unannounced search of Trump’s home in Florida by dozens of armed FBI agents.

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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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