Category: General

One of the more troubling aspects of America’s recent version of protests, involves activists actually attacking the homes of government officials whose opinions or actions don’t fit the latest woke narrative.  James Rainey of the Los Angeles Times reports that in recent months the homes of LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best, LA Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer, and liberal Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg have been the scene of late night protests, sometimes with bullhorns and vandalism.  The reporter actually touched upon a much broader problem, that involves activists groups doxing (giving out the addresses) of reporters, politicians and television personalities they don’t like and encouraging, over social media, organized attacks on their homes.  This has typically happened to conservatives including Senator Lindsey Graham,  Fox host Tucker Carlson and Congressman Josh Hawley for example.  But now liberals, who aren’t liberal enough are getting this treatment.  What to do?

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Posts on this blog have repeatedly exposed intentional misreporting of news events by the major media.  Often this takes the form of a reporter or news editor simply excluding important information because it would conflict with a narrative that the network or newspaper is advancing.  Sometimes the facts are actually doctored.  As noted in 2012, when Hispanic neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman shot black teenager Treyvon Martin after Martin attacked him.  The New York Times initially reported that a white man had shot an unarmed black man.  Later, when  Zimmerman’s ethnicity was correctly reported on local news the national media identified him as a “white Hispanic.”  Later, NBC  broadcast an audio recording of Zimmerman’s 911 call reporting on a suspicious person (Martin).  The network edited out the dispatcher asking the race of the suspect and pieced together Zimmerman’s statements “This guy looks like he’s up to no good.  He looks black.”  Mission accomplished….the message most people heard was “white guy shoots unarmed black kid.”  There were few headlines when, months later, a jury concluded that Zimmerman acted in self defense,

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While looking at the entry on my Georgetown Law Faculty page (which lists inter alia news articles in which professors are quoted) I found this one from the Washington Post, titled “Five myths about criminal justice” and subtitled, “Being ‘tough’ on crime doesn’t always make sense.”  I’m happy to say that I make the bad list with both Kent and former US District Judge, now law professor, Paul Cassell.  I’m listed as a sponsor of Myth # 5, to wit, “Criminal Justice Reform Means More Crime.”  The error of my ways is described as follows:

We’ve seen leaders hesitate to engage in criminal justice reform strategies because they seem too new, nuanced or radical. Law enforcement officials and prosecutors across the country have been outspoken critics of policies to reduce or eliminate cash bail. Georgetown University law professor Bill Otis, nominated to the U.S. Sentencing Commission by President Trump, called efforts toward sentencing reform “more-crime-faster proposals.”

My observation is then appropriately debunked.

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As reported by Mychael Schnell of The Hill,  the City Manager of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota was fired yesterday after a vote by the City Council.   Curt Boganey’s dismissal followed the shooting death of 20-year-old Duante Wright last Sunday by a Brooklyn Center police officer during a traffic stop.  Boganey’s transgression…..he told reporters at a press conference Monday that the officer involved in the shooting “was entitled to due process.”  The nerve of this guy!

City Manager Curt Boganey

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A legislative measure signed into law in 2017 by then-governor Jerry Brown has resulted in the parole of a Monterey County drug dealer who killed a young woman in 1989 to prevent her testimony in a case implicating him in an earlier double-homicide.  To make  sure she would not survive, Bradly Hardison, then 25, shot 23-year-old Sonjii Johnson five to six times in the upper body with a .357 magnum, while she was sitting in a car in front of her parent’s home.  One of the bullets passed through Johnson and lodged in her younger brother’s spine, but he survived.  Tom Wright of the Monterey Herald reports that the state Board of Parole has granted parole to Hardison, who, in 1990, pleaded guilty to the murder to avoid the possibility of receiving the death penalty.  The plea deal resulted in Hardison receiving a sentence of 25-to-life prison plus six additional years for the use of a gun and assault on Johnson’s brother as detailed in this 2003 District Court decision.

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President Biden this week appointed a Commission to examine possible “structural changes” to the Supreme Court, which to most people means the prospect of adding seats, i.e., packing the Court.  This Vox article bemoans the makeup of the Commission as something of a Federalist Society dream.  The gist of its criticism is that, even though the Commission’s majority is liberal, there is a surprisingly large minority of right/libertarian sorts.  Thus the liberal majority isn’t big enough or radical enough to be as useful as Biden could and should have made it.

It’s the precise nature of the missed opportunity for usefulness that’s telling here.  What it tells us specifically is what sort of persuasion the Left views as desirable.

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Over the past two election cycles rich white liberals, such as George Soros, have pumped millions into passing ballot measures, and electing political candidates, including district attorneys that will reduce sentences for criminals, restrict prosecutions and essentially empty out jails and prisons based upon the myth of over-incarceration.  The expressed motive behind this fiction is that consistently enforced laws against crime and increased sentences for repeat offenders is racist.  The proof:  blacks and Hispanics, which commit crime at higher levels that other races, are more frequently arrested, prosecuted and incarcerated than other races.  Their narrative leaves out the which commit crime at higher levels part, and so does most of the national media.  But to sell a lie over a long period of time, one must prevent the majority from finding out the truth.  Today’s Wall Street Journal provides a case in point.  The powerful Democratic City Committee in Philadelphia has voted not to endorse progressive District Attorney Larry Krasner’s reelection this year.

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CJLF Legal Director Kent Scheidegger will be delivering oral argument remotely to the California Supreme Court Tomorrow morning (April 7) at 9:00 am.

The argument will be live streamed at this link:  https://www.courts.ca.gov/35333.htm

The name of the case is In re Friend (Jack Wayne) on Habeas Corpus, S256914.

This will be the first case argued tomorrow and you should be able to click on it to watch it occur.
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