Category: General

A group of five domestic terrorists were arrested Tuesday at a rural site in Atlanta.  Mark Miller of Fox News reports that police found explosive devices, gasoline and road flares.  All five were charged with domestic terrorism, criminal trespass and four were charged with aggravated assault.  Were these members of the dreaded QAnon, or the Proud Boys, the “domestic terrorist” groups targeted by the U.S. Department of Justice and vilified in the national media?  Nope, they are college-aged progressive anti-police activists who have been spiking trees, throwing Molotov cocktails at police, setting fires and carjacking among other crimes to stop the construction of a police training center.  The members of Stop Cop City claim they are also protecting the environment and have been living in trees adjacent to the site.  It is a sad fact that these anarchists are the product of the “woke” counterculture that is well established in colleges and universities, the national media, the federal and many state and local governments, entertainment, social media and too many U.S. corporations.

With one month left in office,  Oregon Governor Kate Brown announced that she is commuting the death sentences of all seventeen murderers on the state’s death row to life without the possibility of parole.  CBS News reports that Brown, who has earned a reputation for issuing executive orders without legislative or public input, told reporters “I have long believed that justice is not advanced by taking a life…”  In 1978 and again in 1984, Oregon voters reinstated the death penalty for the state’s worst murderers  but the democrat-controlled government has not allowed an execution since 1997.  Brown is not the only governor who substituted her views on the death penalty for those of the people she is supposed to represent.  In 2019, newly-elected California Governor Gavin Newsom announced a reprieve for the murderers on that state’s death row, and dismantled the execution chamber.  He is currently shipping the state’s worst murderers out of death row to other prisons with more pleasant living conditions.

The state of Mississippi is set to execute Thomas Edwin Loden Jr.  on Wednesday, December 14 for the 2000 kidnap, rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl.  The Associated Press reports on a judge’s ruling allowing the state to move forward with Loden’s execution despite his pending lawsuit challenging the state’s three-drug protocol.  As detailed in a 2013 federal District Court decision denying Loden’s claims on habeas corpus; on the evening of June 22, 2020 witnesses saw Lodin flirting with sixteen-year-old Leesa Marie Gray while she was working in her family’s restaurant in Dorsey, Mississippi.  At about 10:30 PM Lodin spotted Ms. Gray’s car on the side of a rural road with a flat tire.  Initially, he offered to help her, but eventually forced her into this van and drove to his grandmother’s remote farm.  “Over the course of the next few hours, he raped her numerous times and battered her sexually, videotaping portions of the abuse, before suffocating and strangling her to death inside of the van. He then pushed her nude, bound body under a fold-out seat in his van, went inside his grandmother’s house, and fell asleep.”  UPDATE:  Loden was pronounced dead at 6:12 PM Thursday.

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In an effort to protect them from deportation, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon has announced a policy that requires prosecutors to drop or reduce the charges against offenders in the country illegally.  Louis Casiano and Bill Melugin of Fox News report that the new directive requires deputy DAs to make their charging decisions based upon whether or not they would effect the possibility an offender being deported, including aliens legally in the country.   As a sanctuary state, California law prohibits local police from cooperating with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities regarding illegals, but ICE can still track down and arrest offenders who have been convicted of serious or violent crimes, without help from local police.  In many cases the new policy will result in dropping gun and gang enhancements which could trigger deportation.  This policy creates two classes of criminals in Los Angeles;  legal and illegal alien criminals who will be undercharged or diverted to avoid deportation, and U.S. citizens who break the law and face the full consequences for their crimes.  While the policy is almost certainly unconstitutional, it demonstrates how little regard for public safety or equity Gascon and his supporters have.

It is well known that the largest factor associated with crime is biological: being a man. However, the etiology of crime in most other respects is driven by culture.  NYU Professor Scott Galloway provides a fascinating interview that covers many topics, including the crisis (and it is a crisis) of masculinity in modern America.  Not all will agree with every point he makes, but it is a sobering account of what is wrong and what can be done.

The Washington DC City Council has unanimously passed a bill rewriting the district’s 100-year-old criminal code, as reported by Matt Pusatory and Jess Arnold of CBS News.  Supporters said that the change was “long overdue.”  Among the revisions will be the elimination of mandatory minimum sentences and enactment of early sentence review, for offenders sentenced under previous law.  The bill would also reclassify all crimes, for example; distinguishing robbery from armed robbery.  It also gives the right to a jury trial to misdemeanor defendants.  This would overwhelm the district’s court system, putting pressure on prosecutors and judges to plea bargain.  Commenting on the elimination of mandatory minimums, Councilmember Charles Allen, the head of panel which adopted the bill said, “In regards to mandatory minimums….they frequently just tie the hands of judges and juries, and treat all victims as if they were the same.”  Apparently Mr. Allen believes that convicted criminals are victims.  It is not clear that DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, who has been criticized for DC’s 18-year high in homicides and other violent crimes, will sign a bill reducing sentences.  The problem Bowser faces was highlighted hours before the bill passed last Tuesday, as ex-con Kelvin Blowe, who advocated for the shorter sentences, was fatally shot on his way home from work, as reported by Fox News.

Progressive Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon’s effort to reduce the sentences of every murderer in the county received a setback last week courtesy of the state’s Second District Court of Appeal.  In the case of People v. Machado a unanimous panel held that a trial judge has the discretion to refuse a sentence reduction even if both the district attorney and the defense attorney request it.  The City News Service reports that convicted murderer Ernest Machado appealed a trial judge’s refusal to reduce his 25-years-to-life sentence for a 1982 conviction for first-degree felony murder.  He claimed that SB 1437, a 2018 sentencing reform law eliminating most murder convictions for accomplices, invalidated his conviction.  In this case, the evidence indicated that both Machado and his accomplice participated in the murder and robbery, allowing both to be convicted under the felony murder rule.  Machado also claimed that Gascon’s 2020 directive ordering his deputies not to oppose a murderer’s request for a reduced sentence, required the judge to grant it.

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The man who attacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ‘s husband in their San Francisco home last week is an illegal alien who has been living in the U.S. since 2008, according to CNBC.  David DePape, a Canadian, crossed the southern border as a temporary visitor, which allowed him to stay in the U.S. for six months.  For the past several years he has been living in a converted bus in Berkeley.   The New York Post reports that his ex-girlfriend, who is currently in prison, said that DePape has been mentally ill for years.  The Department of Homeland Security has sent a detainer request to the San Francisco Police Department asking that they hold him for deportation after his trial.  De Pape has been charged with attempted murder and multiple other crimes related to his October 28 hammer assault on 82-year-old Paul Pelosi. Under California law, attempted murder is punishable  by 5 to 9 years in prison.  Unfortunately, because California is a sanctuary state, if and when De Pape completes his sentence, he will not be turned over to ICE for deportation.

A Southern California man convicted on 16 counts of arson in 2021 and sentenced to five years in prison, has been rearrested for setting at least eight fires in North Hollywood last Wednesday.  Eric Leonard of NBC Los Angeles reports that 35 year-old David Rivas was released from prison on October 7 after serving 1/3 (18 months) of his sentence.  Arson is considered a serious crime under California law, but sentencing reforms, including Governor Jerry Brown’s Proposition 57, have given the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation the authority to grant early release of criminals, even those with priors for rape and murder.  Rivas is being held without bail, and faces trial on seven counts of arson.   Anybody confused about why there is so much crime in major California cities?