Category: Politics

Unqualified AG Candidate Removed from DC Ballot

by · Apr 29, 2022 8:52 am

The District of Columbia Court of Appeals today affirmed a trial court decision removing the leading candidate for Attorney General from the ballot. The qualification statute requires that the candidate have been actively involved for 5 of the last 10 years in the practice of law, service as a judge, being a law professor at a DC law school, or “As an attorney employed in the District of Columbia by the United States or the District of Columbia.”

The court held that legislative service as a council member by a person who happens to be an attorney does not meet the last criterion.

California requires only being a member of the bar for five years. No actual experience required. Continue reading . . .

Candidates for LA Mayor Divided on Policing

by · Apr 8, 2022 10:30 am

As the Los Angeles mayor’s race starts heating up, one of the top issues is restoring the Los Angeles Police Department, which suffered $150 million in cuts made by Mayor Eric Garcetti and the woke city council in June of 2020.  Some may recall news video of Garcetti kneeling with Black Lives Matter protesters the day before the vote.  Soledad Ursúa of the City Journal reports that while the City Council told the public that the funds from the cuts would be reinvested in non-white and disadvantaged communities, city officials later reported back that the money was being earmarked for street sweeping, tree trimming, storm drains, speed bumps and other services unrelated to the disadvantaged or reducing crime.  In the eighteen months since the cuts were made Los Angeles has suffered an unprecedented rise in murders, assaults, carjackings, commercial and residential burglaries.  With this crime spike and the police-officer-to-citizen ratio in Los Angeles now roughly half of that of Chicago or New York City,  the candidates for Mayor are being asked how they would address the issue if elected.

Continue reading . . .

Worry About Crime in U.S. at Highest Level Since 2016

by · Apr 7, 2022 9:29 am

Megan Brenan has this report for Gallup with the above title:

Americans’ concern about crime and violence in the U.S. has edged up in the past year, and for the first time since 2016, a majority (53%) say they personally worry a “great deal” about crime. Another 27% report they worry a “fair amount,” which places the issue near the top of the list of 14 national concerns — behind only inflation and the economy, and on par with hunger and homelessness.

Crime, policy, and politics have gone in a depressingly predictable cycle. The American people were pitched a bill of goods that going soft on crime could be done without increasing crime, and perhaps even lower it. Fueled by billionaire-funded campaigns and viral videos, they bought it, having forgotten the lessons of the last third of the twentieth century. Continue reading . . .

Mike Pence Stands Up for the Rule of Law in Federalist Society Speech

by · Feb 4, 2022 7:33 pm

Like most Vice Presidents, Mike Pence was loyal to his superior while in office.  Of late, former President Trump and some of his more extreme allies have been touting the notion, hatched a bit more than a year ago, that Pence should have either refused to count the electoral votes that put Joe Biden in the White House, or have simply “counted” them in a way where Trump would have come out ahead.  Whether or not one views the last Presidential election as having had its episodes of fraud (what national election hasn’t to some degree?), there is no reasonable way to view that stance as consistent with the rule of law, or as anything but a dangerous deviation of how we do things in this country.

Today, speaking at the Federalist Society, Mike Pence gave his answer.  The Washington Post has the story.

Continue reading . . .

Breyer to Retire, Part lll

by · Jan 30, 2022 9:21 pm

President Biden has made it clear that he will restrict his pool of Supreme Court candidates to black women only, thus excluding almost 95% of the population from the get-go.  How this yields the most qualified possible nominee has yet to be explained; perhaps commenters can give me a clue.  I’m assuming here, of course, that Supreme Court qualifications are things like fidelity to the Constitution, legal scholarship, broad experience, fair mindedness and self discipline.  What a candidate looks like is decidedly not a qualification for the Court, or probably much of anything beyond making your way in Hollywood.

But enough of what I think.  What do the American people think?  ABC News polled the question.

Continue reading . . .

Crime and President Biden

by · Dec 15, 2021 11:34 am

The ABC News / Ipsos poll finds that a strong majority of Americans disapprove of President Biden’s handling of crime, 36-61.

But does the President have much to do with crime, really? Isn’t it mostly a state and local matter? Well, it’s complicated. Continue reading . . .

Breaking News: The Media is Pushing Racism

by · Dec 1, 2021 3:20 pm

As if we already did not know this, but sometimes the national media exposes itself so blatantly it defies logic.  Jason Riley has this piece in the Wall Street Journal discussing the amazing double standard in the way the national media covered the death of George Floyd, the Rittenhouse case and the Waukesha massacre.  “The protests that followed Floyd’s death rested on two assumptions. The first is that Floyd, a career criminal and drug addict, was somehow representative of black America, which is not only false but deeply insulting. The second is that police acted out of racial animus, which has never been proven. This is what happens when racial identity becomes the centerpiece of politics and public life in a multiracial society.”  But that was the prevailing narrative and the riots and murders swept the country in response to Floyd’s death were generally reported as justified.  “The Biden administration has picked up where the Obama administration left off.”  Although the criminals killed by Rittenhouse were white, he was immediately characterized as a racist white supremacist in “a clumsy attempt by President Biden and his allies to further a narrative about bias in the criminal justice system.”

Continue reading . . .

Crime could become hot issue in 2022

by · Nov 29, 2021 10:41 am

Veteran California political commentator Dan Walters has this column at CalMatters with the above title. The summary reads, “Political reaction to a spate of smash-and-grab retail thefts indicates that crime could be a hot button issue in next year’s California elections.” Walters notes:

“The current governor, Gavin Newsom, has largely continued [previous Governor Jerry] Brown’s [soft] policies, unilaterally suspending the execution of murderers and proposing to shut down some prisons. It was a bit odd, therefore, to see Newsom publicly denounce lawbreakers last week after a series of smash-and-grab raids on high-end retail outlets in the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California.”

In the home stretch, Walters has opened up a lead for understatement of the year 2021. A bit odd? Continue reading . . .

Even the Washington Post Gets It, Sort Of

by · Nov 9, 2021 7:57 am

The Washington Post is a predictably liberal newspaper very slightly to the right of the New York Times (in other words, not Maoist).  It woodenly goes along with whatever the liberal position du jour is, including opposition to the death penalty and an unfriendly skepticism toward the police and policing.

A week ago today, however, there was an election.  As has widely been reported, more liberal candidates took a pasting, running from 12 to 16 percentage points behind what Joe Biden won in 2020.  Crime and policing were issues across the country, including although not limited to Northern Virginia, just across the Potomac from the WaPo  —  which dutifully took note.

Continue reading . . .