Monthly Archive: September 2020
by Michael Rushford · Sep 14, 2020 10:20 am
With huge swaths of Washington, Oregon, and California suffering from raging wildfires, five people have been arrested in the three states for intentionally setting fires. Peter Aitken of Fox News reports that the Police Chief in Ashland, Oregon believes that there is good reason to believe that the Almeda fire, which has killed two and destroyed hundreds of homes, was intentionally set. Police have arrested 41-year-old Michael Bakkela after witnesses reported seeing him set fires near homes. In California a woman was arrested for setting fires along the coast highway near Monterey. In separate incidents, two unidentified men were arrested in Washington for setting fires near state highways.
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by Bill Otis · Sep 12, 2020 8:40 am
A recent article featured on Sentencing Law and Policy reminded me of why my first career was with the Justice Department and I came to legal academia only later. The gist of the article — written by a law professor and appearing in SSRN — is that drug sentencing is a product of an ignorant electorate’s “moral panic,” and that the Supreme Court should rein in us wahoos by deciding for us what drug sentencing should be.
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by Bill Otis · Sep 12, 2020 7:08 am
New York City survived the 9-11 attack and came back to flourish under Giuliani and Bloomberg. But now, under the “progressive” and anti-police regime of Bill de Blasio, crime is surging. Businesses are plenty worried about the City’s future and are letting de Blasio know it’s time to get a grip.
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by Bill Otis · Sep 9, 2020 5:14 pm
President Trump today put out a new list of potential SCOTUS nominees, in addition to the list he put out four years ago.
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by Michael Rushford · Sep 9, 2020 11:48 am
Seven people were found shot to death Monday at an illegal marijuana grow in the small rural town of Aguanga, California. The Associated Press reports that police responded to a call reporting gunshots at a home in the one stop-sign town, and found a woman suffering from gunshot wounds, who later died, and six other victims who were dead. Officers found over 1,000 pounds of processed marijuana and several hundred plants. In February police arrested four people in the same community and seized nearly 10,000 plants and 400 pounds of pot. After recreational marijuana became legal in 2018, illegal grows have actually increased in the state.
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by Kent Scheidegger · Sep 9, 2020 9:16 am
The soft-on-crime side likes to pride itself as being somehow the champions of the poor and downtrodden. They are not. Rafael Mangual has this article in the City Journal on growing inequality in the impact of crime on New Yorkers. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Sep 9, 2020 7:41 am
Who would you guess said, in response to a question on defunding the police, “to take all policing off is something a latte liberal may go for as they sit around the Hamptons discussing this as an academic problem. But people living on the ground need proper policing.” Continue reading . . .
by Michael Rushford · Sep 8, 2020 12:20 pm
A federal district judge’s July 23, order restricting federal law enforcement agents from removing journalists and observers from restricted areas around federal buildings and the federal courthouse during violent protests in Portland was lifted last week by a divided panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Sam Simon of Politico reports that the court’s 2-1 ruling held that preventing federal agents from removing everyone, including journalists, from areas around federal buildings they are trying to protect undermines the objective and threatens their safety.
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by Michael Rushford · Sep 8, 2020 11:32 am
A unanimous panel of the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has held an Oklahoma City ordinance prohibiting panhandling on traffic medians unconstitutional. The Associated Press reports that in an earlier ruling, a federal District Judge had upheld the ordinance. The case of McGraw et al. v. City of Oklahoma City involves a lawsuit by two panhandlers, two joggers and an activist, all claiming that they had a constitutional right to use traffic medians to solicit money, sell newspapers, jog and chat with friends, hand out leaflets and display political signs.
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by Kent Scheidegger · Sep 3, 2020 2:13 pm
The Supreme Court and the judiciary were barely mentioned at the Democratic National Convention, says Ilya Shapiro in this op-ed in the WSJ. That non-event does seem to be a “curious incident,” to borrow Sherlock Holmes’s famous observation in The Adventure of Silver Blaze. Continue reading . . .
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