Monthly Archive: January 2022

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.

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What Happened to Black Lives Matter?

by · Jan 28, 2022 2:03 pm

Investigative reporter Andrew Kerr’s piece in yesterday’s Washington Examiner exposes the corruption behind the curtain of Black Lives Matter (BLM), the nation’s most influential social justice organization.  BLM was founded in 2013 by black activists Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, in response to the acquittal of Hispanic neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman after the fatal shooting of black teenager Trayvon Martin in self defense.  The movement gained national exposure after the August 9, 2014 shooting death of black teenager Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.   BLM immediately launched protests which turned into several weeks of riots, with businesses looted and set on fire. The St. Louis Chief Financial Officer estimated a total cost at $20 million.  Months later a grand jury and the Obama Justice Department concluded that the shooting was in self defense.  By the May 25, 2020 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the group had amassed several million in contributions and had a worldwide network of chapters and affiliates.  Within five days of Floyd’s death BLM coordinated protests occurred, almost simultaneously, in 2,000 cities in 60 countries.  Many of the protests, especially in over 200 U.S. cities, devolved into riots with government buildings and businesses burned, police officers, bystanders and reporters attacked, and widespread looting and violence.  In the end the “mostly peaceful” protests took 25 lives and cost at least $1 billion in damage.   So how did BLM get the money to finance these protests and where did it go?

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Breyer to Retire, Part ll

by · Jan 26, 2022 11:27 am

Mike has noted the news being reported this morning that Justice Stephen Breyer will retire at the end of the Court’s current Term.  It’s true, as Mike observes, that this will give our aging President the chance to solidify the liberal wing on the Court with someone 30 or 40 years younger than Breyer.  But there are two other features about today’s news worth noting.

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Breyer to Retire

by · Jan 26, 2022 10:12 am

Pete Williams of NBC News reports that Associate Justice Stephen Breyer plans to retire from the U.S. Supreme Court at the end of the current  term.  Justice Breyer, 83, has been pressured by progressives to retire after Joe Biden won the presidency last year.   Liberal U.C. Berkeley law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky urged Breyer to step down and put “the good of the institution” ahead of his personal interests.  The progressive group Demand Justice actually hired a billboard truck to drive around Washington last year with a “Breyer Retire.  It’s time for a Black woman Supreme Court Justice,” sign.  Recognizing that optics are the priority among liberals Biden has already pledged to do this.  Williams speculates that federal judge Ketanji Brown Jackson and CA Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger are likely candidates.   Breyer’s replacement will not change the conservative/liberal balance on the court, but a young appointee, like Kruger at 45 or Jackson at 51, could serve for decades and be part of a future liberal majority.

Stores Adjust to “No Shoplifting Prosecutions” Policy of Progressive DA’s

by · Jan 25, 2022 6:51 pm

As “progressive prosecutors” have taken over in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Baltimore and many other one-party cities, merchants have had to adjust to the reality that their shelves can be and have been cleaned out by shoplifters and nothing is going to  be done about it.  The facts that retail theft is still a crime defined by the legislative branch, and in the aggregate causes very substantial economic losses, just don’t register (or don’t count).  There is also the fact that it’s driving businesses out of already “under-served” (and almost always minority) neighborhoods, but that too doesn’t count.  When the businesses take flight, they leave behind now-unemployed workers and a typically disadvantaged customer base with a skimpy and shrinking  selection of alternatives.

Then of course there’s the fact that the indulgence of rampant stealing is the calling card of  —  how shall I say this?  —  devolving standards of decency that mark the decline of a corrupted society.  But I wouldn’t want to be so old-fashioned as to bemoan stealing simply because it’s dishonest and corrosive to the basics of civic life.  Instead, being a capitalist, I want to highlight how stores have adjusted to the new reality.

A picture is, as they say, worth…………………………

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Copycat Gascón Recall Undermines Legitimate Campaign

by · Jan 24, 2022 12:18 pm

In an apparent effort to divert money away from the legitimate campaign to recall pro-criminal LA District Attorney George Gascón, a copycat recall effort called Recall Gascón Now (RGN) has been launched.  The group does not have a recall petition and, based upon its website, apparently intends to copy the legitimate petition and circulate it as their own.  The Metropolitan News Enterprise reports that former LA District Attorney Steve Cooley, co-Chairman of the Recall DA George Gascón Committee said those behind RGN are “rogue, gadfly activists,” and that their false campaign was an attempt to “sabotage, undermine and confuse the recall.”   Last December Cooley’s Committee announced that it had raised $2.5 million and hired professional management to begin the recall effort this year.

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Wherein the New York Times Joins My Analysis of the Surge in Murder

by · Jan 18, 2022 12:58 pm

Yesterday, I wrote an entry that focused on the explosion in murder in this country over the last two years, an explosion that has grossly disproportionately harmed black people.  I thought this a particularly noteworthy subject on Martin Luther King Day.  Now, a matter of hours later, the New York Times, of all things, features a discussion of the same subject that in some ways seems like a slightly different draft of my piece.

It is, to say the least, unusual that the NYT and I see any significant issue in crime the same way, but at my age, I’ll take what I can get.  The Times’ view of the causes of the spike is largely misguided, in my view, but its description of the problem is spot-on, and belies the dismissive attitude of many in the criminal justice “reform” movement.

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Re-Registration Needed For Some Users

by · Jan 18, 2022 5:58 am

It has come to my attention that a software glitch may have resulted in some users not being presented with the correct form at registration. If you registered without seeing a form with real name as a required field, it will be necessary for you to re-register before commenting.

My apologies for the inconvenience.

George Gascon’s Los Angeles: Welcome to the Third World

by · Jan 17, 2022 6:19 pm

Progressive prosecutors are making a name for themselves.  In the dreamworld of legal academia, it’s all wonderful.  In the actual world normal people inhabit, it’s something different.  In Kim Foxx’s Chicago, it’s murder galore, especially of black people (whom she falsely claims to want to protect).  Much the same in Larry Krasner’s Philadelphia.  In Marilyn Mosby’s Baltimore, the bloodshed is now compounded by an almost comical (by contrast) federal indictment for rampant dishonesty.  In George Gascon’s Los Angeles, a picture is worth a thousand words.

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