Monthly Archive: September 2025

Walters: Newsom Delusional on Cal. Mask Law

by · Sep 24, 2025 11:35 am

Dan Walters has this column at CalMatters on California Governor Newsom, masked ICE officers, and the recently enacted state statute on masking. “Newsom and any other critics of ICE tactics are delusional if they believe federal officers will be arrested and prosecuted for wearing masks after SB 627 takes effect.” The column headline, probably written by an editor and not by Walters, is oddly equivocal: “Court rulings cast doubt on California mask ban for federal officers.” Walters doesn’t say the ban is in doubt. He says there is no way it will be enforced. Continue reading . . .

Guardsmen as Cops

by · Sep 22, 2025 12:59 pm

Barry Latzer and Peter Moskos have this article in the National Review. Sending in the National Guard for law enforcement has some benefits, but it is not an optimum solution.

But there are limits to what soldiers can do.

First, troops do not have police powers and cannot enforce laws or arrest lawbreakers. They are not trained in the chain-of-custody protocols needed for evidence preservation. Nor can they do the detective work needed to track down suspects.

Second, national guardsmen cannot prepare a case for the prosecutor. This is a vital job for which the police have training. Cops are taught how to interview victims and other witnesses, gather physical evidence, and preserve the chain of custody, and then testify in court to help obtain a conviction. Soldiers can’t do this, and without convictions, offenders cannot be sentenced and incarcerated for their crimes.

Continue reading . . .

Exposing the Big Lie

by · Sep 19, 2025 1:17 pm

The assassination of Charlie Kirk on September 10 by the radicalized 22-year-old boyfriend of a transgender male roommate has become a polarizing event eclipsing even last year’s attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a campaign rally. The day after the shooting MSNBC commenter Matthew Dowd said in an on-air interview that Kirk had been “one of the most divisive, especially divisive younger figures in this, who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups. You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place.”  A day later Dowd was fired for making that statement. On his late night September 15 show, host Jimmy Kimmel told his audience “The MAGA Gang [is] desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”  Two days later ABC announced it was pulling Kimmel’s show off the air indefinitely after two of ABC’s largest broadcast networks reported they would no longer air it.

Continue reading . . .

Why is America No Longer Safe?

by · Sep 10, 2025 1:44 pm

In recent weeks, crime has become the central topic of debate among politicians and the major media. The President is responsible for this. Crime was a primary issue in his campaign and helped get him elected. His decision to deploy the national guard to augment police in Washington, DC and send troops to assist the ICE removal of illegal alien criminals in Los Angeles has been met with harsh criticism by democrats who continue to claim that crime is not a serious problem. While crime rates are lower than during the Black Lives Matter crime explosion of 2020, the 283 murders in Chicago and 186 in New York City this year represent crisis-level violence to most people. The New York Post reports that on September 1, a stolen car pulled up to a popular deli in the Bronx at 7:30 PM and two young black men jumped out and opened fire, killing one and injuring four. All of the suspects were arrested, including a 16-year-old. A week earlier, a 15-year-old repeat offender on an ankle monitor was arrested by New York police for killing a man during a botched robbery. On August 23, four young black men, including a 16-year-old, were arrested for shooting up a basketball tournament at a New York park, killing one and injuring three others , including a 17-year-old girl currently fighting for her life from a gunshot to the face. Is anyone surprised that many New Yorkers don’t feel safe?

Continue reading . . .

Unsubstantiated Claims for Effectiveness of Rehabilitation Programs

by · Sep 5, 2025 2:23 pm

Corrections officials often claim that their rehabilitation programs are “evidence-based.” For example, a recent report by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) found that participants in enhanced alternative custody programs (EACPs) recidivated at a lower rate than nonparticipants. The report’s accompanying press release painted the results as a clear win for the program. This framing is misleading because the evidence doesn’t hold up under closer scrutiny.

In a recently published Research in Brief, we raise doubts about these claims of effectiveness, noting how the report presents descriptive statistics rather than causal evidence.

Continue reading . . .

CA Legislature is Clueless on Crime

by · Sep 5, 2025 12:53 pm

Last November over 68% of California voters announced that they wanted state law enforcement to crack-down on thieves, drug dealers and addicts.  Proposition 36 passed in all 58 counties including the liberal strongholds of San Francisco, Marin and Los Angeles. The measure was opposed by the democrat party, almost every democrat in the Legislature, the Governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General and every liberal/progressive public interest and non-profit organization in the state.  It mandated that habitual thieves and drug dealers be charged with felonies and that drug addicts arrested for a third time for drug possession be ordered into either treatment or jail.  So how did democrat lawmakers react? Earlier this year Assemblywoman Sade Elhawary, who represents gang-infested South Central Los Angeles, introduced a bill that ABC News reports would allow habitual felons to go into a rehab program rather than jail or prison. This bill,  AB 1231, the Safer Communities Through Opportunities Act, is a direct rebuke of the California voters, including several million democrats who voted for Proposition 36.  In July during the budget process, media exposure shamed Elhawary and her colleagues in the Legislature into approving a one-time set aside of 1/4 of the funds needed annually to allow counties to fully enforce Proposition 36.  Now they are considering a bill allowing judges to completely ignore it and let the criminals go.  In order to actually restore public safety in California, at the 2026 election voters must burst the bubble that the democrat majority of the state legislature are living in by removing them from office.

Back-from-the-Dead Attack on Habeas Corpus Reform

by · Sep 3, 2025 5:03 pm

Like a bad horror movie, a monster we thought we had killed in a past episode is back. The monster is the notion that the most important element of Congress’s 1996 reform of federal habeas corpus violates Article III of the Constitution because it binds federal courts to state courts’ interpretation of the Constitution, precluding the federal court from exercising independent judgment. In a nutshell, the law requires that when a defendant’s constitutional claim has been decided on the merits in state court, a federal court is precluded from nullifying that judgment on habeas corpus unless the state court was clearly wrong based on U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

In 1998, Columbia Law Review published an issue devoted to habeas corpus. James Liebman and William Ryan advanced the thesis described above in “Some Effectual Power”: The Quantity and Quality of Decisionmaking Required of the Federal Courts, 98 Colum. L. Rev. 696. I wrote the response article, Habeas Corpus, Relitigation, and The Legislative Power, 98 Colum. L. Rev. 888.

The Supreme Court resolved the issue in Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 411 (2000). The resolution left a lot to be desired, but the result was that 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) was enforced as the major reform it was intended to be, not watered down to a minor change based on the supposed constitutional limitation. Continue reading . . .