Justice in New York

by · Oct 20, 2020 10:49 am

The poster boy for junk justice in New York City is Angel Rivera, a habitual criminal who has repeatedly attacked New York police officers and gained immediate release each time over the summer. Joe Marino and Dean Balsamini of the New York Post, report that in early June, Rivera was released after being charged with using a stolen credit card and threatening to shoot a man during an altercation. In July Rivera was arrested and released for assault after attacking police who were attempting to clear protesters at a major  intersection near Columbus Park. In September he was arrested again and released for headbutting an officer during another protest.

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The Criminal, Not Just as Societal Victim, But as Hero of the Resistance

by · Oct 19, 2020 5:52 am

I’m normally not a big fan of Andrew Sullivan, but he has a thought-provoking essay out titled, “Why Is Wokeness Winning?”  This passage in particular struck me:

BLM’s critical race activists do not support reforming the police, they want to abolish them entirely. In fact, they demonize all cops as “bastards”, and they justify violence and exonerate crime as legitimate resistance to the far greater crime of white oppression.

This crystalizes a thought I’ve had for a while about our opponents’ thinking:  The reason we should go soft on criminals is that we have the theory of moral culpability, not merely misunderstood, but backwards.

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DEA Makes Largest Meth Bust in U.S. History

by · Oct 16, 2020 12:11 pm

The Federal Drug Enforcement Administration seized the largest cache of methamphetamine in history earlier this month.  The Mercury News reports that the drug, along with large quantities of heroin, fentanyl and cocaine were found in two stash houses  rural Riverside County, CA. and at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry a few miles south of downtown San Diego.  The drugs confiscated from the two locations are estimated to have a combined wholesale value of $25 million, with enough meth to dose every inhabitant in the United States.

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BLM Forms PAC to Target DAs & Sheriffs

by · Oct 15, 2020 2:05 pm

The co-founder of Black Lives Matter has announced the formation of a political action committee (PAC) which will focus on the elections of county sheriffs and district attorneys.   Maya King of Politico reports that group will announce a slate of preferred candidates ahead of the upcoming November 3 election.  While the mainstream media likes to portray BLM as a disorganized grassroots movement, this fiction does not square with the well-coordinated and equipped protests that have been launched  simultaneously in cities across the country over the past five months or the group’s bank account.

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Suppressing Inconvenient Truths

by · Oct 14, 2020 10:23 am

For anyone who digs a little to find the facts, the truth about the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri is not hard to find. The case was investigated by the Civil Rights Division of the Obama Administration’s Department of Justice. That was a group whose bias ran against the police, not in favor of them. Even so, they concluded that the evidence showed that the “hands up” story was a lie. Michael Brown was shot when he attacked Officer Wilson for no good reason. See this post from last year.

But most people don’t read government reports. The truth will only be widely known when it is disseminated in mass media. The good news is that there is a movie, written and narrated by Shelby Steele and directed by his son Eli, scheduled for release on Amazon. The bad news is that Amazon has placed the movie on “content review.” Jason Riley has this column in the WSJ on the controversy. Continue reading . . .

Federal Judge: Inmates Entitled to Stimulus Checks

by · Oct 14, 2020 10:17 am

A federal district judge in San Francisco has ruled that it is unlawful for the Internal Revenue Service to deny federal coronavirus Cares Act stimulus checks to criminals serving time in state prison.  Evan Symon of the California Globe reports that Judge Phyllis Hamilton announced that the Treasury Department and the IRS have until the end of October to send the checks or the court will most likely order them sent.  The ruling stems from a class action lawsuit brought by inmates and inmate families.  The government said that it will appeal the ruling.

The Eighth Amendment and Statutes of Limitations

by · Oct 13, 2020 3:46 pm

What do statutes of limitations and the constitutional ban on “cruel and unusual punishments” have to do with each other? The logical answer is “nothing.” But the law follows strange paths, and the two issues crossed in today’s Supreme Court argument on the statute of limitations for rape in the military justice system. Continue reading . . .

9th Circuit Blocks Border Wall Funding

by · Oct 13, 2020 3:19 pm

In a divided ruling announced Friday, a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the President’s use of emergency powers to appropriate military construction funds to build the border wall is illegal.  Celine Castronuovo of the Hill reports that ruling also lifted a stay put in place by the district court to allow construction to continue while the government appealed.

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