Federal Executions to Resume in July
After the Supreme Court refused to take up a case challenging the federal government’s new execution protocol, as noted in Kent’s post below, federal executions are set to resume in July.
Police Report a Spike in Violence
A survey of four U.S. cities finds that crime and particularly shootings have increased significantly since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and widespread protesting organized by Black Lives Matter. Luke Barr of ABC News reports that data compiled by the Police Executive Research Forum found that during the third week of June 72 people were shot in New York City. An official from the NYPD suggested that the pandemic-related release of inmates from Rikers Island had contributed to the increased violence. “[W]e’re seeing a large uptick of parolees involved on either end of the gun, as either the shooter or the victim,” he said. Continue reading . . .
Supreme Court Turns Down Federal Execution Case
The U.S. Supreme Court today turned down the federal execution protocol case, apparently on a 7-2 vote. The orders list is here. See page 6. See this post from June 18. The order notes, “Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor would grant the application and the petition for a writ of certiorari.”
For President, 2040
What do we need in a President? Maybe someone who thinks for himself, has the courage to stand against the winds of a debased culture, and understands, even if just intuitively, that the United States, though in need of a continuous struggle for improvement, has been a force for good in the world like no country that has existed before.
I don’t know this person’s political party. But I just found my candidate.
Because Black Lives Matter, Save Them Instead of Sacrificing Them to Blind Ideology
As I noted in an earlier post, no normal person disagrees with the proposition that black lives matter. So the obvious question is: What can we do to preserve and enhance them?
This is not a hard question, because we’ve been preserving and enhancing black lives for an entire generation. We didn’t do it by tearing down statues, defacing monuments, chucking bricks through store windows or setting up lawless “autonomous zones.” Liberals know perfectly well how we did it, but don’t want to admit it because that would confound The Received Woke Wisdom. Jason Riley of the WSJ spills the beans, however.
Bogus “Study” on Bias in Jury Selection
A recent study from The Death Penalty Clinic (read Anti-Death Penalty Clinic) at Berkeley Law, headed by long-time defense attorney Elisabeth Semel, has found that “California prosecutors routinely strike Black and Latino people from juries,” according to the Los Angeles Times. A piece by Michele Hanisee, of the Association of Los Angeles Deputy District Attorneys, raises serious questions about the accuracy of the study and the bias of its author. Ms. Semel’s study, entitled “Whitewashing the Jury Box,” examined 683 appellate rulings between 2006-2018 in non-death penalty cases where defense attorneys objected to a prosecutor’s peremptory challenge of a juror.
The Black Lives Matter Agenda, in Its Own Words
Since no normal person thinks that black lives do not matter, I thought it would be worthwhile trying to see what else is in the Black Lives Matter program. Fortunately, this got looked into by Paul Mirengoff at PowerLine. Here are some of the goodies:
The retroactive decriminalization, immediate release and record expungement of all drug related offenses and prostitution, and reparations for the devastating impact of the “war on drugs” and criminalization of prostitution, including a reinvestment of the resulting savings and revenue into restorative services….
Reparations for the wealth extracted from our communities through environmental racism, slavery, food apartheid….
A divestment from industrial multinational use of fossil fuels and investment in community- based sustainable energy solutions….
In other words, BLM has ambitions well beyond, and having nothing to do with, police behavior. It has a comprehensive, far Left agenda taking root in a vision of America as a centuries-long racist cesspool.
Supreme Court Upholds Expedited Removal of Alien Apprehended at Border
The U.S. Supreme Court today upheld the 1996 Act of Congress that sharply limited judicial review for aliens whose claims of asylum are not found credible by immigration authorities. The opinion of the Court, joined by five Justices, upheld the statute entirely. The Court rejected the claim that the statute violated the Suspension Clause. That clause protects the right to seek habeas corpus relief for its original purpose, release from illegal custody. It provides no constitutional right for a person seeking to remain in this country when the government intends to release him to his own country.
Of Mobs and Monuments
The present fad of monument toppling vividly illustrates the dangers of resorting to force rather than waiting for the process of government, which certainly can be agonizingly slow. Even when street action is initiated by people with good intentions, the forces unleashed inevitably spread beyond those intentions. There are no “controlled burns” in street mobs.
What the Data Say About Police
Roland Fryer, professor of economics at Harvard, wrote this op-ed for the WSJ, published yesterday.
In 2015, after watching Walter Scott get gunned down, on video, by a North Charleston, S.C., police officer, I set out on a mission to quantify racial differences in police use of force. To my dismay, this work has been widely misrepresented and misused by people on both sides of the ideological aisle.
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