California may be the capitol of wokeness.  On almost every area of policy, be it energy, education, the economy, elections, morality, climate, jobs, health, law, religion and crime, the Golden State has set the national standard for political correctness.   The commitment to the extreme leftist narrative is so entrenched that even as the state’s policies are making life unbearable for large segments of the population, its leaders and their supporters continue to push it.  Crime and law enforcement have become dominant political issues precisely because of the government’s obsession with a reform agenda that began to be implemented by Governor Jerry Brown in 2011.  As crime and violence have increased, anyone pointing this out has been labeled a “fearmonger” or “racist” by the dominant media and both state and local political leaders.

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Darrell Brooks, the posterboy for progressive sentencing reform, was found guilty today of six counts of first degree murder and 61 other felony counts.  Michael Ruiz of Fox News reports that the jury held Brooks accountable for driving an SUV through the Waukesha, Wisconsin Christmas Parade on November 21 of last year, killing six and injuring dozens.  Brooks, a habitual felon with a 50-page rap sheet, chose to represent himself at trial, insulting the judge and intimidating witnesses.  It took a day-and-a-half for the jury to reach its unanimous verdict.  In Wisconsin a conviction of intentional first-degree murder carries a mandatory life sentence.  Days before he ran down paradegoers, a Milwaukee judge released Brooks on $1,000 bail after he ran over his child’s mother with the same SUV during a domestic dispute.  At that time, he was free on bail awaiting charges of illegally carrying and firing a gun during an argument with his nephew.

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An Oklahoma man who in 2004, was angered that his nine-month-old daughter’s crying was interrupting his video game, killed her by bending her backwards until her spine was broken.  That murderer was executed Thursday by lethal injection.  Olivia Land of the New York Post reports that lawyers for Benjamin Cole claimed that their client was mentally incompetent due to his long exposure to drugs and alcohol.  A state panel rejected Cole’s bid for clemency last month.  Cole was one of four Oklahoma murderers who in 2015, challenged the state’s lethal injection process, claiming that it violated the Eighth Amendment bar against cruel and unusual punishment.   In its June 20, 2015 decision in Glossip v. Gross a 5-4 Supreme Court majority rejected the claim, holding that a murderer who challenges a state’s method of execution, shall be required to present an available alternative method.   The CJLF brief in this case argued for that holding.   Cole was the sixth Oklahoma murderer put to death since the state resumed executions in 2021.  The Glossip decision made it possible.

The City of Los Angeles is about to select its next mayor.  The contrasts between two candidates are profound.  Karen Bass, is a liberal former community organizer, three-term Democrat state assemblywoman elected Speaker in 2008.  She left Sacramento for Washington with a 2010 election to Congress, and served from 2011 to 2021.  While in Congress she was elected chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, and appointed to Chair the United States House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations and the United States House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security.  During her political career, Bass has avoided the “in your face” approach to racial justice issues, although frequently shared her view the criminal justice system is systemically racist.  In August of 2020, as the the George Floyd riots were winding down, Bass was asked about her thoughts on defunding the police. Bass replied, “I say it a little different. Instead of saying, “defund the police,” I say, “refund the communities.  Communities [should] reinvision what public safety is like.”  Whatever this means exactly, it still sounds like taking funding from the police and spending it elsewhere.

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