Lying and More Lying

by · Sep 16, 2020 5:09 pm

A pro-criminal “reform” agenda cannot win public support if presented honestly.  That’s the reason its advocates more or less continuously lie.  Their marquee lie (or perhaps I should be charitable and call it merely an article of voodoo-like faith), is that the problem is the behavior of the system rather than the behavior of the criminal.  Their second most important lie (and this is nobody’s mere article of faith) is that the sober measures we implemented in the Eighties and Nineties  —  more police, more proactive policing, more incarceration and more law-driven sentencing  —  had little or nothing to do with the enormous drop in crime that began after they took hold.  The audacity and belligerence of this lie has been something to behold.

As Mike reminds us, the Left is now engaged in rampant lying about the scope and nature of the riots they pretend not to want.  But Mike is not the only one to notice; Bill Barr has noticed, too.

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Media Lies About The Rioting

by · Sep 16, 2020 2:30 pm

Since the televised George Floyd killing in late May,  a well-organized and funded army of thousands of activists have invaded scores of U.S. cities to protest against what Black Lives Matter leaders characterize as systemic racism infecting every facet of American society.  While much of the mainstream media has told the public that these protests were peaceful, or mostly peaceful, local news outlets and independent on-site reporters have confirmed that, in many if not most cases, these protests turned violent, destroying millions of dollars of property, and injuring or killing dozens of law enforcement officers, property owners and occasionally a random bystander.   On May 28, MSNBC reporter Ali Velshi won the “Baghdad Bob” award for standing in front of burning buildings in Minneapolis while telling viewers “this is mostly a protest. It is not generally speaking unruly.  But fires have been started.”

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Sedition Charges Coming from DOJ?

by · Sep 16, 2020 11:23 am

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Attorney General William Barr told the nation’s federal prosecutors to be aggressive when charging violent demonstrators with crimes, including potentially prosecuting protesters for plotting to overthrow the U.S. government, people familiar with the conversation said.

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Crime Rates Up and Down in First Half of 2020

by · Sep 16, 2020 10:43 am

Crime Change Graph The FBI has released its preliminary crime report for the first half of 2020. In this unprecedented year, we see crime rate changes varying widely by crime. Rates for rape, robbery, burglary, and most thefts are down, probably because of more people staying home. Rates for murder and arson are up sharply, and there are substantial increases in aggravated assault and auto theft as well. Continue reading . . .

For Judge Amul Thapar, the Rule of Law Counts

by · Sep 14, 2020 5:45 pm

Judge Amul Thapar is one of many excellent appointments President Trump has made to the federal courts of appeals.  He showed it again in his opinion today for a unanimous Sixth Circuit panel that reversed, and removed from the case, a district judge disinclined to follow established law.  The subtitle of Judge Thapar’s work could easily be, “Being A Judge Is A Job Not An Anointment.”

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The Moral Foundations for Resistance to BLM

by · Sep 14, 2020 1:44 pm

As more cities become afflicted with the forcible disruptions staged by BLM, the question before us is whether a peaceable society is justified in fighting back and, if so, at what point and by what means.  I’m not talking here about violent assaults on police (like the one over the weekend in Compton, CA) or about riots, arson and looting.  Almost every normal person  —  and certainly any person open to reason  —  agrees that these are intolerable.  I’m talking about raucous demonstrations brought to the target’s home, or disrupting rush hour traffic, or forcing drivers out of their cars, or menacing ordinary people as they shop or dine or just walk down the street.

Most people understand that we need to accommodate free speech and perhaps, to a point, some of its excesses.  They also understand that racial discrimination  —  opposition to which is the asserted reason for BLM protests  —  is morally indefensible and has to an end.  The question is how far tolerance for forcible and quasi-forcible disruptions to the ordinary life of blameless people should go and thus, necessarily, when the correct response becomes, not tolerance, but intolerance, if necessary by force.

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Arsonists Arrested on the West Coast

by · Sep 14, 2020 10:20 am

With huge swaths of Washington, Oregon, and California suffering from raging wildfires, five people have been arrested in the three states for intentionally setting fires.   Peter Aitken of Fox News reports that the Police Chief in Ashland, Oregon believes that there is good reason to believe that the Almeda fire, which has killed two and destroyed hundreds of homes, was intentionally set.  Police have arrested 41-year-old Michael Bakkela after witnesses reported seeing him set fires near homes.  In California a woman was arrested for setting  fires along the coast highway near Monterey.   In separate incidents, two unidentified men were arrested in Washington for setting fires near state highways.

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What Passes as “Scholarship” About Drug Sentencing

by · Sep 12, 2020 8:40 am

A recent article featured on Sentencing Law and Policy reminded me of why my first career was with the Justice Department and I came to legal academia only later.  The gist of the article  —  written by a law professor and appearing in SSRN  —  is that drug sentencing is a product of an ignorant electorate’s “moral panic,” and that the Supreme Court should rein in us wahoos by deciding for us what drug sentencing should be.

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