Author Archives: Dana Pico

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A Drexel law professor claims that Rittenhouse verdict enables shooting “racial justice protesters”

David S Cohen is a professor Thomas R. Kline school of law at Philadelphia’s Drexel University, and perhaps that explains things; he’s getting too much of his information from the wildly slanted Philadelphia Inquirer. In addressing the verdicts in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, he wrote, in Rolling Stone:

    The Rittenhouse Verdict and a Supreme Court Case Could Spell an ‘Open Season’ on Protesters

    After the ruling, it’s clear that anyone who protests against racial injustice risks being killed without consequence

    by David S. Cohen[1]At least to judge by Mr Cohen’s Twitter entries, he’s a very hard-left liberal. | Friday, November 20, 2021 | 5:45 PM EST

    Today, Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted on all charges after killing two people and wounding another while he was conducting his own armed vigilante patrol of Kenosha, Wisconsin, in response to Black Lives Matter protests. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case about whether people have a constitutional right to concealed-carry permits.

    Why am I talking about these two things together? Because in combination, these two cases could mean that it is soon going to be open season on racial-justice protesters around the country.

    The Rittenhouse verdict is obviously very concerning for racial-justice protesters. Rittenhouse said he went to Kenosha the night of Aug. 25, 2020, to protect property. He did so by openly brandishing a semi-automatic rifle through the streets of the city in the midst of unrest over the shooting of Jacob Blake. While patrolling the streets, there was gunfire that resulted in some of the Black Lives Matter protesters thinking Rittenhouse was attacking them. They charged Rittenhouse, and he opened fire, killing Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and injuring Gaige Grosskreutz.

In this, Mr Cohen admitted that the shootings of Messrs Rosenbaum, Huber and Grosskreutz were not because they were “racial justice protesters,” but because they “charged” Mr Rittenhouse. Mr Cohen omits, of course, the fact that they did more than “charge” toward Mr Rittenhouse, but they assaulted him as well. Mr Rosenbaum yells, “F*** you!” and dove for Mr Rittenhouse’s weapon. Mr Huber, after Mr Rosenbaum falls wounded and dying, charges at Mr Rittenhouse, and, after Mr Rittenhouse falls to the ground after being struck by an unidentified person in a white shirt, Mr Huber starts to beat Mr Rittenhouse with a skateboard. Mr Huber grabs the barrel of Mr Rittenhouse’s weapon, and Mr Rittenhouse then pulls the trigger, killing Mr Huber. Mr Grosskreutz then charges at Mr Rittenhouse, and, according to his own testimony, pointed his handgun at Mr Rittenhouse, who then shoots Mr Grosskreutz in the arm.

Mr Cohen equates all of that with simply being a “racial justice protester.”

Unless, that is, what the Left is really against is law enforcement, per se. — Robert Stacy McCain.

In the infamous screen grab from CNN, with the chyron “Fiery but mostly peaceful protests”, we can see that the “racial justice protests” are not just marchers carrying signs, but some are criminals committing arson. If all the “racial justice protesters” had been peaceful, had just been carrying signs and chanting, there wouldn’t have been any perceived need for people to defend their property. Remember: Mr Rittenhouse’s actions were on the third day of the protests, not the first.

Mr Rittenhouse was not tried for shooting someone throwing a Molotov cocktail, or someone marching and carrying a sign, or someone yelling or chanting slogans or screaming into the night; he was tried, and acquitted, for shooting three people in self-defense. Does Mr Cohen believe that people should lose their right to defend themselves just because there is a “racial justice protest” somewhere in the neighborhood? Does Mr Cohen believe that arson is a legitimate part of “racial justice protests”?

Well, being in the Philadelphia area, maybe he does, given that The Philadelphia Inquirer, the nation’s third oldest continuously published newspaper, fired Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski for entitling an article “Buildings Matter Too”, in reference to the arson being committed in the City of Brotherly Love during the “racial justice protests” following the death of drug-addled convicted felon George Floyd during his arrest in Minneapolis. Many of the buildings damaged or destroyed in the Philadelphia “racial justice protests” were in the more heavily black areas of the city.

In one regard, Mr Cohen was using the Rittenhouse case verdict as his lead in for his real message: he is very concerned about the Supreme Court case of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, in which the petitioners were denied permits to carry firearms in New York outside of one’s home. New York allows only restricted reasons as sufficient for such permits, and simply living in a high crime area is not considered a sufficient reason.

Mr Cohen makes the specious argument that, if the Court rules in favor of people’s Second Amendment rights rather than state restrictions, everyone will be armed and peaceful protesters at “racial justice protests” will be in grave danger:

    What this means in conjunction with the Rittenhouse verdict is very scary for all, but especially for racial-justice protesters everywhere. With a proliferation of concealed-carry permits and a sense among the far right after today’s verdict that they have the freedom to patrol racial-justice protests and act as vigilantes, the court system’s message couldn’t be clearer — anyone who protests against racial injustice risks taking their lives into their own hands.

Of course, the Rittenhouse case was not about that at all. Mr Rittenhouse was legally armed, under the laws of the state of Wisconsin, without the Court having decided on the New York case, and Mr Rittenhouse did not simply open fire on “racial justice protesters.” He defended himself against assailants, after having first retreated and been chased. Rather, it was Mr Grosskreutz who was armed illegally, carrying a concealed weapon after his permit for such had expired. It was the “racial justice protester” who was illegally armed, not Mr Rittenhouse.

Mr Cohen does not seem to like people being legally armed, and claims that they will kill people, and target “racial justice protesters.” However, as of the end of Thursday, November 18th, in Philadelphia, where Mr Cohen works, 491 souls had been sent untimely to their eternal rewards, the vast majority — if not all — of them by people who did not have concealed carry permits, the vast majority of them possessing firearms illegally. 491 ÷ 322, the number of days elapsed so far in 2021, = 1.5248 homicides per day, not in any “racial justice protests,” but in criminal acts, in intentional murders. 1.5248 x 365 days in the year = 556.552 projected homicides for the city for the year.

And it gets worse. Despite the long, hot summer having reached its traditional end after the Labor day holiday, there have been 128 homicides in Philadelphia since the end of Labor Day, September 6th, 128 homicides in 73 days, 1.7534 per day, meaning that the pace of killings has gotten even worse, and you can bet your bottom euro that very few, if any, of those homicides were committed by someone who possessed a firearm legally. We have already noted the very personal Inquirer OpEd piece by Temple University Hospital trauma nurse Ruqiyya Greer, pointing out that the vast majority of homicide victims in the City of Brotherly Love are black, while on Friday, Inquirer columnist Jenice Armstrong noted the same thing, and how four black female juvenile students attacked Asian female students on a SEPTA train in a racially motivated incident.

Of course, the “racial justice protesters” in Kenosha were mostly white, simply because Kenosha County population is roughly 87.2% white, and 75.4% are non-Hispanic white. The assailants who attacked and were shot by Mr Rittenhouse were all white, though “Jump Kick Man,” if the identification of him as Maurice Freeland is correct, is black. The problem for Mr Cohen’s argument is simple: it has been the “racial justice protesters” who have been the violent ones, the criminal ones, in the vast majority of the cases. Unless Mr Cohen believes that arson and attacking bystanders or opponents, as the mostly white Antifa protesters did for much of the summer of 2020, are legitimate parts of “racial justice protests,” then his arguments completely fall apart. And if he does believe that such actions are legitimately part of such protests, then there’s just no help for him.

References

References
↑1 At least to judge by Mr Cohen’s Twitter entries, he’s a very hard-left liberal.
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Hold them accountable! Why shouldn't a Parole Board which released a violent criminal early be punished when the criminal raped a young woman?

We have previously said that the problem is not, as the left tell us, “mass incarceration,” but that not enough people are incarcerated, for not a long enough time. We noted yesterday that had the criminal justice system treated Aramis Murray seriously in the multiple times he had been arrested between July 27, 2017 and February 22, 2018, he might have been behind bars on April 23, 2018, the day he murdered Jason Lemer Smith, and wouldn’t now be looking at spending 25 years behind bars. Had the criminal justice system treated Mr Murray seriously, Mr Smith might still be alive today.

In the end, the criminal justice system did Mr Murray no favors; by treating him leniently, they gave him the opportunity to get himself in worse trouble.

And so we come to the case of Cody Allen Arnett, whom we have previously mentioned. Mr Arnett was convicted for two robberies in Lexington, on August 7, 2015, and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. As early as June 26, 2018 he was recommended for parole, and was scheduled to be released on August 1, 2018. This would mean that he served a week less than three years for his fifteen year sentence. Within 76 days of his release, Mr Arnett was arrested for the forcible rape at knifepoint of a Georgetown College coed, at a time in which he could have and should have still been in prison. Mr Arnett had five violent felony offenses on his record. Mr Arnett was only able to rape his victim because the Parole Board let him out early.

Mr Arnett’s trial had been delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but he was finally brought before the bar in July of 2021.[1]I would have caught this story earlier, but the Lexington Herald-Leader, which reported on the original charge, never reported on Mr Arnett’s trial or conviction.

    Jury hands Arnett six consecutive life sentences

    By Kyle Woosley | Georgetown News-Graphic | July 30, 2021

    Cody Allen Arnett

    Cody Alan Arnett was sentenced to six consecutive life sentences after jury found him guilty on seven charges relating to the rape of a Georgetown College student in 2018.

    After less than two hours of deliberation, a jury found Arnett guilty on seven counts — one count of first-degree burglary, three counts of first-degree rape, two counts of first-degree sodomy and one count of first-degree tampering with physical evidence.

    Following the verdict, the jury went back into deliberation for 15 minutes and found Arnett guilty on an additional first-degree persistent felony offender charge. State law prohibits the jury of knowing prior convictions as it might prejudice the jury, therefore these charges were not presented prior to the other charges. Arnett had previously been convicted of three felonies.

    The trial concluded Tuesday afternoon after emotional testimony from the victim and her parents. Previously the victim’s roommates, first responders, investigators and forensic experts testified. Arnett also testified as his defense team’s one and only witness.

    As the verdict was read, Arnett was chewing gum and grinned when the persistent felony offender charge was read. Commonwealth Attorney Sharon Muse also said Arnett winked and smiled at the victim as he exited the court room following his sentencing.

    In her opening statement to the jury at sentencing, Muse said she was seeking maximum sentencing on each charge. Because Arnett was found guilty of the persistent felony offender charge, she was able to ask the jury to sentence him to life in prison on six of the seven charges he was facing. This excluded the tampering with physical evidence charge, which could only be a maximum sentence of 20 years. The jury went with this recommendation and gave Arnett the maximum 20-year sentence.

    Arnett’s defense team attempted to blame his rough childhood, having several family members and a close friend testifying during sentencing on his behalf. The defense begged for “empathy” and “mercy” to the jury.

Oh, the poor baby! He had a “rough childhood!” Well, now he’s going to have a rough rest of his worthless life, living behind bars and barbed wire, which is exactly what he deserves.

There’s more at the original, including a parole officer’s statement that, regardless of the sentence, Mr Arnett would be eligible for parole in twenty years. But, perhaps if the previous parole board hadn’t shown Mr Arnett “empathy” and “mercy,” he’d have still been in prison on September 23, 2018, when he broke into the coed’s apartment and raped her, repeatedly, at knifepoint. The victim would not have been harmed, not have been raped, and Mr Arnett would not be looking at spending the rest of his miserable life in jail.

The Kentucky Parole Board failed! They failed to protect the victim, and they did no favors for Mr Arnett. If they hadn’t let him out early, he would still be looking at a future in which he’d eventually be released. The Parole Board members who decided to release Mr Arnett, despite his previous, violent record, should be held accountable for their decision. Quite frankly, they need to be locked up right beside him!

As for Mr Arnett’s victim? She’s a strong young woman, who has come forth to fight!

    ‘I’m ready for my voice to be heard’: Georgetown rape survivor discusses trial and resilience

    Woman speaks publicly for first time since attack

    by Leigh Searcy | August 2, 2021 | 7:00 PM EDT | Updated: August 3, 2021 | 11:22 AM EDT

    GEORGETOWN (LEX 18) — In the nearly three years since a rape was reported at Georgetown College, the name of the woman who was attacked had not been released. Now, after the man accused was convicted on multiple counts, Ava Stokes says she wants to show the public — and others who’ve been through a similar nightmare — that she’s a survivor, not a victim.

    Leigh Searcy (L) interviews Ava Stokes. From LEX18.com. Click to enlarge.

    On the night of Sept. 23, 2018, Stokes, then an 18-year-old Georgetown College freshman, told police she was held at knife-point and raped multiple times by a stranger who wandered in through the unlocked door of her student housing unit.

    As is typical in sexual assault cases, Stokes’ name was kept largely private during the investigation and the trial that followed. A recent interview with LEX 18 was the first time she’s spoken about what happened publicly outside of a courtroom.

    “Now I’m ready for my voice to be heard,” Stokes said. “I want other survivors to know that you are allowed to be proud of yourself for surviving something like this, you’re allowed to feel angry and want justice.”

    Stokes survived not only the rape but the reliving of the gruesome details of that assault in front of a courtroom of people as she took the stand at 35-year-old Cody Arnett’s July jury trial.

    “I’m not gonna lie, that was the hardest thing I ever had to do, especially with my family in there and describing the awful things he did to me for hours,” Stokes told LEX 18.

There’s more at the original, including the video of Leigh Searcy’s interview with Miss Stokes. She’s a strong woman, and is trying to help other women who are victims of monsters like Mr Arnett. Miss Stokes survived the rape because she was able to seize the knife and she stabbed Mr Arnett a few times. As he fled the apartment, wounded, he was apprehended.

And Miss Stokes asks the obvious question: why did the Parole Board release Mr Arnett so early? Why did they release a man with five previous violent felony convictions and think he’d somehow straighten up and fly right? She didn’t ask the question I have asked: why shouldn’t the members of the Parole Board who decided to let that cretin out early be held accountable for the consequences of their decision? Why shouldn’t they be locked up right next to the violent criminal they set free, the rapist they helped to create?

A crime like this leaves all sorts of chaos in its wake. Miss Stokes has alleged that Georgetown College did not do enough to protect students, and her volleyball coaches and other staff wanted to minimize the fallout from the crime. Why, Heaven forfend! it might have discouraged some other potential students from matriculating there!

There have been a whole lot of people who have not done the right thing in this case, when the right thing to do has been so blatantly obvious.

References

References
↑1 I would have caught this story earlier, but the Lexington Herald-Leader, which reported on the original charge, never reported on Mr Arnett’s trial or conviction.
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Lock him up!

Aramis Murray, 30, is not your quintessential good guy. Despite his claim that it was self-defense, a jury in Fayette County convicted Mr Murray of murder:

    ‘Senseless act.’ Jury convicts man in Lexington murder despite self-defense argument

    by Jeremy Chisenhall | Wednesday, November 17, 2021 | 3:49 PM EST | Updated: Thursday, November 18, 2021 | 8:13 AM EST

    Aramis Murray, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

    A Fayette County jury on Wednesday convicted a man of murder in a Lexington shooting death despite the defendant’s claim that he fired in self-defense.

    Aramis Murray, 30, stood trial this week for murder in the death of 30-year-old Jason Lemer Smith in April 2018. Murray claimed self-defense, alleging that he believed Smith had a gun. But prosecutors said in court there’s no evidence to support Murray’s claim and this shooting was “another senseless act of gun violence.”

    The jury agreed with prosecutors and convicted Murray after several hours of deliberation Wednesday.

    Murray shot Smith on the front porch of Smith’s home, a residence on Corral Street where Murray had also been staying, according to court testimony. Prosecutors alleged that Smith was trying to confront Murray because Murray threatened his and Smith’s girlfriends with a gun. Murray had been arguing with the women and making threats to them all day, prosecutors said.

    Jurors had been told they could convict Murray of murder, second-degree manslaughter or reckless homicide if they found him guilty.

There’s more at the original. The mugshot in this article was not in the Herald-Leader website.

The Lexington Herald-Leader used to publish mugshots of accused criminals, and did so on April 23, 2018, before the adoption of the McClatchy Mugshot Policy. The newspaper used a slightly older mugshot, dated February 22, 2018, rather than the one taken the date of his reported arrest. The jail website also has mugshots of Mr Murray dated July 27, 2017, December 21, 2017, and December 28, 2017.

Mr Murray, it seems, had a bad habit of getting himself arrested. Sadly, whatever got him arrested on February 22, 2018, didn’t keep him behind bars on April 23, 2018, when he murdered Jason Smith. If he had been behind bars on that day, Mr Smith would (probably) still be alive today. More, Mr Murray would not be looking at spending the next 25 years of his miserable life, the sentence recommended by the jury, in prison. Lenient treatment, in the end, did Mr Murray no favor.

This is the problem with the left’s continual complaints about “mass incarceration.” The really bad guys are almost always the people previously treated leniently by the system, the people who could have, and should have, already been behind bars for a lesser term. when they committed the acts that got them the big time sentences.

The mugshot? Why of course the newspaper didn’t print the photo of a convicted killer! The photo of an accused, but not yet tried or convicted suspect, a white suspect, is still up on the newspaper’s website, because they engage in race-based reporting.

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Is Our Bishop Catholic?

Whenever I read that His Excellency, The Most Reverend John Stowe, O.F.M. Conv., Bishop of Lexington, is in the news, I cringe, because I know it’s not for something good. From the Catholic News Agency:

Bishop Stowe ‘not in favor’ of Eucharistic document, but predicts it will pass

By Joe Bukuras | November 12, 2021 | 19:05 EST

Boston: An outspoken critic of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ draft document on the Eucharist predicts it will be adopted at their fall assembly next week, though he intends to vote against it.

“I’m afraid it is,” Bishop John Stowe, OFM Conv., of Lexington, Ky., said during a media briefing Nov. 11 when asked if he thought the document, “The Mystery of the Eucharist in the Life of the Church,” is going to be adopted.

“I think it will [pass] because it’s blander than what was proposed at first, and it’s got something that I think was trying to appease everybody,” Stowe predicted, “and I think a lot of bishops would have a hard time voting against it because there’s not something so objectionable contained in it.”

Stowe’s comments came Nov. 11 during a livestreamed forum about the fall assembly sponsored by Fordham University’s Center on Religion and Culture in partnership with the National Catholic Reporter. The assembly begins Monday with a closed-door meeting at which the bishops are expected to have a private preliminary discussion about the Eucharistic document, prior to discussing and voting on it in public later in the week.

There’s a lot more at the original, but it basically informs the reader that the document does not contain any explicit language which states that abortion supporting politicians like Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi should be denied communion, but addresses worthily receiving the eucharist.

In response to Stowe’s comments, Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila of Denver told CNA that the document on the Eucharist is in accordance with Pope Francis’ teaching.

“Bishop Stowe presents the discussion surrounding Eucharistic coherence as being motivated by a desire to return to a pre-Vatican II Church and to ignore Pope Francis’ teachings,” Aquila said.

“On the contrary, I believe that directly addressing the issue of worthily receiving Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is completely in line with what the Holy Father has called for and is directly linked with encouraging a deeper belief in and reverence for our Lord in the Eucharist,” he said.

“Some bishops seem insistent on portraying this effort to teach clearly on worthy reception of Jesus in the Eucharist as divisive. By framing the discussion this way, they are in fact increasing division by failing to address the scandal given to the faithful by those public figures who insist on saying they are devout Catholics in communion with the Body of Christ, when they are blatantly advancing laws that allow the taking of innocent life and the serious distortion of human sexuality,” Aquila said.

From St Paul’s website; note the ‘rainbow’ stole being worn by a clergyman. Bishop John Stowe is at the far right of the photo. Click to enlarge.

It’s that second part that bothers His Excellency the Bishop. The Diocese of Lexington does not have a lot of Catholic politicians advocating abortion, but it hosts, with the Bishop’s full support, a parish which openly supports homosexuality. He has openly supported homosexuality and transgenderism among parishioners, and if abortion is not a big topic in the Bluegrass State, a parish which welcomes open homosexuals in the same city as the Cathedral parish is pretty hard to ignore.

Photo from St Paul’s Catholic Church website. Click to enlarge.

Let’s be plain here: in stating that one should only attempt to receive the Host validly, all active and non-repentant homosexuals are necessarily excluded. Of course His Excellence the Bishop is going to be opposed to it!

Our Bishop just does not want to seem to be Catholic!

Then, on The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website main page on Wednesday, was this bit of joy:

Philly priest sexually abused a teen at Cardinal Dougherty High and on a Shore trip decades ago, lawsuit says

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia has been sued by a man who claims he was sexually abused by a priest in 1981.

by Mensah H Dean | Wednesday, November 17, 2021

A Philadelphia priest who was on the faculty at Cardinal Dougherty High School in the 1980s sexually abused a teen there and also took the boy on a trip to Margate, where he served him alcohol and assaulted him, according to a lawsuit filed in Atlantic County Superior Court.

The Rev. Peter Foley sexually assaulted the boy, then 16, on a trip to the Shore in 1981 and also at the school, where they worked together on student council, the suit says.

Foley, 83, reached by phone Wednesday at the church-run retirement facility in Upper Darby where he lives, said he had never abused the teen — or anyone else — although he acknowledged he had given him alcohol.

“The allegations are false,” he said. “I did give the kid alcohol, but that’s as far as it went. He was 17 or 18.”

There’s more at the original.

I will admit to having a low tolerance for such stories, because a claim forty years old can hardly be defended against. Mt impression is that the petitioner is just seeking a f(ornicating) payday. But the story is at least credible, because, as always seems to be the case, the alleged victim is male. Three other related stories appeared:

And, what do you know, the only other story which specified an individual accuser also specified a male ‘victim.’

Bishop Stowe is going to bat to defend homosexuality, when homosexual activity is explicitly forbidden in the Bible he purports to believe. More, homosexuality has been a huge problem within the Catholic priesthood, and that problem has spilled out in the form of predator priests. while it is wholly politically incorrect to say, the sexual abuse of minors in the Church has been a problem of homosexuality: the vast majority of sexual abuse by Catholic priests has been against boys rather than girls. The John Jay Report noted that, of the abuse cases it studied, between 1950 and 2002, stated:

The largest group of alleged victims (50.9%) was between the ages of 11 and 14, 27.3% were 15-17, 16% were 8-10 and nearly 6% were under age 7. Overall, 81% of victims were male and 19% female. Male victims tended to be older than female victims. Over 40% of all victims were males between the ages of 11 and 14.

The biggest problem with the Catholic priesthood has been homosexuality, and the Bishop of Lexington, by opposing this move by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, is supporting allowing that problem to continue.

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Killadelphia A trauma nurse laments over all of the bodies which are brought into her emergency room

As I do every weekday morning, I checked the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, and I saw that three more people had been sent untimely to their eternal rewards yesterday. 486 homicides ÷ 320 days elapsed = 1.51875 per day x 365 days = 554.34375 projected homicides for the year. With only 14 more killings needed to tie the record of 500, at the current rate that should happen in just 9 days, or on November 25th, which is Thanksgiving Day.

Philadelphia Inquirer writer Robert Moran reported, briefly, on one of the killings:

A 67-year-old woman was fatally shot during an attempted robbery inside a check-cashing store Tuesday afternoon in the city’s Ogontz section, police said.

About 1:10 p.m., the woman, who was believed to be the owner, was shot in the chest inside Any Checks Cashed at 5812 Old York Rd., which is next door to a day-care center. She was pronounced dead at the scene by medics.

That’s it, that’s all, a 67-year-old woman’s life, and death, reduced to two paragraphs. There were a couple more which told readers that the police had very little information thus far. The story had been superseded by others, and was not visible on the Inquirer’s website main page.

But it was this article, blurbed on that main page as “I wake up every day knowing that I will have to watch another Black man take his last breath. And over what?” that caught my attention, though the title, when I opened it, was different:

A trauma nurse’s letter to a Philly shooter | Opinion

I wish you would wait before you pick up that weapon. I wish you could come talk to me. I would’ve begged you not to do this.

by Ruqiyya Greer, For The Inquirer | Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Dear Gunman,

When the alarm goes off, I know that first responders are on the way with your target.

We stand outside, dressed in plastic gowns, gloves, and bonnets. We are sweating profusely as we wait for your target’s arrival. We hear the sirens from a distance. They get louder as they get closer. They race down the hill and come to an abrupt stop. We can smell the burning rubber of the tires. The door swings open and there lays your target, bloody and unconscious.

We struggle to pull his lifeless body, covered with bullet holes and blood, out of the car. It becomes a struggle to get him out as the moisture from the blood makes it difficult to get a tight grasp.

We get your target to the trauma bay as we empty several code carts full of medical supplies, injecting several lifesaving medications into his still body. Techs stand in line taking turns performing chest compressions. The trauma team cracks his chest open to manually compress his heart to keep what little blood he has left circulating.

After we have exhausted all measures, the attending doctor announces, “time of death.” The techs bag his cut-up clothes as well as his body. Two tags are applied, one to his big toe and the other to the outside of the body bag.

There’s more at the original, describing what Ruqiyya Greer, the author and a trauma nurse in the emergency room at Temple University Hospital, sees and feels, practically every day, on the job. And she points out what Mr Moran’s brief stories, the Inquirer in general,[1]We have noted previously Elizabeth Hughes, publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer, and her determination to make her newspaper “an anti-racist news organization,” has turned it into exactly … Continue reading and the Police Department figures, obscure, because it’s inconvenient reporting: the vast majority of the homicide victims in the City of Brotherly Love are young black males, sometimes men, and sometimes still boys.[2]The Philadelphia Tribune, a publication for the city’s black community, noted that, in 2020, black victims accounted for about 86% of the city’s 499 homicide victims, and 84% of the 2,236 … Continue reading

She concluded:

There’s so many times I want to walk away, but if I do, I will be deserting my community and my culture. I can’t do that. But these days it feels like I am a nurse in the middle of a war. I wake up every day knowing that I will have to watch another Black man take his last breath. And over what?

Our ancestors fought for our freedom; they were murdered for our freedom. I don’t think they risked it all for us to murder each other.

Please, before you pick up that gun again, placing your life at risk, risking your freedom and ending another life, talk to whoever plays a significant role in your life. A parent, uncle, pastor. You are about to make the worst mistake of your life.

I really don’t like quoting so many paragraphs from an Inquirer article, but Miss Greer’s concluding point is important: she is asking the potential shooters out there — people who will almost certainly never read her ‘letter’ anyway — to think before they act.

But they don’t think, at least they don’t think about the act itself. Oh, they may well think, and plot, and plan about how they are going to get away with it, but seem to give little thought or care about what will happen if they do get caught, very possibly spending the rest of their miserable lives locked up.

Miss Greer has been far more honest than most. While so many Philadelphia politicians want to blame the guns, she noted the people who “pick(ed) up that gun,” the people who shot, and frequently killed, other people, most often members of their own communities.

References

References
↑1 We have noted previously Elizabeth Hughes, publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer, and her determination to make her newspaper “an anti-racist news organization,” has turned it into exactly that, a newspaper more concerned with racial identity and sorting out its news coverage that way than it has been about the “public’s right to know.” The vast majority of homicide victims in Philadelphia are black, but when one black gang banger kills another black gang banger, it isn’t really news anymore, not to the Inquirer. Instead, the paper paid more attention to the accidental killing of Jason Kutt, a white teenager shot at Nockamixon State Park, an hour outside of the city. That’s four separate stories; how many do the mostly black victims get?
↑2 The Philadelphia Tribune, a publication for the city’s black community, noted that, in 2020, black victims accounted for about 86% of the city’s 499 homicide victims, and 84% of the 2,236 shootings; non-Hispanic black Americans make up only 38.3% of the city’s population. The current statistics for this year I have not been able to find.
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The Lexington Herald-Leader does race-based reporting A white man accused, but not convicted, has his photo published; a black man who has pleaded guilty to killing a man, no mugshot published

Jemel Barber. Photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

Jemel Barber is not a nice guy. The Lexington Herald-Leader reported this afternoon that Mr Barber has pleaded guilty to manslaughter:

    2 died in a robbery, gunfight spree in Lexington. Shooter pleads in 1 case

    by Jeremy Chisenhall | November 16, 2021 | 7:44 AM EST | Updated: 4:16 PM EST

    A Central Kentucky man has pleaded guilty in one of two fatal shootings during a string of robberies and gunfights in Lexington.

    Jemel Barber, 22, pleaded guilty last week to manslaughter and second-degree robbery more than four years after he shot and killed 40-year-old Tyrece Clark, according to court records. He was initially charged with murder and first-degree robbery, but his charges were amended down after a plea agreement was reached.

    Barber told police after the deadly shooting on July 23, 2017, that he showed up at a Lexington motel with a rifle, intending to rob Clark of narcotics and/or money, according to court records.

    But Clark started shooting after Barber knocked on his door, Barber told police, so he shot back. The plea agreement was reached after attorneys disputed whether or not Barber could claim self-defense. Barber maintained that Clark was the aggressor and his attorneys continued to blame Clark as the court case played out.

Prosecutors recommended a sentence of 15 years on manslaughter, and 10 years on the robbery conviction; sentencing is scheduled for February 11, 2022. Not yet determined is whether the sentences will run concurrently or consecutively.

There’s more at the original, but what is not at the original is the convicted killer’s mugshot. The McClatchy Mugshot policy holds that:

Publishing mugshots of arrestees has been shown to have lasting effects on both the people photographed and marginalized communities. The permanence of the internet can mean those arrested but not convicted of a crime have the photograph attached to their names forever. Beyond the personal impact, inappropriate publication of mugshots disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness.

Mr barber, however, is not someone who has been arrested but not convicted; he’s guilty.

Nor was he a very nice guy prior to his latest arrest. The Fayette County Detention Center page on Mr Barber had five separate mugshots of the malefactor, dated September 28, 2017, November 14, 2017, February 14, 2018, April 19, 2018, and then his last arrest, on May 2, 2018. Born November 25, 1998, he was just 18 when he was first arrested, at least as an adult, and wasn’t yet 19 when arrested the last time. He was still 18 when he killed Tyrece Clark.

However, while the Herald-Leader kept Mr Barber’s mugshot out of their website, they applied their mugshot policy rather inconsistently in the next story:

    Hour-long standoff at Stanton gas station leads to arrest of sexual assault suspect

    by Christopher leach | November 16, 2021 | 4:20 PM EST

    Craig Worm, photo by Stanton Police department, and published in the Lexington Herald-Leader, November 16, 2021.

    A sexual assault suspect from South Dakota was arrested at a gas station in Powell County after a nearly hour-long standoff with police Tuesday morning, according to a Facebook post by Stanton Police Department.

    Police said they were called to Airport Market in Stanton just before 8:30 a.m. for reports of a man who was firing a gun inside the store. When police and deputies with the Powell County Sheriff’s Office arrived, they found a man with a handgun inside a vehicle.

    That man was later identified as Craig Worm, 50, of South Dakota, according to police.

    Worm asked to buy cigarettes before firing at the store’s ceiling and saying, “now call police,” the store owner told WAVE 3.

    Worm barricaded himself inside his vehicle for approximately one hour before surrendering, police said.

There’s more at the original, including Mr Worm’s mugshot.

Unlike Mr Barber, who has been accused of a serious crime, but not convicted of anything, the editors at the Herald-Leader decided to publish his photo, despite their concern about “those arrested but not convicted of a crime hav(ing) the photograph attached to their names forever”. Mr Worm could still be acquitted.

The difference? Mr Barber, now a confessed killer, is black, while Mr Worm, accused but still innocent until proven guilty of sexual assault, is white. If there is another distinction, it certainly isn’t obvious.

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#MaskMandates and fewer fans in the stands Maybe if the Lexington Herald-Leader told the unshaded truth, the newspaper would have more subscribers

If there is one thing that keeps the Lexington Herald-Leader in business, it is the newspaper’s reporting on University of Kentucky sports. In our poor state, UK’s men’s basketball team has been a source of pride for decades, winning eight NCAA championships, the first in 1948. Rupp Arena, where the Wildcats play, was once the nation’s largest basketball venue.

Crowds were extremely limited last season, due to COVID-19 restrictions, and the team had an unexpectedly poor season. This year, with some veteran players returning, along with some experienced transfers and top freshmen, much is expected of the Wildcats.

The Herald-Leader has now noted that attendance has been unexpectedly low:

    Empty seats in Rupp Arena are sending UK a message. Is anyone listening?

    by Mark Story | November 15, 2021 | 4:14 PM EST

    One of the pressing questions this year as America’s mass-spectator sports moved out of 2020’s pandemic-inspired attendance restrictions is whether the crowds were going to come back en masse to the ballgames?

    Locally, University of Kentucky football fans have answered with an emphatic yes.

    In the 61,000-seat Kroger Field, UK sold out three of its four home Southeastern Conference games this fall — Florida (announced attendance of 61,632), LSU (61,690), Tennessee (61,690) — and just missed on its fourth vs. Missouri (58,537).

Skipping further down was the impetus for the story:

    While the sample size is small, attendance has so far this season been soft for UK basketball games in Rupp Arena at Central Bank Center.

    For the Wildcats’ 2021-22 exhibition opener against Kentucky Wesleyan, the announced attendance in Rupp — the number of tickets distributed to the event — was 17,133 in the 20,545-seat venue.

    The figure for the second exhibition, against Miles College, was 17,814.

You can follow the link to read the rest for yourself.

Mark Story, one of the newspaper’s sportswriters, suggested that part of the reason was worry over the COVID-19 panicdemic. But, in the end, he said that it was his guess that paying customers were disappointed in the cupcakes UK was playing in the early part of the season, and that we’d see something different when the hated University of Louisville Cardinals come to town on December 22nd.

But it was this photo, accompanying the article, which caught my attention. If I counted correctly, there are 38 fans depicted whose faces can be seen clearly, and only 17 cam be seen wearing face masks correctly. Several others can be seen with masks below noses, below chins, at least one with a mask hanging down from one ear, and others with no masks visible at all. Yet UK mandates the wearing of facemasks at all indoor sporting events:

    Among the policies, fans will be required to wear a face mask as they watch the game and move around Rupp Arena, regardless of vaccination status. The policy also applies to staff and vendors.

We have reported, more than once, that despite individual venues requiring the wearing of face masks, those ‘requirements’ are being honored in the breach. Just yesterday, at the Kroger on Bypass Road in Richmond, Kentucky, despite this sign being posted by the interior door of the vestibule, requiring masks of all customers, around half, and possible more, of the customers were not wearing masks. Another sign, outside the exterior doors, said “Masks strongly encouraged for fully vaccinated individuals,” meaning that the signs were inconsistent with each other, but there was, of course, no attempt made that I saw, or have ever seen, to enforce either sign.

Kentuckians just don’t like those masks!

Mr Story’s story? While he mentioned the COVID-19 panicdemic possibly having something to do with lowered attendance, he never wrote the first word about the mask mandate potentially contributing to fewer fans in the stands.

This is just poor journalism, or typical journolism,[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading from the Herald-Leader. To have mentioned that the mask mandate might have possibly caused lower attendance would have wholly violated the paper’s editorial stand in favor of masks. Whether Mr Story actually mentioned it, and an editor removed it, or he simply ignored it due to what my best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal’s editorial stand, I do not know, but the newspaper is not telling the whole truth to its readers.

Media bias does not normally come in the form of outright lies to readers. Rather, it is far more likely to come from the choices of what facts to report, and what facts to conceal. In this case, the Herald-Leader omitted a major potential cause in reduced attendance, when that major potential cause contradicted its editorial stance. Perhaps Mr Story sneaked that in, with the photo chosen to illustrate the article, but no mention of the mask mandate was made in the story; the source I used to note the mandate came from WLEX-TV.

Newspapers are suffering from reduced readership all across the country; maybe if they told readers the unvarnished truth, they’d have more subscribers.

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
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Weathering the storm

My good friend William Teach noted, ten days ago, an article by Saul Griffith, in which he claimed that, to save Mother Gaia, there was one thing that we absolutely had to do:

    Now, finally, much of the world has become convinced, first-hand, that global warming is not only real but heating up more rapidly than we expected, unleashing irreversible impacts. Many people feel despair and helplessness in the face of doomsday predictions already in evidence. And yet, I’m optimistic that we can solve this problem in time to keep our planet livable for future generations.

    I have to be optimistic. I’m the father of young children and I want them to not only survive what humanity has done to our planet, but experience the awe of the natural world that I enjoyed as a child. But I’m also a scientist, and I approach the problem like an engineer. What do we need to build to fight global warming? Can we do it in time to keep the planet under the 1.5-2.0 degrees centigrade warming that can avoid a tipping point toward climate disaster?

    Squinting at the data, I see a way forward, but the urgency can’t be underestimated. The answer is actually quite simple and requires no miracle technology: we must electrify everything, fast. That means not just the supply-side sources of energy; we’ve got to electrify everything on the demand-side—the things we use in our households and small businesses every day, including cars, furnaces, stoves, water heaters, and dryers. I’m optimistic because over the last two decades the advances and cost reductions in electric vehicles, solar cells, batteries, heat pumps, and induction cooking mean that what we need can now be purchased at roughly price parity with the fossil fuelled incumbent.

Mr Griffith doesn’t bother to tell us just how poorer Westerners, much less poorer people in the rest of the world, can simply afford to go out and replace working gas ranges with electric induction cooktops, or gas or heating oil furnaces with electric ones. Even the environmentally-conscious show, “This Old House,” showed remodeling of a house, in cold Massachusetts, adding a new gas-fired furnace, in 2018, because gas heat is simply more reliable and efficient in New England. I did have to replace my electric HVAC system last spring, as the old one was destroyed in the record flooding last March.[1]The river gauge jammed at 28.18 feet, so the flooding crest was guesstimated, but it was the historic crest, topping the previous record of 39.37 feet. The flooding got into the crawl space … Continue reading That was $5,896.00, and fortunately we had the money, but a lot of people around here did not.

In January of 2018, our first winter here, an ice storm knocked out the electricity for 4½ days . . . and our house was ell-electric. Electric heat pump for heating and cooling, electric range for cooking, and an electric water heater for hot water. My wife headed to our daughters’ apartment in Lexington and stayed there, nice and comfortably, but I had to stay at home, to take care of the critters, and make sure the plumbing didn’t freeze. I was able to get a lukewarm shower the second morning, as the water in the tank had cooled but wasn’t cold, but that was the extent of it.

By the time the sparktricity was restored, it was down to 38º F inside the house. Fortunately, the weather outside was in the upper twenties to mid thirties that week; had it been down in the teens or lower, it could have been a much worse problem.

Now, our house is a fixer-upper, which we knew when we bought the place. One thing my darling bride (of 42 years, 5 months and 27 days) wanted was a gas range; almost everybody wants a gas range! But, after that first winter, and 4½ days without electricity, and a farm which is at the end of the line as far as Jackson Energy Cooperative is concerned for restoring power, we decided: a gas — propane in our case — water heater and fireplace for backup heating would be a very wise thing.

Our propane fireplace. Click to enlarge.

Yesterday evening, they came into play! A serious storm knocked out power not just to us, but much of the county. It was raining hard, and was very windy. But that propane fireplace did its job, keeping the house warm.

Mrs Pico was not at home at the moment; a hospital nurse, she wouldn’t get off until 7:30 PM, so supper hadn’t been cooked when the electricity failed. It was when she arrived home that she told us how widespread the power outage was. But, with that gas range, supper was no problem.[2]The electric pilot didn’t work, but the caps could be easily lit with a match. The oven will not work without electricity. It wasn’t the supper we had planned, hot wings, because we cook those with an electric air fryer, but my younger daughter — our daughters were visiting for the weekend — whipped up bacon and eggs on the range top.

Oil lamp and candles on the kitchen counter.

Of course, it was dark in the house, but candles, and a oil lamp — more fossil fuel there! — provided illumination.

Had Saul Griffith had his way, the house would have cooled down uncomfortably, and there’s have been no cooked meal for us. Morning showers? He’d not have wanted us to be able to take them.

As it happened, the sparktricity came back on a few hours later, but I remembered January of 2018; since Mrs Pico was had volunteered for an extra shift this morning, a shower was necessary for her.

Still, to quote Game of Thrones, winter is coming. My closest neighbor has told me that the power has been out here for as long as two weeks in the past, when bad snow and ice storms have brought down power lines. We are now prepared, though Mr Griffith doesn’t want us to be.

References

References
↑1 The river gauge jammed at 28.18 feet, so the flooding crest was guesstimated, but it was the historic crest, topping the previous record of 39.37 feet. The flooding got into the crawl space underneath our house, but stopped one concrete block, about 7½ inches, below the wooden structure. Our house was saved, but the HVAC system was lost.

Flood insurance is expensive. One woman I know had flood insurance, but to keep the expense manageable, she had a $10,000 deductible, and her losses were slightly under $10,000.

↑2 The electric pilot didn’t work, but the caps could be easily lit with a match. The oven will not work without electricity.
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CDC doctor says that achieving ‘herd immunity’ is unlikely even with universal vaccination

The vaccinated Joel Embiid is out for the 76ers due to a positive test. Quarterback Ben Roethlisburger, who is fully vaccinated, is out today for the Pittsburgh Steelers due to COVID-19. Yet somehow, while everyone is trashing Aaron Rodgers, no one seems to note that fully vaccinated players are also testing positive. Now, the CDC are saying that ‘herd immunity’ is not an achievable goal:

The prospects for meeting a clear herd-immunity target are “very complicated,” said Dr Jefferson Jones, a medical officer on the CDC’s COVID-19 Epidemiology Task Force.

“Thinking that we’ll be able to achieve some kind of threshold where there’ll be no more transmission of infections may not be possible,” Jones acknowledged last week to members of a panel that advises the CDC on vaccines.

Vaccines have been quite effective at preventing cases of COVID-19 that lead to severe illness and death, but none has proved reliable at blocking transmission of the virus, Jones noted. Recent evidence has also made clear that the immunity provided by vaccines can wane in a matter of months.

The result is that even if vaccination were universal, the coronavirus would probably continue to spread.

“We would discourage” thinking in terms of “a strict goal,” he said.

If such is the case, vaccination appears to be personally useful, but its societal usage is questionable. If none have proven “reliable at blocking transmission of the virus,” what is the justification for compelling vaccination? At this point, choosing not to get vaccinated puts an individual at greater danger, but it’s a danger for himself, without being a proven greater danger to others.