Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Credit where credit is due The Lexington Herald-Leader does the right thing

I have been critical enough of the Lexington Herald-Leader for not publishing mugshots of black criminal suspects, due to McClatchy’s mugshot policy. I specifically noted the failure to publish the mugshot of Juanyah J Clay, even though Mr Clay, an accused murderer, was on the loose, and publishing his mugshot might have helped the Lexington Police Department to apprehend him. He was apprehended the following day.

McClatchy policy is that mugshots will not be published, save for special circumstances, and an editor must decide whether to make an exception to the policy.

Any exception to this policy must be approved by an editor. Editors considering an exception should ask: Is there an urgent threat to the community?

Well, there is an urgent threat to the community, and someone at the paper took the correct decision:

Updated: FBI seeking man in Lexington after exchange of gunfire with law enforcement

By Jeremy Chisenhall and Morgan Eads | June 24, 2021 | 2:37 PM | Updated: 5:59 PM EDT

The FBI is seeking a fugitive after exchanging gunfire with him in Lexington, the agency announced Thursday afternoon.

FBI agents were in the process of trying to apprehend Antonio “Tony” Cotton on a fugitive warrant in Lexington when the officials exchanged gunfire with Cotton near the intersection of New Circle Road and Eastland Parkway, according to the FBI. Cotton fled the scene.

Cotton was wanted on a charge of interference with commerce by robbery, according to Katie Anderson, an FBI spokesperson.

There’s more at the original.

The image to the right is from the Herald-Leader’s story. Since I have been so critical, I should give credit where credit is due.

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Amanda Marcotte doesn’t want you to exercise a right she chooses not to use Today's left support freedom of choice on exactly one thing

Salon senior politics writer Amanda Marcotte moved to South Philadelphia sometime in early 2019, but unless she never listens to the local news — always a possibility, given that she never writes on it — she has to have noticed the tremendous homicide rate in the City of Brotherly Love.[1]One wonders: does the uber-feminist in Miss Marcotte object to the appellation “City of Brotherly Love” as leaving out sisterly love? As of the end of Wednesday, June 23rd, the Philadelphia Police Department reported 262 homicides. 262 murders in 174 days so far is 1.506 homicides per day in Philly, which works out to, if that average is maintained, 550 for the year.[2]With only one homicide each day on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, the rate has come down slightly this week, but the weekend’s coming. Philadelphia’s record is 500, during the crack cocaine drug gang wars of 1990, with last year coming in in second place with 499.

At the end of June 23rd last year, there had been ‘only’ 190 homicides in the city, so this year’s number is 37.37% higher than 2020.

How Democratic is Philadelphia? Joe Biden carried Philadelphia County 603,790 (81.44%) to 132,740 (17.90%)

Unless something changes pretty drastically, 2021 isn’t just going to set the record, but blow it out of the water. And remember: the long, hot summer has just begun.

So, what is leading to all of this mayhem? According to Miss Marcotte, it ain’t the bad guys, but those inanimate guns!

oe Biden is right about the rise in crime: Blame guns — not police or protesters — for the violence

Conservatives are using crime as cover for ugly race-baiting, but their own lax gun policies are the real culprit

By Amanda Marcotte | June 23, 2021 | 1:11PM (EDT)

Violent crime is on the rise and it’s making Republicans happier than a fire sale on wraparound sunglasses.

Conservatives will find any excuse to indulge in their favorite sport: racist fear-mongering. The current uptick in violent crime fulfills their desire to use police to terrorize and stigmatize people of color while spinning it as merely in the interest of “public safety.” (Which is especially rich coming from the same people who left hundreds of thousands of Americans to die of COVID-19 rather than accept emergency pandemic measures.) And boy, they’re throwing themselves into the scare tactics with a relish usually reserved for sharing grammatically confusing memes on Facebook.

As the AP reported earlier this month, Republican politicians across the country are using rising crime rates as an excuse to pass laws aimed at suppressing Black Lives Matter protests and at protecting police budgets from re-evaluation. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on June 11 blaming crime on “radical and reckless decisions by some jurisdictions to defund their police forces,” which is, at best, a wild exaggeration of what have largely been efforts to redirect funds to crime prevention. Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, falsely accused Democrats of supporting “the dangerous idea of defunding the police.”

Now, we noted, just yesterday morning, that very white, very liberal Portland, Oregon, had cut its police budget enough that the department was 150 officers under strength, and according to Portland Police Department numbers, the city is on pace for 92 murders this year, shattering 1987’s record of 70. With a city population of 662,549, that would give the city a murder rate of 13.89 per 100,000 population. How liberal is Portland? Joe Biden carried Multnomah County 367,249 (79.21%) to 82,995 (17.90%).

Just two days prior to that, we noted that Austin, Texas, where Miss Marcotte lived before her boyfriend and she moved to Brooklyn, had slashed its police budget by 1/3. Austin is the most liberal city in Texas; Joe Biden carried Travis County, where Austin is located, 435,860 (71.62%) to 161,337 (26.51%).

Our deadliest city, St Louis? As of June 22nd, there had been 88 murders in the Gateway City, and 82 of the victims, 93.18%, were black. Of the 36 known killers of those 88 dead black people, all were black. Joe Biden carried the city by 110,089 (80.85%) to 21,474 (15.77%).

So, unless those inanimate guns are just leaping into the air by themselves and shooting people, those guns are seemingly leaping into the hands of Democrats.

Miss Marcotte claims that, since the rise in the homicide rate is seemingly everywhere, with no distinct differences between places like Austin, where the police have lost a third of their funding, and other big cities, where the funding drops have been significantly less, the increase in the homicide rate cannot be attributed to defunding. But then she goes on:

The sociological reasons for the rise are still ambiguous, though there is little doubt that the pandemic contributed by adding economic and social stress, while also depriving young people of jobs and school opportunities that keep them out of trouble. Pfaff also suggests there may be a reason to believe that rising tensions between police and communities contribute, if only because people are unwilling to cooperate with law enforcement they see, for good reason, as oppressive. If that relationship “deteriorates significantly,” Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of St. Louis-Missouri, told Salon’s Igor Derysh in February, “that simply widens the space for street justice to take hold.”

Well, yes, that’s true enough, but it undermines her other points. She claimed that crime, overall, had dropped, and the violent crime rate had spiked only modestly. As I have previously noted, there are two kinds of crimes: crimes of evidence and crimes of reporting. If a man rapes a woman on the streets of Philadelphia, as far as the police are concerned, if it wasn’t reported, it didn’t happen. It is commonly assumed that most rapes go unreported, with some guesstimates being as high as 90% not reported. Crimes like robbery might go unreported if the victims do not trust the police or think it will do any good, or are fearful of revenge by the criminals.

But murder is different: it is a crime of evidence. It isn’t easy to dispose of a dead body in a way that it won’t be found, especially if you haven’t carefully planned things. You’re looking at 100 to 300 pounds of dead meat, bone and fat, and something which will put off a strong and nasty odor after very little time. The vast majority of dead bodies get found.

So when I read that other crime has decreased, I just don’t believe it. Murder is not normally an entry-level crime; it’s a crime committed primarily by people who have committed other crimes. When you read about a murder who was caught — and the police actually catching killers is getting progressively worse — you almost always read that the killer was legally barred from owning a firearm, or that he was carrying it illegally. Noting Miss Marcotte’s own statement that people are less willing to cooperate with the police, it stands to reason that crimes of reporting would be reported less.

After a few paragraphs in which the author ties the existence of illegally purchased or possessed guns to the existence of legally owned firearms, she gives us her solution:

The surest way to reduce murder rates is to get guns out of people’s hands.

Miss Marcotte’s biggest issue has always been abortion, but it’s certainly not the only right she cherishes. She frequently and loudly exercises the rights she believes she should have. She exercises her freedom of speech and of the press in her tweets, her articles in Salon, and other places. She exercises her right to use contraception. She has exercised her right of peaceable assembly to join the #BlackLivesMatter protests in Philadelphia. An avowed atheist, she exercises her right not to go to church. She will defend those rights to, well, to the death is the common phrase, but I can’t say that she’d go that far.

But the right she has and chooses not to exercise — and, to me, it is actually choosing to exercise the right in the negative[3]Just as choosing not to speak or publish something is still an exercise in your freedom of speech and of the press. — is her right to keep and bear arms. Because it is a right she chooses not to keep and bear arms, she doesn’t think that anyone else should have that right. Her solution to the illegal use of firearms is to take guns away from people who have not used their weapons illegally.

Miss Marcotte is but a small, if vocal, part of the left in America. Very much proclaiming her own views, she, like The New York Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Washington Post, doesn’t like hearing other people expressing their own. The left just plain don’t like anyone exercising their constitutional rights in a way of which they don’t approve.

Me? I support Miss Marcotte’s right to choose to buy, or not buy, a firearm. I support her right to write, or not write, whatever she chooses. I support her right not to go to church, and I even support her right not to read what I happen to write. Our freedoms are both positive and negative; we may choose to do or not do something as we please.

The left used to support that, but that was a long, long time ago.

 

References

References
↑1 One wonders: does the uber-feminist in Miss Marcotte object to the appellation “City of Brotherly Love” as leaving out sisterly love?
↑2 With only one homicide each day on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, the rate has come down slightly this week, but the weekend’s coming.
↑3 Just as choosing not to speak or publish something is still an exercise in your freedom of speech and of the press.
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The Supreme Court bitch-slaps a small school district in Pennsylvania Mahanoy Area School District should never have appealed the initial decision in the first place.

Have you ever been to Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania? It’s a bit more than a wide spot in the road, but only a bit, having an area of 0.5 mi² and a population of 3,944 people. Located in the Keystone State’s old anthracite coal mining region, it has fallen on hard times as the demand for coal has greatly waned. I have driven through Mahanoy City several times, as it was on Pennsylvania Route 54 just a mile from Exit 131 onto Interstate 81; that was my shortest route from our previous home in Jim Thorpe and the farm in the Bluegrass State.

I can’t say that I was impressed.

There have been a lot of people who’ve yelled, in anger, “I’ll take it all the way to the Supreme Court.” Well, taking something all the way to the Supreme Court costs money, lots of money, something Mahanoy City, and the Mahanoy Area School District do not have in abundance. From Wikipedia:

Mahanoy Area School District serves the borough and Mahanoy Township. The district operates: Mahanoy Area Elementary School (K-4), Mahanoy Area Middle School (5th-8th) and Mahanoy Area High School (9th-12). The district has provided full day kindergarten since 2004. In 2015, the Mahanoy Area School District’s enrollment declined to 1,004 students.[16] Mahanoy Area School District was ranked 433rd out of 493 Pennsylvania school districts, in 2015, by the Pittsburgh Business Times.[17] Mahanoy Area High School has been listed on the Commonwealth’s annual lowest achieving schools list.[18] In 2015, Mahanoy Area School District’s graduation rate was 91%. In 2012, Mahanoy Area School District declined to Warning Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) status, due to a low graduation rate and lagging student academic achievement.[19]

Brandi Levy. Photo from tweet by WNEP.

Near the end of the 2016-17 school year, Brandi Levy,[1]Though the courts continued to refer to Miss Levy by her initials, they specify her father’s last name in the decision title, and her name is in the public domain on the Associated Press. I am … Continue reading who had tried out for the school’s varsity cheerleading squad, posted two angry messages, one of which was profane, on SnapChat; Miss Levy was not on school grounds, nor was school in session at the time she posted the messages. One of the SnapChat recipients, a cheerleader herself, took offense, and made a screencap of the self-deleting SnapChat message, and showed it around.[2]Justice Alito, in his concurrent opinion, made the greatest ‘Karen’ criticism of all: “(Miss Levy) did not send the messages to the school or to any administrator, teacher, or … Continue reading The school responded by suspending Miss Levy from participating in the junior varsity cheerleading squad for one year. Her parents filed a lawsuit on her behalf in federal court, arguing that the district had unconstitutionally punished her for speech made completely outside of the school that did not pose a risk of disruption.

Miss Levy won both a preliminary injunction, preventing the school from suspending her from cheerleading,[3]Preliminary injunction granted to plaintiff, B.L. v. Mahanoy Area School District, 289 F. Supp. 3d 607 (M.D. Pa., 2017). and then her case.[4]Summary judgment granted in favor of plaintiff, B.L. v. Mahanoy Area Sch. Dist., 376 F. Supp. 3d 429 (M.D. Pa. 2019).

At that point, the Mahanoy Area School District appealed the decision. The judgement for Miss Levy had been in the whopping sum of $1.00, so it’s not as though the School District had lost a bunch of money. The School District lost again in the Court of Appeals for the Third District.

But, because the Third District’s ruling clashed with other rulings from other district Courts of Appeals, there was a justiciable split that the Supreme Court could, and did, address.

And so we come to Mahanoy Area School District v. B. L., a minor, by and through her father, Levy, et al., 594 U. S. ____ (2021). In the case, the 8-1 majority held that Miss Levy’s First Amendment rights had been violated by the School District, though the justices did not go as far as the Third District; the Court allowed that public schools had some authority over student speech, even if off of school grounds, such as when students are transiting to and from school, given that school attendance is compulsory. Justice Breyer concluded:

It might be tempting to dismiss B. L.’s words as unworthy of the robust First Amendment protections discussed herein. But sometimes it is necessary to protect the superfluous in order to preserve the necessary. See Tyson & Brother v. Banton, 273 U. S. 418, 447 (1927) (Holmes, J., dissenting). “We cannot lose sight of the fact that, in what otherwise might seem a trifling and annoying instance of individual distasteful abuse of a privilege, these fundamental societal values are truly implicated.” Cohen, 403 U. S., at 25.

This, to me, is important, because it states that even the most trivial of speech is protected by the Constitution, and that officious little pricks have no authority to impose state punishment just because they don’t like what someone else has said.

Our representative democracy only works if we protect the “marketplace of ideas.” This free exchange facilitates an informed public opinion, which, when transmitted to lawmakers, helps produce laws that reflect the People’s will. That protection must include the protection of unpopular ideas, for popular ideas have less need for protection.

In his concurring opinion, Justice Samuel Alito, with Justice Neil Gorsuch agreeing, wrote:

public school students, like all other Americans, have the right to express “unpopular” ideas on public issues, even when those ideas are expressed in language that some find “‘inappropriate ’” or “‘hurtful’”.

and:

But it is a “bedrock principle” that speech may not be suppressed simply because it expresses ideas that are “offensive or disagreeable.” Texas v. Johnson, 491 U. S. 397, 414 (1989); see also Matal v. Tam, 582 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2017) (slip op., at 1–2) (“Speech may not be banned on the ground that it expresses ideas that offend”); FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U. S. 726, 745 (1978) (opinion of Stevens, J.) (“[T]he fact that society may find speech offensive is not a sufficient reason for suppressing it”); Young v. American Mini Theatres, Inc., 427 U. S 50, 63–64 (1976) (plurality opinion) (“Nor may speech be curtailed because it invites dispute, creates dissatisfaction with conditions the way they are, or even stirs people to anger”); Street v. New York, 394 U. S. 576, 592 (1969) (“It is firmly settled that under our Constitution the public expression of ideas may not be prohibited merely because the ideas are themselves offensive to some of their hearers”).

The Court, in my opinion, gave less protection to Miss Levy’s speech than it should have. The justices reasoned that, though schools have a right to control some of what students say, such as not being allowed to be disruptive in class, what Miss Levy SnapChatted was be protected not because it was off campus — though they did allow that most off-campus speech did not fall under the school’s authority — but because it did no identifiable harm. It would have been far better to have stated simply that, once the student is out of school and off-campus, and not involved in any school-sanctioned event, his speech was protected, period.

More importantly, the freedom of speech must be protected, period. The left are doing everything they can to censor speech by conservatives, and though they are using mostly ‘private’ methods — if Twitter and Facebook can really be considered private entities anymore — we have reported on how even The New York Times and The Washington Post, among others, are now opposed to freedom of speech. The city of New York even has compulsory speech requirements. If these things are not fought, the freedom of speech will be lost.

The School District attempted to put lipstick on the pig of having lost:

The Mahanoy Area School District is pleased with and vindicated by today’s Supreme Court decision. The School District unanimously won the issue upon which it sought Supreme Court review: all 9 Justices rejected the Third Circuit’s conclusion that school districts lack authority to regulate off-campus speech. The Supreme Court held that it does “not agree with the reasoning of the Third Circuit.” The Supreme Court instead enumerated many examples of situations when school districts can regulate off-campus speech and made it clear that its list was not exclusive. So, although the Court upheld the $1 judgment in favor of Ms. Levy, we are very pleased that the Court agreed with our arguments about schools’ authority to address off-campus speech under a wide variety of situations. This decision is an important vindication of schools’ authority to protect students and staff and to fulfill schools’ educational missions.

https://www.thepiratescove.us/wp-content/plugins/wp-monalisa/icons/wpml_yahoo.gif The School District could have had that much had they simply not appealed the initial summary judgement. Instead they wasted scads of money, and wound up with eight Supreme Court Justices rhetorically bitch-slapping them for their rotten judgement.

I am amused. 🙂

References

References
↑1 Though the courts continued to refer to Miss Levy by her initials, they specify her father’s last name in the decision title, and her name is in the public domain on the Associated Press. I am not somehow ‘outing’ Miss Levy by the use of her name.
↑2 Justice Alito, in his concurrent opinion, made the greatest ‘Karen’ criticism of all: “(Miss Levy) did not send the messages to the school or to any administrator, teacher, or coach, and no member of the school staff would have even known about the messages if some of B. L.’s “friends” had not taken it upon themselves to spread the word”.
↑3 Preliminary injunction granted to plaintiff, B.L. v. Mahanoy Area School District, 289 F. Supp. 3d 607 (M.D. Pa., 2017).
↑4 Summary judgment granted in favor of plaintiff, B.L. v. Mahanoy Area Sch. Dist., 376 F. Supp. 3d 429 (M.D. Pa. 2019).
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Don’t chill out so much!

I responded to William Teach’s article Rolling Stone: We’re In An Air Conditioned Nightmare Or Something by noting:

A couple of months ago, on the Weather Channel’s AMHQ, Stephanie Abrams went a bit off script and called Jen Carfagno over to the side of the screen. The camera caught her, in the middle of the show, as having pulled on her puffy coat when she was supposed to be off-camera. I found it amusing.

Of course, the on-camera women on the Weather Channel almost always wear dresses or skirts, and women’s ridiculous shoes, and it seems that bare arms are pretty much called for, not just in the summer, but other seasons as well.

Women working in offices have long complained that office air conditioning is set too low, and there are valid scientific reasons for them to think that, reasons which go beyond the differences in the way men and women dress.

Well, today I saw this amusing retweet by Mrs Carfagno:

Of course, while Mr Wooten is wearing long pants, a shirt, suit coat, socks and men’s dress shoes, Mrs Carfagno is wearing what her network seems to assign as appropriate dress for female anchors. I have noted that the women on the Weather Channel are always dressed up, while many of the men appear with rolled up sleeves, often eschewing a tie, but, of course there’s no sexism involved in any of that! 🙂

Office air conditioning is too cold, women think, and science says they’re right

A new study says that office air conditioning may be biased against women, with temperatures more suitable to the average male of the 1960s.

Aug. 4, 2015, 11:25 AM EDT / Updated July 5, 2017, 12:40 PM EDT / Source: TODAY
By Scott Stump

To all the women bundled in sweaters and blankets in your office air conditioning even though it’s 100 degrees outside: A recent study says that it’s not all in your head. It really IS cold.

As many women bundle up against the arctic air conditioning, their male counterparts one cubicle over have no idea what all the fuss is about. It turns out that science says the office A/C may be biased toward temperatures that more comfortable for men — thanks to a formula from more than 50 years ago.

A 2016 study in the journal Nature Climate Change notes that the temperatures in many office buildings are based on a formula developed in the 1960s that employs the resting metabolic rate of 154-pound, 40-year-old man.

Wait, what? A 40-year-old man weighing just 154 lb, and they thought that was average?

More than half a century later, the workforce is much different, but the thermostat isn’t. Half of the workforce is now female, and many of them are wrapping themselves up in blankets to be able to type without shivering. The new study finds that females prefer the average temperature at home and in the office to be 77 degrees, compared to 71.6 degrees for men.

“Women tend to have lower basal metabolic rates, so they tend to burn off energy a lot slower,” Dr. Devi Nampiaparampil of NYU School of Medicine told TODAY. “They actually give off less heat than men, so they tend to be colder.”

Much of the rest of the article is about different office wear for men and women.

Rolling Stone said:

But long before that, the most obvious impact of extreme heat is that it pushes people to turn on – and turn up – their air-conditioning. With cool air, you can feel the chaos within you subsiding. But it comes at a cost: AC sucks up huge amounts of electricity, which strains the grid and increases the risk of blackouts. More electricity also means burning fossil fuels, which means more CO2 pollution (President Biden has promised a 100 percent clean electricity grid by 2035, but that’s still a long way off). In addition, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), the human-made chemicals inside of air-conditioners used to cool the air, are super greenhouse gases, up to 3,000 times more potent than CO2 at trapping heat in the atmosphere. What it comes down to is this: By cooling ourselves off, we risk cooking ourselves to death.

But this poses an interesting question for the global warming climate change emergency activists: since setting the thermostat higher during the summer will save electricity, and the fossil fuels burned to produce it, the activists should be all for it! Hey, ditch those coats and ties for shorts and flip flops!

Not sure how that’ll work out in the C Suite.

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Everything is sweetness and light in Portland!

The city of Portland, Oregon, is located in Multnomah County; in the 2020 elections, Joe Biden carried the county by a huge margin, 367,249 (79.21%) to 82,995 (17.90%). I would say that it’s reasonable to describe Portland as a very liberal city.

How, then, in this bastion of leftward politics, can it be that while only 6% of Portlanders are black, black drivers account for 18% of traffic stops?

Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell

Police in Oregon’s largest city are being advised to no longer pursue low-level traffic infractions — including expired plates and broken headlights — unless related to an immediate safety threat, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler announced Tuesday.

In addition, if police do stop a driver they must receive recorded consent before searching the vehicle and clearly inform the person they have the right to refuse.

Wheeler said both changes are an attempt to refocus on immediate threats and are also occurring in response to data showing a a disproportionate impact on Black drivers for traffic stops and vehicle searches. While 6% of Portlanders are Black, he said they account for 18% of traffic stops in the city.

“The goal of these two changes is to make our safety safer and more equitable,” Wheeler said.

Portland is not the first large city to make such a move regarding traffic stops. Oakland, California, has had a similar police for the last several years.

The obvious question is: are Portland’s police officers racists, just looking to pull over cars driven by black people, or, is it possible, just possible, that black Portlanders actually commit traffic offenses at a greater rate?

Oh, wait, I’m sorry: it’s raaaaacist to even ask such a question!

After several paragraphs about the traffic stops, the Associated Press article got into what I saw as the meat of it:

Last summer, while officers’ priorities were shifted to protests, Portland was also experiencing its deadliest year in more than a quarter-century.

Gun violence has spilled over into this year, with at least 42 homicides so far. If nothing changes, Portland will surpass its all-time record for homicides of 70 set in 1987, when the city was in the midst of a gang siege.

Police estimate half of Portland’s more than 500 shootings this year, which have injured more than 140 people, are gang-related. In May, Wheeler warned that perpetrators are being told by gangs to shoot someone within 30 days or be shot and that people are traveling from other states to engage in violence in the Rose City.

The police are short on resources, in part due to the city slashing its budget by $27 million last year, and the department is 150 officers under its authorized strength.

Through the end of May, Portland saw 38 homicides, an average of one every four days. At the current pace, the city is on pace for 92 murders this year. With a city population of 662,549, that would give the city a murder rate of 13.89 per 100,000 population. Yeah, Philadelphia, St Louis and Chicago laugh at that puny rate, but it’s still damned high. How, in this very liberal city, where the policies of the left hold sway as much as possible, can we explain this? After all, the left have assured us that if we just do things their way, all will be sweetness and light?

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Yup, they did it again! The Lexington Herald-Leader publishes the photos of more white criminal suspects

We have noted, many times, how the Lexington Herald-Leader has eschewed publishing the photographs of criminal suspects who are black, but have not been so reticent when it comes to those who are white.

County jailer in Eastern Kentucky charged with DUI

By Liz Moomey | June 22, 2021 | 9:20 AM EDT

Carter County Jailer R W Boggs. Click to enlarge.

Carter County Jailer Robert “R.W.” Boggs was charged Sunday night with driving under the influence.

A Kentucky State Police trooper responded to a two-vehicle accident after Boggs hit a vehicle at the intersection of Ky. 773 and Lakeview Circle in Grayson.

According to a KSP news release, Boggs hit another vehicle twice while backing into a driveway on Lakeview Circle before stopping. The other driver exited their vehicle to inform Boggs he had hit their vehicle.

After field sobriety tests, police arrested Boggs for allegedly operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol and took him to Boyd County Detention Center.

There’s more at the original.

As the county jailer, Mr Boggs is a public official, and thus fits within the McClatchy mugshot policy for exception to the general prohibition on publishing mugshots. But, to me, so is Jason Lee Sharp, the East Jessamine High School teacher who was arrested and charged with rape, sodomy, and sexual abuse of a “person” under 16 years of age, yet the Herald-Leader not only declined to publish his mugshot, but when I linked his mugshot to their article, the paper removed the comments.

According to the mugshot policy, an editor had to have approved the publication of Mr Boggs’ photograph. Technically speaking, the photo of Mr Boggs is not a police mugshot, but the Herald-Leader used it as one.

Carter County is near the far eastern border of the Bluegrass State, bordering Boyd County and Ashland, one of Kentucky’s larger cities. The Ashland Daily Independent is far more of a ‘local’ newspaper to Carter County than the Herald-Leader, with Lexington being about eighty miles, over an hour’s drive along Interstate 64, to the west. The Daily Independent’s story on the arrest of Mr Boggs was slightly more detailed, but the Ashland paper did not publish Mr Boggs’ photo, or at least there is no photo attached to the story when I found it at 2:20 PM EDT.

Mr Boggs was charged with a relatively minor offense. No one was injured, and he has already been released from the Boyd County jail. The offense with which he has been charged is certainly not as serious as the charges against Mr Sharp.

But, that isn’t all.

Ky. man charged after 4-year-old found walking on a highway at night, deputies say

By Jeremy Chisenhall | June 22, 2021 | 7:46 AM EDT |Updated: 9:05 AM EDT

A Kentucky man was arrested over the weekend after deputies found a 4-year-old walking alone on US-25E at night, according to the Knox County sheriff’s office.

Deputies got a call about the small child walking about 2 miles north of Barbourville around 10:30 p.m. Saturday, according to the sheriff’s office. The caller said the child was walking on the white line of the road and nearly got hit by a car, according to deputies.

Deputies located the child, found out where he lived and went to his home.

“When the deputies went to the residence, they were told by the father that 62-year-old Darrell Myrick of Gray, had been left in charge of the child while the mom was away,” the sheriff’s office said in a social media post.

Myrick was arrested and charged with wanton endangerment, according to court records. He was held in the Knox County Detention Center on a $2,500 bond, according to jail records.

The Herald-Leader got the photo from the Knox County Sheriff’s Department Facebook page. Knox County is roughly 100 miles from Lexington, about an hour and 40 minute drive along Interstate 75 and then US 25E. Mr Boggs is a public official, but Mr Myrick is not; under what part of the McClatchy mugshot policy exceptions did whichever editor of the Herald-Leader who decided to include Mr Myrick’s mugshot justify his choice? He’s not a suspect in a hate crime, nor a public official, nor a serial killer or high profile crime suspect. He’s not an urgent threat to the community, in that he’s already in jail.

The Herald-Leader does, of course, enjoy the complete freedom of the press; the newspaper can print whatever it wishes. But I have to ask: for a newspaper which loves to hold other people accountable, who holds them accountable?

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An expected OpEd in The Philadelphia Inquirer A special pleader doesn't like Fulton v Philadelphia

In my article noting the Supreme Court’s decision in Fulton v Philadelphia, I wrote, “I anticipate an editorial in The Philadelphia Inquirer denouncing this decision.”

I had anticipated a main editorial by the Inquirer’s Editorial Board, so I missed on that one, but there certainly was a significant OpEd piece:[1]Fairness requires me to note that the Inquirer also published, on the same day, in the same OpEd section, Supreme Court decision is a win for religious freedom: Religious actors shouldn’t be forced … Continue reading

Supreme Court was wrong. Religious beliefs can’t be a free pass for discrimination. | Opinion

As I can attest from personal experience, the process of becoming a parent is highly intense, personal, lengthy, and emotionally challenging.

by John Culhane, For The Inquirer | June 21, 2021

The United States Supreme Court has just ruled against Philadelphia, and in favor of Catholic Social Services (CSS), in a case asking whether the agency can discriminate against same-sex couples by refusing to certify them as foster parents. Chief Justice John Roberts, in a judicial sleight of hand, crafted a narrow opinion that can’t be readily exported to other cases. As both a law professor and a gay father with first-hand experience dealing with the city’s foster care system, I have a complicated reaction to this decision. In the end, though, businesses and agencies that offer services to the public must do so with an even hand. Religious beliefs can’t be a free pass for discrimination.

The author, John Culhane, is the H. Albert Young Professor of Law at Delaware Law School, and through roughly 700 words he makes his case. Being homosexual himself, I see him as a special pleader.[2]As a Mass-every-Sunday Catholic, I suppose it would only be fair to admit that I am a special pleader as well. His OpED is based on legal arguments, and he certainly made one very valid point: Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion left Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 494 U. S. 872 (1990), in place, where Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas would have overturned it.

The Smith case held that religion could be subjected to civil and criminal law if such subject was not aimed at religion, but was completely neutral in its application. But facts are stubborn things, and the Smith case was about the state of Oregon refusing unemployment benefits to two persons who were discharged for using the hallucinogenic drug peyote, containing mescaline. It did not compel any individual to take an action against his faith, but does not shield him from the consequences of his faith related actions.

Skipping down several paragraphs, Mr Culhane continued:

In distinguishing the services that foster placement agencies provide from other public services, the Supreme Court is not totally off the mark. As I can attest from personal experience, the process of becoming a parent is highly intense, personal, lengthy, and emotionally challenging. It’s vital for the prospective foster or adoptive parents to have a strong and trusting relationship with those working for the agency they’re assigned to. My husband and I would not have wanted to work with CSS under any circumstances. It’s hardly surprising that, according to the record in this case, “no same-sex couple [had] even sought certification from CSS.” And “if it did, CSS would direct the couple to one of the more than 20 other agencies . . . all of which currently certify same-sex couples.”

Should this reassignment move be permitted? This isn’t like the earlier Supreme Court case involving a cake shop baker who refused to design a “masterpiece” for a gay couple. Even if the couple could just walk down the street to a more accommodating bakery, the refusenik shouldn’t get a pass: If you’re open to the public, you need to bake cakes for all comers. But the relationship between a foster care agency and prospective parents is nothing like that. So it’s no wonder that gay and lesbian couples have avoided CSS, and the court’s ruling likely won’t make any practical difference.

Clearly, Mr Culhane was disappointed with the decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop Ltd v Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 584 U.S. ___ (2018), in which baker Jack Phillips was not punished for refusing to bake a ‘wedding’ cake for a same-sex ‘marriage.'[3]Yes, you may infer from my placing the word ‘marriage’ in single quotation marks that I do not believe that, though legal, a homosexual ‘marriage’ constitutes a real marriage. But Mr Phillips was willing to bake cakes for all comers; he was simply unwilling to bake a cake with a particular message which was contrary to his religious beliefs; Mr Culhane did not address that distinction. Mr Culhane, I infer, would rather see Mr Phillips fined, or imprisoned, or at least driven out of business for his refusal to bake a cake with what he considered to be an objectional message.

More, Mr Culhane admitted that Catholic Social Services refusal to promote foster care or adoption to homosexual couples injured no one, because homosexual couples were not trying to avail themselves of CSS agency, and that there are more than twenty other agencies involved in the same area which would agree to provide foster care and adoption services to homosexual couples.

One wonders: were my wife and I trying to adopt a child, would Mr Culhane think it legally wrong of such an agency to take as a reason for blanket refusal that I do not, as stated in footnote 3 of this article, and footnotes 1 and 3 of my previous article on the subject that I do not believe in the validity of same-sex ‘marriage’ or homosexual couples adopting children? After all, the argument could be made that my religious positions could be harmful to a child, and I’d bet a case of Mountain Dew that Mr Culhane would believe just that.

Mr Culhane concluded:

Perhaps the court’s workaround led to a workable, practical solution here. But when the issue is squarely presented, the only defensible outcome is to apply the antidiscrimination law with an even hand.

The problem with that argument is that the Constitution, not just statutory law, but the Constitution itself, prohibits laws which restrain the free exercise of religion; Mr Culhane took no note of that in his admittedly limited OpEd piece. Though he stated that “the decision is still wrong and the Supreme Court misread the law,” it’s a bit difficult to make that case in a 9-0 decision; it wasn’t just the Justices appointed by the evil reich-wing Republicans who voted in favor of Catholic Social Services, but those appointed by Presidents Clinton and Obama.

There is more hope in this decision than some conservatives see. Only three of the Justices stated explicitly that they wanted to overturn Smith, Justice Amy Barrett wrote, in her concurrent opinion, which was joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh:[4]Justice Stephen Breyer joined with Justice Barrett in all but the first paragraph, and this quotation is from the first paragraph.

Petitioners, their amici, scholars, and Justices of this Court have made serious arguments that Smith ought to be overruled. While history looms large in this debate, I find the historical record more silent than supportive on the question whether the founding generation understood the First Amendment to require religious exemptions from generally applicable laws in at least some circumstances. In my view, the textual and structural arguments against Smith are more compelling. As a matter of text and structure, it is difficult to see why the Free Exercise Clause—lone among the First Amendment freedoms—offers nothing more than protection from discrimination.

Mrs Barrett was concerned that if Smith were overturned, there would be no precedent to replace it. But, if it comes right down to it, it seems that there are at least five Justices who would be willing to overturn Smith if the case before the Court required it; this case did not require it.

But another case will, and soon, and it needs to come up before Justice Thomas, who is 72 years old, leaves the Court, because it does not seem that the Chief Justice agrees. Not only did he not write such in his majority opinion, but he allowed the Smith standard to be used to uphold the unconstitutional closing of churches in Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley v. Sisolak, 591 U. S. ___ (2020) and South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, 590 U. S. ___ (2020) before Justice Barrett replaced Justice Ruth Ginsburg.

What should replace Smith? It’s simple: how about “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”?

References

References
↑1 Fairness requires me to note that the Inquirer also published, on the same day, in the same OpEd section, Supreme Court decision is a win for religious freedom: Religious actors shouldn’t be forced to leave their beliefs at the door to serve in the public square.
↑2 As a Mass-every-Sunday Catholic, I suppose it would only be fair to admit that I am a special pleader as well.
↑3 Yes, you may infer from my placing the word ‘marriage’ in single quotation marks that I do not believe that, though legal, a homosexual ‘marriage’ constitutes a real marriage.
↑4 Justice Stephen Breyer joined with Justice Barrett in all but the first paragraph, and this quotation is from the first paragraph.
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The Herald-Leader sticks to policy UPDATED!

This website has spent a good deal of bandwidth noting the Lexington Herald-Leader and the McClatchy Company’s mugshot policy. In particular, we have noted the Herald-Leader’s odd habit of violating that policy when it comes to white criminal suspects, but adhering closely to it when the suspects are black.

Well, in this case, the suspect is white, and the paper did not publish his mugshot. Given my disagreement with that policy, I will.

Jason Lee Sharp (Fayette County Detention Center)

Central Kentucky teacher arrested on rape, sexual abuse charges

By Karla Ward | June 19, 2021 | 4:55 PM EDT | Updated: June 20, 2021 | 1:06 PM EDT

Lexington police have arrested a Central Kentucky teacher, charging him with rape, sodomy and sex abuse.

Jason L. Sharp, 32, of Lexington, was arrested Thursday on charges of third-degree rape, third-degree sodomy and first-degree sexual abuse, court records show.

Sharp teaches math at East Jessamine High School, according to the school’s website.

There’s a little more at the link.

A couple of points:

  • While Mr Sharp was arrested on Thursday, reporter Karla Ward’s story did not initially appear until Saturday. Since the McClatchy policy is that an editor must approve the publication of a mugshot, and the Herald-leader does not even publish a Saturday edition, it is possible that no editor was available to approve the publication of the mugshot.
  • Miss Ward noted that, “The circumstances surrounding the charges were not immediately clear.” When one reads a story about a teacher being accused of a sex crime, the automatic assumption is that the victim or victims were students. The Herald-Leader article does not state that such is the case, and it is very possible that any victims of Mr Sharp’s might be adults and not students at East Jessamine or any other school.

The article notes that Jessamine County Schools Superintendent Matt Moore was informed of the arrest on Friday, and stated that the school and he would cooperate fully with any police investigation, “if requested,” a statement which would seem to state that the police had not made any such request at the time. The charges listed in his arrest record do not make any statement that his (alleged) victim was a minor.

One of the points in the McClatchy mugshot policy that editors are supposed to consider in their decision-taking is whether the suspect is a “public official.” That raises the obvious question: what is a “public official.” East Jessamine High School is a public school, making Mr Sharp a public employee. Does simply being a public employee make someone a public official? Since public education in Kentucky is primarily funded by the state, I am one of the Kentucky taxpayers who furnished his salary and benefits! Yes, I would define him as a public official.

But, given my criticisms of the newspaper for publishing the mugshots of white suspects while concealing those of black suspects, it behooves me to note when the paper follows McClatchy policies when it comes to white suspects.
_______________________________________________
Updated!: June 21, 2021

The Herald-Leader is now reporting that Mr Sharp’s alleged victim was a minor:

A Central Kentucky teacher charged with rape, sexual abuse and sodomy allegedly committed the offenses against someone who was under 16 years old, according to arrest records.

Jason L. Sharp’s alleged victim was under 16 years old when the sexual abuse happened in July 2018, police wrote in an arrest citation obtained by the Herald-Leader. Sharp teaches math at East Jessamine High School, according to the school’s website. Police wrote in Sharp’s citation that he made sexual contact with a minor while being “a person in a position of special trust.”

I added a link to this article to the comments section in the original article, in response to a commenter who asked the Herald-Leader for a mugshot of the alleged offender. Though the paper left in place three spam comments hawking online income jobs, it deleted my comments with links. Can’t let anyone see that mugshot!

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Why are police looking the other way until such situations lead to murder? That's kind of what happens under 'defunded' budgets and liberal city restrictions

My good friend Robert Stacy McCain noted that new national holiday Juneteenth “was celebrated in many communities with gunfire and mayhem”. He described several of those events, though he missed the one we noted previously in Lexington, and the three homicides on Saturday in the City of Brotherly Love.

This was the longest incident he documented:

AUSTIN, Tex. – A deadly weekend mass shooting in Austin’s famed entertainment district arose from a feud between two groups of Central Texas teenagers, according to a police affidavit filed Wednesday.

Harker Heights High School student Jeremiah Tabb, 17, was arrested at school Monday and remained in Travis County Jail on Wednesday. He is charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a second-degree felony punishable by two to 20 years in prison. . . .

In the arrest affidavit filed by Austin police filed in a Travis County district court Wednesday, a wounded male juvenile is quoted as telling detectives at an Austin hospital that he was with friends on East Sixth Street, a famous entertainment strip, when they began exchanging stares with a youth he identified as JT and JT’s friends.

“Exchanging stares”? Yeah, that’s reason enough, right?

The male juvenile, who was not identified by name, said he had attended the same Killeen middle school as JT, who said to the juvenile’s group, “What y’all wanna do? Y’all wanna fight?” The juvenile said he answered, “It’s whatever,” at which point JT pulled a handgun from his waistband and opened fire. A companion of the juvenile, also a juvenile, drew his own gun and returned fire. One person was killed and more than a dozen others were wounded.

Of course, the “wounded male juvenile” broke gang discipline, and ratted out Mr Tabb when shown a photo of Mr Tabb, claiming that Mr Tabb had already shot him in the leg a few days earlier.

Mr McCain then ended his post with three rhetorical questions:

  1. Why are groups of minors walking around downtown Austin after midnight?
  2. Why are these minors carrying pistols?
  3. Why are police looking the other way until such situations lead to murder?

I, of course, am the type to answer rhetorical questions! The answer to the first two is simple: their parents — assuming that there actually were parents who were supposedly responsible for these teenagers — didn’t rear them right, and didn’t care about what their ‘children’ were doing. I’ve said it before: you show me a bad kid, and I’ll show you some rotten parents.

What kind of parents don’t bring up their children to understand that it’s just plain wrong to shoot people? What kind of parents have failed to educate their children that murder — and if you shoot at someone, you must intend to kill him — is wrong? What kind of parents don’t tell their children that, if you kill someone, you might just spend the rest of your miserable life in jail?

Those teenagers were walking around Austin after midnight, and were walking around carrying pistols, because the same kind of ‘parents’ who failed on the three questions in the paragraph above are the ones who don’t give a f(ornicate) about where their kids are or what they are doing.

But the third question?

Austin cuts police budget by 1/3 amid national ‘defund’ push

The Austin City Council has voted to cut one-third of the city’s $434 million police budget amid national calls for “defunding” law enforcement in favor of spending more money on social services

By Acacia Coronado | Report for America/ Associated Press | August 13, 2020 | 6:52 PM

AUSTIN, Texas — In a unanimous vote, the Austin City Council moved Thursday to cut about one-third of next year’s $434 million police budget amid national calls for “defunding” law enforcement agencies in favor of spending more money on social services.

That will come to just over $150 million that will be redirected to social services in the 2021 fiscal budget, which starts Oct 1.

Further down came this gem:

Austin Councilman Gregorio Casar, one of the main proponents of cutting the police budget, called the move “unprecedented in Texas” and praised the decision following the vote.

“Extreme, anti-civil rights voices will try to send us backward and are already working (to) mislead people about this vote,” Casar said on Twitter. “But today, we should celebrate what the movement has achieved for safety, racial justice, and democracy.”

Really? “Safety, racial justice, and democracy”? I’m not certain just what the esteemed Mr Casar thinks is an achievement for safety. According to monthly reports posted by the Austin Police Department, there were 33 murders from January through the end of May; in 2020, the city recorded 19 murders in the same time frame. That’s a 73.68% increase; just how much “safety” has the defunding of the police department achieved?

Jeremiah Tabb (Austin Police Department photo).

“Racial Justice”? Young Mr Tabb, who is black, if he is convicted, could see “racial justice” meted out to him in the form of perhaps two decades behind bars. If the bullets which killed 25-year-old Douglas John Kantor during this gang shooting came from Mr Tabb’s gun, he could spend the rest of his miserable life behind bars.

All because two hostile groups were “exchanging stares”.

Mr Kantor wasn’t even a target; he was an innocent bystander, a visitor from Michigan.

So, why are police looking the other way until such situations lead to murder? Perhaps it is because dumbasses like Mr Casar cut the police department’s budget by a third!

So, where is the money cut from the police department going to go?

Beginning in October, about $21 million will fund social services, community resources including response to the coronavirus, mental health aid programs, violence prevention, victim services and food, housing and abortion access. Another $80 million will be redistributed to similar city services throughout the year, and $49 million will be spent on city’s Reimagine Safety Fund, which aims to provide alternative forms of public safety and community support besides policing.

Somehow the city’s “Reimagine Safety Fund” has managed to mean “you’re on your own.” Whatever “alternative forms of public safety and community support besides policing” don’t seem to have worked.

Austin, the state capital and home of the University of Texas, is the most liberal city in a conservative state. Joe Biden carried Travis County, where Austin is located, 435,860 (71.62%) to 161,337 (26.51%), and has been governed exclusively by Democrats. If all of the feel-good liberalism and racial and social justice ideas actually worked, Austin should be one of the safest places around.

Do you think that maybe, just maybe, reducing law enforcement doesn’t really work when it comes to keeping the public safe?