Author Archives: Dana Pico

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And another two bite the dust

Lexington, Kentucky, had gone 18 days without a homicide, but I suppose that it was too good to last. From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

2 men shot dead in Lexington: 1 was left in a vehicle, another killed outside a club

By Jeremy Chisenhall | June 9, 2021 | 7:05 AM EDT | Updated 4:33 PM EDT

Two men are dead after separate shootings Tuesday night and early Wednesday, according to Lexington police.

The fatal shootings were the 17th and 18th homicides in Lexington this year, according to Lexington crime data. The city set a record last year with 34. At this point in 2020, Lexington had reported 12 homicides for the year.

Sadly, this is incorrect; the victims are teh 18th and 19th murder victims in the city.

I can understand why Jeremy Chisenhall made the error: the Lexington Police Department has not updated its homicide investigation page in a long time, with the May 9th killing of Mar’Quevion Leach as the 16th and last victim listed, but the Herald-Leader reported on the murder of Demonte Washington, 28, on May 22nd. Since Mr Chisenhall was not the reporter on that story, he may have missed it completely.

Police found the first shooting victim around 11:35 p.m. Tuesday, according to Lt. Ronald Keaton. The victim was a 28-year-old man who had been shot and left in a vehicle in the 200 block of Hedgewood Court in the Woodhill area. . . . .

The city’s second overnight shooting occurred outside The Office, a gentleman’s club in the 900 block of Winchester Road.

Keaton said police were called to the location around 2:35 a.m. for a report of shots fired outside. The victim was already dead when officers arrived, Keaton said. He said it was unclear if the victim or anyone involved in the shooting was a patron at the club.

As of Mr Chisenhall’s most recent update, there was little information about the victims or any suspects available.

Nineteen homicides in 160 days. That doesn’t put Lexington in similarly-sized St Louis’ class, with the Gateway City having 82 homicides to date, or Louisville’s “more than 80,” but Louisville, with 617,790 people is twice Lexington’s size.[1]The Louisville metropolitan area has about 1,265,000, while Lexington, the borders of which extend to the Fayette County line, doesn’t really have a ‘metropolitan area.’ Still, Lexington is on pace for 43 murders in 2021, which would shatter last year’s record of 34, and the long, hot summer hasn’t really begun yet.
___________________________
Update: June 10, 2021, at 2:20 PM EDT:

While I didn’t get personal credit, Mr Chisenhall did update the homicide numbers:

CORRECTION: The total number of homicides in Lexington this year was incorrectly stated in a previous version of this story.

References

References
↑1 The Louisville metropolitan area has about 1,265,000, while Lexington, the borders of which extend to the Fayette County line, doesn’t really have a ‘metropolitan area.’
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Charles Booker’s misplaced priorities

Charles Booker, from his Twitter profile.

As I previously noted, the hearts of the editors of the what my, sadly late, best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal must have been all aflutter when former, one-term state Representative Charles Booker (D-43rd District) of Louisville announced that he was forming an exploratory committee to see if he should run for the 2022 Democratic nomination against incumbent Senator Rand Paul (R-KY). In 2020, the editors endorsed the hard-left Mr Booker against faux moderate Amy McGrath Henderson for the nomination to run against Senator Mitch McConnell. After Mrs Henderson won the primary by an unexpectedly-close margin, the editors endorsed her against Mr McConnell, where she lost in a landslide.

Well, being the news junkie that I am, I went ahead and followed Mr Booker on Twitter, and he had this one up on Tuesday:

Really? Well, a whole lot of Kentuckians would disagree with Mr Booker. In 2010, Dr Paul defeated Democratic nominee Jack Conway, who had already won a statewide election to become the state’s Attorney General, 755,411 (55.69%) to 599,617 (44.26%) to win his seat in the United States Senate. Anything over 10% is considered a landslide win. Then, in 2016, Senator Paul defeated then-Mayor Jim Gray of Lexington 1,090,177 (57.27%) to 813,246 (42.73%) for re-election.

Mitch McConnell? In 2014, Senator McConnell defeated Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes 806,787 (56.2%) to 584,698 (40.7%), and in 2020 he stomped Mrs Henderson 1,233,315 (57.8%) to 816,257 (38.2%), despite her spending $90.8 million to ‘just’ $60 million by the incumbent senator.

If you visit Mr Booker’s (exploratory) campaign website, you’ll see a letter from him on the front page. In it, he said, “We all want a society where every single person can be safe in their homes without the fear of being killed by the government agencies we pay to protect us.”

Yeah, I get it: he’s channeling the killing of Breonna Taylor, the ex-girlfriend of a notorious Louisville drug dealer, who died when police returned fire from her then current boyfriend when they broke in, serving a legitimate no-knock warrant.

But, really, Mr Booker is worried about people being killed in their homes by police, an extremely rare event, when, as of May 30th, there had been 76 murders in his home town?

That’s 30 more murders than at the same time in 2020, a 65.22% increase. It was more than double the 33 homicides at the same time in 2019.

Louisville saw 92 criminal homicides in 2019, and almost doubled it to 173 in 2020. Louisville is currently on pace for a new record of 185 murders for 2021, and the long, hot summer hasn’t begun yet, but Mr Booker is worried about Breonna Taylor? One of us believes that Mr Booker’s priorities are misplaced.

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It has come awfully late in the game, but at last it has come! Governor Beshear has been slapped down by the courts!

As we have frequently noted, Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) has been trying to run out the clock with his ’emergency’ decrees under KRS 39A. The Kentucky state Supreme Court, on April 16th, decided to hold a hearing on the disagreement between courts in Franklin and Scott counties over the Governor’s executive orders, and then set June 10th, a date then eight weeks into the future, for a hearing.

On May 6th, Governor Beshear announced that he would loosen the restrictions, but not eliminate them entirely, effective just before the Memorial Day weekend. Then, on May 14th, the Governor announced that almost all restrictions would be lifted on Kentuckians, including the hated mask mandate, even for those who are not vaccinated against COVID-19. He had, the previous day, followed the Centers for Disease Control’s recommendations, and stated that “fully vaccinated” Kentuckians could dispense with face masks.

Well, today is June 8th, just two days before the state Supreme Court hears oral arguments, and three days before our dictatorial Governor will (supposedly) lift almost all of his emergency COVID-19 orders. But today, the Boone County Circuit Court declared the Governors actions to be illegal and unconstitutional.

THEREFORE, JUDGMENT IS HEREBY ENTERED in favor of Plaintiff and DECLARATORY RELIEF is GRANTED in that the Court finds and declares that all actions taken by Defendants, Hon. Andrew Beshear, as Governor, Mr. Eric Friedlander, as acting Secretary of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, and Dr. Steven Stack, M.D., as Commissioner for the Department of Public Health, and all emergency orders imposed by said defendants, or that are being continued by said defendants, are unconstitutional, void and without any legal effect, to the extent that the same are in conflict with, or otherwise contrary to, House Bill 1, Senate Bill 1, Senate Bill 2, and House Joint Resolution 77, as passed by the 2021 session of the General Assembly.

Here’s the decision:

Boone Circuit Court Order by Chris

This should have come at the end of March, not today, but it is at least a bit of a relief that it has occurred.

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That which you sow, so shall ye reap

I might not have bothered with this story had the dead criminal’s name not been Winston Smith. Winston Smith is the protagonist of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.

Winston Smith, apparently nicknamed “Boogie,” was a wanted felon in GeorgeFloydeapolis, and wound up on the wrong end of a gun. On Thursday, June 3rd, United States Marshals tried to arrest Mr Smith on a felony-arms charge. Mr Smith decided that no, he wasn’t going to go quietly, and “exchanged gunfire” with the marshals. He died of multiple gunshot wounds, the Hennepin County medical examiner’s office reported Saturday morning.

As always, Mr Smith’s family demanded answers from authorities.

“I want body camera footage … we want to see that footage of what actually happened,” Smith’s brother, Kidale Smith, told reporters Friday.

“And all other security surveillance as well,” chimed in Waylon Hughes, identified as a friend of the victim.

Of course, Mr Smith wasn’t really a bad guy!

His family claims the angry social media posts don’t reflect the man they knew.

Smith “was a comedian,” his sister Tiesnia Floyd told reporters Friday, adding, “So this doesn’t sound like him.”

She admitted he had a criminal record, but said her brother was trying to improve his circumstances.

Being a convicted felon, Mr Smith was legally barred from possessing a firearm, but it seems that that ‘common sense gun control law’ was not one which Mr Smith chose to obey:

Police officials in Minnesota say the U.S. Marshal’s Fugitive Task Force attempted to arrest 32-year-old Winston Boogie Smith on June 3 for a warrant for being a felon in possession of a firearm, the Associated Press reported. As sheriff’s office deputies assigned to the task force approached Smith’s vehicle, he reportedly refused to comply with orders and pulled a handgun. Officials confirmed Smith fired at least one shot from inside his car.

A statement from the Marshal’s Service said Smith was in a parked vehicle and “produced a handgun resulting in task force members firing upon the subject.” Smith died at the scene from wounds from two deputies’ shots.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension reported that state investigators found a gun in Smith’s car along with a spent cartridge indicating Smith fired from inside his vehicle, the AP article states.

Robert Stacy McCain noted Mr Smith’s anger at the killing of another convicted felon, George Floyd:

In the aftermath of the shooting, Smith’s social media activity came under scrutiny after we found posts on his Facebook profile in which he bragged about shooting a police officer if he was shot at and would not surrender “like the rest.”

“Officer please don’t shoot at me cuz ima [I’m gonna] shoot back I ain’t so sucker like the rest I ain’t going with my hand up” Smith wrote in a Facebook post in September 2019.

In other posts, shared days after the death of George Floyd as the city of Minneapolis erupted in riots, Smith wrote about burning down police stations and starting a “war” against law enforcement. “justice is an eye for eye u kill one of mine we need one of yours that’s justice!,” he wrote in one of the posts.

Smith was sentenced to 48 months in prison in October 2018 for aggravated robbery in the first degree but the judge stayed his sentence and let him out on parole.

Wait a minute! If he was sentenced to four years in the clink in October of 2018, he should still be alive today, behind bars, but alive. Mr Smith is now stone-cold graveyard dead because a soft-hearted and soft-headed judge stayed his sentence and let him out on parole!

“We got guns and bullet proof vest too or should be able to get em … why not just rush these fucks and start this war they keep asking for!” he raged on Facebook.

“Fuck justice anyway bitch justice is an eye for eye u kill one of mine we need one of yours that’s justice! Right or wrong fuck being right cuz they keep doing us wrong.

“I’m down with the burn everything government not touch shit else I don’t even need to loot I’ll buy my shit just kill them dirty ass cops off we tired of being scared at the red light!” he wrote.

Those Facebook posts quoted were from September 12, 2019 — before George Floyd was killed — and May 28, 2020, both after he was treated very leniently by the criminal justice system. It would seem that being easy on Mr Smith didn’t teach him any lesson.

Mr McCain began his post on the subject with a seemingly rhetorical question:

What is the goal of the Black Lives Matter movement? To make it impossible to arrest and prosecute criminals? Because that would seem a logical inference from recent events in Minneapolis.

Those “recent events” are several nights of rioting, burning and looting Mostly Peaceful Protests™. But Mr McCain hit the nail on the head: to the American left, the victims of crime might as well be written off. They are already dead, or maimed, or robbed or raped, and bringing their killers or assailants or robbers to justice doesn’t make those victims any less victimized, it doesn’t bring the dead back to life. Pursuing ‘justice’ at this point simply contributes to ‘mass incarceration.’

But when the American left promote lawlessness, they may find that they get lawlessness. And when the mob take over, the left will find themselves among the first stood up against the wall.

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I knew it was too good to be true Another one bites the dust in Killadelphia, and The Philadelphia Inquirer has already lost interest in the story

I have noted the city’s, and The Philadelphia Inquirer’s, response to the murder of Christine Lugo, the Dunkin’ Donuts manager senselessly killed by a robber after she had given him the money he demanded. The Inquirer’s story about the city’s response remains up on the newspaper’s website main page, at least as of 7:15 AM EDT on Tuesday, June 8th.

What isn’t on the website main page? Another murder in the City of Brotherly Love, one that occurred a little after 5:30 yesterday afternoon. It was briefly up, yesterday, but this morning? You’ve got to hunt for it.

Man killed in double shooting at North Philly corner store

A woman was also wounded in the shooting.

by Justine McDaniel | June 7, 2021

A 28-year-old man was killed in a double shooting early Monday evening at a corner store in the Nicetown section of North Philadelphia.

The man, whose name was not released, and a 53-year-old woman were shot in an aisle inside Roman Grocery, 1735 W. Butler St., just after 5:30 p.m., Philadelphia police said.

The store’s security camera footage showed a gunman coming inside the store, walking up to the man, and shooting him, firing at least four shots at close range, said Police Chief Inspector Scott Small. The gunman then turned around, left the store, and ran east down Butler Street. The man, who was struck in the chest, was the target of the shooting. Medics at the scene pronounced him dead just before 6 p.m.

The woman was hit in the chest with “stray gunfire,” Small said, and was conscious when police arrived. The woman was standing behind the intended target, near a deli counter at the back of the store’s first aisle when the gunman opened fire.

There’s more at the original.

This was a targeted hit, which leads the mind to the idea it was gang-related, or a drug hit, but it could just as easily have been personal for some reason.

A caption on the included photo of the storefront noted that the shooting was recorded on “security footage,” but if the Philadelphia Police released that footage, or a photo of the gunman from the footage, it was not shown on the Inquirer’s story.

Unlike Miss Lugo’s murder, this one will almost certainly disappear down the rathole of most Philly shootings. If it turns out that the victim was just another bad guy, nobody other than his friends and family will care.

There have been 229 murders so far this year in Philadelphia, up from 174 on the same date last year, a 31.6% increase. 229 homicides in 158 days yields a homicide rate of 1.45 per day, a pace which would leave 529 dead bodies on the city’s mean streets for the year, smashing 1990’s record of 500.

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When you are eaten up with #TrumpDerangementSyndrome, it is unsurprising when you come to poor conclusions Amanda Marcotte doesn't bother to look for alternate answers, not when the voices in her head all say, "It's Trump's fault!"

It’s perhaps telling that Amanda Marcotte’s Twitter photo was taken in a bar.

It has been a while since we noted our good friend Amanda Marcotte. Native Texan and ex-Brooklynite, Miss Marcotte and her POSSLQ Marc Faletti moved to Philadelphia a couple of years ago, and one would think that, being in what I have had too much occasion to call Killadelphia, you’d think she would have at least mentioned the carnage in her new home town.

But, alas! Donald Trump, now 4½ months out of office, still shares that South Philly apartment with Mr Faletti and her, living rent-free in Miss Marcotte’s head.

There is no solution to the GOP’s vaccine refusal

COVID denialism lost its political usefulness months ago, but the GOP zombies keep on refusing to get the vaccine

By Amanda Marcotte | June 7, 2021 | 1:09 PM EDT

In the past six months, we’ve all witnessed the near-miraculous effectiveness of the vaccines against COVID-19  and President Joe Biden’s success at turning the joke of Donald Trump’s vaccine plan into a well-oiled machine. Anyone who wants the shot in the U.S. can get it. Yet, despite an initial surge of interest in vaccines in the mid-spring, there’s been a drastic drop-off in vaccination rates just ahead of Biden’s Independence Day goal for a return to summer grilling.

“The United States is averaging fewer than 1 million shots per day, a decline of more than two-thirds from the peak of 3.4 million in April,” the Washington Post reports, noting that “[s]mall armies of health workers and volunteers often outnumber the people showing up to get shots at clinics” in more conservative areas like Utah, North Carolina and Tennessee.

“Experts are concerned that states across the South, where vaccination rates are lagging, could face a surge in coronavirus cases over the summer,” the New York Times further reports. While many states in the Northeast have reached Biden’s 70% benchmark, the Times notes that only “about half of adults or fewer have received a dose” in 15 red states.

As vaccine rates have been lagging, a number of reasons for what tends to be called “vaccine hesitancy” have been documented through polls and other research. Issues include a lack of access, skepticism that COVID-19 is particularly dangerous, a lack of trust in the vaccines, a belief in conspiracy theories and fear of side effects.

No doubt all these aspects are true to one extent or another, and there’s certainly evidence that some working-class people simply are struggling to find the time to get the shots and recover from them. But the glaring geographical differences give away the one deeply uncomfortable reality about what is driving much, if not most, of the discrepancies in vaccination rates: Republicans are refusing to get vaccinated out of pure spite.

There’s more at the link, with Miss Marcotte doing everything she can to blame the evil Donald Trump and the GOP.

But then there’s this:

Less than 25 percent of Black Americans have reportedly received their first COVID-19 shot

Brigid Kennedy, Contributing Writer | Monday, June 7, 2021 | 5:28 PM

As of Monday, less than 25 percent of Black Americans have received their first COVID-19 shot. Health experts tell Politico that “ingrained” government skepticism, lack of transportation, inability to take time off, and deficient community outreach could explain the lag. Meanwhile, vaccination rates among other minority groups, like Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans, continue to rise following government outreach.

Miss Marcotte’s #TrumpDerangementSyndrome causes her to miss things, to miss a lot of things.

According to the Biden administration and public health experts, it’s not that minority populations are “openly hostile” to vaccines, it’s that they need “reassurance and prodding,” Politico writes. Octavio Martinez, a member of the White House’s COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force, said the government’s equity-focused efforts will require “relationship building and it’s going to take a little longer.” He added, “We have a systemic issue here.”

In Washington, D.C., Black Americans constitute nearly 8 in 10 new cases and close to 90 percent of deaths since May 1. White House efforts that have succeeded elsewhere have yet to gain “similar traction” in Black communities, per Politico.

The Associated Press survey estimated that black Americans gave 90% of their votes to Joe Biden, and that is very much in line with the traditional Democratic dominance among black voters. And the South, the very area in which Miss Marcotte claims that Republicans are not getting vaccinated to show loyalty to President Trump and spite Mr Biden, is the area with the heaviest concentration of black Americans. If the South are taking the vaccines more slowly, if black Americans have shown a much greater reluctance to take the vaccine — something Miss Marcotte should know, in that her hometown newspaper, The Philadelphia Inquirer, has been writing about that almost constantly — and the South is much more heavily black than the rest of the country, is it the evil reich-wing white Republicans who are not taking the vaccine, or is it that greater percentage of the population who are black?

Miss Marcotte’s #TrumpDerangementSyndrome causes her to miss things, to miss a lot of things.

Philadelphia is awash with stories about the murder of Christine Lugo. Does a political blogger in Philadelphia not read the Inquirer? Does she not watch the news on WPVI-TV, Channel 6, or Channel 3, the CBS station, or Channel 29, the local Fox affiliate, or Channel 10, the NBC station? Really, for a political blogger, someone who ought to be a news junkie, it would be pretty difficult to have missed that story.

But, rather than write about that, rather than even mentioning it in passing, Miss Marcotte wrote a poorly researched political piece without ever considering the possibility of an alternate explanation.

We are not surprised. 🙂

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A senseless murder finally gets to the people of Philadelphia Requiescat in pace, Christine Lugo

I have said before that The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t really care about homicide in the City of Brotherly Love unless a child, a local child, a “somebody,” or a cute little white girl.

A photo taken during a block party last year of Dunkin’ Donuts manager Christine Lugo.

Well, Christine Lugo isn’t quite a cute little white girl; she was Hispanic, at least to judge from her photo. But the city and the Inquirer are making a pretty big deal over her murder.

Philly authorities ask for help identifying the man who shot and killed Dunkin’ manager

“The only way the police can get to an arrest and then our office can get to approve charges is for the community to come forward and help,” said Chesley Lightsey, the DA’s homicide chief.

by Chris Palmer | Monday, 7 June 2021 | 5:00 PM EDT

Philadelphia authorities on Monday urged potential witnesses to speak up and help identify the man who fatally shot a Dunkin’ store manager early Saturday in the city’s Fairhill section.

Chesley Lightsey, homicide chief in the District Attorney’s Office, asked the public to review the “very clear” surveillance video of the suspect from inside the store that police posted on YouTube and help them determine who shot Christine Lugo after robbing the store on the 500 block of Lehigh Avenue around 5:30 a.m. Saturday.

“We are begging you to come forward,” Lightsey said. “The only way the police can get to an arrest and then our office can get to approve charges is for the community to come forward and help.”

Mayor Jim Kenney, at an unrelated news conference, said the video showed Lugo trying to comply with the robber’s demand, “and he still killed her.”

Screen capture of Dunkin’ Donuts murder suspect. Click to enlarge.

The Inquirer would have done better to have included the photo of the suspect, but at least they linked to the Philadelphia Police Department’s YouTube video of the robbery, and were willing to print it previously.

Miss Lugo was not a criminal; she was a hard-working store manager, up at the crack of dawn to do her job, a job made more difficult by the fact that the night shift person had called off sick. She was alone on Saturday morning, in a neighborhood that Google streetview shows to be at least somewhat better kept than some others in Philadelphia.

In a city which doesn’t really care about homicide — 228 people have been murdered in the city so far, a 33.33% increase above last years 171 on the same date — some people are caring about this one.

And someone knows who this thug is. The question is: will that someone call the cops?

Of course, the odds are that his fellow thug friends have seen the reports in the media and told him, “Dude, get out of town, now!” He could be in Atlantic City or Charlotte or Miami[1]John ‘Jordan’ Lewis, who murdered Philadelphia Police Officer Charles Cassidy in a Dunkin’ Donuts on West Oak Lane was apprehended in Miami. by now.

Me? I’m still betting a case of Mountain Dew that, when we find out who the (alleged) killer is, we’ll find out that he has a long rap sheet, and that, had he been treated seriously by the District Attorney, could and should have been behind bars at 5:51 AM last Saturday morning. That’s hardly a risky bet: that’s what we always seem to find out about these killers.

References

References
↑1 John ‘Jordan’ Lewis, who murdered Philadelphia Police Officer Charles Cassidy in a Dunkin’ Donuts on West Oak Lane was apprehended in Miami.
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Pegging the irony meter: The New York Times tells us about someone else’s problems with freedom of speech!

I have, in the past, joked that I have an eidetic memory, but it isn’t true. My memory is pretty good, and I have also joked that, despite my advanced age, I don’t have Old Timer’s Disease. At any rate, I do seem to have a longer term memory than the editors of The New York Times:

Once a Bastion of Free Speech, the A.C.L.U. Faces an Identity Crisis

An organization that has defended the First Amendment rights of Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan is split by an internal debate over whether supporting progressive causes is more important.

By Michael Powell | June 6, 2021 | Updated 1:13 p.m. ET

It was supposed to be the celebration of a grand career, as the American Civil Liberties Union presented a prestigious award to the longtime lawyer David Goldberger. He had argued one of its most famous cases, defending the free speech rights of Nazis in the 1970s to march in Skokie, Ill., home to many Holocaust survivors.

Mr. Goldberger, now 79, adored the A.C.L.U. But at his celebratory luncheon in 2017, he listened to one speaker after another and felt a growing unease.

A law professor argued that the free speech rights of the far right were not worthy of defense by the A.C.L.U. and that Black people experienced offensive speech far more viscerally than white allies. In the hallway outside, an A.C.L.U. official argued it was perfectly legitimate for his lawyers to decline to defend hate speech.

Mr. Goldberger, a Jew who defended the free speech of those whose views he found repugnant, felt profoundly discouraged.

“I got the sense it was more important for A.C.L.U. staff to identify with clients and progressive causes than to stand on principle,” he said in a recent interview. “Liberals are leaving the First Amendment behind.”

The A.C.L.U., America’s high temple of free speech and civil liberties, has emerged as a muscular and richly funded progressive powerhouse in recent years, taking on the Trump administration in more than 400 lawsuits. But the organization finds itself riven with internal tensions over whether it has stepped away from a founding principle — unwavering devotion to the First Amendment.

It’s a long article, thousands of words, but, shockingly enough,[1]There should be a sarcasm tag here; I don’t find this shocking in the slightest. nowhere in the article does it mention the Times own opposition to freedom of speech.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon sought a restraining order to prevent The New York Times and The Washington Post from printing more of the so-called “Pentagon Papers,” technically the Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force, a classified history and assessment of American policy and operations in the Vietnam war. The Times and the Post fought the injunctions in court, the Times winning in New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971). The Times was all about the First Amendment and Freedom of the Press.

Of course, All the News That’s Fit to Print was to be determined not by the readers, but by the editors!

Well that was then, but it sure isn’t now. On November 29, 2018, the editors of the Times gave OpEd space to Chad Malloy to claim that a restriction on speech actually promoted freedom of speech:

How Twitter’s Ban on ‘Deadnaming’ Promotes Free Speech

Trans people are less likely to speak up if they know they’re going to be constantly told they don’t exist.

by Parker Malloy[2]‘Parker’ Malloy is a male, born Chad Malloy, who claims to be female. The Times referred to Mr Malloy as ‘Ms Malloy,’ and the Times went along with that. The First Street … Continue reading | November 29, 2018

In September, Twitter announced changes to its “hateful conduct” policy, violations of which can get users temporarily or permanently barred from the site. The updates, an entry on Twitter’s blog explained, would expand its existing rules “to include content that dehumanizes others based on their membership in an identifiable group, even when the material does not include a direct target.” A little more than a month later, the company quietly rolled out the update, expanding the conduct page from 374 to 1,226 words, which went largely unnoticed until this past week.

While much of the basic framework stayed the same, the latest version leaves much less up for interpretation. Its ban on “repeated and/or non-consensual slurs, epithets, racist and sexist tropes, or other content that degrades someone” was expanded to read: “We prohibit targeting individuals with repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to dehumanize, degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category. This includes targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.”

Translation: any reference to a ‘transgender’ person’s biological sex or birth name can earn a person a suspension or permanent removal from Twitter. In mocking Twitter’s recent whine about Nigeria blocking all of Twitter within that country, and stating, “Access to the free and #OpenInternet is an essential human right in modern society”, William Teach noted:

My old account was given time-outs and suspensions many times before being permanently suspended. They never told me why the last. My new account has been given a few timeouts and a 7 day suspension (that one was for scientifically noting that the gender confused have many more mental health issues and a higher percentage of suicidal thoughts and suicide, and it’s a really bad idea to have them around military grade weapons).

Twitter, and, seemingly, The New York Times, will never agree to publish any opposition to the notion that girls can be boys and boys can be girls.[3]I asked if Three Dog Night should be canceled because in their song Joy to the World they wished joy to all the boys and girls without including the intersexed, the non-binary, the questioning, etc. Questioning the acceptance of ‘transgenderism’ is simply not to be allowed, but, to Mr Malloy and the editors of the Times disallowing that promotes freedom of speech.

That was hardly all. Ten and a half months later, the Times gave OpEd space to one of its own staffers, Andrew Marantz, to argue against the freedom of speech:

Free Speech Is Killing Us

Noxious language online is causing real-world violence. What can we do about it?

By Andrew Marantz | October 4, 2019 | 6:01 AM EDT

There has never been a bright line between word and deed. Yet for years, the founders of Facebook and Twitter and 4chan and Reddit — along with the consumers obsessed with these products, and the investors who stood to profit from them — tried to pretend that the noxious speech prevalent on those platforms wouldn’t metastasize into physical violence. In the early years of this decade, back when people associated social media with Barack Obama or the Arab Spring, Twitter executives referred to their company as “the free-speech wing of the free-speech party.” Sticks and stones and assault rifles could hurt us, but the internet was surely only a force for progress.

No one believes that anymore. Not after the social-media-fueled campaigns of Narendra Modi and Rodrigo Duterte and Donald Trump; not after the murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Va.; not after the massacres in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and a Walmart in a majority-Hispanic part of El Paso. The Christchurch shooter, like so many of his ilk, had spent years on social media trying to advance the cause of white power. But these posts, he eventually decided, were not enough; now it was “time to make a real life effort post.” He murdered 52 people.

As we noted here, the editors of the Times considered this such an important article that they added a title graphic of a statuette of Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker on fire.

Freedom of Speech, it seems, matter only to the editors of the Times when it is their freedom of speech, and of the press, that is in question. Greg Bensinger, a member of the Times’ Editorial Board, celebrated Facebook’s banning of Donald Trump.

The editors of the Times, and the rest of the credentialed media, have never gotten over the halcyon days in which they were the gatekeepers, the arbiters of what did, and did not, get published. Rush Limbaugh started to break their hold, by attracting a huge audience to his talk radio show, and then the internet destroyed it completely, allowing anyone with a computer to self-publish. On twitter, on Facebook, on blogger.com, people can publish their thoughts for free, and while yes, I do pay for this site, I really don’t pay that much. I guess that it was easier for the editors of the Times to support the freedom of speech and the press when they were the ones who determined just who got to exercise the freedom of the press. The #woke[4]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading got mostly liberal editorial page editor James Bennet fired because he agreed to print an OpEd piece by a sitting United States Senator with which they disagreed, and ran off liberal columnist Bari Weiss because, horrors! she is Jewish and mostly supports Israel.

Freedom of speech, of the press? Not something really allowed at The New York Times!

So, yeah, I was amused when the Times told us of the ACLU’s struggle with freedom of speech, without mentioning their own lack of support for it.
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Cross-posted on American Free News Network

References

References
↑1 There should be a sarcasm tag here; I don’t find this shocking in the slightest.
↑2 ‘Parker’ Malloy is a male, born Chad Malloy, who claims to be female. The Times referred to Mr Malloy as ‘Ms Malloy,’ and the Times went along with that. The First Street Journal does not go along with the silliness of transgenderism, and while we do not change other people’s quotes, we always refer to a ‘transgender’ person by his biological sex pronouns, honorifics and his birth name, where known.
↑3 I asked if Three Dog Night should be canceled because in their song Joy to the World they wished joy to all the boys and girls without including the intersexed, the non-binary, the questioning, etc.
↑4

From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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The Philadelphia Inquirer does what the Lexington Herald-Leader will not Updated!

I have been generous, shall we say, in my criticism of The Philadelphia Inquirer, so when the paper does something right, it is incumbent on me to note that. The newspaper reported on yet another homicide of a victim in the city:

Dunkin’ Donuts manager shot to death during robbery in North Philly

Police released a video showing the gunman approaching the manager as she opened the store, and pointing a revolver at her as he forces her inside to an office where she hands over money.

by Diane Mastrull and Elizabeth Robertson | Updated June 5, 2021

A Dunkin’ Donuts manager was shot to death early Saturday after a gunman confronted her as she opened the store in North Philadelphia, forced her inside, and demanded she give him all the money, police said.

The victim, a 41-year-old woman, was shot in the head at 5:51 a.m. inside the Dunkin’ Donuts at Lehigh Avenue and Fairhill Street, and was pronounced dead there six minutes later by medics, police said.

Coworkers identified her as Christine Lugo, who lived in the neighborhood and, although she had her own children, was a mother to those she worked with.

“She was an angel, a mother to all of us,” said Larry Evans, one of a few employees who stopped by the restaurant Saturday afternoon to mourn their colleague. “No matter who you are, she give you the shirt off her back.”

Screen capture of Dunkin’ Donuts murder suspect. Click to enlarge.

There’s more at the original, but this killing was wholly senseless: the store manager gave the robber the cash, so he had that for which he came, but he shot her in the head anyway.

The actual video, which I could not link, is available on the Inquirer’s website. The victim is blurred out, for the sake of decency, and it doess not show the killer shooting her.

The Lexington Herald-Leader? If the paper followed McClatchy’s mugshot policy, it would be up to Executive Editor peter Baniak to decide whether or not to publish the photo of the suspect, but, considering how the paper refused to publish the mugshot of accused murderer Juanyah J Clay, who was then on the loose, quite possibly because Mr Clay is black, I have to wonder: would the paper have published the images the Inquirer did, given that the Dunkin’ Donuts killer is visibly black? The Inquirer is trying to help the police and the citizens of Philadelphia to catch this criminal; the Herald-Leader wouldn’t do that to help catch Mr Clay.

If the suspect is caught, what are the odds that he was treated leniently in a criminal past, by District Attorney Larry Krasner and his predecessors, and could have been behind bars on Saturday morning? If he is identified and caught, and it turns out that yes, he was on the loose when he shouldn’t have been, will the District Attorney of the judge involved be held accountable for Miss Lugo’s death?

Of course, in Killadelphia, Miss Lugo was not the only murder victim in the city. The article noted that:

  • A 16-year-old was shot 13 times, killing him, shortly before 8:30 PM Friday at 55th and Market Streets in West Philadelphia;
  • A 25-year-old man was shot once in the chest at 10th and Cumberland Streets in North Philly, and taken to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7 PM; and
  • Later that night, a man in his late 20s was shot multiple times, and killed, while he was sitting in a vehicle at Broad and Belfield Streets in the Logan section.

That was all on Friday night. How many more murders happened in the City of Brotherly Love on the rest of the weekend?

__________________________________

Updated: Monday, 7 June 2016 | 8:25 AM EDT

A photo taken during a block party last year of Dunkin’ Donuts manager Christine Lugo.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Miss Lugo was not scheduled to be working alone on Saturday morning.

The store is usually open 24 hours, offering only drive-through service overnight. But the person who was supposed to work Friday night into Saturday morning called out, assistant manager Terrell Johnson said, which meant Lugo showed up to an empty store, left to open it alone.

Johnson, 38, said he often worked the overnight shift and would meet Lugo in the morning when she came to start her day about 5 a.m. She’d text him when she was 15 minutes away, he said, and he’d meet her outside. Johnson didn’t work the overnight shift this weekend because he had been suspended from work due to a “no-call, no-show,” which he said was a misunderstanding.

Dunkin’ Donuts corporate office wanted to make sure that they got no blame:

In a statement Sunday, Dunkin’s spokesperson Michelle King said store franchisees ”are solely responsible for the day-to-day operations of their restaurants, including staffing decisions.”

That may be true, but what a poor time to be saying so.

The newspaper reported that there was less than $300 in the store when Miss Lugo opened it. She was senselessly murdered, after giving the robber the money, and it was for under $300.

For less than $300! Had he just robbed the store, and not killed Miss Lugo, he’d have been facing what, five years in the slammer? Now, if he gets caught, even with the miserable Larry Krasner as District Attorney, he’s looking at spending the rest of his miserable life in jail.