Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Andy Beshear plays politics with COVID-19 again

Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) is playing politics with COVID-19 cases again. On Wednesday, January 6th, he told Kentuckians that the Bluegrass State had seen a record 5,742 new COVID-19 cases, with 34 fatalities.

Wednesday’s new case total is a head and shoulders above the state’s previous single-day record of 4,324 on Dec. 10. The all-time high comes a day after Beshear noted that the state’s day-to-day number of new cases were fluctuating, and his office was trying to figure out why. Tuesday’s new case tally, for instance, was 1,781 compared with Monday’s 2,319.

“Today’s numbers show how critically important a centralized effort and response is to defeating this virus,” Beshear said. The state has reported a total of 286,541 cases of the virus and 2,806 deaths.

Yet, despite the new record, Mr Beshear did not attempt to renew his school closing executive order, which expired January 4th.[1]The Governor had later recommended that schools stay closed until January 11th, but he did not make it an order. Danville Christian Academy, the lead plaintiff in Danville Christian Academy v … Continue reading

And Thursday was more of the same:

COVID-19 surging in Kentucky. 4,911 new cases & 37 deaths. Positivity rate nears 12%.

By Alex Aquisto | January 7, 2020 | 6:08 PM EST | Updated 7:06 PM EST

A day after Kentucky tallied a record number of new COVID-19 cases, Gov. Andy Beshear announced 4,911 more cases of the virus on Thursday, saying it signals a post-holiday spike.

“We are in a dangerous place,” Beshear said in an update.

Thursday’s new case total is the second-highest number the state has reported in a single day. On Wednesday, the state logged more than 5,700 new cases.

Beshear said it’s “now clear that we are seeing an escalation related to holiday gatherings. This is not the time to make it harder to react to this virus when it may be surging again.”

There’s more at the original, but, once again, the Governor is playing politics, urging the General Assembly not to limit his emergency powers. In it’s odd year, thirty-day session, the General Assembly, which the Governor explicitly cut out of the COVID-19 response because he knew the legislature would not approve all of his orders, is fast-tracking legislation which would limit the Governor’s executive orders under declared states of emergency, primarily limiting them to thirty days unless an extension is approved by the legislature.

House Bill 1 is the Republican legislature’s response to Beshear’s COVID-19 restrictions. Over the course of the pandemic Republican lawmakers have chafed at the capacity limitations and safety requirements Beshear has placed on businesses, schools and churches, with the latest round of outrage coming after Beshear closed restaurants and bars to in-person dining in the last weeks of November and ordered schools to switch to remote learning until January.

The Republican solution: businesses and schools can stay open as long as they “meet or exceed” guidance issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, detail their plan and post it on their door. Lawmakers have not specified which CDC guidelines must be followed, and the CDC’s page is built to offer tips on how to keep employees and customers safe more than to set standards for reopening.

The Kentucky Chamber of Commerce pushed a provision in the bill that would waive interest and penalties on employer’s unpaid unemployment insurance bills until 2022.

There also are provisions in the bill to allow family visitation for children in foster care during an emergency (the Beshear Administration prevented those visitations in November when cases were spiking, but they have resumed) and would allow residents of nursing homes to have one designated “essential personal care visitor” who would be exempt from any orders preventing visitation in nursing homes.

Senate Bill 1 would place a 30-day expiration date on any executive order from the governor that restricts the in-person meeting of schools, businesses and religious organizations unless the order is extended by the General Assembly. Local executives are given more flexibility under the bill for any emergency order they institute.

Should the governor hope to suspend a statute through executive order during an emergency the action would require approval from the Attorney General.

I have no doubt that if the General Assembly does not limit the Governor’s emergency powers, he would start issuing more orders as soon as the legislative session ended.

The bill also requires the governor’s office to give a report every 30 days about the contracts issued and revenues received while the state is under an emergency order. It attempts to prevent the governor from circumventing the legislature by issuing a new emergency order after 30 days on the same “or substantially similar” facts and circumstances of the original order.

The Governor’s pleas that “Today’s numbers show how critically important a centralized effort and response is to defeating this virus” and “This is not the time to make it harder to react to this virus when it may be surging again” make little sense, since the proposals would allow him to issue those executive orders, but would simply require that the state legislature approve any extension. But, despite the surging numbers, Mr Beshear once again declined to renew the expired executive order, because he knew that would just make the legislature even more likely to pass the bills limiting his authority. Republicans have veto-proof majorities in both legislative chambers.

The truth is simple: if the General Assembly does not pass the legislation restricting the Governor’s emergency powers, Mr Beshear would start using them the day the legislature adjourned. While the Governor can call a special session of the legislature whenever he wishes, to approve an executive order extension, the legislature does not have the authority to call itself back into session. Even if they did, the Republicans did not have a veto-proof majority in the state House of Representatives prior to the 2020 elections; now, they do.

References

References
↑1 The Governor had later recommended that schools stay closed until January 11th, but he did not make it an order. Danville Christian Academy, the lead plaintiff in Danville Christian Academy v Beshear, was open with in-person classes on Tuesday, January 5th. I personally verified this with a telephone call to the school.
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I think Joe Biden is too smart to try this, but the spittle-flecked left would love to see it

According to the Associated Press, an Iranian court has issued an arrest warrant for President Donald Trump, for the drone-strike which killed General Qassim Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. General Soleimani led the expeditionary Quds force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The Quds Force (Persian: نیروی قدس‎, romanized: niru-ye qods,Jerusalem Force) is one of five branches of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) specializing in unconventional warfare and military intelligence operations. U.S. Army’s Iraq War General Stanley McChrystal describes the Quds Force as an organization analogous to a combination of the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the United States. Responsible for extraterritorial operations, the Quds Force supports non-state actors in many countries, including Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the State of Palestine’s Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Yemeni Houthis, and Shia militias in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.

The Quds Force reports directly to the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei. After Qassem Soleimani was killed, his deputy, Esmail Ghaani, replaced him. The U.S. Secretary of State designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Quds Force as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) based on the IRGC’s “continued support to and engagement in terrorist activity around the world.”

President Trump specifically ordered the elimination of General Solemani, the Defense Department stating:

General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region. General Soleimani and his Quds Force were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more. He had orchestrated attacks on coalition bases in Iraq over the last several months – including the attack on December 27th (2019) – culminating in the death and wounding of additional American and Iraqi personnel. General Soleimani also approved the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad that took place this week.

This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans. The United States will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world.

Sounds like the killing was a good thing.

Most responsible American leaders would laugh at Iran’s arrest warrant, but when you have notable Philadelphia Inquirer columnists like Helen Ubiñas and Trudy Rubin calling for the President to somehow be punished, I would not be surprised if a lot of our friends on the left would support the President’s extradition to Iran, where he would face a death sentence.

More probable, of course, is that the left will be calling for all sorts of criminal charges against the President after he leaves office, but in the United States; they would like nothing more than the sight of him behind bars. I don’t think that the Justice Department under not-Supreme Court Justice Merrick Garland will pursue charges, but state prosecutors in New York seem eager to do so.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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Politically correct crime reporting

The Lexington Herald-Leader reported Tuesday on the 2020 homicide numbers in Kentucky’s second largest city, home of the University of Kentucky, and where I lived from August of 1971 through December of 1984. There were 34 homicides in the city in 2020, up from 30 in 2019, which was the previous record. With a guesstimated population of 323,152 in mid-2019, that puts the city’s murder rate at 10.53 per 100,000 population, far, far behind places like Philadelphia and Chicago. Lexington-Fayette County is the 60th largest city in the United States, larger than St Louis, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh.[1]Unlike some other larger cities, Lexington has no contiguous suburbs, in that the Lexington city and Fayette County governments merged in 1974.

Teens, disputes drove a Lexington homicide record. COVID-19 made cases hard to solve

By Jeremy Chisenhall | January 5, 2021 | 2:57 PM EST | Updated: 4:12 PM EST

Lexington Police Chief Lawrence Weathers, from the city website.

Many of Lexington’s record-breaking 2020 homicides were violent conclusions to arguments or other crimes involving male adults or teens.

There were 34 homicides in Lexington in 2020, a 13 percent increase from 2019, according to Lexington police data. The previous record was 30, set in 2019. The difficulty of identifying suspects in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic made matters worse for police.

“Everybody’s wearing masks,” Lexington Police Chief Lawrence Weathers told the Herald-Leader. “That puts a little extra work on us, and we have to corroborate a little bit more on some of the things without having a full face.”

Well, Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) did mandate that, so, how about that, even criminals are obeying the orders!

There’s a lot more at the original, which you can read at the embedded link.

Jeremy Chisenhall, the article author, included some graphics in which homicides were mapped by location, by time and day of the week, by the ages and sexes of the victims and suspects.

You know what’s missing? Any data or graphics on the race or ethnicity of the victims and suspects.

Now, I didn’t know if it was political correctness on the part of the Herald-Leader or Mr Chisenhall that omitted that information, or whether the Lexington Police Department failed to provide it, so I did the obvious thing: I went to the Police Department’s website. There I found a chart on homicide investigations, listing all 34 victims and the current dispositions of their cases, including named suspects, plus the ages of the victims and where they were killed. But it doesn’t disclose race or ethnicity.

The LPD certainly keeps that information, because in another chart, on the same page I found the homicide chart, is a three page .pdf file of assaults with firearms, which specifically states that it does not include homicides, in which the races, sexes and ages of the victims are specified.

I was able to dig a bit deeper. On the homicides page, the 25 named offenders were hyperlinked to their mugshots. Based on observation of mugshots and names, I counted 11 non-Hispanic black males, 2 non-Hispanic black females, 4 non-Hispanic white males, 1 non-Hispanic white female, 2 Hispanic white males, 1 black Hispanic white male, 2 unidentifiable suspects and 3 juveniles.

So, why did I have to manually count a number that the LPD provided much more easily available in shooting victims?

Why hide this stuff? The omission was so glaring that anyone could have noticed it, and Mr Chisenhall’s graphics made that even more obvious. Eventually, the city will have to report the numbers anyway. But we’re not supposed to talk about race, are we?

References

References
↑1 Unlike some other larger cities, Lexington has no contiguous suburbs, in that the Lexington city and Fayette County governments merged in 1974.
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Killadelphia reaches the milestone I didn't think they'd make it, but they did: 502 homicides in 2020.

This is part of the penitential rite at the beginning of Mass:

I confess to almighty God
and to you, my brothers and sisters,
that I have greatly sinned,
in my thoughts and in my words,
in what I have done and in what I have failed to do,
through my fault, through my fault,
through my most grievous fault;
therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin,
all the Angels and Saints,
and you, my brothers and sisters,
to pray for me to the Lord our God.

And I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, because, as Philadelphia was approaching 500 homicides for 2020, I was, morbidly enough, rooting for the city to reach the milestone of 500 homicides. And, according to the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, that ghastly goal was achieved, with 502 people bleeding out their lives in the city’s mean streets.

I noted, only a few days ago, that the City of Brotherly Love had, under the great leadership of Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, won the Silver Medal, with 489 homicides, tying the second place mark set in 1989, but that 1990’s 505 number seemed out of reach.

I had used an article in Wikipedia as my source, which gave that number. But, as of just a couple of days ago, the article changed, stating that 1990’s total was 497. And The Philadelphia Inquirer’s old website, philly.com, has interactive data which gives that same 497 number for 1990.

That may not be the last word, because the Inquirer’s Chris Palmer reported, on New Year’s Day:

The number of people killed last year — 499 as of late Thursday — is 40% higher than in 2019, and more than in all of 2013 and 2014 combined. The only time more people were slain in the city was in 1990, when police reported 500 homicides as violence surged alongside an intensifying crack-cocaine epidemic.

With that 505 number stuck in my brain, I had thought that Mr Palmer was simply using 500 as an approximation, but with the change in data from my source — now two sources — I have to wonder, is the 500 number an approximation, or precise?

Because, if it is precise, and the Police Department’s 502 number is accurate, Messrs Kenney and Krasner, and Miss Outlaw, have won the Gold Medal!

That’s a pretty sad award.

At any rate, a site search for 502 homicides on the Inquirer’s website, at 5:40 PM EST did not turn up any stories noting the ‘achievement.’

Now, I’m something of a math geek, and I do really radical things like run the numbers. It wasn’t so long ago, October 22nd, that I noted in an article entitled We need to stop pretending that #BlackLivesMatter, because in the City of Brotherly Love, it’s very apparent that they don’t, that the math said Philly was on track for 485 homicides.

And that had been a huge jump, because on August 18th, the daily averages led to a number of 439.

Of course, in mid-August, there was still a lot of warm weather left, and violent crimes tend to increase in the long, hot summer.

But by October 22nd, we were a month into autumn, cooler weather had prevailed, and supposedly, so would cooler heads. As I wrote then, the math was simple: 391 people killed in 295 days so far equals 1.325 people killed every single day. With 71 days left in the year, at that rate the city should see another 94 people sent to their deaths before the ball drops in New York City.

391 + 94 = 485.

But 502 killings in 366 days? That works out to 1.372 people being slaughtered, every single day of the year. In the last two months of autumn, and the first two weeks of winter, Philadelphia saw 1.563 homicides per day. The rate of death increased in the cooler months. December’s 48 homicides in 31 days works out to 1.548 per day, during what is supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year. December, after President Trump had been defeated for re-election, and COVID-19 vaccines had been developed and approved, yet the things on which the left would like to blame the increased crime rate now being diminished didn’t do much to lower the homicide rate.

I have been profuse in my criticism of Mayor Kenney, District Attorney Krasner and Commissioner Outlaw, and I do not take back a single word of it. But the real blame lies with not just the killers, but the parents who reared them. Yes, a no-nonsense “broken windows” policing and prosecution regime would reduce crime, the way Mayor Rudy Giuliani (D-New York) accomplished it, but the real key is reducing criminal thought in the minds of the people. If the kids are reared right, they won’t commit the crimes, regardless of the policing regimen.

Political leaders cannot rear our children for us; that’s up to parents and grandparents. But the Mayor and the District Attorney can look at what Mayor Giuliani accomplished, and if they don’t like his methods, they can at least appreciate his numbers. Philadelphia’s previous Mayor, Michael Nutter, and his Police Commissioner, Charles Ramsey, might not have been full on “broken windows” in their policies, but, as Robert Stacy McCain pointed out, there were more killings in Philly last year than in two consecutive years, 2013 and 2014, under Messrs Nutter and Ramsey.

Mr Krasner’s Twitter biography states, “District Attorney Larry Krasner fights for equal justice for the great people of Philadelphia. A fair and effective criminal justice system makes us safer.”  The one thing Mr Krasner’s policies have not done is to make Philadelphians safer.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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A novel, and bad, ruling from a British court

It has not been uncommon for foreign governments and judges to refuse to extradite prisoners to the United States if they faced potentially capital charges in the US, but this is a new one. A district court judge in the United Kingdom has refused to allow the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange because he might impose capital punishment on himself!

U.K. judge refuses extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to U.S.

by Jill Lawless, Associated Press | 6:31 AM EST

LONDON — A British judge on Monday rejected the United States’ request to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to face espionage charges, saying he was likely to kill himself if held under harsh U.S. prison conditions.

District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled that extradition would be “oppressive” because of Assange’s mental health.

She said Assange was “a depressed and sometimes despairing man” who had the “intellect and determination” to circumvent any suicide prevention measures taken by prison authorities.

The U.S. government said it would appeal the decision. Assange’s lawyers plan to ask for his release from a London prison where he has been held for more than a year-and-a-half.

There’s more at the original.

Mr Assange and WikiLeaks published the material sent to them by PFC Bradley Manning; Mr Manning was convicted for violating the Espionage Act, stealing government property, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and multiple counts of disobeying orders, and was sentenced to 35 years in prison. President Barack Hussein Obama, just before he left office, unjustly and irresponsibly commuted Mr Manning’s sentence to seven years in prison, and he was released in May of 2017.[1]In keeping with The First Street Journal’s stylebook, we always refer to Mr Manning, an mentally ill individual who believes he’s a woman, by his birth name and biological sex.

There remains something I believe to be a huge problem. Mr Manning was an American soldier, operating on American bases, and thus subject to American law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Mr Assange, however, is not an American citizen, was not in the United States when WikiLeaks published the material sent to them by then-PFC Manning, and Wikileaks is not based in the United States. The notion that American law extends beyond American political jurisdiction is a troubling one, and one I find repugnant. If American law extends outside of the United States’ legal jurisdiction, then any other country can claim that their laws extend inside the United States.

Mr Assange did do the United States a huge favor when WikiLeaks published e-mails hacked from John Podesta and the Democratic National Committee, information which helped to keep Hillary Clinton a private citizen.

But, I digress.

Mr Assange was not facing a capital sentence in the United States, and thus that commonly-used justification for denial of extradition did not apply. In this ruling, Judge Baraitser twisted the justification around to use it to claim that the prisoner might commit capital punishment on himself. If he did so, would that not be his choice? Is anyone really upset that such was Jeffrey Epstein’s choice?

Let me be clear here: I am opposed to capital punishment. I find it unreasonable in circumstances in which a prisoner has no power to escape, and it has become far more expensive than a sentence of life without parole. But if someone wants to kill himself, that ought to be his choice. The notion that we have suicide prevention measures in prison seems silly to me.

But Judge Baraitser has created something new, something which could be used by other nations and foreign judges to block extradition even when the criminal suspect has not committed any offense which would subject him to a possible death sentence. This is not a good thing.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

References

References
↑1 In keeping with The First Street Journal’s stylebook, we always refer to Mr Manning, an mentally ill individual who believes he’s a woman, by his birth name and biological sex.
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If you want to see more conservative political victories, go to church!

Just a few of weeks ago, I commented, to a Facebook friend, in 2016, we had an election where half the people thought they got screwed.

Who knows, maybe there was sufficient fraud that President Trump was cheated out of a victory, but if there was, he hasn’t been able to prove it.

This country will be greatly damaged by a Biden presidency, but that’s what we are going to have. The proper response now is to support conservatives and libertarians for every office, to take back the House of Representatives in 2022, and defeat Joe Biden in 2024. Do whatever you can to resist the Democrats’ policy initiatives. Be sure to support conservatives and libertarians for state and local offices, and do everything you can to replace school boards with conservatives who will not allow the teachers unions to indoctrinate children with leftist babble.

But, most important of all: go to church! The real solidarity of conservatives comes from faith and a clear understanding of God’s laws and morality. Part of the reason that so many Democratic Governors have been able to trample on our freedom of religion is that not that many Americans, even those who claim to be Christian, actually go to church!

Then I came across this, from the Catholic News Agency:

Only frequent church attendees avoided downward mental health trend in 2020

CNA Staff | December 11, 2020 | 12:09 AM MST

Americans who attend religious services weekly are the only demographic group appearing to show improved mental health in 2020, despite the stresses of the coronavirus pandemic and other events, says a new survey.

The survey otherwise shows significant self-reported mental health declines among those previously in excellent health.

In 2019, about 42% of those who reported attending religious services weekly told Gallup that their mental health was excellent. In 2020, 46% said the same, an increase of 4 percentage points. Only 35% of those who attend services nearly weekly or monthly reported excellent mental health, down 12 percentage points from last year. Among those who attend seldom or never, 29% reported excellent mental health, down 13 percentage points.

While coronavirus restrictions have often limited peoples’ ability to attend religious services, the Gallup survey did not ask respondents whether they faced such limits.

There’s more at the original.

I have previously said that Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) executive orders suspending our constitutional rights and closing churches has made going to Mass a political act of defiance as well as a religious one. The evidence has long shown that the stronger one’s Christian faith is, the more probable that someone will be politically conservative and vote Republican. Quite simply, the more strongly Christian someone is, the more likely he is to hold conservative political positions.

And now we see that going to church leads to stronger mental health as well.

It doesn’t work in every case, obviously. Joe Biden is a Mass-every-Sunday (purported) Catholic, yet his fealty to Democratic political positions is stronger than his belief in the Church’s positions on abortion, homosexuality and ‘transgenderism.’ Of course, his mispronunciation of “psalmist,” when there is a reading from the Book of Psalms in every Catholic Mass does make one wonder if he sleeps through Mass most days, but still . . . .

It’s simple: Mr Biden is both a Catholic, nominally anyway, and a Democrat, but, of the two, being a Democrat is far more important to him than being Catholic. However, he is the outlier, not the norm: the more frequently a Christian attends church, Protestant or Catholic, the more likely he is to hold political views in line with his religious ones.

For conservatives, religion not only reinforces our political views, but actually going to church strengthens our commitment to our religious and political positions.

There is, however, something that the left do not realize and political commentators never seem to mention: the more a person attends church, the more he is accepting of other people of different races:

Religious Trump Voters: How Faith Moderates Attitudes about Immigration, Race, and Identity

By Emily Ekins | February 5, 2019

Increasing political polarization and rising conflict over identity, race relations, immigration, and LGBT rights have left two increasingly divided extremes with a seemingly elusive moderate middle. Many have come to view religious institutions, largely because of their opposition to same‐​sex marriage, as a major contributor to this ever‐​increasing divide — a catalyst for increased intergroup societal conflict rather than a possible cure. However, research from the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group’s VOTER Surveys (Views of the Electorate Research Survey) finds that religious participation may serve as a moderating function in our politics, particularly among conservatives. These national surveys find that Donald Trump voters who attend church regularly are more likely than nonreligious Trump voters to have warmer feelings toward racial and religious minorities, to be more supportive of immigration and trade, and to be more concerned about poverty. These data are important because they demonstrate that private institutions in civil society can have a positive effect on social conflict and can reduce polarization.

Left-right culture wars over the rights of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual) people — particularly government sanction of same-sex marriages — have likely soured many Democrats’ views of Christians. Indeed, a majority (56 percent) of Democrats report unfavorable feelings toward evangelical Christians. This, in large part, may be a response to the 64 percent of churchgoing Christians who oppose legalized same-sex marriage and the half who have cool feelings toward LGBT people, and to the finding that the more frequently people attend church, the more negative their attitudes are likely to be toward gay men, lesbians, and also feminists. Thus, antagonism toward religious institutions is often grounded in the idea that religion is a source of exclusion and oppression rather than of inclusivity and tolerance. Such views are succinctly articulated by a bumper sticker from the Richard Dawkins Foundation: “There is no war on religion: Only opposition of intolerance, oppression, hatred, and stupidity.”

Conservatives’ views of black people, Hispanics, and Asians improve the more frequently conservatives attend religious services

.It may surprise some readers, however, to learn that religious participation may moderate conservatives’ attitudes on other important culture war issues, particularly matters of race, immigration, and identity. Given that the rise of Donald Trump has increased the salience of these issues, this brief uses the 2016, 2017, and 2018 VOTER Surveys to examine how religious and nonreligious people who voted for Donald Trump think about these important issues.

Conservatives’ views of black people, Hispanics, and Asians improve the more frequently conservatives attend religious services. Specifically, favorable feelings toward black people increase from 48 percent among Trump voters who never attend church to 73 percent among those who attend more than once a week — a 25-point increase. Similarly, favorable feelings toward Hispanics and Asians increase from 63 percent and 60 percent, respectively, among secular Trump voters to 72 percent and 80 percent, respectively, among churchgoing Trump voters.

There is much more at the original; internal references from original omitted in the quote.

This is the part the left do not understand: religious conservatives, such as myself, may oppose the idea of same-sex ‘marriage,’ and classifying the ‘transgendered’ as the sex they claim to be rather than the sex they are biologically, but that does not mean we somehow want them all killed. Rather, it means that we wish them to return to mental health and conservative beliefs and values. The conservative and libertarian part of me informs me that what they wish to do in their private lives is between themselves and God, and none of my business; it also informs me that we can not care about their private lives as long as they do not bring those private lives into the public square. Once they do that, they have opened their private choices to public discussion. [1]I put the term the way that I do because I do not believe that any homosexual relationship, regardless of how the laws of the state view such, as legitimately a marriage.

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” — Chief Justice John Roberts, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1

Conservatives and libertarians, like me, may well oppose Affirmative Action and government preferences for any group based on race, religion, sex or ethnicity, but that does not mean that we see racial or ethnic or religious minorities as somehow not truly the children of God or as people against whom we should discriminate.

Christianity discourages discrimination, as every non-biased study has shown. Christianity encourages inclusion, but it encourages an inclusion pushing toward Christian values. Christian values encourage work, and thus encourages non-discrimination in hiring and employment; that does not mean, as Chief Justice John Roberts said, that Christians ought to support the reverse discrimination of Affirmative Action, selecting recipients of collegiate admissions and employment opportunities based on race.

Religion requires respect for God, and respect for God pushes respect for other people. Religion inspires respect for the law, and reduces crime and bad behavior. Christianity, the faith on which this country was founded, requires recognizing sin, but it also requires the forgiveness of sin. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.”

Getting out of bed on Sunday morning, getting dressed and going to church brings us more friends, as we meet other Christians, helps to solidify our faith, and strengthens our commitment to conservative values and conservative politics. Everything about it is a benefit for conservatives.

It doesn’t require that much effort. If you do not already have a parish of which you are a member, find one; you don’t need to leave your computer to do that. Once you have found one, it’s just the effort that very first Sunday, to get up, get dressed, and go. Every subsequent Sunday will be a little bit easier.

Conservatism is not something which we need only to support in politicians; politicians, in the end, depend on the support of the people, and the support of the people is strengthened when we practice what we preach.

References

References
↑1 I put the term the way that I do because I do not believe that any homosexual relationship, regardless of how the laws of the state view such, as legitimately a marriage.
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Chicago only thinks it’s the murder capital

My good friend Robert Stacy McCain noted the good mayor of the Windy City, and what had happened to the homicide rate in that toddlin’ town:

Stupid City, Stupid Mayor: Homicide Increases 55% in Lori Lightfoot’s Chicago

January 3, 2021

Remember, dead people are still eligible to vote in Chicago:

A 41-year-old man was shot and killed early Friday morning in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, marking the city’s first homicide of 2021 and following a year of spiking crime rates there and around the nation.

According to Chicago police data, the city recorded 769 homicides in 2020, a 55% increase over 2019.

The increase, reversing a three-year trend, is among the highest in city history, The Chicago Tribune reported Thursday.

Fatal shootings rose by 53%, with December shootings totaling 50, compared with just 19 a year earlier.

According to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office, 78% of the gun violence victims were Black.

So that’s about 600 black people shot dead in Chicago last year, a Democrat-run city in a Democrat-controlled state with some of the strictest gun-control laws in the country. If Black Lives Matter actually cared about saving the lives of black people, they’d be rioting about this, but the truth is the Black Lives Matter is just a propaganda operation with only one goal, to help Democrats win elections.

It would be wrong to say to describe this as a “tragedy,” because it’s so predictable. When you elect Democrats, people get killed as a result. If you’re too stupid to understand this, that’s not my fault.

There’s more to the story. The 2020 Census numbers aren’t in yet, but, according to Wikipedia, Chicago’s population was guesstimated at 2,693,976 for 2019. Since crimes rates are calculated by 100,000 population, 769 homicides works out to a murder rate of 28.54.

That’s pretty high, but but Philadelphia laughs, and says, “Hold my beer.”

Philly’s violent year: Nearly 500 people were killed and 2,200 shot in 2020

by Chris Palmer | January 1, 2021 | 5:00 AM EST

For just the second time in its history, Philadelphia’s annual homicide total threatened in 2020 to reach 500, another grim marker in a year where the city has been wracked by the coronavirus pandemic, economic strife, and social unrest over racial inequity.

The number of people killed this year — 494 as of Tuesday — is 40% higher than last year, and more than in all of 2013 and 2014 combined. The only time more people were slain in the city was in 1990, when police reported 500 homicides as violence surged alongside an intensifying crack-cocaine epidemic.

It’s obvious that Chris Palmer, the author, had been working on this story for a couple of days. Though further down in the article he noted that the reported total was 498, he had written this when the reported number was slightly smaller.

The Philadelphia Inquirer noted in a different story that at least one person was murdered on New Year’s Eve, which would bring the total to 499. The population of Philly was guesstimated to be 1,584,064 in 2019. That gives Philly a murder rate of 31.50, leaving Chicago in it’s rear-view mirror. The Philadelphia Police Department should release its final number on 2020 homicides on Monday.

The spike in shootings was even more pronounced. More than 2,240 people were shot since Jan. 1, 40% more than police have ever recorded. Those statistics only date back to 2007, when the department began keeping track of shooting victims separately from the broader category of assaults involving a gun.

As in most years, the vast majority of victims were young, Black men — many from impoverished neighborhoods lacking resources and long afflicted by gun violence. But shots also killed and wounded children playing on the street. A pregnant woman was struck by a stray bullet — forcing the early delivery of her baby. Some gunmen fired indiscriminately into block parties. A witness was shot dead near City Hall in what police believe was a targeted hit for his testimony in a murder trial.

Then came the money line:

Still, the city’s crime picture continued to show uneven and unusual signs: As homicides and shootings soared, overall violent crime — which also includes rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults — remained near decades-long lows, while overall property crime was also lower than last year.

Are there really fewer other crimes? That’s what the statistics say, but there’s an unforgotten factor. Murder is a crime of evidence; dead bodies are very difficult of which to dispose or hide, and they get found. But rape, assaults which don’t result in hospitalization, robberies, etc, are crimes of reporting; if the victims don’t report them, then as far as the police, as far as the statistics are concerned, they didn’t happen.

And with Larry Krasner’s refusal to prosecute seriously the ‘little’ crimes, with the black community hating the police, and with conviction rates so low, it is more probable that other crimes are simply being reported less frequently than it is that fewer crimes are being committed. When your city is stuck with a District Attorney like Mr Krasner, who doesn’t believe in prosecuting criminals, or sentencing them harshly when they are prosecuted and convicted, what reason is there to report that you were robbed?

From the District Attorney’s Wikipedia biography:

During his tenure, Krasner has sought to spearhead criminal justice reform by ending bail payments for low-level offenders, reducing supervision for parolees, and seeking more lenient sentences for certain crimes. Prior to his government service, Krasner had a 30-year career as a criminal defense and civil rights attorney and public defender. He aggressively pursued police misconduct.

Why would anyone go through the hassle of reporting a crime, and perhaps having to testify in court, when the city isn’t going to give the criminals more than a slap on the wrist?

Murder is not normally a criminal’s first crime; the bad guys tend to start out small, and work their ways up to the really bad stuff. But with all of the ‘social justice’ bovine feces, all of the hatred of the police, and the frustration that comes with crimes not being solved, what’s the point of someone in Kensington or Nicetown calling the cops when they get mugged?

Krasner said summer could have been the moment when the near-total shutdown of social services and alternatives to gun violence collided with warmer weather and other traditional drivers of violence, such as long-simmering feuds — suddenly allowed to play out on streets where witnesses, like everyone else, stayed home in the pandemic lockdown.

Really? The Police Department reported that, as of 11:59 PM on October 23rd, there had been 399 homicides in 297 days in the city. That works out to 1.34 killings per day. But with 498 homicides in 365 days, the average is slightly higher, at 1.36 per day; cooler weather didn’t seem to stem the tide of killings. And in the last 68 days, there were 99 killings, or 1.46 per day, a higher rate, around Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Mr Palmer’s article concludes with the usual platitudes about not enough legitimate opportunities for young black males growing up in the City of Brotherly Love, and Mr Krasner and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw saying that they are trying to put in programs that involve more than just (the barely existent) law enforcement. But what no one will do is admit the truth, because the truth is so very, very politically incorrect: the only solution to bad behavior by teenagers and young adults, regardless of race, is better parenting and better communities. The parents of young black males need to rear them better, and that has to mean both parents. If their fathers are absent, boys are crippled in a way that is easy to quantify:

Children brought up in single mother homes are:

  • 5 times more likely to commit suicide,
  • 9 times more likely to drop out of high school,
  • 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances,
  • 14 times more likely to commit rape,
  • 20 times more likely to end up in prison,
  • 32 times more likely to run away from home.

But if that’s easy to quantify, current political realities prohibit us from noting the quality that’s a problem, namely that children need both male and female role models when they are growing up, and they need fathers and mothers who show love and respect for each other, something that cannot happen when they are not living together.

District Attorney Krasner and Commissioner Outlaw can’t do anything about fathers in West Philadelphia not being married to or living with the mothers of their children.

The solution to Philadelphia’s crime rate, to any city’s crime rate, does not come from Mayors or District Attorneys or Police Commissioners. Yes, Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s (R-New York City) “broken windows” policing policies tamped down on serious crime somewhat, but the real solution has to come from parents being married and staying together, and rearing their children properly. Mr Giuliani’s stricter policing may have prevented some bigger crimes, but holding crime down is eventually a losing proposition; only by bringing up kids who don’t want to commit crimes, not because they are afraid of getting caught, but because it’s the right way to live, can society improve.

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Will the Kentucky General Assembly stand up for our rights?

As 2020 thankfully ends, for Kentuckians that means that the General Assembly will shortly be in session. Our state legislature is a part-time one, which is just the way the people in the Bluegrass State like it. Our state representatives and senators have other lives, and the pay for legislators does not allow them to be professionals at it. Legislators earn a salary of $188.22 per day, when the legislature is in session, along with a per diem expense allowance of $163.90. In even-numbered years, sessions may not last more than 60 legislative days, and cannot extend beyond April 15. In odd-numbered years, sessions may not last more than 30 legislative days, and cannot extend beyond March 30.

If you think, hey, that’s not much, until a constitutional amendment was passed by the voters in 2000, the legislature was restricted to meeting only once every two years.

We have previously mentioned Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) dictatorial orders, and his refusal to involve the General Assembly.

Beshear was asked at Friday’s (July 10, 2020 — Editor) news conference on COVID-19 why he has not included the legislature in coming up with his orders. He said many state lawmakers refuse to wear masks and noted that 26 legislators in Mississippi have tested positive for the virus.

Though the Governor is supposedly very popular, and the public supposedly approve of his handling of COVID-19, the November elections increased Republican control over both chambers of the state legislature. The GOP increased their majority in the state Senate from 28-10 to 30-8, but, more importantly, in the state House of Representatives from 61-37 (with 2 vacancies) to 75-25. While the state Senate held a veto-proof Republican majority prior to the election, such was not the case in the state House; now, there is a veto-proof Republican majority in both chambers.

And so we come to this, from the Lexington Herald-Leader:

The legislature wants to curb Beshear’s executive powers. What does that look like?

By Daniel Desrochers | December 31, 2020 | 11:45 AM EST

After adding to their existing supermajorities in the Kentucky General Assembly in November, Republicans in Frankfort laid out a clear mission for the 2021 legislative session: scale back the executive powers of the governor of Kentucky.

“We’re going to refine,” said Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, days after the election. “There’s no doubt that chief executives of any state or at the federal level need types of powers in an emergency. We all agree with that. What’s the extent and duration? How do you apply [it]?”

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, Republican lawmakers have chafed at executive orders passed by Gov. Andy Beshear aimed at stemming the spread of the coronavirus. Some have attended rallies against the orders, others have spoken out in favor of lawsuits challenging them, nearly all have said there hasn’t been enough communication between the governor’s office and legislators.

In particular, they’ve decried now-expired orders that temporarily banned all gatherings, including church services, and stopped private schools from holding in-person classes.

There’s more at the original.

Technically, Mr Desrochers, the article author, is incorrect: the executive order which prohibited private schools from holding in-person classes does not expire until Sunday, January 3rd, though, as the United States Supreme Court noted, the order would expire at the normal end of the Christmas break for schools.[1]In Danville Christian Academy v Beshear, the Supreme Court did just as I guessed it would: it let the case go moot. On November 18, the Governor of Kentucky issued a temporary school-closing Order … Continue reading

While I suggested that the Governor would renew his school closure order, but wait until January 2nd to do so, to give the private religious schools little time to appeal it, renewing that order would only anger the legislature. However, the Herald-Leader reported, yesterday, that “Kentucky has 7th-highest day for new COVID-19 cases. Positivity rate back above 9%.”

Wednesday’s tally of new cases is the seventh-highest single-day increase the state has reported since the beginning of the pandemic.

In a written update, Beshear noted the mid-week increase was “higher than it has been for a number of days,” adding, “The progress we have made is fragile.”

If the Governor concludes that he has no chance of avoiding the restriction of his emergency powers, he might well simply issue the edicts, hoping to get away with them for another month.

Six bills restricting the Governor’s emergency powers have been pre-filed in the General Assembly, but one commonality is that all require the calling of a special session of the General Assembly if the Governor issues an emergency decree which lasts for longer than a month.[2]Kentucky is one of only a few states in which the legislature cannot call itself back into session.

Mr Desrochers again:

Beshear has indicated he would like no approach at all. He has criticized the effort to restrict his ability to issue executive orders, painting it as a potentially “catastrophic” attempt to limit his ability to deal with COVID-19, and one that would hamstring future governors if another unforeseen emergency arrives.

“I hope when they show up, making a lot of noise, let’s take a breath, let me get on through this and afterwards, have at it,” Beshear told the Herald-Leader when asked about the legislature’s effort to limit executive power. “Then we can go to court or anything else.”

“Then we can go to court,” huh? The Governor is an attorney, and he knows that going to court costs time and money. If he issues another of his decrees, appeals of those decrees could take months by the time they work their way through the courts. The state court challenge to his decrees were consolidated by the state Supreme Court, last July, when the Court issued a stay of the lower court injunctions against the Governor’s decrees, and then the Court decided it would hear oral arguments two months later. The United States Supreme Court, when it finally dismissed Daniel Christian Schools v Beshear, did so based on the practical expiration of the challenged executive order, but that Court sat on the case for two weeks, taking it to less than a week before Christmas break began.[3]Justice Samuel Alito, in his dissent, noted: (I)n my judgment, it is unfair to deny relief on this ground since this timing is in no way the applicants’ fault. They filed this action on November … Continue reading

But the General Assembly must do more than just time limit the Governor’s emergency powers. It must also make clear that those emergency powers do not and cannot infringe on our constitutional rights. We are guaranteed, under the First Amendment, the right of peaceable assembly and free exercise of religion, both rights on which the Governor’s executive orders have restricted. The state does not and cannot have the power to somehow just suspend our rights, and the state legislature must make that clear, in terms that our partisan state Supreme Court cannot choose to ignore.

COVID-19 is serious, but the violation of our constitutional rights, by Governors across the country, is far, far worse.
___________________________________
Cross-posted on RedState.

References

References
↑1 In Danville Christian Academy v Beshear, the Supreme Court did just as I guessed it would: it let the case go moot.

On November 18, the Governor of Kentucky issued a temporary school-closing Order that effectively closes K–12 schools for in-person instruction until and through the upcoming holiday break, which starts Friday, December 18, for many Kentucky schools. All schools in Kentucky may reopen after the holiday break, on January 4. . . . .

The Governor’s school-closing Order effectively expires this week or shortly thereafter, and there is no indication that it will be renewed.

Uhhh, yes, there is! Governor Beshear has already ‘recommended’ that schools delay opening another week, until January 11th, and while he did not make that an order, quite possibly because he knew it would impact the case and it contradicted his own Court filing, he is now free to make it an order.

Under all of the circumstances, especially the timing and the impending expiration of the Order, we deny the application without prejudice to the applicants or other parties seeking a new preliminary injunction if the Governor issues a school-closing order that applies in the new year.

In other words, the Court would entertain a new case, should the Governor issue another executive order, but all of that takes time, and money. With Christmas break about to start, the Governor could easily wait until Saturday, January 2nd, to issue another executive order.

↑2 Kentucky is one of only a few states in which the legislature cannot call itself back into session.
↑3 Justice Samuel Alito, in his dissent, noted:

(I)n my judgment, it is unfair to deny relief on this ground since this timing is in no way the applicants’ fault. They filed this action on November 20, 2020, just two days after the issuance of the Governor’s executive order. And when, on November 29, the Sixth Circuit granted a stay of the order that would have allowed classes to resume, the applicants sought relief in this Court just two days later, on December 1. It is hard to see how they could have proceeded more expeditiously.

Justice Neil Gorsuch also dissented:

Nor should a Governor be able to evade judicial review by issuing short-term edicts and then urging us to overlook their problems only because one edict is about to expire while the next has yet to arrive. Come January 4, a new school semester will be about to start, and the Governor has expressly told us that he reserves the right to issue more decrees like these if and when religious schools try to resume holding classes. Rather than telling the parties to renew their fight in a month, asking the Sixth Circuit to resolve the case now, under accurate legal rules, would be better for everyone—from the parents who might have to miss work and stay home should decrees like these be upheld, to the state public health officials who might have to plan for school if they are not.

Courts have a broader equity at stake here too. In their struggle to respond to the current pandemic, executive officials have sometimes treated constitutional rights with suspicion. In Kentucky, state troopers seeking to enforce gubernatorial orders even reprimanded and recorded the license plate numbers of worshippers who attended an Easter church service, some of whom were merely sitting in their cars listening to the service over a loudspeaker.

Recently, this Court made clear it would no longer tolerate such departures from the Constitution. We did so in a case where the challenged edict had arguably expired, explaining that our action remained appropriate given the Governor’s claim that he could revive his unconstitutional decree anytime. That was the proper course there, as I believe it is here. I would not leave in place yet another potentially unconstitutional decree, even for the next few weeks.
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C’mon, Philly, you can do it! 500 homicides for 2020 is within range!

I spent a good deal of time yesterday on an article about the murder rate in Killadelphia Philadelphia, but it sort of petered out, because, well, just because. But the first three paragraphs were decent:

I will admit to having taken an almost perverse pleasure in checking the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, which tells us that, as of 11:59 PM on Tuesday, December 29th, 494 people had lost heir lives on Philadelphia’s mean streets. That was up two from the previous day, which had been up three from the end of the Christmas weekend.

And the Christmas weekend itself? The 24th through the 27th, four days, saw seven homicides.

On Friday, December 11th, Helen Ubiñas published an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer entitled “What do you know about the Philadelphians killed by guns this year? At least know their names.” As of the day prior to publication, there had been 466 killings in the city. In the 19 days since the publication of that article, 28 people were sent to their eternal rewards, 1.47 per day, which is a faster rate than the rate for the entire year, 1.36 per day. At a time celebrated in song as The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, times don’t seem quite so wonderful in the City of Brotherly Love.

With ‘only’ 494 homicides, and two days left in the year, the numbers were against the city reaching 500 for 2020, or so it seemed until I checked the Current Crime Statistics page this morning. And there it was: 498 homicides as of 11:59 PM EST on December 30th. Only two more people need to be slaughtered to make it happen!

OK, OK, I’m getting pretty morbid here. But in 2019, there had been 353 homicides through December 30th, but 356 for the entire year, meaning that Philadelphia saw three more people killed on New Year’s Eve last year. This year has seen a 41.08% increase over last year, and New Year’s Eve parties can be boisterous. And the weather forecast has temperatures in the low 40s to mid 30s through midnight, with relatively mild winds, and a low probability of precipitation, which shouldn’t keep the gang bangers holed up inside. Partiers will want their molly or blow to celebrate the New Year, and that’s always a chance to get people interacting with the sellers of recreational pharmaceuticals, and that is always a chance for gunfire.