Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Very compassionate academics want “juvenile” definitions extended beyond age 18, so they can let violent twenty-somethings be “reformed” I say that, if you kill someone, you should never, ever get out of prison

What is adulthood? In one way, our Constitution specifies adulthood, with the Twenty-sixth Amendment:

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Much of the impetus for this came from the Vietnam war, in which 18-and-19-year-olds could be and were drafted and sent to fight in Southeast Asia, but most states had set their voting ages at 21. Growing up in Kentucky, I did have that then-rare privilege of being able to register to vote at 18, as both Georgia and the Bluegrass State had previously lowered their voting ages to 18, but it barely made a difference: the only election in which I was able to vote as an 18-year-old when such wasn’t available in all of the other states was the May primary in 1971. 🙂

Nevertheless, adulthood has had different definitions throughout time, for different purposes. The ages of consent for sex vary across our country, set by the states, not the federal government, and several of them specify 16 or 17 as the age of consent. And, in our then older, wider Western civilization, most people were married by age 16, if not earlier. Eleanor of Aquitaine, for example, was first married at age 13, and such was in no way unusual in the twelfth century. Her eldest son, Henry the Young King, was married at age 17, though his father, King Henry II, waited until the ripe, old age of 19 to marry Eleanor! Marriage at an age in which girls were still in puberty was considered a societally and religiously practical thing, as it kept illegitimacy down.

And now come Tina M. Zottoli, an associate professor in the department of psychology and director of the Legal Decision Making Lab at Montclair State University, Tarika Daftary-Kapur, a professor of justice studies at the same school, and Kim Echevarria, a doctoral student in the department of psychology there. Though they say nothing about ages of consent for sex, or to be able to vote, they are very, very upset that 18-year-olds are being held responsible as adults for breaking the law:

An 18-year-old is not an adult, brain science shows. The criminal justice system is failing our kids.

The criminal justice system must stop considering teenagers as adults, and offer more chances for rehabilitation to people in their late teens and early 20s.

by Tina M. Zottoli, Tarika Daftary-Kapur, and and Kim Echevarria, For The Inquirer | Ash Wednesday, February 14, 2024 | 7:00 AM EST

In November, the state of Texas executed Brent Brewer for a homicide he committed in 1990, when he was 19 years old. If Brewer had committed the crime a day shy of his 18th birthday, he would be alive today. In fact, he might even be free.

That’s how much difference a day can make.

The authors go on to tell us that:

In 2005, the Supreme Court of the United States abolished the death penalty for people whose crimes were committed before age 18. Then, between 2010 and 2016, the court tightly restricted the cases for which a youth could receive a sentence of life without opportunity for parole. As a result, the number of people serving sentences of life without parole for crimes they committed as teenagers dropped from 2,300 in 2016 to fewer than 1,500 in 2020.

But you know what the three academics don’t tell us? They don’t give readers the name of Robert Laminack. Mr Laminack got his death sentence in 1990, at the hands of Mr Brewer. Mr Brewer has now been sent to his eternal reward, and, on this Ash Wednesday, a committed Catholic like me can at least hope that he repented of his sins and sought absolution for them, that his eternal reward might not be Hell.

As our regular readers, both of them, know, I am opposed to capital punishment; I wish that Mr Brewer had not been executed. However, one almost throwaway sentence from the authors really annoys me:

In fact, he might even be free.

Well, yes, he might, but whether still behind bars, or released from prison, Mr Laminack would still be stone-cold graveyard dead. The authors, who couldn’t even bring themselves to name Mr Brewer’s victim, seemingly don’t care about that. As we previously reported, 17-year-and-363-day old Quadir Humphrey has been charged with the apparently-senseless murder if 16-year-old Tyshaun Welles, when he (allegedly) fired almost randomly into a crowd at the Philadelphia City Hall SEPTA subway station. The three academics wrote, ” The court further acknowledged — correctly — that youth who commit crimes can be rehabilitated.”

Well, young Mr Humphrey wasn’t rehabilitated, despite being in custody, twice, on June 4, 2021 on a gun charge, and again on March 4, 2023, on a stolen car charge, neither of which had been adjudicated on the day that he (allegedly) shot Mr Welles. Even if charged and prosecuted as an adult, Mr Humphrey, if convicted, cannot be sentenced to either death or life without parole, but Mr Welles will still be dead. That, to paraphrase the three academics, is how much difference two days can make.

Our work following juvenile homicide offenders released from sentences of life without parole in Philadelphia shows that the court got the science right. Among the first 174 released, only six (or 3.4%) were rearrested within an average two-year follow-up, and only two (or 1.1%) were convicted, both for minor offenses. In comparison, the two-year rearrest rate for homicide offenders nationally is 30%.

Like Brewer, some of the individuals in our study had originally been sentenced to death. But unlike Brewer, they had not yet turned 18 when they committed their crimes, so they were given a chance to show us that they could change.

Those paragraphs fall under the category of lies, damned lies, and statistics! From the City Controller’s office, on January 15, 2022:

The increase in gun violence coincided with other concerning gun-related trends. As gun violence surged over the last six years, clearance rates — the share of cases solved by the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) — for homicides and non-fatal shootings declined. In 2020, just 37% of fatal shootings were cleared by the PPD. At the same time, the number of individuals arrested for illegal gun possession increased by more than 100% between 2015 and 2020. While gun possession arrests have drastically increased, conviction rates — the share of cases prosecuted by the District Attorney’s Office (DAO) that result in conviction — for gun possession declined. Between 2015 and 2020, the share of illegal gun possession cases resulting in conviction fell from 65% to 42%. . . . .

In 2015, clearance rates for non-fatal shootings were already low at 27%. As non-fatal shooting victims increased by more than 80% from 2015 to 2020, clearance rates continued to decline. The clearance rate reached a low point in 2020, when only 19% of non-fatal shooting incidents were cleared by the PPD. This clearance rate translates to nearly 1,500 non-fatal shooting incidents for which no arrest was made in 2020.

So, when the three academics tell us that the arrest and conviction rates were low in the City of Brotherly Love, they are basing their claims on statistics from a crippled Police Department under the thankfully-departed, failed Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, and the refusal of the George Soros-sponsored, police-hating and criminal-loving District Attorney Larry Krasner to seriously prosecute some crimes, including gun crimes.

More, the authors restricted their statistical study to “an average two-year follow up,” something which is not only a short period of time, but one which, if they described it accurately in their article in the Inquirer, was shorter than two years in some cases.

The authors indicated their bias in their own linked (supposedly) academic study, when they stated:

Moreover, in light of the growing recognition that addressing the incarceration epidemic will necessitate re-evaluation of long-term prison sentences for individuals who were convicted of violent offenses, these outcome data have implications far beyond just those that pertain to the resentencing and release of juvenile lifers.[1]Resentencing of Juvenile Lifers: The Philadelphia Experience, page 1 of the report, page 2 of the .pdf file.

On page 3 of the document, the authors refer to the “crisis of mass incarceration,”[2]ibid, page 3 of the report, page 4 of the .pdf file. as though mass incarceration is a problem, rather than not enough people being incarcerated, for not a long enough period of time.

Considering that the overwhelming majority of individuals who commit crime — even serious crime—“age out” of criminal behavior, the societal benefits of continued incarceration are called into question, especially in comparison with the costs.[3]ibid, page 3 of the report, page 4 of the .pdf file.

There is a huge problem with the study. The authors are speaking, in the quoted parts above, about offenders previously sentenced to life, or what they have referred to as “virtual life,” by which they mean sentences of 50 or more years, studied in a re-sentencing project, but drawing inferences on juvenile offenders whom they hope to receive much shorter sentences. As they stated previously:

A subset of 38 cases were considered for resentencing by both the prior and current administrations. The average sentence offered in these cases by the prior administration (District Attorney Seth Williams) was 38.8 years; under Krasner, the average offer in these cases was 27.6 years. Across all cases, this difference equates to an additional reduction of 394 years.[4]ibid, page 2 of the report, page 3 of the .pdf file.

An offender really can “age out” of prime criminal activity years, after he has spent 38.8 years, or even 27.6 years, behind bars, but the type of lenient treatment the authors like and want to see continued under Mr Krasner when it comes to juveniles, does not lead to any ‘aging out’.

On page 6 of the report, page 7 of the .pdf file, the authors note that all of the juvenile offenders resentenced following a life sentence were murderers,, meaning that their victims are dead, never again to draw another breath of life. They noted that 38% of them were convicted of Second degree murder, felony murder, which means a homicide committed during the commission of another felony, robbery (78%, home invasion (16%), and “drug-related” offenses (6%), but does not require that the convicted be the one who actually pulled the trigger. The verbiage is such that the reader could infer that none of the 38% were the ones who pulled the trigger, but the charge of First-degree murder in Pennsylvania requires premeditation, not just the adrenaline-fueled, split-second reaction involved in a felony.

In their Inquirer OpEd, the authors concluded:

Of course, whenever a line is drawn, there will be errors at the margins. But if we, as a nation, continue to maintain the most severe of criminal sanctions — the death penalty, and life without parole — and if we justify these sanctions partly on the basis that they ought to be reserved for people who cannot be reformed, we must acknowledge that the dividing line between 17 and 18 years mistakenly classifies far too many young people as irredeemable.

And therein lies the assumption which destroys their entire article: “if we justify these sanctions partly on the basis that they ought to be reserved for people who cannot be reformed.” Not just no, but Hell no! When the result of the crime is that someone else is killed, we should not be looking at whether or not his killer can or cannot be reformed, but the fact that someone’s life was taken from him, and that the killer should not be released until the dead person comes back to life.

References

References
↑1 Resentencing of Juvenile Lifers: The Philadelphia Experience, page 1 of the report, page 2 of the .pdf file.
↑2 ibid, page 3 of the report, page 4 of the .pdf file.
↑3 ibid, page 3 of the report, page 4 of the .pdf file.
↑4 ibid, page 2 of the report, page 3 of the .pdf file.
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Brown University Students for Justice in Palestine end their hunger strike Noble Hahvahd students staged their own twelve hour hunger strike in solidarity.

When I heard about the hunger strike by the Brown University Students for Justice in Palestine, I asked, admittedly mockingly, for them to define exactly what they meant by a hunger strike. I did point out, at one point, that human beings going more than three days without water can lead to serious problems or even death.

Of course, they never answered, so I didn’t know exactly what they meant. But I got an answer, of sorts, from The Harvard Crimson:

More Than 30 Harvard Students Hunger Strike for 12 Hours in Solidarity With Brown Protesters

By Michelle N. Amponsah and Azusa M. Lippit, Crimson Staff Writers | Monday, February 12, 2024

More than 30 pro-Palestinian Harvard students participated in a 12-hour hunger strike Friday in solidarity with 17 students at Brown University who refused to eat for eight days to pressure the Brown Corporation to divest from Israel.

If the Brown University hunger strikers really did refuse to eat for eight days, that is something of an accomplishment. Eight days is not enough for a reasonably health person to starve to death, but it’s going to be pretty uncomfortable after three days or so. But the Crimson telling us that 30 pro-Hamas Palestinian Harvard students participated in a 12-hour hunger strike is just plain mockworthy. I’ve gone through plenty of 12-hour-workdays in which I had nothing to eat because I was just too plain busy to take a lunch; that’s something that can happen in the ready-mixed concrete industry.

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, and millions of Catholics around the world will be engaged in a 12-hour fast; it’s something we also do on Good Friday. Me? I’m giving up soda for the entire seven weeks of Lent; do I get some kind of political credit for a 46-day Mountain Dew strike? 🙂

Nineteen students at Brown began the strike — which was originally indefinite — on Feb. 2, ahead of the Brown Corporation’s planned meetings beginning Feb. 8.

The students intended to strike until the Brown Corporation considered a resolution to divest from “companies which profit from human rights abuses in Palestine,” but they ended the strike[1]Documentary hyperlink added by D R Pico, and was not in the Harvard Crimson original. Given that the paragraph cites the Brown Daily Herald, the failure to include the hyperlink is pretty poor … Continue reading after Brown University president Christina H. Paxson denied their request, citing “now-obsolete demands,” per the Brown Daily Herald.

The 17 students ended their strike at 5 p.m. on Feb. 9, along with the Harvard demonstrators and more than 200 other Brown students who fasted for 32 hours in solidarity.

The Brown Daily Herald Editorial Page Board included an editorial documenting the history of hunger strikes at the University and beyond, noting that very few hunger strikers actually starved themselves to death. But the hunger strike, while an extreme method of peaceful protest, relies on the people against whom they are striking to actually care about whether the hunger strikers suffer, or even whether they live or die.

References

References
↑1 Documentary hyperlink added by D R Pico, and was not in the Harvard Crimson original. Given that the paragraph cites the Brown Daily Herald, the failure to include the hyperlink is pretty poor journalism from these Harvard journalism students!
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Maybe Jeff Bezos could spend some of those tax savings on The Washington Post?

I will admit it: I liked the way that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post, to save it when the Graham family were running out of money. Full disclosure: I am a basic digital subscriber to the Post. I have previously said that I appreciated billionaires who bought newspapers, to fail an otherwise failing industry, as long as they understood that losses were inevitable. Sadly, Mr Bezos isn’t too happy with that last part. We have also noted that Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire who bought the Los Angeles Times, with a piddling $5.9 billion to his name, might feel much more pressure than Mr Bezos, current guesstimated net worth of $194.1 billion, in taking $40-$50 million a year losses.

Well, perhaps Mr Bezos can put a little less pressure on the Post, now that he’s made this money-saving move:

Jeff Bezos will save over $600 million in taxes by moving to Miami

by Robert Frank | Monday, February 12, 2024

  • Last year, Bezos announced on Instagram that he was leaving Seattle after nearly 30 years to move to Miami.

  • In 2022 Washington state imposed a new, 7% capital gains tax on sales of stocks or bonds of more than $250,000.

  • Bezos plans to unload 50 million shares of Amazon before Jan. 31, 2025. Posting those sales in Florida will save him at least $610 million.

Jeff Bezos’ $2 billion stock sale last week came with an added perk: no state taxes.

Last year, Bezos announced on Instagram that he was leaving Seattle after nearly 30 years to move to Miami. He said the move was to be closer to his parents and his rocket launches at Blue Origin. The timing also suggested another reason: taxes.

In 2022 Washington state imposed a new, 7% capital gains tax on sales of stocks or bonds of more than $250,000. Washington state doesn’t have a personal income tax, so the new levy marked the first time Bezos would face state taxes on his stock sales.

Starting in 1998 Bezos sold billions of dollars worth of Amazon shares almost every year for more than two decades to fund his philanthropy, his space company Blue Origin, and more recently his $500 million mega yacht and a growing collection of mansions purchased with his fiancé Lauren Sanchez.

In 2022, when the tax took effect, Bezos stopped selling. He didn’t sell any Amazon stock in 2022 or 2023, gifting only $200 million of shares at the end of last year.

After his move to Miami, Bezos made up for lost time. Last week, a filing with the SEC revealed that Bezos launched a pre-scheduled stock-selling plan to unload 50 million shares before Jan. 31, 2025. At today’s price, that would total more than $8.7 billion.

Simply put, rapacious state governments trying to steal more money from the people who earned it wind up influencing the decisions of the people who earned that money. Mr Bezos had the freedom to move away from the left coast to the far more sensible Sunshine State, and did.

Florida has no state income tax or a tax on capital gains. So on the $2 billion sale last week, he saved $140 million that he would have paid to Washington state. On the entire sale of 50 million shares over the next year, he will save at least $610 million. And that’s assuming Amazon shares remain flat. If they continue to rise, the value of his shares — and his tax savings — will be even higher.

That’s some major bucks he doesn’t have to give to a left-wing state government, which would doubtlessly spend it on welfare and illegal aliens. Mr Bezos could, and should, spend some of those savings on the Post, to decrease the financial pressure on that august newspaper, at least if his girlfriend Lauren Sanchez doesn’t persuade him to waste more of it on yachts and mansions.

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The Associated Press make story about rescue of two Israeli hostages all about the poor, poor Palestinians! Maybe Hamas shouldn't have started a war they knew they couldn't win?

The Israel Defense Force have rescued two elderly hostages seized by Hamas in the October 7th terror raid, but Associated Press reporters Najib Jobain, Josef Federman, and Samy Magdy want you to sympathize with the Palestinian Arabs who held them captive!

Israeli forces rescued two hostages in a Gaza raid that killed at least 67 Palestinians

Israel says about 100 hostages remain in Hamas captivity.

by Najib Jobain, Josef Federman, and Samy Magdy, Associated Press | Monday, February 12, 2024 | 7:37 AM EST

RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli forces rescued two hostages early Monday, storming a heavily guarded apartment in the Gaza Strip and extracting the captives under fire in a dramatic raid that was a small but symbolically significant success for Israel. Heavy airstrikes that provided cover for the operation killed at least 67 Palestinians, according to health officials in the beleaguered territory.

The plight of the hostages has profoundly shaken Israelis, and the rescue in densely populated Rafah briefly lifted the spirits of a nation still reeling from Hamas’ cross-border raid last year that started the war. Israel has described Rafah — a city on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip where 1.4 million Palestinians have fled fighting elsewhere — as the last remaining Hamas stronghold in the territory and signaled that its ground offensive may soon target the city.

In Gaza, the operation unleashed another tragedy in a war that has killed 28,340 Palestinians in the territory, displaced over 80% of the population, and set off a massive humanitarian crisis.

More than 12,300 Palestinian minors — children and young teens — have been killed in the conflict, the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Monday. About 8,400 women were also among those killed. That means minors make up about 43% of the dead and women and minors together they make up 73% of the dead.

As Messrs Jobain, Federman, and Magdy lament the “at least 67 Palestinians” killed in this operation, the 28,340 Arabs killed overall, and the “73% of the dead” being women and children, I am reminded of what would have saved their lived, namely Hamas not launching the October 7th terror assault in the first place!

The Wall Street Journal already documented how Hamas were using civilian facilities as shields:

Hamas Military Compound Found Beneath U.N. Agency Headquarters in Gaza

Subterranean complex had air-conditioned room with computer servers, office space

by Dov Lieber and David Luhnow | Saturday, February 10, 2024 | 3:52 PM EST

GAZA CITY—Hidden deep below the headquarters of the United Nations’ aid agency for Palestinians here is a Hamas complex with rows of computer servers that Israel’s armed forces say served as an important communications center and intelligence hub for the Islamist militant group.

For those who are stymied by the Journal’s paywall, you can also read the article here, for no charge.

Part of a warren of tunnels and subterranean chambers carved from the Gaza Strip’s sandy soil, the compound below the United Nations Relief and Works Agency buildings in Gaza City appears to have run on electricity drawn from the U.N.’s power supply, Israeli officials said.

A Wall Street Journal reporter and journalists from other news organizations visited the site this week in a trip organized by Israel’s military. A tunnel also appeared to pass beneath a U.N.-run school near the headquarters.

Gosh, I’m shocked, shocked! that the Hamas facilities were drawing power from the UNRWA’s building power. Are we supposed to believe that no one at UNRWA noticed the power drain?

The location of a Hamas military installation under important U.N. facilities is evidence, Israeli officials say, of Hamas’s widespread use of sensitive civilian infrastructure as shields to protect its militant activities. Tunnel complexes have also been found near or under some of Gaza’s largest hospitals.

Israel’s discovery of the Hamas operations below Unrwa offices is likely to put further pressure on the agency, which is facing international scrutiny after Israeli allegations that at least 12 of its employees had links to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which authorities say killed 1,200 people.

Israeli military officials assert that people working at Unrwa would have been aware of the tunnel complex, either from activities during its construction or by what they said would have been a jump in electricity usage when the complex started operating.

I’m trying to figure out just how Hamas could construct concrete-lined tunnels and excavate the material as they dug those tunnels with nobody noticing? The answer, of course, is that they couldn’t. It took a great deal of effort, mostly by hand, to excavate and line those tunnels, and the obvious question is: if the work effort put forth to construct those tunnels had instead been put to use building Gaza’s housing and infrastructure, how much better would that miserable place have been?

Next to the room with computer servers, which was air-conditioned, was an electricity-supply room fitted with massive batteries, apparently to serve as a backup if power was disrupted.

The electricity room and server room were beneath the Unrwa compound’s own electrical supply room, the officer said. He said wires snaked down into the underground base from the Unrwa compound, allowing Hamas to steal electricity from the U.N agency to power its underground facility.

If Hamas had computer servers in the tunnels, then the odds are that they were also stealing internet services from UNRWA, even though such is not mentioned in the article.

The three Associated Press reporters who wrote this article were certainly aware that Hamas were using the civilian population to shield themselves and their facilities from the IDF, but never mentioned that. They did, of course, have to give us a oh-the-poor-Palestinians bit:

In Hamas’ cross-border raid on Oct. 7, an estimated 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed, and militants took 250 people captive, according to Israeli authorities. .  .  .  .

Mohamed Zoghroub, a Palestinian living in Rafah, said he saw a black jeep speeding near the Shaboura refugee camp in the town followed by clashes and heavy airstrikes.

“We found ourselves running with our children, from the airstrikes, in every direction,” he said, speaking from an area flattened by the heavy strikes overnight.

Footage circulating on social media from Rafah’s Kuwaiti hospital showed dead or wounded children. The footage could not immediately be verified but was consistent with AP reporting.

A young man can be seen carrying the body of an infant who he said was killed in the attacks. He said the girl, the daughter of his neighbor, was born and killed during the war.

“Let Netanyahu come and see: Is this (infant) one of your designated targets?” he said.

When the fighters use the civilian population as shields, civilians will get killed. This is all on Hamas!

The three Hamas-sympathetic reporters seem to want you to believe that Israel should not defend itself, and should not carry the fight to its enemies. They want you to believe that the IDF’s response is wholly disproportionate, in that 28,340 Palestinians have been killed compared to roughly 1,200, as though this ought to be a matter of competing body-counts rather than a war against enemies. They want you to believe that the lives of 67 Arabs were far too high a price to pay to rescue two Israeli citizens, two Joooos! Stories like this are designed to further inflame passions in the civilized West against the Israelis.

Hamas have made their goals clear: they want to destroy the Jewish state. And Prime Minister Netanyahu has made Israel’s policies clear: they must destroy Hamas. In the end, one has to destroy the other.

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CNN reporter Barbie Latza Nadeau accidentally tells the truth, though I’m sure she is appalled by it

I spotted this following story thanks to a tweet from William Teach of The Pirate’s Cove. Mr Teach noted that CNN seemed far more concerned that an alleged gang rape of a 13-year-old girl in Sicily would benefit conservative politicians — called the “far-right” by CNN — than they were about the fact that a young teenager was raped!

An alleged gang rape shocks Italy, and provides fodder for an ascendant far right

By Barbie Latza Nadeau, CNN | Sunday, February 11, 2024 | Updated: 5:27 AM EST

Rome CNN — Italy has been shaken by the alleged gang rape of a 13-year-old girl in front of her boyfriend in a public park in the Sicilian city of Catania, the latest in a string of shocking sexual attacks in the country.

The case is reminiscent of two alleged gang rapes last summer. A group of seven men and teenage boys between the ages of 15 and 18 are currently on trial for the alleged rape of a 19-year-old girl in Palermo in August.

Weeks later nine young men were arrested and charged with allegedly raping two cousins aged 10 and 12 near Naples and broadcasting the attack live on social media. They, too, are facing trial.

Last month’s alleged gang rape in Catania has become not only a symbol of violence against women in the country, but a cause célèbre for Italy’s far-right government. The seven suspected perpetrators were all Egyptian migrants, three of them under the age of 18, Catania police confirmed to CNN.

There’s more at the original.

As we previously reported, a ‘migrant’ from Venezuela has been arrested for trying to shoot an New York City Police Officer, and wounding a tourist in Times Square. Neither the United States as a whole, or New York more specifically, has a “far-right” government to which to tie that crime, and somehow, some way, CNN didn’t cover the story of the arrest of Jesus Alejandro Rivas-Figueroa at all, or at least a site search for Rivas-Figueroa conducted at 12:55 PM EST this morning returned no stories on the subject.

Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, came to power in September 2022 on an anti-immigration platform, but her efforts to curb irregular migration into the country have so far been unsuccessful.

How interesting that CNN reporter Barbie Latza Nadeau characterized Prime Minister Meloni and her government as “far-right,” and then linked an article which said, among other things, “She was nowhere near as far-right as some had feared, and the multilingual career politician was at ease with global world leaders.” 🙂 Perhaps if she had been more stringently “far-right” Italy would have been more successful in intercepting and turning around the ‘migrants’ boats.

The CNN writer then had a several paragraph section beginning with, “Italy has long struggled with the problem of gender-based violence,” even as she noted that the parliament has passed measures to more greatly criminalize such.

The legislation was inspired by the case of Giulia Cecchettin, a 22-year-old woman murdered by an ex-boyfriend. She was one of 118 femicides in Italy last year. In 2022, women were the victims of 91% of homicides committed by family members, partners or former partners, according to the European Data Journalism Network.

“Violence against women is a phenomenon that’s more or less present in all countries, caused by structural causes like the disparity between men and women, stereotypes and prejudices,” Elena Biaggioni, vice president of D.i.Re, a national association that coordinates anti-violence centers and women’s shelters, said last June.

Speaking at a protest after a pregnant woman was allegedly stabbed to death by her partner, she added: “But of course in countries where there’s a macho culture and sexism is stronger, like Italy, this violence is justified in a different way.”

Yet in the latest case, officials have centered their attention on the background of the alleged perpetrators.

So, are you convinced yet that this is not really a problem of the illegal immigrants, but Italy, and wicked Italian men in general? It’s not the fault of the illegal immigrants, but the problem is that “officials” who have focused on the “background of the alleged perpetrators.” That’s pretty clearly what Miss Nadeau wants you to believe. But next comes the money line, though I doubt that the CNN writer realized it:

The judge investigating the most recent case, Carlo Umberto Cannella, said the suspects were likely to reoffend because they were not “accustomed to civilization.”

Absolutely right! Islamic ‘civilization,’ if you can call it civilization at all, simply is nothing like Western civilization, and Judge Cannella told the truth. Islamic ‘civilization’ has produced, in the 21st century, an Iran which jails and occasionally beats to death women who don’t properly wear a headscarf, an Afghanistan where girls cannot be educated past the sixth grade, women are forced to wear head-to-toe burkas, and must be accompanied by a responsible male if they leave the home. Islamic ‘civilization’ has produced Hamas, which used murder and deliberate rape to terrorize Israeli civilians, and Da’ish, which throws homosexuals off of tall buildings.

They are not Westerners, and if we try to think of them as Westerners or expect them to behave as Westerners, we are deceiving ourselves and endangering actually civilized people.

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It’s just not possible that Jesus Alejandro Rivas-Figueroa committed the crimes of which he has been accused, because gun control laws would have stopped him.

New York state and city have strict gun control laws, even after the Supreme Court’s ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen 597 U. S. ____ (2022), and there is no way that a 15-year-old illegal immigrant ‘migrant’ could obtain a permit to purchase or license to carry a concealed weapon in the Empire State. Therefore, despite the credentialed media stories and accompanying photographs, there’s just no way that this story could be true!

‘Armed and dangerous’ teen migrant from Venezuela cries after arrest over chaotic Times Square shooting that injured tourist

By Joe Marino, Georgett Roberts, Steven Vago, and Olivia Land | Friday, February 9, 2024 | 7:35 PM EST

A 15-year-old migrant suspected of shooting a tourist and firing at a police officer in a robbery-gone-wrong in Times Square was arrested on Friday, authorities said.

The US Marshals Joint Regional Fugitive Task Force and the NYPD tracked Venezuelan teen Jesus Alejandro Rivas-Figueroa down in Yonkers less than 24 hours after Thursday’s mayhem at the Crossroads of the World.

Photos obtained by The Post showed the young suspect, wearing a dark T-shirt, jeans and a gold necklace, being taken into custody at around 3:30 p.m. at what sources said was the home of a relative on Saratoga Avenue.

“He was crying. When he was apprehended, he was crying… Here he is committing these adult acts, that’s something you don’t expect a child to do, and then when he’s apprehended, he’s brought out in handcuffs crying,” NYPD spokesman Carlos Nieves told reporters.

At least the wannabe gangstas in Philly don’t cry when they get arrested. They do their best to present a tough guy look.

He will most likely be charged as a juvenile with attempted murder of a police officer, Nieves said, noting the case will then either go to criminal or family court.

Here’s where it gets bad: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is yet another of the liberal prosecutors who don’t believe in seriously prosecuting crimes. This kid needs to be charged as an adult, and locked up for decades, not stuck in the juvenile system, and out by 18. But, whenever he is released, he needs to be immediately deported back to Venezuela, or if Venezuela won’t take him, Antarctica.

Antarctica in shorts and flip flops!

Young Mr Rivas-Figueroa had arrived in September, and housed at a temporary shelter at the Stratford Hotel on West 70th Street. He’s also a suspect in an armed robbery in the Bronx on January 27th, and was involved in shots fired at a park on 45th Street in Midtown two days earlier.

There’s a lot more at the original.

But think about this. Venezuela under the ‘Bolivarian socialist’ Hugh Chavez banned private ownership of firearms in 2012, when this fine young gentleman was just 4 years old. He’s not coming from a culture in which people were able to own guns, and then he becomes a ‘migrant’ in a state in which firearms ownership is as restricted as the Constitution allows . . . if not more. He’s never known a life in which firearms were not restricted, yet he was (allegedly) carrying and using not just any pistol, but a .45. That’s not just falling into a life of crime, but actively planning it.

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You in a heap o’ trouble, boy! But don't you dare call him a 'groomer'!

Gerald Spoto, mugshot via Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News.

We reported, Friday afternoon, on the case of substitute teacher Rebecca Coddington of Brown Mills, New Jersey, who has been charged with aggravated sexual assault, among other crimes, for seducing and having a four-year-long affair with a 14-year-old girl. I expressed some surprise that the credentialed media, which have frequently tried to downplay or conceal the sex of victims of such crimes when that information would inform readers that the abuse was homosexual in nature.

Well, here we go again!

Former Bucks County after-school worker sexually assaulted a seventh boy, prosecutors allege

Gerald Spoto, 41, allegedly molested the boy starting in 2021 and recorded hundreds of pornographic images, prosecutors said.

by Robert Moran | Friday, February 9, 2024 | 5:48 PM EST

A 41-year-old Bucks County man already charged with sexually assaulting six boys while he worked for an after-school program and as a babysitter two decades ago now faces a slew of additional charges in connection with a seventh boy who allegedly was victimized just a few years ago.

The Bucks County District Attorney’s Office said Friday that Gerald Spoto, of Bristol Township, was charged with an additional three felony counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and related offenses, including 274 counts of photographing or filming a child sex act, and 275 counts of possession of child pornography.

No, of course the Inquirer did not include the accused’s mugshot!

Spoto was arraigned Friday by District Judge Terrance Hughes, who denied bail, citing public safety concerns and Spoto being a flight risk because he is in the process of selling his home. Spoto has been in custody since his original arrest in December.

Last month, Chief Deputy District Attorney Kristin McElroy argued against reducing Spoto’s bail because he allegedly attempted to adopt a child recently.

While the cited news report from The Philadelphia Inquirer continues to note that the police have found “hundreds of images” on computers belonging to Mr Spoto, of a nude boy who appears to be tween 11-and-13-years of age, and that some showed actual sexual abuse, it was a previous story in the newspaper which gave readers more detail:

All six men said they experienced a similar pattern of abuse at Spoto’s hands. He befriended them through the after-school program, and in some instances was hired by their parents to babysit them.

When left alone with Spoto, usually at his home in Langhorne or while he was driving them in his car, police said, he would grope the boys, perform sex acts on them, and force them to perform sex acts on him. The boys were preteens at the time, some as young as 10.

Emphasis mine.

Gerald Spoto, older photo, which Bucks Co. District Attorney’s Office said may more closely resemble the accused at the time of the alleged assaults.

One victim said Spoto threatened to kill him if he told anyone about the abuse, and said he would “move on” to his younger brother, whom police identified as one of the other victims in the case.

The victims also reported other abusive behavior, including being forced to drink alcohol and watch violent videos of people being mutilated. One victim told police that Spoto would invite other men to his home and force the boy to watch as they performed a group sex act.

So, it wasn’t ‘just’ pedophilia, which some quack psychologists tell us has nothing to do with an abuser’s sexual orientation, but Mr Spoto was, allegedly, engaging in some form of homosexual sex with adult men males.

The Bucks County District Attorney’s Office stated that some of Mr Spoto’s victims were as young as 7-years-old, and another victim reported around 50 encounters with the accused between 2000 and 2003, when he was 9-to-11-years old. Would you entrust your child’s care to someone who looked like that?

I apologize to any readers who felt an urge to vomit upon reading that, but Inquirer reporter Vinny Vella didn’t pull any punches, and I believe that readers really do need to know what is being done to children. If the charges are proven — and Mr Spoto is legally innocent until proven guilty — he needs to never again see the sun rise from outside of prison walls.

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You in a heap o’ trouble, girl It would be horribly, horribly wrong to call her a 'groomer'

Rebecca Coddington, July 28, 2023, from her Facebook page. Click to enlarge.

[Sigh!] Yet another teacher who has (allegedly) seduced and raped a minor. But it would be wrong, just wrong, to call her a groomer.

NJ substitute teacher charged after allegedly sexually assaulting teen for years, prosecutors say

By Cherise Lynch and Emily Rose Grassi • Thursday, February 8, 2024 • Updated: Friday, February 9, 2024 • 12:21 AM EST

A substitute teacher who works in Camden County, New Jersey has been charged with aggravated sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl, according to authorities.

Rebecca Coddington, 27, of Browns Mills has been charged with two counts of first-degree aggravated sexual assault, six counts of second-degree sexual assault, two counts of third-degree aggravated criminal sexual contact and two counts of third-degree endangering the welfare of a child, according to prosecutors.

I will admit to some surprise that NBC10 in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia noted that the victim of a female teacher was a girl. The media like to keep that stuff secret. But Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News published the Camden County Prosecutor’s press release, so it was never a secret which would keep. Her Facebook page states that she is “in a relationship” with a male, but if you want to check that, look quickly, because it will doubtlessly be taken down soon.

Aggravated sexual assault in the first degree is generally punished with a sentenced of 10 to 20 years in prison, and Miss Coddington faces two counts. Second degree sexual assault is a second degree crime in the Garden State, with a usual sentence of 5 to 10 years.

Prosecutors said during an investigation, detectives from the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office Special Victims Unit and the Gloucester Township Police Department had learned during an investigation that a 14-year-old girl was sexually assaulted multiple times by Coddington at a private residence in Gloucester Township during the period of September 2019, until Dec. 29 of last year.

Coddington was a substitute teacher in the Runnemede Public School District, but no allegations have been brought forward involving students, prosecutors said.

So, the victim was being raped from ages 14 to 18 now? And Miss Coddington, who is now listed as being 27-years-old, was 23 when the (alleged) assaults began?

If the lovely Miss Coddington is guilty of the offenses with which she is charged, she should never again see the sun from outside of prison walls, but the odds are that she’ll cop a plea deal.

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Once again, an otherwise detailed article in The Philadelphia Inquirer omits a pertinent fact. The newspaper just doesn't want to mention the crime angle

Perhaps it’s wrong of me to expect more in-depth coverage from The Philadelphia Inquirer, and my $285.48 annual subscription, but this one jumped out at me:

These Philadelphians got rid of their cars in the past year. They haven’t looked back.

“Now that I’m forced to walk, I’m seeing the city more than I did before,” said one newly car-less resident. She used to pay about $400 a month on her car payment and insurance.

by Erin McCarthy | Friday, February 9, 2024 | 5:00 AM EST

Dajé Walker’s Hyundai Elantra was stolen from a Brewerytown parking lot in July, only to be found a week later on the side of a local highway.

The car that Walker had driven for three years was “in shambles,” Walker said, and the insurance company deemed it a total loss.

“I had that existential crisis moment where I was like, ‘Do I need a car or do I want a car?” she said.

Around the same time, Walker, 28, got a new, completely remote job as a project manager. The news sealed her decision: She took the insurance payout of about $15,000, putting some of the money in savings and using the rest to move from Brewerytown to Old City, and never looked back.

She no longer has to set aside $300 a month for her car payment and another $100 for insurance. When she recently moved to Old City, she didn’t have to worry about securing a convenient and safe parking spot, which can cost at least $250 a month at private lots.

There’s a nice photo of Miss Walker, with her dog, on the narrow, brick streets, streets wide enough for a horse-and-buggy back in 1776, in the historic Old City, a really nice area in Philly, if you can afford it.

But while Miss Walker was able to get a new, 100% work from home job, published at the very same time was the article “IBX’s (Independence Blue Cross) new in-person office policy has some workers feeling betrayed. Others are job-hunting. Senior employees say they are worried that their teams will quit to find more flexible or better-paying positions at other companies,” which was a follow on to the Groundhog Day article, “Independence Blue Cross changes its work-from-home policy, the latest big Philly employer to require more in-office days: The insurance company had been allowing most employees to work remote as much as they liked. Now, they’ll be required onsite a majority of the work week.”

So, more and more employees are being expected to do something really radical and actually come to work in Philly; won’t those workers need a way to get to work?

More people are back in the office, but commuters say SEPTA service isn’t back to pre-pandemic norms

SEPTA service isn’t back to 100%, but it’s still outpacing ridership, even as employers push more in-office time. Would workers be more willing to commute if transportation schedules bulked up?

by Lizzy McLellan Ravitch | Friday, October 6, 2023 | 9:18 AM EDT

On Wednesday morning, SEPTA sent 39 notifications of Regional Rail trains running at least 10 minutes late and warned of potential delays or cancellations on 18 bus and trolley lines “due to operator unavailability.”

“It’s a gamble” trying to catch the bus, said a Pennsylvania state employee from West Philadelphia, who asked to remain nameless out of concern for their job. “There were times I would wake up earlier to get an earlier bus, and that wouldn’t show up.”

SEPTA’s mismanagement by CEO Leslie Richards is famed far and wide in Philly.

They have taken a rideshare to work on multiple occasions because their bus route options were canceled or late. Walking to a further bus stop isn’t an option because they have a disability. A lifelong bus rider, they said the system was more dependable before COVID-19.

[Sigh!] In English grammar, properly understood, the masculine subsumes the feminine, meaning that the singular masculine pronouns are used to refer to one person, even when that person’s sex is not known or specified. Anything else is sloppy writing.

“You have to laugh to keep from crying,” the West Philly bus rider said. “People could lose their jobs” if they’re late for work.

Septa’s ridership is down 39% from 2019, the year prior to the panicdemic, though the bus service alone was back up to 75% last October.

Back to the first cited article:

After a surge in car-buying statewide at the height of the pandemic, there are signs that some Philadelphians like Walker have made the decision to do away with their cars in recent years, bucking larger trends.

In 2022, more than 638,000 passenger vehicles were registered in the city, about 24,000 fewer cars than were registered here a year prior, according to the most recent state data. That represents a 3.6% decline in registered vehicles over a period when the city’s population decreased 1.4%, the largest one year drop in 45 years.

Do all of these things make sense together? Car ownership is down significantly from the population decrease, public transportation ridership has significantly decreased, and more people are being required to return to their employers’ offices? We reported, just two days ago, that the newspaper did not report politically inconvenient facts about vehicle ownership, that while the Inquirer reported on the surge in automobile insurance rates, completely ignored was the possibility the city’s huge auto theft and carjacking rates had anything to do with that surge.

Well, here they go again. The newspaper has previously reported:

Philadelphia has seen a surge in plateless vehicles. Some are abandoned, but others are the result of drivers attempting to evade law enforcement, parking tickets, or toll-by-plate systems.

There was also this:

How rampant phony license plates are being used to get away with crimes in Philadelphia

Fraudulent temporary tags have flooded into Philadelphia from states with looser rules — like Delaware.

by Ryan W. Briggs and Dylan Purcell | November 18, 2022 | 5:00 AM EST | Updated: 12:11 PM EST

(F)ake license plates are an old tool of criminal trades, what’s new is the flood of fraudulent temporary tags into Philadelphia from states with looser issuance rules — like Texas and Delaware. These phony plates have shown up increasingly in police investigations into shootings, carjackings, hit-and-runs, and car thefts. (In addition to counterfeit plates, thefts of auto tags this year to date were 2,378, a more than 60% increase over the same period in 2018.)

How, I have to ask, is it good and reliable reporting to tell the newspaper’s readers that fewer people own cars without mentioning that the city has seen a surge in vehicles on the street which some people possess, though “own” might not be the proper word? There was not the first word in Erin McCarthy’s article to even hint that, Heaven forfend!, there might be more cars on the road possessed by scofflaws and criminals.

Miss McCarthy’s article was entirely upbeat, telling readers that there are good and reasonable ways to live in the City of Brotherly Love, that Philly “is known for being one of the best cities to live in without a car (though historically not all neighborhoods have the same access to public transit),” which, I would guess, will be something referenced in yet another article telling us that we must give up cars to save Mother Gaia.

William Teach reported, just this morning, that we are being told by Our Betters that the behavior of the public as a whole must be changed to fight global warming climate change, but at least Miss McCarthy’s article is trying to be persuasive rather than authoritarian.