Author Archives: Dana Pico

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“Claims she has a bad back”

Her job is riding a desk. Is she bed-ridden? Is she hospitalized? Is she too doped up on pain meds to work from her La-Z-Boy? Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw is off of work with a back injury.

Police Commissioner Outlaw is out for a month with a back injury after a car crash

Outlaw suffered a back injury in a car accident on March 29. She’s been out of work since and hopes to return in about two weeks, officials said.

by Ellie Rushing | Tuesday, April 11, 2023

Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw is expected to be out of work for about a month after suffering a back injury in a motor-vehicle crash two weeks ago, the department said Tuesday.

Outlaw was injured on the afternoon of March 29, after her police SUV collided with an Uber driver at 15th and Race Streets.

The commissioner suffered “injuries to her back” during the collision and has been out of work since, said department spokesperson Sgt. Eric Gripp.

“She is recovering and hopes to be back to work in approximately two weeks,” he said.

There’s more at the original.

Back injuries are no fun, to be sure, but can’t Miss Outlaw do some of her work from a recliner? If she can’t sit at her desk, is there no hospital-type desk that she could use? Are there no phones that she could use, no computers that she could access?

The cop-hating incoming Mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, will have to select a new Police Superintendent now that David Brown has resigned; he was going to be fired anyway. May I suggest that Miss Outlaw get the job? Anything, just get her out of Philly!

The City of Brotherly Love is in the middle of a four-year-long crime wave, but the Commissioner, and perhaps you could read this with the same voice and inflection Tony Joe White did in Polk Salad Annie, “claims she has a bad back.”

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The credentialed media don’t understand their home state! Once again, the Lexington Herald-Leader is out of touch with Kentuckians

We have previously reported how the Lexington Herald-Leader, a McClatchy newspaper, follows the McClatchy Mugshot Policy, and refrains from publishing the photos of black suspects and convicted criminals, and does not refer to race in its criminal reports, though somehow, photos of accused criminals who are white manage to make it into the newspaper.

So, imagine my surprise when reporters Taylor Six and Aaron Mudd wrote this line:

Connor Sturgeon, a white male who police said was live-streaming the shooting, was a former employee at Old National Bank, the site of Monday morning’s shooting.

Naturally, I took the screen shot of the sentence, before it vanishes into the ether.

Authorities identify former Old National Bank employee as Louisville shooter

by Taylor Six and Aaron Mudd | Monday, April 10, 2023 | 4:10 PM EDT | Updated: 9:52 PM EDT

Louisville Metro Police have identified a 25-year-old man as the shooter who killed five people and injured several others before he was fatally shot by police at a downtown bank Monday morning.

Connor Sturgeon, a white male who police said was live-streaming the shooting, was a former employee at Old National Bank, the site of Monday morning’s shooting.

The new details emerged during a Monday afternoon press conference attended by city officials and Gov. Andy Beshear, who said he’d lost a close friend in the shooting.

According to police, officers were dispatched to Old National Bank Monday morning for reports of an active shooter. When they arrived, the shooting was ongoing, but the shooter was reported dead soon after.

Louisville Metro Police Department Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel named him Monday afternoon during a press conference. She said Sturgeon was formerly an employee with Old National Bank and assumed he was a Louisville resident.

According to the police chief, Sturgeon was killed by police gunfire. He was reported to have used a “rifle,” although police did not specifically state what type.

There’s a little more at the original, but nothing that hasn’t been all over the news. The story mentions that the killer was a “former” employee of the bank, but does not state what several other sources have, that he was discharged by the bank.

Naturally, the Herald-Leader’s primary columnist wants gun control:

After Louisville shooting, it’s time to get out our bullhorns. We’re sick of gun deaths. | Opinion

by Linda Blackford | Monday, April 10, 2023 | 12:28 PM EDT

Have we had enough yet?

Exactly two weeks after a deranged shooter killed six people in Nashville, three of them precious, innocent children, a deranged shooter killed four people in Louisville (the shooter also died), and sent eight more to the hospital.

Also see: William Teach, “Gun Grabbers Push Gun Grabbing Immediately After Leftist Nutjob Kills People“

There have been 131 mass shootings — defined as more than four people dead or injured — THIS YEAR alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Almost 10,000 people have died from guns since Jan. 1.

Today made 132. The archive updated its numbers as police gave their final reports.

A tsunami of “thoughts and prayers” from politicians will now roll down, hoping to drown us in distraction from the fact that they could stop this if they wanted to.

If we made them.

After several more paragraphs blaming “the guns,” Mrs Blackford comes up with a statement she has made before, and one she knows is a lie:

But once again, gerrymandered political districts do not represent the will of the people, who are sick of seeing people, children, die for nothing but a perverted misunderstanding of our founding fathers.

“Gerrymandered”? In 2020, Republicans dramatically increased their number of seats in the Kentucky General Assembly, from 61-39 in the state House of Representatives to 75-25, and in the state Senate from 28-10 to 30-8. But those gains happened under the district lines passed following the 2010 Census, when Democrats controlled the state House, and a Democrat was Governor. Republicans did not take over control of teh state House until after the 2016 elections; they did previously control the state Senate, including prior to the reapportionment.

Republicans did increase their seats in the 2022 election, up to 80-20 in the House and 31-7 in the Senate. Interestingly enough, the Democrats never even fielded candidates in 44 of the House districts, so there was no way they could even think about regaining control. In my own district, no serious Democrat ran in the primary, and a perennial kook candidate won the nomination, a candidate so bad that the state Democratic Party disavowed him.

Is there gerrymandering? In 2020, President Trump received 1,326,646 votes from Kentuckians, 62.09% of the total, while Joe Biden got only 772,474, or 36.15%. President Teump carried 118 out of the Commonwealth’s 120 counties, losing only Jefferson (Louisville) and Fayette (Lexington). In the same election, Senator Mitch McConnell won 1,233,315 votes, 57.76%, while his well-funded Democrat opponent, Amy McGrath Henderson received only 816,257, 38.23%. Mrs Henderson carried only three counties, Jefferson, Fayette, and Franklin, which included the state capitol of Frankfort.

In 2022, Senator Rand Paul, a libertarian Republican, won 913,326 votes, 61.80%, to Democrat Charles Booker’s 564,311 votes, 38.19%.

Those were statewide elections, which means there was no gerrymandering possible. Mrs Blackford might argue gerrymandering at the margins of the 2022 General Assembly races, but a difference of two or three would hardly matter against the GOP’s overwhelming majorities.

Mrs Blackford called the Commonwealth’s gun laws “a perverted misunderstanding of our founding fathers,” but that completely ignores history. When what became the Second Amendment was written, it was by the generation which had just won a revolution against Great Britain. In 1775, the military Governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Gage, had ordered gun control himself, ordering the confiscation of firearms and ammunition from the wretched colonials. It was to seize reported storehouses of gunpowder and ammunition that General Gage sent the redcoats to Lexington and Concord, resulting in the shot heard ’round the world, and the first battles in our revolution. Does Mrs Blackford seriously believe that the revolutionaries who began that war fighting against gun control by the British would not have meant for individuals to have the right to keep and bear arms.

In 1791, when the Second Amendment was ratified, many Americans lived on or very near the frontier. Does Mrs Blackford believe that the “founding fathers” would have thought the government could ban individuals from owning firearms when they had to hunt for game to put meat on the table, and be able to defend themselves from the Indian tribes? Does Mrs Blackford believe that when her home state of Kentucky was settled by white families, that the “founding fathers” would have believed it acceptable for the government to have the authority to ban individual ownership of firearms when the settlers needed to hunt for food and defend themselves from the Cherokee and Shawnee Indians who already lived here?

There were no telephones in the late 18th century, and homesteads could be pretty far apart. There were no police departments on the frontier. The first organized, publicly-funded professional full-time police forces in the United States were established in Boston in 1838, New York in 1844, and Philadelphia in 1854. If a bad guy was raiding a homestead, would the “founding fathers” have thought that the government could ban the private ownership of firearms by individuals, leaving them unable to defend themselves?

Mrs Blackford’s biography says that she “writes columns and commentary for the Herald-Leader. She has covered K-12, higher education and other topics for the past 20 years at the Herald-Leader.” Twenty years, huh? That means entirely in the 21st century, on computers and word processors, exercising her freedom of speech and of the press via giant printing presses and an internet which allows distribution of her words widely across the Herald-Leader’s service area, which is central and eastern Kentucky, and even around the world if someone chooses to search. These are certainly things of which the “founding fathers’ had no concept! If we were to accept the columnist’s ideas that the “founding fathers” certainly never meant for the Second Amendment to cover what it covers today, then wouldn’t we also have to say that the First Amendment does not cover more than a megaphone or a hand-set newspaper printed entirely by manual labor?

We have previously documented the newspaper’s endorsement history, and how the voters of the sixth congressional district and the commonwealth as a whole almost always vote the opposite from how what my best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal want.

When I moved away from the Bluegrass State at the end of 1984, the Herald-Leader was a broadsheet publication, and if not the size of Louisville’s Courier-Journal or The Philadelphia Inquirer, still a reasonable newspaper for central and eastern Kentucky. I used to deliver the old morning Lexington Herald and afternoon Lexington Leader in Mt Sterling, and when I returned to the Bluegrass State in 2017, I could see just how far downhill the newspaper had gone. Just a few pages, no longer a broadsheet, and visibly on its last legs. That, too, is freedom of speech and of the press, as, presented with the other news alternatives of television and radio and the internet, the people of the newspaper’s service area have chosen against it.

Perhaps that is why Mrs Blackford personally, and the newspaper’s editors in general, have lost touch with what used to be their service area. They now reflect only the opinions of the state’s second-largest city, and while it’s a significant voting block, it isn’t the majority of even the sixth congressional district. Mrs Blackford may blame it all on gerrymandering, but it’s the newspaper and her which are out of touch with Kentuckians, not the state legislature.
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The left keep making excuses for other leftists who kill.

Democrats in the United States have been very much in favor of enforcing the law when it came to the protests which occurred on January 6, 2021. The federal Department of Justice has charged nearly a thousand people with crimes over a rowdy demonstration, and The Washington Post reported that Attorney General Merrick Garland — who absolutely hates Republicans for denying him a Supreme Court seat — is looking at charges for perhaps another thousand people. What my best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal has been very much supportive of charging the Capitol kerfufflers as seriously as possible, even though the actual guilty pleas have been for a single, relatively minor misdemeanor count, 40 U.S.C. § 5104(e)(2)(G), Parading, Demonstrating, or Picketing in a Capitol Building; the penalty for which is a misdemeanor conviction punishable by a maximum fine of $5,000 or up to six months in prison, or both.

But it seems as though the Herald-Leader is actually quite supportive of breaking the law when it comes to something the editors support:

Civil disobedience is now required to fight gun violence and protect our most vulnerable | Opinion

by Fenton Johnson[1] | Thursday, April 6, 2023 | 11:00 AM EDT | updated: Friday, April 7, 2023 | 9:35 AM EDT

The moment I read that the Nashville school shooter was a woman whom the police indicated was being “treated for a mental disorder,” I wrote an email to a friend in Kentucky, like Tennessee a state where a Republican supermajority legislature is waging war on trans children and their parents. “I find myself wondering,” I wrote, “if the ‘mental disorder’ with which the killer was being treated was some kind of gender nonconformity issue, conscious or otherwise. So much mental illness resides there, and may have been triggered, to use the word of the day, by the Tennessee legislature’s actions against LGBT people.”

Really? It was reported almost immediately that Audrey Hale, the murderer — no need to used the qualifier “alleged,” since she was shot dead virtually in the act — was ‘transgendered,’ a woman claiming that she was really a man and calling herself “Aiden.” As we previously reported, with some confusion about Miss Hale’s status in the immediate aftermath, the professional media used some contorted language to avoid gendered pronouns or honorifics, to keep from getting them wrong.

Not that it mattered: “Gender identity advocates accused mainstream news outlets who scrambled to cover the story of ‘misgendering’ and ‘deadnaming’ Hale by not referring to her as a man or as a transman.”

How did I know this before reading or hearing the news that Audrey Hale was in fact trans? Because I grew up in rural Kentucky in the 1950s, where I attended the most conservative of Roman Catholic grade schools. Shaming and corporal punishment were commonplace and sex was never spoken of because the priestly hierarchy understood that silence was its most powerful tool in protecting its power to abuse children and women.

LOL! I attended a public school in a small town in Kentucky, in the 1960s and very early 1970s, and sex was never spoken of by the teachers and administrators — it was spoken about plenty of times by the students! — because those subjects were simply not supposed to be part of the educational curriculum, and if they had been part, parents would have been very upset. Sex education was a subject for parents, not the public schools.

I who loved learning dreaded not the classroom, where I could sneak a look into the science and literature textbooks that we were often forbidden to read. Instead I dreaded the playground and my walks to and from school, where class bullies beat me up for walking like a woman. They would teach me to be a man like them — they would teach me violence. But I got lucky — I got a scholarship; I got out; I ran away, to San Francisco, to a place where I could heal my wounds, learn peace, and find the courage to come out as a gay man.

The playground and those walks home taught me that the loudest bullies had the most to protect. The meanest bullies were such cowards that they resorted to violence to mask their insecurities. They rushed to buy assault weapons.

Really? The “bullies” of the 1950s “rushed to buy assault weapons”?

Fifty years later, ex-Marine Senator J.D. Vance tweets that “giving into these ideas is dangerous,” as if gender identity is an “idea,” as if his toxic heterosexuality has not slaughtered countless women, children, and men across centuries of war, in the battlefields and in the streets and lanes. Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett implies that the solution is to lock our children up at home and go to the mats — an approach that has some merit, in that it allows loving and compassionate parents to protect their children from the likes of him and his ideologies.

When a homosexual male starts blabbering about “toxic heterosexuality,” you know that he’s pretty much losing it. 🙂

Audrey Hale’s powder keg of anger and self-loathing was prepared in the halls of the school where she acted out her despair on the terms established and promoted by the gun lovers. The leaders who in their public stances told her she was “dangerous” invited her to act out their accusation. That she did so on their terms and using their weapons of choice is a matter of cause and effect.

Oh, look! Fenton Johnson just ‘deadnamed‘ and ‘misgendered‘ Miss Johnson!

Americans live on sidewalks, migrants seeking asylum are murdered at our doors and in our streets, banks go under, our transportation infrastructure is in rotten shape, our students do not receive the literacy, skills, and moral compasses they need to become good and cheerful citizens. Our legislators’ response to these crises is to spend days debating drag performances while defending easy access to assault weapons. Beyond that, they say, they can do nothing.

The hour is here for peaceful civil disobedience, such as that practiced by Tennessee State Representative Gloria Johnson and over a thousand Nashville students, who are taking their case directly to the legislative halls in exercise of their constitutional rights, and whom the Republican supermajority is attempting to silence. As U.S. history teaches us, those who act from courage and compassion must be prepared to face the cowards with their guns. Better our aged bodies than those of our children.

Connor Sturgeon’s LinkedIn profile, screen captured before it could be deleted. Click to enlarge.

“Civil disobedience,” huh? Civil disobedience is defined as “active, professed refusal of a citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders or commands of a government or other lawful authority.” Is Mr Johnson, and the Herald-Leader which chose to publish him, calling for breaking the law? The newspaper, at least, hasn’t been so charitable when it comes to the January 6 protesters, the vast majority of whom did nothing but march in the Capitol Building. Is Mr Johnson willing to go to jail, and be incarcerated amongst those “toxic(ly) heterosexual” other criminals?

Well, Connor Sturgeon, 25, just killed several people at Old National Bank, his employer, in Louisville, going to his eternal reward in the process. Will Mr Johnson “find myself wondering, if he had a ‘mental disorder’, or was perhaps homosexual or transgender, since the General Assembly recently overrode the Governor’s veto and passed Senate Bill 150, which prohibits hormone of surgical ‘transitioning’ of minors — they can do whatever fool thing they want once they turn 18 — and prohibits public school systems from requiring teachers and other employees from being required to go along with a ‘transgender’ student’s preferred name or pronouns? Mr Sturgeon did specify his ‘pronouns,’ “He/him” in his LinkedIn profile, though they only show up if you are logged in to LinkedIn, which I screen captured before it was deleted. Mr Johnson complained that “our students do not receive the literacy, skills, and moral compasses they need to become good and cheerful citizens,” but young Mr Sturgeon claimed that he had a Master of Science degree from the University of Alabama’s Manderson Graduate School of Business, and he had what would appear, from his job title, Syndications Associate and Portfolio Banker, to be a decently-paying job at Old National Bank.

Miss Hale and Mr Sturgeon were insane by any practical definition: both wanted to end it all, and both decided that suicide-by-cop and taking innocent people with them was a great, great way to make a splash as they departed our mortal vale. Anger over a legislative act does not somehow justify what Miss Hale, and perhaps Mr Johnson, did.

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Oh, look! Helen Gym Flaherty is getting much of her financial support from people with no connection to Philadelphia! Socialists gotta socialist, and are trying to trash yet another big city

As critical as I have been of The Philadelphia Inquirer, I should note when they do good reporting.

Half the money collected by candidates for Philly mayor comes from outside the city

Some candidates in the crowded Democratic primary field have relied more than others on money from outside Philadelphia than others.

by Aseem Shukla and Anna Orso | Monday, April 10, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

Philadelphia’s mayoral race has already drawn millions in fundraising. And half of it has come from outside the city.

Campaigns have already raised more than $17 million. Of that, $8 million comes from the candidates themselves. But an Inquirer analysis shows that of the $9.3 million given by actual donors:

  • About half of the money, at least $4.4 million, comes from donors in Philadelphia.
  • Roughly another quarter, at least $2.5 million, comes from donors elsewhere in the region.
  • The remainder, at least another $2.1 million, comes from donors outside the area.
  • A small fraction, under $100,000, came from small donations that campaigns don’t have to disclose, so the addresses of those donors is unknown.

Maria Quiñones-Sánchez recently withdrew from the race.

That there would be donors from the city’s suburbs is hardly surprising: many people who work in Philadelphia don’t live in the city themselves, but have a vested interest in how the city functions.

It’s interesting that former city Controller Rebecca Rhynhart McDuff is tied for the largest percentage raised from city residents, and has, by far, the smallest percentage raised from outside of the area. The Inquirer surprised me when, rather than the furthest left candidate, Helen Gym Flaherty, the Editorial Board instead endorsed Mrs McDuff.

But here’s the money paragraph from the newspaper:

More than the rest of the field, Helen Gym and Derek Green, both former City Council members, have raised money from donors outside the region entirely. Gym in particular has a national profile as a leading voice in the progressive movement, and has significant financial support from the American Federation of Teachers, which is headquartered in Washington, D.C. Over one-third of her money comes from donors outside the region.

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Why Do Democrats Think They Can ‘Win’ the Crime Issue? Media bias misinforms the public about “gun violence.”

The Inquirer previously reported that the city’s teachers’ union has been one of Mrs Flaherty’s biggest supporters. As we previously reported, Mrs Flaherty has earned her reputation of being a major supporter of public schools, but one of her notable successes, keeping Edward T Steel Elementary School from becoming a charter school, hasn’t worked out all that well, as it is ranked 1,205th out of 1,607 Pennsylvania elementary schools, with 8% of students ranked as grade-level proficient in reading, and a whopping 1% as grade-level proficient in math.

So, why do I care? After all, I no longer work in Philadelphia and its suburbs, and don’t even live in Pennsylvania now. I care because I’ve seen the disastrous effects of big city liberalism, as the City of Brotherly Love has seen a tremendous spike in crime, with annual homicides more than doubling in fewer than ten years as the good people of Philly elected a mayor who is just plain tired of the job and a district attorney who doesn’t want to put criminals in jail. Chicago has suffered through the same things with outgoing Mayor Lori Lightfoot and State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, and just elected police-hating Brandon Johnson, who’s even further left than Miss Lightfoot to replace her as Mayor. Manhattan elected Alvin Bragg to be district attorney, and his chief assistant district Attorney, Meg Reiss has said, “We know incarceration doesn’t really solve any problems.” Me? I believe that our problem is not mass incarceration, but that not enough people are incarcerated, for not a long enough time.

One thing ought to be obvious: the criminal who is already locked up is not out on the streets, committing more crimes.

But Mrs Flaherty doesn’t seem to understand that. She strongly endorsed and campaigned with, George Soros-sponsored “restorative justice” District Attorney Larry Krasner, later saying, “I support reducing the prison population by 50% from 2019 levels. We must center transformative and restorative justice practices in Philadelphia.” She wants to do everything to increase public safety other than getting criminals off the streets! Yet Mrs Flaherty has been receiving a clear pile of money from public school teachers, who are the epitome of the socialist class, government employees who have no responsibility for actually being good at their jobs, and who seem to want to introduce every bit of #woke idiocy and sexual deviance to children.

The policies of the left, when put into government action, have proven to be actively harmful to our society and our civilization. That’s why I fret for Philadelphia, which is already suffering from such policies, and could well be poised to double-down on the stupidity.

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You will drive an electric car, and you will like it! Suck it up, buttercup, and do as you are told!

A former co-worker of mine liked to use the expression, when telling someone to do something he didn’t want to do, “and you will like it.” That’s how I see the actions of the Biden Administration to force plug in electric vehicles on American consumers. Do Americans really want them? All-electric vehicles — excluding hybrids — were 5.8% of all new vehicles sold in the US in 2022, up from 3.2% in 2021. At least as of now, buying a plug-in electric vehicle is not something most Americans would like to do.

From The New York Times:

E.P.A. Is Said to Propose Rules Meant to Drive Up Electric Car Sales Tenfold

In what would be the nation’s most ambitious climate regulation, the proposal is designed to ensure that electric cars make up the majority of new U.S. auto sales by 2032.

by Coral Davenport | Saturday, April 8, 2023 | 11:00 AM EDT

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is planning some of the most stringent auto pollution limits in the world, designed to ensure that all-electric cars make up as much as 67 percent of new passenger vehicles sold in the country by 2032, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Also see: William Teach: Good News: Brandon’s CAFE Standards To Drastically Increase

That would represent a quantum leap for the United States — where just 5.8 percent of vehicles sold last year were all-electric — and would exceed President Biden’s earlier ambitions to have all-electric cars account for half of those sold in the country by 2030.

It would be the federal government’s most aggressive climate regulation and would propel the United States to the front of the global effort to slash the greenhouse gases generated by cars, a major driver of climate change. The European Union has already enacted vehicle emissions standards that are expected to phase out the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035. Canada and Britain have proposed standards similar to the European model .

At the same time, the proposed regulation would pose a significant challenge for automakers. Nearly every major car company has already invested heavily in electric vehicles, but few have committed to the levels envisioned by the Biden administration. And many have faced supply chain problems that have held up production. Even manufacturers who are enthusiastic about electric models are unsure whether consumers will buy enough of them to make up the majority of new car sales within a decade.

That last quoted line is the telling one: “Even manufacturers who are enthusiastic about electric models are unsure whether consumers will buy enough of them to make up the majority of new car sales within a decade.” Or, in my former co-worker’s phraseology, you will buy one, and you will like it!

What’s that you say? A plug-in electric car is not really a good choice for you? Suck it up, buttercup, and do as you are told!

Not your choice? I’ve said it many times before: the left are pro-choice on exactly one thing!

Michael S. Regan, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is expected to announce the proposed limits on tailpipe emissions on Wednesday in Detroit. The requirements would be intended to ensure that electric cars represent between 54 and 60 percent of all new cars sold in the United States by 2030, with that figure rising to 64 to 67 percent of new car sales by 2032, according to the people familiar with the details, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information had not been made public.

Now, how does that work? The most obvious way would be to force manufacturers to produce 60% or more of their new vehicles as plug-in electrics, but production of them does not mean that they would sell in such percentages. What happens if Ford produces 6 million plug-in electric and 4 million internal combustion engine vehicles, but American consumers choose to buy out the 4 million ICE vehicles but only a fraction of the electrics sell? Ford would have to cut the price of the electrics to the bone, perhaps below manufacturing costs. How long can the company sustain such losses?

A 2019 Chevy Dolt Bolt electric vehicle caught fire at a home in Cherokee County, Georgia, on Sept. 13. Source: Cherokee County Fire Department. Click to enlarge.

Electric vehicles have their problems, the most obvious is charging them. If you live in a decent house, with a garage or secure parking space and ample electric service to install a charger, you can recharge overnight. But with urbanization, something the left want to see increase, a lot of people don’t have that garage or secure parking space. Here in the wilds of eastern Kentucky, I’ve seen plenty of homes with just 100 amphere electric service, and while it would be possible to have an electric car charger on one of those, you’d lose the ability to use an electric range or electric heater or clothes dryer while you were charging your Chevy Dolt. The only realistic way to charge at hole is to have 200-amphere electric service installed, and if you don’t have it, that means a licensed electrician to do the work.

Rapidly speeding up the adoption of electric vehicles in the United States would require other significant changes, including the construction of millions of new electric vehicle charging stations, an overhaul of electric grids to accommodate the power needs of those chargers and securing supplies of minerals and other materials needed for batteries.

Rapidly speeding up the adoption of electric vehicles in the United States would require other significant changes, including the construction of millions of new electric vehicle charging stations, an overhaul of electric grids to accommodate the power needs of those chargers and securing supplies of minerals and other materials needed for batteries.

All of which the Biden Administration plans on doing, but all of which also requires that private companies decide to make such investments. Can anyone build a commercial charging station before the electric grid to support it is in place?

It was December of 2021 in which I last stopped at the Wawa at the junction of PA-61 and I-78 in Pennsylvania, where there were six Tesla electric car charging stations, none of which was in use, and twenty-four — if I remember correctly — gasoline pumps, all of which were in use, with a line for next at some of them. Imagine: 24 vehicles not taking 5 to 10 minutes apiece to fuel up and go, but spending 45 to 75 minutes each recharging. It might be great for Wawa, selling more coffee and sandwiches, but perhaps less great for the people having to spend that time there. And if your Tesla is getting near a flat can, and you are stuck in line waiting for a charging station, you might get rather annoyed.

The trips I used to have to make between Pennsylvania and the Bluegrass State? I’m a pretty steady — and perhaps slightly heavy-footed — driver, and could make the trip in around 9½ hours, including one stop for fuel in West Virginia. If rather than my gasoline-powered 2010 Ford F-150 with a 36-gallon fuel tank, I had a 2023 Ford F-150 Lightning, I’d have to make two hour-long charging stops on the 624 mile trip, and I’d still arrive with less than a 50% charge.

The 9½ hour trip just became 11½ hours, if not more. And I’ve had the privilege of paying $60,000+ for the truck! F(ornicate) that!

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Helen Gym Flaherty apparently thinks that money grows on trees And she wants to do everything she can to improve public safety except the most obvious: actually enforce the law!

As Robert Stacy McCain noted in “Chicago Votes for More Crime,” when the Windy City Democrats nominated police-hating Brandon Johnson to become their next Mayor, the bad things that happened under Mayor Lori Lightfoot would just get worse.

When Jazz Shaw refers to the city’s “carjacking epidemic,” it’s no exaggeration. As recently as 2014, Chicago had barely 300 carjackings a year. Last year, there were more than 1,600 carjackings in Chicago, to go along with 737 murders and 2,937 people wounded from gunfire.

In crime-ridden Philadelphia, you’d think that people would take notice of that, and some did. Philadelphia’s Working Families Party tweeted how happy they were that Mr Johnson won in Chicago, and wanted Philly to be next by voting for Helen Gym Flaherty.

Who are the Working Families Party? On their About page, they pretty much tell us that they are full socialist without saying that they are full socialist, but I will admit to being amused that the photo they used[1]Also here, in case they delete it. as an illustration of who they are was of almost entirely young people, mostly Asian, in front of a Chinese restaurant in New York City, in the summer[2]Or so I judge by their shorts, sandals, and crop tops., all wearing silly face masks.

And so we come to Mrs Flaherty. The Philadelphia Inquirer, which, to their (slight) credit, endorsed Rebecca Rhynhart rather than the far-left Mrs Flaherty, had this on the Working Families’ favorite:

Philly mayoral candidate Helen Gym’s education plan includes a $10B ‘Green New Deal’ for schools

Gym said Thursday the city could borrow money to finance some capital costs and that she favors directing a higher share of property taxes to the School District.

by Anna Orso | Thursday, April 6, 2023 | 7;40 PM EDT

Philadelphia mayoral candidate Helen Gym on Thursday unveiled an education proposal that includes guaranteed jobs for teenagers, free SEPTA passes for all city students, and a $10 billion plan to modernize school buildings.

Gym, who stood with supporters outside Edward T. Steel Elementary School in Nicetown to make the announcement, called her public-education focused capital plan a “Green New Deal for Schools” and vowed to implement a 10-year facilities improvement plan. She also said she would add more librarians and counselors to schools, overhaul the high school selection process, and base school budgets on need, not enrollment levels.

Ahhh, yes, the Edward T Steel Elementary School. City Councilwoman Kendra Brooks, a Working Families Party member, tweeted:

I met @HelenGymPHL over a decade ago when my daughter’s school was going to be privatized. We were a few moms saying we want something greater. We DESERVE something better.

That’s what her education plan is about. That’s why I’m standing here today because since day one, she’s been fighting for communities like mine. And winning.

To this day, Edward T. Steel Elementary is a public school.

Why yes, it is. In the still public Steel Elementary, which is ranked 1,205th out of 1,607 Pennsylvania elementary schools, 1% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math, and 8% scored at or above that level for reading. Maybe keeping it public didn’t work all that well?

Another respondent had the charts. But perhaps having a campaign rally touting public education in front of a clearly failing public school wasn’t the brightest idea, unless Mrs Flaherty was assuming that the people who would be most likely to vote for her aren’t particularly bright themselves.

Her announcement was another sign that the former City Council member and longtime public-schools activist is running in part on her education background by proposing a laundry list of schools improvements that teachers and advocates have been urging for years. . . . .

The proposal didn’t include an overall price tag, but $10 billion in capital costs alone would represent an enormous expense. Under the current administration, the proposed capital investment for the entire city for the next six years is $13.2 billion.

My compliments to reporter Anna Orso for researching that and pointing it out. Where would the city get the money?

Gym said Thursday the city could borrow money to finance some capital costs and that she favors directing a higher share of property taxes to the School District, which currently receives 55% of local property tax revenue. Doing so would, in turn, decrease cash flow to the city’s coffers.

“The point is that we’re not going to get there if all we say is what we don’t have,” she said. “I know the city has to get down to business to do it, but it needs a plan, it needs a vision, and we need somebody who’s been relentless about fighting for this from day one.”

As we have previously noted, Philadelphia’s population has dropped by 2.28% between the April 2020 Census and the Census Bureau’s July 1, 2022 population guesstimate. More, 3.34% of the 36,539 souls lost during that time period, 1,222 people, were lost to murder! If Mrs Flaherty’s proposals were put into effect, the obvious result is that more better-off people would move out of the city due to the higher taxes which would necessarily be imposed to pay for all of her ideas, whether paid for by direct taxation or in the debt service she would impose. Philly’s poverty rate, 23.1%, is double the U.S average, while the city’s median income, $49,127, is just three-quarters of the national average. Mrs Flaherty’s plans, if they push out more of the higher earners, can only exacerbate that problem, and make paying for her plans even harder.

But her plans, along with those of the Working Families Party are pretty much in line with their complete lack of understanding of economics. Perhaps they believe that money can be created out of thin air, since that’s what our federal government seems to be doing, but Philly isn’t the federal government.

The city’s teachers union, one of Gym’s biggest backers, quickly endorsed the plan Thursday, with Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Jerry Jordan saying in a statement that Gym’s plan also prioritizes safety — including through guaranteed after-school programs — and has “thoughtful and proactive measures to address a real crisis in our city.”

Well, of course the teachers’ union endorsed Mrs Flaherty! Government employees all, they, too, have no concept of economics, and they, too, seem to think that the public trough is ever-full and never-ending. It was the teachers in Kentucky which caused former Governor Matt Bevin to lose his re-election bid, because he tried to do something really radical like reform their pension system before it went broke.

But in reading Mrs Flaherty’s website Issues page, clicking on her “Safety in every neighborhood” section, I read that she would “Declare a State of Emergency on Gun Violence,” “Protect, Uplift, and Empower Philadelphia’s Young People,” have “Community-Driven Interventions and Effective Policing,” “Reduce Violence with Clean and Green Neighborhoods”, and “Provide Real Support for Victims of Violent Crime and their Families,” spending gobs of money in these things, but never once said anything about reducing the number of vacancies in the Philadelphia Police Department, the people who actually enforce the law, the people who do their best to get criminals off the streets. Mrs Flaherty strongly endorsed and campaigned with, George Soros-sponsored “restorative justice” District Attorney Larry Krasner, later saying, “I support reducing the prison population by 50% from 2019 levels. We must center transformative and restorative justice practices in Philadelphia.” She wants to do everything ti increase public safety other than getting criminals off the streets! The Philadelphia Tribune reported:

She also vowed to overhaul the Philadelphia Police Department, “so that they are more responsive and interactive with neighbors, so that we are dealing with young people, and helping and support young people, who are currently in the path of violence right now.”

So, nothing about more police officers, just ‘progressive’ reform. Yeah, that has worked so well other places.

In addition to reverse the slashing of hours at recreation centers and public libraries, she said she wants public schools to be open from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., referencing the high amount of gun violence involving students that happens before 6 p.m. Gym also pledged to remove 10,000 abandoned cars from city streets and sealing 50% of the city’s vacant lots.

So, spending more money, money that the Jim Kenney Administration couldn’t find. It’s not like Mayor Kenney wanted to close libraries and recreation centers; he just didn’t have the money to do otherwise. Of course, having the recreation centers open didn’t decrease violence, and the city could open only 50 of its 65 pools because they couldn’t find enough lifeguards.

Let’s face it: there are no good candidates for the Democratic nomination for Mayor of Philadelphia, but there are some who are worse than others, and Helen Gym Flaherty is the worst of the worst.

References

References
↑1 Also here, in case they delete it.
↑2 Or so I judge by their shorts, sandals, and crop tops.
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Once again, Joe Biden thinks that girls can be boys and boys can be girls

With several conservative states imposing common sense restrictions on the participation of males in women’s sports, it’s little surprise that the #woke Biden Administration wants to overrule them. From The New York Times:

School Sports Cannot ‘Categorically’ Ban Transgender Athletes, Under Biden Proposal

The proposed rules under Title IX would give schools flexibility for “fairness in competition” or for the possibility that participation could lead to injury.

By Sarah Mervosh and Remy Tumin | Thursday, April 6, 2023 | Updated 4:47 PM EDT

UPenn Women’s Swim Team, via Instagram. It isn’t difficult to pick out the one man male in a women’s bikini top. Click to enlarge.

The Biden administration proposed a rule change on Thursday that would forbid schools from enacting outright bans on transgender athletes from teams that are consistent with their gender identities, but offered some flexibility for “fairness in competition” and other exceptions.

What does “fairness in competition” mean, and just who will be judging whether a particular local decision excluding the ‘transgendered’ from a particular women’s or girls’ sport for “fairness in competition” reasons can stand?

The proposed rule change would make “categorically” banning all transgender students from athletic teams that are consistent with their gender identities a violation of Title IX, the law that prohibits sex discrimination at educational institutions that receive federal funding.

But it would also allow K-12 schools and universities to limit the participation of transgender students when including them could undermine fairness or potentially lead to sports-related injuries.

“Every student should be able to have the full experience of attending school in America, including participating in athletics, free from discrimination,” Miguel Cardona, the U.S. Secretary of Education, said in a statement.

Also see: Deanna Fisher: Trans Violence Is Acceptable To The Left

There are a few, few sports in which males and females can compete on an even basis, sports such as curling or a university rifle team. But every sport in which physical strength, size, speed, quickness or endurance make a difference would mean that males who believe they are female are going to have a significant physical advantage over real females.

In one sense, this proposed regulation recognizes that there really are physical differences between males and females, and that those physical differences make a difference in sports.

The Department of Education said the proposal was meant to offer “much needed clarity” about how public schools, as well as colleges and universities, should handle an issue that has led to intense and often vociferous debate, particularly when it comes to the question of women’s sports.

That “intense and often vociferous debate” has occurred where it should, among the public at large and our elected representatives.

Under the proposed rules, which must undergo a period of public comment, elementary school students would generally be able to participate in school sports consistent with their gender identity. But for older students, questions of fairness and physicality could come into play.

No one really cares if boys and girls play kickball together in elementary school, but puberty changes everything. It would be nice if we had a bit more common sense in our federal government when it comes to subjects like these.

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The foreign policy disaster that is Joe Biden He managed to drive a former friend into the arms of Russia and China

Remember how Joe Biden defeating the evil Donald Trump in 2020 was supposed to make the United States respected again?

Saudi Arabia Seeks Regional Embrace of Assad in Win for Iran

Kingdom keen to assert itself as regional political leader

Syria has been banished from Arab League for atrocities

By , and | April 5, 2023 | 7:44 AM EDT | Updated: April 6, 2023 | 4:41 AM EDT

(Bloomberg) — Saudi Arabia is leading efforts to formally bring Syrian President Bashar al-Assad back into the Arab inner circle as early as next month, in what would be a win for Iran and Russia and in defiance of US warnings after more than a decade of conflict.

For those of you stymied by Bloomberg’s paywall, you can read it for free here.

The kingdom is taking steps that would allow the Arab League grouping of regional states to end a suspension of Syria’s membership in time for a summit in Riyadh in mid-May, according to three people briefed by the Saudis and one person close to the United Arab Emirates government, which backs the plan.

Those efforts are ongoing and could be stretched out or even fall through, or Arab leaders could settle on an interim plan next month, the people said. The US is aware of the push, has warned against it but has realized it can do little to stop it, several of the people said.

Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is eager to cast the kingdom as the Arab world’s uncontested political and economic leader.

Following last month’s surprise restoration of ties with Iran, Riyadh now wants to be at the forefront of initiatives to calm regional conflict zones like Syria and ensure nothing disrupts its ambitious efforts to transform its economy, the Saudi daily Okaz said in an Op-Ed last week.

As we have previously reported, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of the country, really doesn’t like President Biden. Mr Biden directly, to his face, accused the Crown Prince of being responsible for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, after Mr Khashoggi called the prince a liar, in public, in the pages of The Washington Post.

So, what did Saudi Arabia do?

U.S. Officials Had a Secret Oil Deal With the Saudis. Or So They Thought.

After Saudi leaders pushed to slash oil production despite a visit by President Biden, American officials have been left fuming that they were duped.

By Mark Mazzetti, Edward Wong and Adam Entous | Tuesday, October 25, 2022

WASHINGTON — As President Biden was planning a politically risky trip to Saudi Arabia this summer, his top aides thought they had struck a secret deal to boost oil production through the end of the year — an arrangement that could have helped justify breaking a campaign pledge to shun the kingdom and its crown prince.

It didn’t work out that way.

Mr. Biden went through with the trip. But earlier this month, Saudi Arabia and Russia steered a group of oil-producing countries in voting to slash oil production by two million barrels per day, the opposite of the outcome the administration thought it had secured as the Democratic Party struggles to deal with inflation and high gas prices heading into the November elections.

From The Wall Street Journal:

Saudi Arabia Considers Accepting Yuan Instead of Dollars for Chinese Oil Sales

Talks between Riyadh and Beijing have accelerated as the Saudi unhappiness grows with Washington

By Summer Said in Dubai and Stephen Kalin in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia | Updated March 15, 2022 11:48 AM ET

Chinese President Xi Jinping shakes hands with Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman on arriving at Al Yamamah Palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on December 8. Photo: Saudi Press Agency via AP

Saudi Arabia is in active talks with Beijing to price some of its oil sales to China in yuan, people familiar with the matter said, a move that would dent the U.S. dollar’s dominance of the global petroleum market and mark another shift by the world’s top crude exporter toward Asia.

The talks with China over yuan-priced oil contracts have been off and on for six years but have accelerated this year as the Saudis have grown increasingly unhappy with decades-old U.S. security commitments to defend the kingdom, the people said.

The Saudis are angry over the U.S.’s lack of support for their intervention in the Yemen civil war, and over the Biden administration’s attempt to strike a deal with Iran over its nuclear program. Saudi officials have said they were shocked by the precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last year.

China buys more than 25% of the oil that Saudi Arabia exports. If priced in yuan, those sales would boost the standing of China’s currency. The Saudis are also considering including yuan-denominated futures contracts, known as the petroyuan, in the pricing model of Saudi Arabian Oil Co., known as Aramco.

That was 13 months ago, but maneuvers toward this continue apace. The yuan is not all that liquid right now, but the Chinese are making moves to push internationalization of the yuan to weaken the dollar’s grip on international trade, and as the world’s reserve currency.

The Chinese don’t have to buy in yuan; thanks to America’s seemingly insatiable desire for Chinese products, and the Chinese financing so much of the United States’ debt, they have plenty of dollars. But the inflation of the dollar under President Biden has made our currency worth less, and even if that is something of an international problem, there is significant weakness of the reputation of the dollar.

And now OPEC and its allies, including Russia, agreed on Sunday to widen crude oil production cuts to 3.66 million barrels per day (bpd) or 3.7% of global demand. American inflation has been coming down slowly — though it’s still higher than wages have increased — so Saudi Arabia and Russia, the number three and number two oil producers in the world, have decided to push American inflation higher.

It’s pretty amazing, when you think about it. President Biden insults the ruler of Saudi Arabia, and then wages a proxy war against Russia. China, which has no reason to love the US other than our dollars, makes some noises about Taiwan, and the US then proceeds to warn China about the consequences of trying to retake the island. Shockingly enough, all three start taking actions to hurt the United States and its economy. You don’t have to like Mohammed bin Salman or Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping to realize that they can hurt the United States, and that insulting them really isn’t a great idea, but the dummkopf from Delaware did it anyway.

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When public officials are too weak-willed to do the right thing

The Catholic Church’s handling of sexually abusive priests has been an enormous scandal, almost as bad as the abusive priests themselves. In far, far, far too many instances, the Church ‘handled’ the problem priests, when the dioceses became aware of them, not by reporting such to law enforcement or removing them from any duties which brought them in contact with minors, but by transferring them to other parishes, without telling parishioners why, in the frequently vain hope that the priest had somehow been reformed and wouldn’t try it again.

In Philadelphia, then-District Attorney Seth Williams brought Monsignor William Lynn to trial not for abusing any victims himself:

His trial attracted a packed courtroom full of press, priest-abuse victims and outraged Catholics, along with a few church loyalists. Lynn, the longtime secretary for clergy, was accused of sending a known predator — named on a list of problem priests he had prepared for Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua — to an accuser’s northeast Philadelphia parish.

The trial judge allowed nearly two dozen other priest-abuse victims to testify about abuse they had suffered in the archdiocese over a half century. An appeals court later said their weeks of testimony over uncharged acts were unfair to Lynn — who some saw as a scapegoat for the church, given that the bishops and cardinals above him were never charged.

Also see: Fr Gordon MacRae: Msgr William Lynn is Free and a Prosecutor is “Disgusted”

By the time of Msgr Lynn’s trial, Cardinal Bevilacqua was retired, suffering from dementia, and was unable to defend himself; that is why he was never charged.

The jury found that Msgr Lynn allowed Fr Edward Avery, who had a history of sexually abusing children, to live in a Northeast Philadelphia rectory, where he later assaulted a 10-year-old altar boy. Fr Avery pleaded guilty in the 1999 attack and was sentenced to five years in state prison.

Finally, after two separate appeals by Msgr Lynn, vacating his convictions, current District Attorney Larry Krasner, who had nothing to do with Msgr Lynn’s trial, finally offered a plea deal to end the whole farce, and Msgr Lynn pleaded no contest to “a charge of failing to turn over records to the 2002 grand jury,” and saw no further penalty; he had already served three years in state prison for the offenses of which he had been improperly convicted.

Now, why do I bring this up? It was a paragraph from this article , referred to me by Kirby McCain:

The boy was transferred out of Richneck and placed in a different institution within the district, but was allowed to return for the 2022-23 school year when he was enrolled in Zwerner’s class.

Here’s the article:

Virginia teacher shot by 6-year-old files $40M lawsuit after she says school ignored warnings

The lawsuit mentions new details about the boy, who is identified as John Doe, and an alleged pattern of troubling behavior.

by Erik Ortiz | Monday, April 3, 2023 | 7:30 AM EDT| Updated 6:10 PM EDT

Abigail Zwerner. Photo by Carlos Bernate for NBC News.

Almost three months after Virginia teacher Abigail Zwerner was shot by a 6-year-old student, she filed a $40 million lawsuit Monday alleging school administrators shrugged off multiple warnings from staff and students who believed the boy had a gun and posed an imminent threat on the day of the shooting, and did so knowing the child “had a history of random violence.”

The Jan. 6 shooting of Zwerner at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News stunned the country as police announced the child’s actions were intentional. The student shot her with a 9 mm handgun while she sat at a reading table in their first-grade classroom, according to officials.

The injured educator’s complaint, filed in the Newport News Circuit Court, says Richneck Assistant Principal Ebony Parker chose to “breach her assumed duty” to protect Zwerner, “despite multiple reports that a firearm was on school property and likely in possession of a violent individual.”

What follows is a fairly lengthy list of safety warnings ignored, which can be boiled down to this:

Lawyers for Zwerner said Monday on NBC’s “TODAY” show that the school leadership knew of at least three separate warnings that the boy was believed to have a gun and some other students reported seeing it.

The NBC News article is not behind a paywall, so you can easily see them yourself. But this is the important part:

School knew of boy’s behavioral issues

The lawsuit mentions new details about the boy, who is identified as John Doe, and an alleged pattern of troubling behavior.

While in kindergarten at Richneck in the 2021-22 school year, the boy strangled and choked a teacher and was removed from the school, according to the complaint.

That same school year, the boy also pulled up the dress of a female student who had fallen on the playground, the complaint says, and “began to touch the child inappropriately until reprimanded by a teacher.”

The boy was transferred out of Richneck and placed in a different institution within the district, but was allowed to return for the 2022-23 school year when he was enrolled in Zwerner’s class.

He was placed on a modified schedule last fall after “chasing students around the playground with a belt in an effort to whip them with it, as well as cursing at staff and teachers,” according to the complaint. At least one parent was also required to attend school with him daily “because of his violent tendencies.”

“Teachers’ concerns with John Doe’s behavior was regularly brought to the attention of Richneck Elementary School administration, and the concerns were always dismissed,” the suit says. “Often when he was taken to the school office to address his behavior, he would return to the classroom shortly thereafter with some type of reward, such as a piece of candy.”

Why was this child even allowed to be in a public school? Yes, I know he was only six years old, but he was clearly violent and out of control. Despite his age, this boy should have been institutionalized in some form. Yes, the assistant principal allegedly ignored notifications that the boy had a gun the day of the shooting, but the truth is that he should not have been in that school in the first place. That he brought a gun to school was simply the last manifestation of the problem; the problem is that he was wholly uncivilized and the teachers and administrators knew it. He was assaulting teachers and students long before he brought the gun to school.

I get it: the brat cannot be criminally charged because he’s only six years old, but, like Nikolas Cruz at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the administrators didn’t do anything about the ‘student’ because they were too soft-hearted and soft-headed and didn’t want to scar the poor dear. They simply did not do their duty to get these savages out of school entirely.

So, what will happen?

Newport News Commonwealth’s Attorney Howard Gwynn told NBC News last month that he would not seek charges against the boy, citing his age and inability to adequately understand the legal system, but said he was still weighing whether he might hold any adults criminally liable.

The family of the boy said in a statement in January that the weapon was “secured” in the home and that they have “always been committed to responsible gun ownership and keeping firearms out of the reach of children.”

The family also said the boy has an acute disability and was receiving the “treatment he needs” under a court-ordered temporary detention at a medical facility.

A bit late for that! Note that the “temporary detention at a medical facility” was ordered by the court, after the boy’s criminality became publicly known; if the school system had ever sought such a thing before he shot his teacher, it has not been reported. But my question is: if the Commonwealth’s Attorney is still considering whether any adults should be charged, is he weighing this only concerning the little savage’s parents, or are the school administrators who failed to take any serious action also being considered for charges? That is what happened to Msgr Lynn, and if Seth Williams went overly broad in his prosecution, and Judge Teresa Sarmina allowed it, such that the convictions were thrown out on appeal, Msgr Lynn and Cardinal Bevilacqua still did nothing positive to stop the sexual abuse of minors in the Archdiocese.

Msgr Lynn’s trial and convictions should have put the fear of the law into other diocesan officials; charging the school administrators in Newport News who took so many wrong decisions in this case would send a message to schools everywhere to not just ignore threats such as this kid, or they just might wind up behind bars themselves.