Author Archives: Dana Pico

Posted on by

Philly’s Mother of the Year Has The Philadelphia Inquirer finally admitted that there are gangs in the city?

We have expended some bandwidth mocking The Philadelphia Inquirer for its statement that there are no real gangs in the City of Brotherly Love:

In Philadelphia, there are no gangs in the traditional, nationally known sense. Instead, they are cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families. The groups have names — Young Bag Chasers, Penntown, Northside — and members carry an allegiance to each other, but they aren’t committing traditional organized crimes, like moving drugs, the way gangs did in the past.

We also mocked the George Soros-sponsored defense attorney who is now the city’s District Attorney, Larry Krasner, when his office decided to refer to them as rival street groups. And we pointed out, at the end of last year, that what I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. was still using euphemisms to refer to gangs those cliques of young men, though the word “gang” in one article, apparently for prosaic reasons, since the term “street group” had been used previously in the same sentence.

Well, perhaps the journolists[2]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading at the Inky got tired of being mocked; I know that I wasn’t the only one doing it!

A Southwest Philly street gang burglarized three gun stores, stealing nearly 100 guns, DA says

Members of 54th Street targeted gun stores in the suburbs, prosecutors said Wednesday, committing overnight, smash-and-grab burglaries that put guns in the hands of criminals.

by Vinny Vella | Thursday, January 25, 2023

Investigators in Montgomery County dismantled a Philadelphia street gang that they say burglarized a series of suburban gun stores in the fall, stealing 93 firearms that they used in shootings in the city or sold to other criminals. One of the guns, prosecutors said, was used in the murder of a 16-year-old.

OK, reporter Vinny Vella gets a point for using the word “gang,” but he loses a point for using the horrible, made-up word “burglarized,” which has, sadly, come into the dictionary, when the proper word is “burgled.”

In a sweeping affidavit of probable cause released Wednesday, prosecutors outlined the investigation of 54th Street, a gang active in Southwest Philadelphia. The group, mostly teens, wielded guns openly on social media and in music videos of rap songs in which they bragged about killing their rivals and terrorizing their neighborhoods, according to the document.Two adults and 11 juveniles were charged in the investigation, but only four were named in the affidavit: Angel Mason, 40, Elijah Terrell, 16, Donte Purnell, 22, and Liv Hall, 18. The nine other suspects, between the ages of 14 and 17, have been charged in juvenile court and were not publicly identified.

All have been charged with operating a corrupt organization, conspiracy, gun violations, and related offenses.

Elijah Terrell, photo via Steve Keeley, Fox 29 News.

Hmmm, young Miss Hall looks like she never expected to get into this kind of trouble! The Inky, of course, did not include her photo, but Fox 29 News did.

But she’s 18-years-old, legally an adult, and she (allegedly) took a stupid decision to join in burgling a gun store. They whooped and partied and made some good bucks last fall, but now someone is stone-cold graveyard dead, shot by one of the guns the 54th Street clique of young men, and apparently women as well, (allegedly) stole, and since the burglary occurred in Montgomery County and not Philadelphia, Let ’em Loose Larry Krasner won’t be able to cut her any sweetheart plea bargain.

None of the attorneys representing the four charged as adults had any comments concerning the cases. Mr Vella wrote that he found no indication that two of the defendants had yet hired lawyers.

According to Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele, only 33 of the stolen guns have been recovered. That means that sixty of the stolen firearms are still out there, almost certainly in the hands of other criminals. Perhaps, just perhaps, the gun control laws the editors of the Inquirer say that Philly ought to be able to enact on the city’s own authority wouldn’t do anything at all to have stopped a few dozen bad guys from obtaining the firearms they wanted.

Donte Purnell, photos via Steve Keeley, Fox 29 News.

The first burglary was committed on September 24, 2022, when Miss Hall and four of the charged juveniles broke into Founding Fathers Outfitters in Springfield Township, getting away with 26 handguns, only six of which have been recovered.

Angel Mason would be my nominee for Mother of the Year in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy, Philadelphia. It seems that 16-year-old Elijah Terrell, her son, (allegedly) attempted to rob a man at gunpoint in Southwest Philly, but was thwarted when his intended victim drew his own weapon and shot Mr Terrell. After that, our Mother of the Year candidate supposedly called 22-year-old Donte Purnell, who is also her son, to tell him to get the stolen weapons out of their home before detectives arrived with a search warrant.

There comes a point at which it’s difficult to believe that anything else in Philly could surprise you, and then you read a story like this. Apparently there’s really no bottom to the decadence in the City of Brotherly Love. Liv Hall, the fourth suspect pictured? She was caught when she (allegedly) used one of the weapons from the first burglary to shoot at her brother during an argument outside of their home.

These people were caught not so much because they are evil but because they are just boneheadedly stupid. Who knows, Miss Mason might be the leader of this gang, but a criminal mastermind she isn’t.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
↑2 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
Posted on by

Would you believe that reading the ‘wrong’ book can get you in trouble at Stanford?

My copy of Mein Kampf.

Have you ever read Mein Kampf? I have, and I even own a copy. I also own copies of The Communist Manifesto, several of Vladlimr Il’ich Lenin’s pre-revolutionary works, the Q’ran, the Book of Mormon, and the old Lancer Books twelve paperback volume set of Conan stories. The fact that I own and have read some wildly contradictory books does not mean that I accept any or some of them as gospel; it means that I have read books.

My copy of Mein Kampf is an English translation by Ralph Manheim, copyrighted in 1943 by the Houghton Mifflin Company.

Adolf Hitler did not actually write the book. Rather, he paced around his cell in Landsberg am Lech prison, more making speeches, as oratory was his particular skill, than dictating it, to Rudolf Hess and Emil Maurice. As a result of this, Herr Hitler’s relatively uneducated German, and the difficulties in really translating German into English, it’s a hard slog of a read.

Nevertheless, it was a work of dynamic historical importance. But, history or not, it appears that some on the left are highly, highly! offended that someone would read it.

Report: Stanford student may need to ‘take accountability,’ ‘acknowledge harm’ for reading Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’

It looks to be a case study in how bias reporting systems chill speech. We’re seeking information and accountability from Stanford.

by Graham Piro and Alex Morey Wednesday, January 25, 2023

Reading a book on a college campus should not prompt formal administrative intervention. But that’s what’s reportedly happening at Stanford University this week, after a photo of a student reading Adolf Hitler’s autobiography, “Mein Kampf,” circulated on campus last Friday.

The Stanford Daily said over the weekend that administrators were working “swiftly” with the students involved to “address” the incident. Two campus rabbis emailed Jewish students saying administrators “are in ongoing conversation with the individuals involved, who are committed to and actively engaged in a process of reckoning and sincere repair.”

Stanford was reportedly alerted to the book-reading via its Protected Identity Harm reporting system. Effectively a bias response system, Stanford says PIH reports help the university “address incidents where a community member experiences harm because of who they are and how they show up in the world.”

In other words, a Special Snowflake™ say another student reading a copy of Mein Kampf and reported it to the University! His precious little feelings were hurted.

The PIH is “not a judicial or investigative process,” the Office of Student Affairs carefully notes in bold, before (properly) carving out exceptions for hate crimes and unlawful discrimination or harassment. “We hope to provide a path to resolution for the affected individuals or communities who need to heal” by having the students participate in one of a “menu” of exercises like “mediated conversations, restorative justice sessions, or Indigenous circle practices,” to “help move towards resolution.”

Because college students should not have to report to university authorities for merely reading a book — one, by the way, that has been required reading in at least one recent Stanford humanities class and is available to borrow from the university library — FIRE asked Stanford today to provide additional clarity about the way it handles these kinds of “harm” reports on campus.

Stanford defines a PIH Incident as “conduct or an incident that adversely and unfairly targets an individual or group” on the basis of actual or perceived characteristics like race, religion, or marital status. Yet, it acknowledges such conduct does not necessarily violate its harassment or discrimination policies that, quite rightly, already prohibit such unlawful conduct. What purpose does this separate process serve, then?

There’s more at the original.

There is at least a possibility that this was some sort of set-up, to expose the idiocy of Stanford’s system. That two “campus rabbis” were participating in this seems suspect to me, because such a system, if it can punish or intimidate students from reading Mein Kampf, could also be used, on a campus where so many students support the Palestinians, to report a student reading Theodor Herzl’s The Jewish State.

But set-up or not, the fact that it has worked to expose the idiocy of the University’s system demonstrates that idiocy.

From The Stanford Daily:

University spokesperson Dee Mostofi confirmed that the Office of Student Affairs and the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life (ORL) became aware of this incident on Saturday. Mostofi added that the two offices, along with Stanford’s Hillel chapter, are working with the leaders of the residence that the students belong to address the social media post and its impact on the community.

“Swift action was taken by the leadership in the residential community where both the individuals who posted and the one pictured are members,” (Rabbi Jessica) Kirschner and (Rabbi Laurie) Hahn Tapper wrote. Student Affairs and ORL are actively working with students involved to address the issue and mend relationships in the community.

“It can be upsetting to hear about incidents like this,” Kirschner and Hahn Tapper wrote. “Jewish people belong at Stanford, and deserve to be respected by our peers.”

At some point, the students who got their precious little feelings hurt are going to have to leave the University and enter the working world, and won’t that be a shock for them!

Yeah, this still has the hallmarks of a set-up, but if it is, it’s a set-up that revealed real problems.

Posted on by

As the activists try to force everyone into electric heat, have they considered what this will do to electricity bills?

We have wasted used a lot of bandwidth recently on the subject of the Biden Administration, some Democrat-governed states, and the global warming climate change activists wanting to force everyone away from natural gas and into electric utilities.

The southeast is the only region in the country in which electricity is the primary fuel for heating homes, due to the more rural nature of the area making natural gas service more limited, and our generally milder winters. And those people depending upon electricity to heat their homes are seeing some real sticker shock.

Seniors among customers struggling with rising energy bills

by Christiana Ford | Friday, January 20, 2023 | 8:45 PM EST | Updated: 8:53 PM EST

FRANKFORT, Ky. (LEX 18) — State regulators are investigating how to ease volatile fuel costs passed onto consumers that are leading to higher-than-normal electric bills for customers in Kentucky.

People living in Eastern Kentucky have been struggling with high power bills in recent months.

There’s more before the fold, including the embedded video from WLEX-TV. Continue reading →

Posted on by

Hold them accountable!

Meet Edwin Vargas. If you were expecting to see Mr Vargas’ mugshot in The Philadelphia Inquirer, your expectations would have been dashed, but at least the Inky covered his arrest:

Man arrested for quadruple shooting that killed 3 in Mayfair

Edwin Vargas also is charged with murder that occurred on Jan. 3. Vargas has been in custody since Jan. 18 for an earlier gun incident.

by Robert Moran | Tuesday, January 24, 2023

A 24-year-old man is facing murder charges for the deaths of three young men in a quadruple shooting on Jan. 9 in the city’s Mayfair section, police said.

We had previously noted the killings in Mayfair. We said then:

According to the city’s shooting victims database, which records only three victims, not four, and only two fatally shot, not three, as of 12:22 PM EST on Tuesday, January 10th, the victims were all Hispanic white males; what I have often called The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. doesn’t want to tell you that part. As of this writing, the 18-year-old victim does not appear on the database.

A check of the city’s shooting victims database, which now lists 124 shooting victims since the beginning of the year, now lists all four victims.

Mr Vargas was already behind bars, and has been charged with another murder that occurred on January 3rd, but had been locked up since January 18th for a December 30th “gun incident”. The police finally connected him with the January 3rd killing after he had been jailed, and then detectives sought a warrant for him for the triple murders.

But here comes the money line:

Court records show Vargas has been in and out of jail as an adult since late 2016, when he pleaded guilty for firearms violations.

Last July, Vargas pleaded guilty to illegal possession of a telecom device by an inmate.

On Aug. 30, he was released from prison.

Under Pennsylvania Title 18 §5123(c)(2), illegal possession of a telecom device by an inmate is a first degree misdemeanor. Under Title 30 §923(a)(7), the sentence for a first degree misdemeanor is “a fine of not less than $1,500 nor more than $10,000, or imprisonment not exceeding five years, or both.”

Yet, according to the Inquirer, Mr Vargas was locked up for less than two months for this crime.

So, Mr Vargas, “in and out of jail as an adult since late 2016”, and with who knows how many juvenile offenses under his belt, could have been locked up until 2027, but someone, somewhere, decided that nahhh, they could let him back out on the streets.

And now four people are stone-cold graveyard dead.

Mr Vargas is, of course, innocent of those four murders until proven guilty, but if he is guilty of even one of them, whoever decided to turn this fine gentleman loose has the victim’s, or victims’ blood on his hands. Will that person, or persons, ever be held accountable?

That, of course, is a rhetorical question: no, nobody will be held accountable. But if we did hold prosecutors, judges, and parole boards accountable for the crimes committed by previously convicted criminals who could have still been behind bars but were treated leniently and released before the maximum possible sentence, we would see crime rates go down dramatically, if for no other reason than the bad guys would spend more time in prison and less out on the streets. Had Mr Vargas been behind bars when he could have been, when the state already had him in custody, four more men — assuming the charges are correct — could still be alive today.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
Posted on by

Killadelphia: Lies, damned lies, and statistics

Broad + Liberty’s Philadelphia Homicide Tracker noted that the dead body found on January 23rd was not classified as a homicide by the Philadelphia Police Department, although the website did not tell us how the police did categorize it. And there was no change in the PPD’s Current Crime Statistics page to indicate that it was a homicide.

But here’s the PPD’s press release on the discovery of the body, which was Broad + Liberty’s information source:

Death Investigation:

39th district .. Stabbing –3xx Hansberry Street inside at 11:50 AM  a 25-year-old black male was stabbed to the right side of his neck, under his chin. The male was pronounced (dead) on location at 11:52 AM by Medic 28. Scene held, no weapon recovered, no arrest made.

Now, I don’t know about you, but the fact that someone died from being stabbed in the neck, under his chin, and the fact that the knife was not found on the scene, sure makes that seem like a homicide to me! Broad + Liberty obviously thinks so, as would anyone with an IQ higher than Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw’s, but the Philadelphia Police Department can’t quite seem to say that’s what it is.

There are things which could make it not legally a homicide: if it was a killing in self-defense, it’s not considered a homicide under the law. A suicide is also not considered a homicide under the law, but this was no suicide, because the knife disappeared.

It would make more sense to list this as a homicide, and if it turns out to be a self-defense case, remove it from the homicide report later. As it is, it looks like Commissioner Outlaw’s minions are trying to keep the numbers down artificially.

Posted on by

Lexington’s first homicide of 2023

Rigoberto Vasquez-Barradas, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

Meet Rigoberto Vasquez-Barradas. Mr Vasquez-Barradas has, allegedly, been a very bad boy:

Lexington man accused of repeatedly kicking pregnant woman, leading to fetal homicide

by Christopher Leach | Tuesday, January 24, 2023 | 8:10 AM EST

A Lexington man facing a fetal homicide charge allegedly kicked a pregnant woman in the stomach three times during a physical argument, according to court documents.

No, of course the Lexington Herald-Leader did not publish Mr Vasquez-Barradas’ mugshot! I had to look that one up myself.

Rigoberto Vasquez-Barradas, 24, is charged with first-degree fetal homicide, first-degree strangulation and second-degree assault — domestic violence, Lexington police previously said in a news release. Police said they were called to a local hospital that was treating a domestic violence victim Friday morning.

Court documents say Vasquez-Barradas and a woman who was 18 weeks pregnant got into an altercation that turned physical on Thursday. Vasquez-Barradas shoved the woman to the ground four times and kicked her in the stomach three times, court documents say.

Vasquez-Barradas also strangled the woman while she was on the ground, according to court documents.

While speaking with investigators, Vasquez-Barradas admitted to shoving the woman but denied kicking her in the stomach, according to court documents.

There’s a little more at the original.

As of this writing, the murder of the unborn child is not listed in the Lexington Police Department’s 2023 homicide investigations report, but that page is not updated daily. I do wonder, however, if the powers that be will include the murder of an unborn child on that list.

Mr Vasquez-Barradas has been charged with:

  • KRS §508.020: Assault, second degree- domestic violence. Assault in the second degree is a Class C felony.
  • KRS §508.170: Strangulation, first degree. Strangulation in the first degree is a Class C felony.
  • KRS §507A.020: Fetal homicide, first degree. Fetal homicide in the first degree is a capital offense.

Under KRS §532.060(2)(c), the sentence for a Class C felony is imprisonment for “not less than five (5) years nor more than ten (10) years”. The penalty for a capital offense under KRS §532.030 is:

  • death; or
  • imprisonment for life without benefit of probation or parole; or
  • imprisonment for life without benefit of probation or parole until he has served a minimum of twenty-five (25) years of his sentence; or
  • imprisonment life; or
  • imprisonment for not less than twenty (20) years nor more than fifty (50) years.

Under that fourth possibility, imprisonment for life, a prisoner first becomes eligible for parole after serving a minimum of 20 years in prison.

Me? I’m hoping that Mr Vasquez-Barradas is not allowed some lenient plea bargain arrangement and, if he is guilty, sentenced to life without parole.

Posted on by

Taylor Lorenz loves to express her opinions, but doesn’t really want other people expressing their opinions back to her

Taylor Lorenz, from her Twitter profile.

We have previously mentioned Taylor Lorenz, who covers technology and online culture for The Washington Post. Miss Lorenz is probably most famous for her article doxing Chaya Raichik, the previously anonymous lady who ran the Twitter site Libs of TikTok. LoTT’s schtick is to find the silliest things leftists put on the social media site Tik Tok, and snark them for sensible people on Twitter. Basically, LoTT is mocking people for their own exposed stupidity. My good friend Amanda Marcotte of Salon loved that LoTT was doxed, doubtlessly hoping that Miss Raichik, a Brooklyn-based real estate salesperson and LoTT creator would lose her job — she wrote in September of 2021 that the unvaccinated should all lose their jobs, and retweeted it with the same message just four days ago — and posted back in April a hope that Elon Musk’s buyout of Twitter results in the whole thing being killed. Miss Lorenz was also appalled that the Biden Administration’s plans to open a Ministry of Truth Disinformation Governance Board within the Department of Fatherland Homeland Security.

Miss Lorenz previously told us that she was immunocompromised, though I have included that link to show that I once saw it; she has since deleted it. Thus, the image of one of her latest threads is just that, a screen captured image. Of course, it had to be screen capped because Miss Lorenz, who has her tweets protected and limited to her “approved followers” — Miss Lorenz has, as of this writing, 355,400 followers, but she follows only 8,674 people — both restricts those who can reply to it and set it so that her tweet cannot be retweeted. It is interesting that someone with the blue checkmark of being a high-profile person, who has the major public soapbox of a Washington Post reporter, and believed that Chaya Raichik needed to be doxed, has her tweets protected.

If it’s difficult to read what she tweeted, you can click on the image to enlarge it.

You know, I get it: Miss Lorenz is immunocompromised herself, and thus she has a personal reason to see the rest of us forcibly vaccinated and masked for the rest of our lives. But most people realize that the masks don’t really do much, and that the vaccines neither prevent people from contracting the virus nor prevent those who do contract it from transmitting it to others. And, as I have noted previously, it’s not just evil reich-wing American conservatives: in our family’s recent travels, we flew on Air Canada and Swissair, and were in airports in Toronto, Amsterdam, Aberdeen, Zurich, Tel Aviv, Istanbul and Kuwait City, and on neither any flights nor in any of those airports were there mask mandates, vaccine records checks, nor more than a small minority of people wearing masks voluntarily.

No, I don’t want Miss Lorenz to contract the SARS-CoV-2 virus. For the vast majority of people, as it was for me, it’s like an annoying cold or flu bug for a few days, but nothing debilitating. For someone immunocompromised as she is, it could be significantly worse. But there comes a point at which the vast majority of people cannot and should not have their rights and freedoms restricted for the benefit of a relatively few.

Posted on by

Killadelphia It's still early in the year, but perhaps a bit hopeful?

The Philadelphia Police Department have reported 23 homicides so far this year in the City of Brotherly Love, while Broad + Liberty shows 26. That website, having reported the undercounting via the classification of ‘suspicious’ deaths not listed as homicides, is using various police reports as its source.

But regardless of whether we use the Philadelphia Police Department’s statistics, or Broad + Liberty’s, one thing is certain: Through the first 22 days of January, Philadelphia has seen a lot fewer murders than the previous three years.

We had previously noted the decline in the homicide rate in the City of Brotherly Love that began last November, and it at least seems to be continuing into this year. After Hallowe’en, Philadelphia saw 71 homicides, over 61 days, an average of 1.1639 per day. With 23 homicides in 22 days — using the Police Department’s figures — 2023 is seeing 1.0455 per day, or, using Broad + Liberty’s numbers, 26 in 22 days, for an average of 1.1818 per day. Given that only three weeks plus one day have passed, either of those figures is reasonably in line with the numbers seenj over the last two months in the city.

Could Philly see fewer than 500 murders in 2023? The total would have to be ‘just’ 422 to bring the four-year average under Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw under 500 per year, which would be achievable if the homicide rate being seen these first three weeks holds steady for the year, but we all know that murders pick up when summer arrives. But there is at least some hope, at least statistically speaking, that the total will be under 500 this year.

Posted on by

Why, it’s almost as though gun control laws don’t work!

It was just one sentence, buried far down in the story:

“I believe the weapon that was recovered at the Alhambra location is not legal to have here in the State of California,” LA County Sheriff Robert Luna said Sunday.

The New York Post reported that the alleged Monterey Park gunman, Huu Can Tran, 72, was essentially nuts:

The gunman who slaughtered 10 people at a California dance club before killing himself had been a regular patron at venue — and believed that the instructors said “evil things about him.”

Huu Can Tran, 72, opened fire at Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park late Saturday with a semiautomatic pistol, killing 10 people and wounding at least 10 others before storming the rival Lai Lai Ballroom & Studio, where two bystanders disarmed him.

He later killed himself inside a cargo van during a stand-off with police in Torrance, about 30 miles from Monterey Park, officials said.

The motive for his rampage after a Lunar New Year celebration remains unclear but several disturbing details have emerged about the gunman, who had once been a regular patron at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio, where he gave informal lessons, CNN reported.

There’s more at the original, and the Post is not behind a paywall.

It has been reported that Mr Tran was looking for his ex-wife at the two dance halls; she had been invited, but he had not. It was, as it is so often, a domestic dispute.

Mr Tran used a Cobray M11 9mm semi-automatic pistol, a weapon not highly regarded by firearms experts, but one for which a thirty-round magazine has been available. The Los Angeles County Sheriff said that the weapon was not legal to be possessed or owned in California, but Mr Tran apparently had one anyway. Why, it’s almost as though nuts and criminals don’t obey gun control laws.