Category Archives: Crime

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The Philadelphia Inquirer conceals a truth that everyone already knows Is the Inky actually perpetuating a stereotype it wishes to avoid?

As the husband of a nurse, though not an Emergency Room nurse, the idea that people can careen into ER entrances, dump a shooting victim on the ground, and speed off, endangering hospital personnel outside the entrance, pisses me off royally. But, as usual, 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. once again refuses to tell readers the full story.

Three nurses were injured in a hit-and-run as they tried to help a shooting victim outside a Philly hospital, police say

Police said the collision left a 36-year-old nurse in critical condition, with facial injuries and internal bleeding.

by Michelle Myers | Saturday, October 12, 2024 | 11:58 AM EDT

Three nurses were seriously injured after being struck by a vehicle in a hit-and-run as they tried to help a shooting victim outside Penn Presbyterian Hospital early Saturday morning, police said.

Around 4:20 a.m., police said a driver in a silver Jeep Cherokee arrived at Penn Presbyterian’s ambulance bay area to drop off a 28-year-old man with multiple gunshot wounds. As the nurses gathered to provide first aid, the driver struck the nurses and the shooting victim, police said, then fled the scene.

Police said a 36-year-old nurse was in critical condition, with facial injuries and internal bleeding. A 37-year-old nurse suffered injuries to his legs, and a 51-year-old nurse suffered injuries to his head and back. They are both listed in stable condition, according to police.

The shooting victim — who police said was wounded on the 1300 block of Belmont Avenue — may have suffered an additional head injury as the driver fled the scene, police said. His condition was unknown, police said.

There’s more at the original, though not really a lot. Naturally, the Important Spokescritters all decried “gun violence”, but if they said a single negative word about the driver, who was “possibly in his early 20s,” The Enquirer Inquirer story didn’t mention it. We were not told whether the shooting victim is white, black, Hispanic, or something else, which means that most people will assume that he is black. Fox 29 News reporter Steve Keeley posted the Philadelphia Police press release which specified that the driver was a black male, at 9:54 AM EDT, two hours and four minutes before reporter Michelle Myers published her story, so she knew that the driver was black, but scrubbed that from her story.

Also unmentioned is anything about the shooting, but let’s tell the truth here: if a Jeep Cherokee rolls up to the Emergency Room, dumps off a shooting victim, and then the driver hauls ass fast and carelessly enough that he runs down three nurses and the victim he dumped, all at around 4:20 in the morning, the odds that the shooting was not gang-related are vanishingly small. “(M)ultiple gunshot wounds” means that this was no accident.

But the Inky won’t tell you that.

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↑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.
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Killadelphia: Did Teryn Johnson ever have a chance?

Even though I no longer live in the Keystone State, The Philadelphia Inquirer is my favorite newspaper — the Lexington Herald-Leader is the closest thing I have to a local newspaper, but it’s absolutely pathetic — because the Inky has a lot more news coverage, but also reports on the culture of America’s poorest big city in a way that the editors might not realize that it does. I have reported, several times, on the newspaper deliberately concealing facts.

This story doesn’t conceal any facts of which I am aware, but when I read it, I saw the unreported on culture that underlies it.

Halim Evans, mugshot via Philly’s Most Wanted.

A teen wouldn’t get an abortion. So her boyfriend hired his cousin to kill her, prosecutors say.

It’s a case that even the accused killer’s defense attorney said was “just about as bad as we see in Philadelphia, and we see a lot of horrific things.”

by Ellie Rushing | Thursday, October 10, 2024 | 5:00 AM EDT

Halim Evans didn’t want any more children.

So when the then-20-year-old learned that his girlfriend was pregnant, he told her there was only one option.

“We gotta get the abortion jawn,” Evans texted Teryn Johnson, 17, in July 2022. “I ain’t ready for no more kids.”

Johnson made an appointment to terminate the pregnancy, and later told him she was no longer pregnant. But she didn’t go through with it, and when Evans found out, prosecutors say, he hired his cousin to kill her.

Qasim Pointer, mugshot via Philly’s Most Wanted.

There’s a lot more at the original, but no, of course the Inquirer didn’t include the mugshots of the alleged perpetrators, but it didn’t take much effort to find them.

When Mr Evans found out that Miss Johnson was out of the house, walking her dog, he allegedly called his cousin, Qasim Pointer, and told him where to find her. Mr Pointer and Mr Evans other cousin then — again allegedly — drove a stolen Dodge Challenger to Frankford, and spotted the victim. They trailed the victim, and Mr Pointer then jumped out and shot Miss Johnson twice in the back, killing her and her unborn child. I have omitted direct quotes of how the Philadelphia Police put together the evidence, but this part is important:

In a series of recorded conversations, Pointer and his brother, who is serving a 70-year sentence for murder in Maryland, laid out the motive for the crime, (Homicide Detective Robert)Daly said.

“Bro, our cuz … he been dropping babies like motherf— flies bro,” Pointer said on Sept. 7. “He dropping babies like flies but one of them he trying to trim up so I … I mean, I don’t condone this … but like, for that paper I would do it bro.”

“(P)aper” means cash in this instance.

Here is the underlying culture part: the distinguished Mr Evans had “been dropping babies like motherf— flies,” which means that he had been f(ornicating) and knocking up other women, women being plural, and that was part of the street culture in which he lived. Though the newspaper article does not specify it, he didn’t want Miss Johnson to have her baby, I assume because he didn’t want to pay child support. He had a cousin who was willing to commit murder for “paper,” and another who is a convicted murderer in Maryland.

Life meant nothing to these people!

Of course, these guys were all as dumb as a box of rocks, because they were making calls to a man in prison, and everyone knows that those calls can be recorded.

It took more than a year for Pointer’s preliminary hearing to go forward because he was in custody in Delaware for committing a separate shooting. He pleaded guilty to assault and illegal gun possession in that case, Pope said, and was sentenced to 12 years.

Yeah, these guys aren’t exactly models of classy citizenship! And here’s more of the cultural problem:

Johnson’s grandmother agonizes over a hope for justice for her baby, whom she raised from the age of 3. Johnson’s mother struggled with addiction before dying of a fentanyl overdose in October 2021, Waters said, and her father spent most of her childhood in prison.

Despite years of therapy, those traumas affected Johnson’s decisions and personal relationships, Waters said. She struggled with school, and often found herself surrounded by friends and boyfriends who weren’t always looking out for her best interests, her grandmother said.

Did young Miss Johnson ever have a chance in life? Her mother was a long-term junkie — I refuse to use reporter Ellie Rushing’s mealy-mouthed “struggled with addiction” — and her father is a criminal. At age 17, and possibly younger — the age of consent is 16 in Pennsylvania — she was running with a bad crowd; that’s what she “often found herself surrounded by friends and boyfriends who weren’t always looking out for her best interests” means.

The final paragraphs of Miss Rushing’s story tell readers that young Miss Johnson was a good, strong-willed, and independent girl. She was described in glowing terms by the grandmother who was responsible for rearing her. But she was also running with a bad crowd, and had been f(ornicating) a bad guy from a bad family. It would take an absolute [insert slang term for the anus here] to say that she was at least in part responsible for her own killing, but I can live with that epithet; sometimes you have to be an [insert slang term for the anus here] to tell the unvarnished truth, and the unvarnished truth here is that there is a terrible culture in some parts of the City of Brotherly Love, and Miss Johnson participated in it.

Would Miss Johnson be alive and happy today if she had grown up with two decent parents in Chestnut Hill or University City . . . or Jim Thorpe? That’s something only God can answer, and he didn’t tell me what that answer is. But the truth is that the rotten culture where she grew up, and which she at least partly embraced, greatly decreased the probabilities that she’d grow up healthy and happy and a credit to society. And that’s a truth which has to be told.

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We should never release murderers until their victims come back to life!

Every Sunday morning during Mass, Catholics make our Profession of Faith, which ends:

I look forward to the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of world to come. Amen.

Other than Christ Jesus, we believe that no one has yet been resurrected from the dead. That is the case with the victims of murder here on earth, but some people seem to believe that those who commit murders should be released from prison before the person they killed is resurrected from the dead.

Should life without parole be mandatory for second-degree murder? The Pa. Supreme Court is weighing the issue.

Efforts to challenge the statute and the penalty have been persistent but unsuccessful over the years

by Chris Palmer | Tuesday, October 8, 2024 | 2:07 PM EDT

Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court justices on Tuesday debated whether the state’s mandatory sentence of life without parole for second-degree murder is constitutional — an issue that has long been eyed for reform by a mix of advocates and some legislators.

Under state law, people who participate in a deadly felony — such as a robbery — can be charged with the crime, also known as felony murder, even if they didn’t commit the killing or intend for anyone to die. A conviction leads to an automatic life sentence, and more than 1,100 people are serving that penalty in Pennsylvania, which is one of only two states nationwide to mandate incarceration for life for felony murder convictions.

The law is Pennsylvania Title 18 §2502(b), reproduced above. I point out here that even if the perpetrators did not go into their crime intending to kill anyone, if they were committing a crime, while carrying weapons, they had to know that someone being killed was a possibility, and that they might not have intended for someone to be killed does not make someone who was killed during such a crime is no less dead than the victim in an intentional murder. Title 18 §1102(b) specifies the penalty as life imprisonment.

Efforts to challenge the statute and the penalty have been persistent but unsuccessful over the years. The issue landed before the state’s high court this week because an attorney for one of those defendants — Derek Lee, who took part in a fatal robbery in Pittsburgh in 2014, but whose coconspirator committed the killing — filed an appeal saying that the penalty is unduly cruel.

Isn’t killing someone “unduly cruel”?

Further down, we get the typical leftist argument:

Legislators have debated Pennsylvania’s sentence for felony murder for years. Beyond the challenge to the sentence as potentially cruel, advocates have pointed out that those imprisoned for the crime are disproportionately Black, that about half are from Philadelphia, and that hundreds have already served decades in prison, putting them beyond the age at which they’re likely to commit another crime.

Is the purpose simply to lock them up until they have passed the ages “at which they’re likely to commit another crime,” or is the purpose also to punish them for the crimes they have committed? Perhaps they will have passed the ages in which they are likely to commit other crimes, but their victims are still stone-cold graveyard dead.

“(A)bout half are from Philadelphia”? Perhaps they are, but it’s also true that about half of all murders in the Keystone State occur in the City of Brotherly Love.

“(D)isproportionately black”? According to the Philadelphia Shooting Victims Dashboard, accessed at 8:58 AM EDT on Wednesday, October 9th, the data on fatal shootings in the city from 2015 through October 7th, 75.71% of all fatal shooting victims were black males, and another 5.85% were black females. 11.1% were Hispanic males, while 1.25% were Hispanic females. Only 3.97% were white males, 1.25% white females, and less than 1%, 0.78% were Asians of either sex. Of course the criminals who killed them are going to be “disproportionately black”!

(Bret)Grote[1]How unserious is Mr Grote? He couldn’t even be bothered to clean up his beta male beard before going before the state Supreme Court. has been among the most vigorous advocates for change. He and the organization he works for, the Abolitionist Law Center, filed a lawsuit in 2020 contending that the state’s ban on parole eligibility for felony murder was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court rejected that appeal two years later.

Image from main page of Abolitionist Law Center website, screencaptured on October 9, 2024.

Ahhh, the Abolitionist Law Center, which we have previously mentioned. What reporter Chris Palmer failed to mention, and did not hyperlink, is that the Abolitionist Law Center is opposed to incarceration for anything, opposes all prison sentences, and would, if they could, free every murderer, every rapist, every drug dealer, and every assailant locked up in Pennsylvania’s prisons.

We challenge every point on the criminal punishment conveyor belt including policing, courts, jails and prisons, and various forms of legal supervision, as well as other aspects of the carceral machine.

Boldface in the original.

TribLive.com carried more on this story:

Grote told the seven justices that if his client’s sentence is not struck down, Lee will some day die in prison because of the unintended consequences of his crime.

“This must no longer be the case in Pennsylvania,” Grote said.

Why not? After all, Leonard Butler of Pittsburgh died in his own basement, the result of a crime committed by Paul Durham and Derek Lee! Why shouldn’t Mr Lee die in prison?

Lee ordered Butler and his girlfriend into the basement and demanded money from them. Butler handed over his watch, and Lee went upstairs in the home, leaving Durham and Butler in the basement.

Butler attempted to lunge at Durham, the girlfriend testified at trial, and Durham shot him. . . . .

Justice P. Kevin Brobson countered (Mr Grote’s argument, saying) that Lee engaged in a violent home invasion, entered with a gun and pistol-whipped the victim.

So, Mr Lee was armed just as the actual shooter was!

Justice Brobson questioned whether Mr Lee’s case was the right one on which to base the Abolitionist Law Center’s case. I have to ask: what good would be served by releasing Mr Lee, either now, after he has served only eight years, or ever, for the people of Pennsylvania, or the family of Mr Butler?

Perhaps Mr Lee will find faith in God while he’s locked up; perhaps he already has. Perhaps he will be able to do some good while in prison, counseling others who do have hope of eventual release. Regardless of that, he participated in a felony murder, and should not be released until the day his victim comes back to life.

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↑1 How unserious is Mr Grote? He couldn’t even be bothered to clean up his beta male beard before going before the state Supreme Court.
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October 6, 2023: a day of peace. The next morning in Israel would be a red dawn.

On Friday, October 6, 2023, Israel was not in open warfare with Hamas or Hezbollah. On Friday, October 6, 2023, Israelis were going about their business. At sundown, on Friday, October 6, 2023, observant Jews were beginning their Sabbath celebrations.

On Sunday, October 6, 2024, Catholics around the world were listening to parts of Psalm 128:

5 – The Lord bless you from Zion: may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life;
6 – May you see your children’s children. Peace be upon Israel!

On Saturday, October 7, 2023, terrorists from Hamas broke through the gates between Gaza and Israel proper, and went on a rampage of rape, murder, kidnapping, and mayhem. It was still the Sabbath in Israel.

As a terrorist surprise attack, it was wildly successful. 1,195 Israelis were killed, 815 of whom were civilians, and 251 people were seized as hostages. Many Israelis were wounded, and the ‘Palestinians’ used rape and serial rape as instruments of torture and terror.

Yet, for the ‘Palestinians,’ October 7, 2023, was a massive failure. None of the bordering nations came to Hamas’ aid, though Iran, a thousand miles away, kept sending weapons, and Hezbollah, not a nation but a terrorist group of Iranian puppets, tried to join in. Much of Gaza is in ruins, thousands upon thousands of homes destroyed, dozens of thousands of Gazans have been killed, all due to a war Hamas started but couldn’t finish.

Israel is not done. Gaza is still being pounded, and the Israel Defense Force has now focused on Hezbollah in the north. Almost all of Hezbollah’s leaders have been sent to Jahannam, and many of their fighters killed or wounded. Parts of Hamas leadership have also been sent to their eternal rewards, while Yahya Sinwar, who planned the October 7th attack has been stuck in underground shelters in Gaza.

Hamas Leader Is Holding Out for a Bigger War, U.S. Officials Say

Yahya Sinwar is increasingly fatalistic, has blocked a cease-fire deal and, so far, been frustrated that Hezbollah and Iran have not come to his aid, officials said.

By Julian E. Barnes, Adam Goldman, and Edward Wong | October 4, 2024

The psychopath Yahya Sinwar. You can see the crazy in his eyes.

The leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, has become fatalistic after nearly a year of war in Gaza and is determined to see Israel embroiled in a wider regional conflict, U.S. officials said.Mr. Sinwar has long believed he will not survive the war, a view that has hindered negotiations to secure the release of hostages seized by his group in the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, according to U.S. intelligence assessments.

His attitude has hardened in recent weeks, U.S. officials say, and American negotiators now believe that Hamas has no intention of reaching a deal with Israel.

What “deal” could be reached? Hamas have only one point of strength, and that is the hostages. If they surrender the remaining hostages, many of whom are already dead, they have no leverage at all.

But Israel has learned from past wars: whenever they grant the Muslims a ceasefire before the terrorist groups, or, in some cases, actual Arab armies, have been fully destroyed, they slowly reconstitute themselves, and a next generation of boys grow into men and want to take up the fight. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows this, and that’s why he is determined to destroy Hamas once are for all.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has also rejected proposals in the negotiations and added positions that have complicated the talks. U.S. officials assess that he is mainly concerned about his political survival and might not think a cease-fire in Gaza is in his interests.

Well, yes, of course The New York Times and the liberals in the State Department are going to try to put the blame on Mr Netanyahu. But, as the Times previously reported:

As an architect of the Oct. 7 attacks, Mr. Sinwar masterminded a strategy that he knew would provoke a ferocious Israeli response. But in Hamas’s calculus, the deaths of many Palestinian civilians — who do not have access to Hamas’s subterranean tunnels — were the necessary cost of upending the status quo with Israel.

American and Israeli intelligence agencies have spent months assessing Mr. Sinwar’s motivations, according to people briefed on the intelligence. Analysts in both the United States and Israel believe that Mr. Sinwar is primarily motivated by a desire to take revenge on Israel and weaken it. The well-being of the Palestinian people or the establishment of a Palestinian state, the intelligence analysts say, appears to be secondary.

The distinguished Mr Sinwar is very much like Adolf Hitler in his Führerbunker, waiting for the last, and refusing to surrender to save Germany from near total destruction.

On 28 April, Hitler learned that Reichsführet-SS Heinrich Himmler was trying to discuss surrender terms with the Western Allies through Count Folke Bernadotte, and Hitler considered this treason.

How is that any different from what the crazy-eyed head of Hamas is doing? He knows that he’s a dead man, and that his dreams of the ‘frontline’ Arab nations attacking Israel are nothing but fantasy, but if he cared anything, anything at all, about the people for whose liberation he is supposedly fighting, he’d not only surrender himself, and Hamas, but should have done that months ago.

This is being published at 6:30 PM EDT in the United States, which is half-past midnight in Israel. At this time a year ago, innocent Israelis were mostly in bed, living in the peace that they had. When the morning sun arose on October 7th, it would be a red dawn.

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The Philadelphia Inquirer conceals a truth that everyone already knows Is the Inky actually perpetuating a stereotype it wishes to avoid?

This site has reported, many times, on how The Philadelphia Inquirer censors the news, at the direction of published Elizabeth “Lisa” Hughes. Miss Hughes told us that “racial justice” concerns will be considered in the newspaper’s “crime and criminal justice coverage.”

Teen critically wounded in shooting on SEPTA bus in North Philly

The shooting occurred on Allegheny Avenue near Third Street, police said. Some gunshots hit the engine area and disabled the bus.

by Robert Moran and Earl Hopkins | Friday, October 4, 2024 | 9:47 PM EDT | Updated: Saturday, October 5, 2024 | 2:33 PM EDT

A 17-year-old was critically wounded in a shooting on a SEPTA bus Friday night in North Philadelphia, police said.

The shooting occurred just after 6:15 p.m. on Allegheny Avenue near Third Street, police said. The teen was taken by private vehicle to Temple University Hospital, where he was listed in critical but stable condition with several gunshot wounds, including to the face, police said Saturday.

The suspected shooter, described as a male wearing all-black clothing, got off the bus and fled in a silver Kia, which was located and pursued by police until it crashed at Fifth Street and Glenwood Avenue, said Inspector D.F. Pace. One person in the Kia ran from the car and was apprehended, according to video of the chase, but another remained at large, police said.

Based on a preliminary investigation, police said an altercation between several males on the bus likely led to the shooting near Allegheny Avenue and Fifth Street. The bus had several bullet holes, and spent shell casings were found on the highway in the 300 block of West Allegheny Avenue, so investigators are looking into the possibility of some shots fired outside the bus, Pace said.

There’s more at the original.

I noticed as soon as I read it: the “suspected shooter” was “described as a male wearing all-black clothing”. He wasn’t described as a white male, or an Hispanic male, or an Asian male, but just a male. And I was 99.44% certain that meant that the “suspected shooter” is a black male. The victim was described only as a “17-year-old,” but the Inquirer does tell us that he was male, through the use of the masculine pronouns.[1]Since, in English grammar, the masculine subsumes the feminine, the masculine pronouns are used when the sex of the person to which they refer are unknown, so that does not tell us, technically … Continue reading

But the reporters knew: the Philadelphia Police Department released a crime notification to the media, which Fox 29 News reporter Steve Keeley duplicated at 7:18 PM Friday evening, 2½ hours before the newspaper’s original story, which stated that the victim is a black male. And NBC 10 News reported last night that the suspect was a black male.

Let’s tell the truth here: when violent crime is reported in the City of Brotherly Love, people who hear about it automatically assume that the perpetrators are black. And, in the majority of cases, they are.

But not all of the bad guys in Philly are black, and when the Inky deliberately conceals the race of suspects and victims, is the newspaper not contributing to the stereotype that they are all black?

The Inquirer is privately owned, by the Leftist Lenfest Institute for Journalism, and absolutely has the right to print what it wishes, and not publicize what it wants to keep quiet. But it ought to be asked just how much journalist respect we can have for a newspaper that censors the news for political purposes.

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↑1 Since, in English grammar, the masculine subsumes the feminine, the masculine pronouns are used when the sex of the person to which they refer are unknown, so that does not tell us, technically speaking, that the victim is male, but I also know that the newspaper’s reporters are too grammatically illiterate to realize that and use pronouns thus.
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When the Jew haters tell you who they are, believe them! "Students for Justice in Palestine" could have protested at Israeli consulate, but chose to protest at Jewish center

This poor site, along with literally hundreds of others, has covered the pro-‘Palestinian, really pro-Hamas ‘demonstrations’ on our college campuses last spring. I did note, with some pleasure, that at least at my alma mater, the University of Kentucky, the protests were carried out the way the First Amendment, which guarantees to all of us both the freedom of speech and the right of peaceable assembly, contemplated, peaceably.

Sadly, many of the pro-savages demonstrations at other schools were not entirely peaceable. But I did gloat report on those demonstrations fading away when school was out for the summer.

Well, it’s a new school year — though October seems like this article is a bit late — and the Usual Suspects have been up to their old tricks. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Temple suspends pro-Palestinian student group; Muslim advocates call to investigate police over alleged hijab removal during campus protest

CAIR is calling for an investigation after Temple University’s handling of a protest, where they say a Philadelphia police officer allegedly removed a Muslim protester’s hijab.

by Max Marin and Robert Moran | Wednesday, October 2, 2024 | 2:02 PM EDT | Updated: 6:37 PM EDT

Temple University has temporarily banned Students for Justice in Palestine from operating on campus, the latest in a wave of suspensions against pro-Palestinian student groups amid sustained protests against the war in Gaza.

The move comes after police detained four SJP members, including a Temple student, during a demonstration that interrupted an on-campus career fair last week.

So, the “Students for Justice in Palestine” demonstration was not peaceable in nature, but interrupted a meeting to help more sensible students at Temple who were looking to begin their professional careers after graduation. You know, the sensible thing to do after spending a boatload of money for a university education.

Muslim community leaders are calling for an investigation into the university’s handling of that protest after a Philadelphia police officer allegedly removed a Muslim protester’s hijab and detained the woman without access to her religious head covering.

If that happened, and I will never believe claims by “Muslim community leaders” without outside corroboration, it would have been because the woman was resisting arrest.

While Temple did not cite that specific incident, a university spokesperson said in a statement that the interim suspension stemmed from “recent conduct,” and the student activist group is now forbidden from holding on-campus activities, including “meetings, social and philanthropic events.” The suspension was first reported by the Temple News.

The spokesperson pointed to the university’s on-campus demonstration guidelines that are “in place to ensure the safety and well-being of community members while also encouraging and preserving freedom of expression.” . . . .

This is not the group’s first brush with university leaders. Temple president Richard Englert denounced an SJP-led demonstration in August after protesters chanted outside a Jewish student center on campus.

In a statement, Englert threatened disciplinary action against students who participated in the rally, which he described as a form of “intimidation and harassment.” The pro-Palestinian student group pushed back against Englert’s comments, arguing in a post on social media that the president “distorted our message to serve the false narrative that Temple SJP is a threat to Temple.”

No, I suppose that the pro-barbarian students wouldn’t see accosting Jewish students outside of a known Jewish student gathering place as “intimidation and harassment,” but the Jews on campus certainly would have, and did:

Temple University says it is investigating a student pro-Palestinian demonstration held outside a Jewish center on campus

“Targeting a group of individuals because of their Jewish identity is not acceptable and intimidation and harassment tactics like those seen today will not be tolerated,” Temple’s president said.

by Robert Moran | Thursday, August 29, 2024 | 10:40 PM EDT

Temple University said it is investigating for possible disciplinary action a pro-Palestinian march by students and nonstudents who demonstrated outside a Jewish center on campus Thursday.

The protest march began at the Charles Library, said Temple University president Richard Englert in a statement, then some demonstrators went to the Rosen Center, which is the home at Temple of Hillel, an international organization for Jewish students.

“While there, the demonstrators used megaphones to chant directly at the occupants within the building,” Englert said.

Emphasis mine. Using megaphones to chant directly at the people in the Hillel Center, the majority of who could be assumed to be Jewish, would constitute targeted ethnic and religious harassment.

“We are deeply saddened and concerned by these events,” Englert said. “Targeting a group of individuals because of their Jewish identity is not acceptable and intimidation and harassment tactics like those seen today will not be tolerated.”

This was clearly a protest against Jews in general, not just Israeli policy, as the “Students for Justice in Palestine” have conflated the two. Not all Jews are Israelis, and at an American college 5,774 miles away from Israel, it’s virtually certain that most of the Jews on campus at Temple are not from Israel.

There is an Israeli consulate in Philadelphia, at 1880 John F. Kennedy Blvd, which is just 2.6 miles away from the Hillel Center, at 1441 West Norris Street, pretty much of a straight march down Broad Street, though, admittedly, marching that way takes you partly into the Philadelphia Badlands. If the SJP wanted to protest Israeli government policies specifically, they could have been protesting outside the consulate; instead they were harassing people they knew to be Jooooos.

Temple’s actions won’t stop the SJP from existing; all it does is ban them as a student organization and deny them use of Temple’s facilities.

Our First Amendment was written by civilized men, with civilized behavior in mind; they cited “the right of the people peaceably to assemble”. It does not protect some right to harass others, or gather in mobs, or riot.

But the pro-‘Palestinian’ people in this country, and around the world, are not truly civilized men. They might think that they are, but they are supporting the barbarism of Hamas, they are supporting the antithesis of the Western civilization, the benefits of which they enjoy.  The “Students for Justice in Palestine” have a right to exist, and to protest peacefully; it’s only when the break the code of civilization that they become subject to arrest.

The one thing they do not have is any right to the respect of decent people, and for them, I have none. When the anti-Semites tell you who they really are, you should believe them!

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That this has led to fraud is no surprise at all!

My good friend and occasional blog pinch-hitter, William Teach of The Pirate’s Cove, has an article this Friday morning on the Biden Administration prosecuting a major ‘carbon offset’ sales company for fraud:

C-Quest Capital LLC Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Newcombe, who stepped down as CEO in February, was indicted Wednesday in New York on wire fraud and commodities fraud charges. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted on the most serious charges.

C-Quest develops emission-reduction projects to earn carbon credits that can then be sold to companies or other entities that wish to offset their own emissions. Newcombe, a onetime Goldman Sachs Group Inc. managing director and World Bank official, founded C-Quest in 2008.

You can read the rest on Mr Teach’s fine site.

But this one speaks to me, due to my experience. It was 2003, and carbon offset salesmen came and made a presentation to the concrete company at which I worked. Ready-mixed concrete producers use pozzolans, materials which are not cementitious alone but when mixed with Portland cement during the production of concrete utilize the excess calcium hydroxide liberated to become cementitious. We use them because they are less expensive than cement. The two most frequently used are flyash, which is harvested from the ignition byproducts of burning coal in power plants, and ground granulated blast furnace slag, the material left over from the smelting of iron ore.

The manufacture of Portland cement is a major carbon dioxide (CO2) emitter, so by the partial substitution of flyash, ready-mix companies reduce their carbon footprint. The salesmen told us that we could gain carbon credits every time we used flyash instead of cement, and that we could sell those carbon credits to other companies, to make it look like they were doing something to help fight global warming climate change, but, since it wouldn’t have changed how we did business since we were already using flyash — other than requiring some bookkeeping — it wouldn’t have reduced CO2 emissions at all! It was simply a way to take money, taking it from one CO2 emitter and giving it to a company which emitted less CO2; virtue signaling for the first, without having to actually spend significantly more money to reduce their emissions, and extra money for us, for doing what was already in our own economic interest.

Is anyone really surprised that fraud would be involved? When it comes to global warming climate change, the scammers and fraudsters will always be buzzing around.

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Killadelphia Yes, homicide is significantly down, but still more than thrice that of the rest of the Commonwealth

It was March 16, 2022, when this poor site noted liberal Philadelphia magazine reporter Victor Fiorillo‘s story about how applications for concealed carry permits had skyrocketed. He had expected an increase, following the 562 officially reported murders in the City of Brotherly Love, but “wasn’t exactly ready for just how big this increase has been.”

Mr Fiorillo doesn’t like Fox 29 News reporter Steve Keeley’s reports on crime in the city, just as WHYY reporter Cherri Gregg, who said his reporting “definitely makes me cringe,” while Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Jenice Armstrong “wrote on Facebook: ‘His Twitter feed is also disturbing.'”

So, @phillyvictor, Mr Fiorillo’s Twitter handle, gleefully told us that homicides were down in the city, slamming Mr Keeley for not reporting on that:

Philadelphia Homicides on Pace for Historic Low. No, Really!

The news Steve Keeley won’t tell you.

By Victor Fiorillo | Tuesday, September 24, 202 | 3:29 PM EDT

If you’re addicted to local television news or Fox News or if you live your life based on 15-second blips on TikTok or whatever the awful Citizen crime app[1]Hyperlink not in Mr Fiorillo’s original, but added by me. I have assumed that this is the Twitter site to which he referred, but cannot say that I am certain. has to say, you are probably still convinced that Philadelphia is a desolate hellhole, the Wild Wild West of urban living, where anything goes and where crime is rampant and without consequence. The “car meetup” events from Saturday night into Sunday morning, which featured a ring of fire outside City Hall and at least one flamethrower, are probably all you can talk about. You’re living your best Steve Keeley life.

But here’s some news that Steve Keeley and his ilk can’t find the time to tell you: Philadelphia’s homicide count is on pace for a historic low. You read that right, and I’ll say it once again for those in the back: Philadelphia’s homicide count is on pace for a historic low.

Now, this isn’t fake news. This isn’t my opinion. This is real news based on, you know, facts. Data. Statistics.

According to the latest data provided by the Philadelphia Police Department, homicides in Philadelphia are down 40 percent in Philadelphia as of Tuesday morning compared to the same time period last year. If you think I’ve told you similar things in the not-too-distant past, you’re not wrong. Back in April, I cautiously reported that our homicide count was down 34 percent. I say cautiously because, well, anything can happen at any time, sending those numbers in the wrong direction. Also because we hadn’t yet hit summer, and generally speaking, summers are associated with more violent crime.

Well, friends, guess what? Summer is officially over. And we went from a 34 percent decrease in homicides as of April to a 40 percent decrease in homicides as of today. If we stay on that track, that would mean that we’d end the year with 246 homicides. And if we do that, 2024 would tie 2013 for the lowest number of homicides in Philadelphia for the last 56 years. To do better than that, we’d need to end the year with fewer than 234 homicides. That’s how many homicides the city saw in 1967. One can hope!

Perhaps so, but it comes back to the first story of Mr Fiorillo’s that I cited, concerning the surge in applications for concealed carry permits. And then this, from Thursday morning’s Philadelphia Inquirer:

One killed, one injured in gunfight during an attempted robbery that ended in SEPTA bus crash in West Philly

There were nine people — eight passengers and one driver — on the SEPTA bus, a SEPTA spokesperson said. Nobody was injured.

by Rodrigo Torrejón | Thursday, October 3, 2024 | 9:44 AM EDT

A 36-year-old man was killed and a 17-year-old was injured when gunfire broke out during an attempted armed robbery in Mantua on Wednesday night, police said. After the teen and his accomplice fled the scene in a getaway car, the car crashed into a SEPTA bus a block away.

The 17-year-old was identified as Sage Black-Rivera.

Police responded to a report of a shooting at a candy store on the 800 block of North 40th Street at 10:11 p.m., police said. When officers arrived, they found the 36-year-old man on the floor of the store with multiple gunshot wounds, police said.

The man, who police did not identify, was pronounced dead at the scene minutes later.

The victim had been in the store when a 17-year-old boy and another male tried to rob him at gunpoint, said Police Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore. The 36-year-old man then took out a gun and fired at the two men, striking the teen.

The teen then shot the 36-year-old manm, said Vanore.

The two assailants then fled the store in what police believe is a Mazda, but only got a block away before the car crashed into a SEPTA bus near 41st and Brown Streets, said Vanore.

Miss Gregg complained that “it is not good reporting to simply repeat police accounts/narratives,” but that’s what Inky reporter Rodrigo Torrejón just did, as shown my Mr Keeley’s tweet with the image file of the police report.

There were nine people on board the Route 31 SEPTA bus, eight passengers and the driver, a SEPTA spokesperson said. No injuries were reported to anyone on the bus.

The two alleged robbers then fled on foot. Police later found the teen on the 700 block of Preston Street with gunshot wounds to his arm and chest. He was taken to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he was placed in stable condition.

Homicide detectives are continuing to investigate. The 17-year-old boy has been arrested, and police are looking for his accomplice.

Mr Fiorillo noted, in the first cited story about concealed carry permits:

Of course, just because you’re denied doesn’t mean you’re not carrying, and carrying without a license is generally a first-degree misdemeanor, punishable by up to five years in prison. But that charge can be upgraded to a felony depending on the circumstances.

It seems sadly appropriate that I’m writing about another Philly murder while drinking my coffee from a blood-red mug.

We have not yet been told whether the 36-year-old victim had a license to carry his weapon, but we do know that the unnamed 17-year-old did not have one, because such permits are not issued to minors. I am waiting on someone to whine that the 36-year-old victim would not be dead had he not been carrying a weapon and tried to defend himself, not that anyone can know that, but if he had been unarmed and simply handed over his wallet, both armed juveniles would have gotten away, and would still be out on the streets, waiting to rob at gunpoint someone else. At least now the 17-year-old will spend — hopefully — the rest of his miserable life behind bars, at least he will if the George Soros-sponsored, criminal loving District Attorney, Larry Krasner, charges him as an adult with second-degree murder, Pennsylvania Title 18 §2502(b). Under Pennsylvania Title 18 §1102(1)(c)(1), “A person who at the time of the commission of the offense was 15 years of age or older shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment the minimum of which shall be at least 30 years to life.”

Yes, homicides are down and crime is down in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, but there is still a culture in the city, and in most of our major cities, that allows crime to continue. Let’s use Mr Fiorillo’s statistics, estimating that Philly will finish with 246 homicides. With an estimated population of 1.55 million in 2023, that would still leave the city with a homicide rate of 15.87 per 100,000 population, significantly higher that the state’s 8.9 homicides per 100,000. Using the 2022 numbers — and the fact that the full 2023 numbers are not yet available is just plain sinful — Philly saw 514 homicides out of the Commonwealth’s total of 1,068, 48.13% of the total, when the city has only 11.96% of the state’s population. The rest of the Commonwealth had a homicide rate of 4.85 per 100,000 population, less than a third of Philly’s.

What will the numbers look like once full figures are available? Well, who knows, but even if they’re better than 2021, that won’t mean that they are good.

So, yes, things aren’t as bad as they once were, but if you live in Philly, you have slightly more than thrice the chance of being murdered than anyplace outside the city. It’s a shame that Mr Fiorillo didn’t mention that part.

References

References
↑1 Hyperlink not in Mr Fiorillo’s original, but added by me. I have assumed that this is the Twitter site to which he referred, but cannot say that I am certain.
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Democrisy! The party of more and more gun control are now buying themselves more guns.

We noted, 2½ years ago, that, in the aftermath of its bloodiest year on record — 562 homicides in 2021 — even Philadelphia Magazine’s Victor Fiorillo, who is so dramatically opposed to Fox 29 News Steve Keeley actually reporting on crime, told us about Philadelphians applying for concealed carry permits at a greatly increased rate.

Now it seems that significant numbers of the American left, who have been so vigorous in their demands to infringe upon our rights to keep and bear arms, have decided to keep and bear arms themselves. From The Wall Street Journal:

The Most Surprising New Gun Owners Are U.S. Liberals

After decades of decline, gun ownership is rising among Democrats

by Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson | Thursday, September 19, 2024 | 9:22 PM EDT

Michael Ciemnoczolowski, a lifelong Democrat, supports stricter gun laws and contributes to Sandy Hook Promise, a gun-violence-prevention nonprofit.

But this summer, the liquor store clerk in Iowa City, Iowa, for the first time in his life bought a gun. Apprehension about street crime, armed right-wing extremists, and “whatever else the world could possibly throw at us,” drove his decision.

“Domestic politics have grown increasingly acrimonious,” says Ciemnoczolowski, 43.

This is kind of laughable. “(A)rmed right-wing extremists”? It wasn’t “right-wing extremists” who have tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump recently. It wasn’t “right-wing extremists” who shot up schools in Nashville or other places. And it certainly hasn’t been “right-wing extremists” who have been responsible for the “street crime” we’ve seen in Chicago, Philadelphia, and our other major cities.

American gun culture has long been dominated by conservative, white men. Now, in a marked change, a burgeoning number of liberals are buying firearms, according to surveys and fast-growing gun groups drawing minorities and progressives.

“It’s a group of people who five years ago would never have considered buying a gun,” says Jennifer Hubbert, an anthropology professor at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., who has researched liberal gun owners.

Historically, it wasn’t unusual for Democrats to own guns, with many more of them living in rural areas. Also, hunting was much more popular. But starting in the early ’90s, gun ownership among Democrats dropped significantly. Increasingly divisive political battles over the role of firearms in American society led the Democratic Party to become an advocate for gun regulation. Republicans became the party of gun rights.

Now, today’s Democrats are rediscovering guns.

There follow several paragraphs giving liberals’ reasons for increasing their firearm ownership percentages, up from an all-time low of 22.5% in 2010, to 29.2% in 2022, the last year one which information was available. That’s a 29.78% increase, and since this deals with percentages, it isn’t an increase due to population growth. The number was only 25.4% just the previous year, a 16.14% increase in just one year, the year after the murderous carnage of Joe Biden’s first year in office.

The Democrats interviewed for this article brought up all sorts of reasons, many of them political, which the Journal’s authors diligently reported, but 2021 and 2022 were years of Donald Trump losing voter fraud cases in courts, and the January 6th protesters being tried and jailed. The credentialed media tried drumming up fears about conservatives, but, for the very greatest part, the violence of 2021 and 2022 was perpetrated from the criminal classes in our major cities.

Four decades ago, Democratic gun owners were typically white men, including auto or steel union workers who grew up hunting.

That line is absolutely rotten reporting, something very unusual in the Journal. Four decades ago, Democrats in the South were far more rural than they are now. Four decades ago, Democrats controlled state legislatures and gubernatorial seats in most of the South, rather than being so heavily packed into urban areas as they are today. The Journal’s comparison of those numbers wasn’t even as close as apples and oranges, but more like apples and turnips.

Of course, today’s Democrats in general are not very much like the Democrats of “four decades ago.” The Democrats of forty years ago would have laughed at the notion of homosexual marriage, were pretty much anti-war as a holdover from Vietnam, were complete free speech supporters, and would have hauled off to the insane asylums anyone who held that a guy could simply declare himself to be a girl and compete in women’s sports.  The only Democrats who could have been called #woke forty years ago were the ones who had gotten up with the alarm clock to actually go to work. The urban Democrats of the 1980s who didn’t own firearms were the ones who lived in safer neighborhoods.

The Democrats of forty years ago were seeing the weakening of the Soviet Union, and calling that a good thing, rather than electing socialists. They remembered the ‘Palestinians’ as terrorists who attacked Israelis at the 1972 Olympic games in Munich, rather than as somehow selfless martyrs and resistance fighters in Gaza.

Today we have the same party which has been screaming for more and more gun control buying more and more guns for themselves. They want to be able to defend themselves, not from evil reich-wing gangs, but criminals, criminals created and enabled by the Democrats own policy choices, but they have to mouth silliness about Republicans and conservatives to justify their own hypocrisy