Category Archives: Pro-Life

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The Patriot Front March for Life The left wax apoplectic!

My Twitter feed was filled with images of the Patriot Front marching at Fridays March for Life in Washington, DC. Much of it was condemnatory, and a lot of conservatives were repeating the meme that these were “Feds,” by which they meant federal law enforcement officers, rather than real civilians. I can see, at least in appearance, why people might conclude that. Robert Stacy McCain addressed that issue in “Is the ‘Patriot Front’ a Fed PsyOp?” He cited the very liberal Southern Poverty Law Center, a group which hates all things conservative, normal, and moral, telling us:

Like other hate and extremist groups, the need to recruit and grow their members makes PF a target for antifascist activists who attempt to infiltrate white nationalist groups to expose and disrupt their activities. Since 2018, antifascist activists have infiltrated PF at least five times, which has led to journalist and activist networks obtaining thousands of documents, including internal chat logs, audio and video recordings, and photographs. The laxed operational security measures of PF that are responsible for these infiltrations led to the identification of more than 130 current and former members since 2019.

Continue reading →

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“Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to (foul) things up.” Don't tell me that you are opposed to capital punishment, but you'll make exceptions for politically difficult cases

Also see: Charles Lane in The Washington Post, “Biden’s commutations paradoxically prove the pro-death-penalty case“

Barack Hussein Obama supposedly once said of his former Vice President, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to (foul) things up.” Snopes calls the claim that President Obama actually said this “unproven,” but whether our 44th President actually said this about the man who was about to become our 46th President, Mr Biden has proven its accuracy.

Biden Commutes 37 Death Sentences Ahead of Trump’s Plan to Resume Federal Executions

Those affected by the president’s action on Monday are still subject to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Three men will remain on federal death row.

By Aishvarya Kavi | Monday, December 23, 2024 | 5:01 AM EST

President Biden on Monday commuted the sentences of nearly all prisoners on federal death row, sparing the lives of 37 men just a month before Donald J. Trump will return to the Oval Office with a promise to restart federal executions. Continue reading →

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My local Bishop really, really doesn’t like Donald Trump

The Most Reverend John Stowe, Bishop of Lexington

While I cannot say that I am friends with His Excellency, the Most Reverend John Stowe, O.F.M. Conv., Bishop of Lexington, we are at least acquainted with each other. The Bishop at least recognizes me when he sees me, though I cannot be certain he remembers my name. We have had some pleasant conversations the few times he has visited our small parish.

I have written about him, or at least mentioned him, on this poor site, in 17 previous articles, not always charitably. Bishop Stowe is an excellent homilist, one who can really connect with a congregation, and I have no doubts at all about his faith. But, as a Catholic priest, he chooses the wrong things far too often for me.

Kentucky prelate calls lack of election response from American Church ‘disappointing’

by John Lavenburg | Tuesday, December 3, 2024

NEW YORK – In the month or so since former President Donald Trump was elected to occupy the White House for a second term, the majority of American bishops have either not commented on the election publicly, or issued a generic statement about the importance of civility, unity, and democracy.

That extends to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, where – outside of responses to Trump’s stated plan for mass deportations – not much has been said. Bishop John Stowe, in a recent conversation with Crux, said that reality isn’t surprising considering how American Church leaders have handled the presidency of Joe Biden over the last four years.

“It was not surprising coming from the USCCB. What was surprising was the attitude when Joe Biden was elected, a Catholic president four years ago, and there was such an uproar in the conference about that election, and because of that, I really had no expectation that there would be much said about the Trump election,” said Stowe, the bishop of Lexington in Kentucky.

His Excellency the Bishop does not like former and future President Donald Trump. Speaking in August of 2020, before the 2020 election, the Bishop let us know, let all of his Catholic parishioners know, that he was opposed to President Trump’s re-election. Bishop Stowe was appalled by Mr Trump’s anti-illegal immigration policies, calling them “anti-life.” Continue reading →

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The uselessness of the death penalty in Pennsylvania

I get it: the family are outraged at the murder of Temple University Police Officer Christopher Fitzgerald, but let’s tell the truth here: a death sentence in Pennsylvania is virtually meaningless.

Family of slain Temple Police Officer Christopher Fitzgerald seeks the death penalty for his alleged killer

“It meets every threshold of the death penalty,” Joel Fitzgerald said of the crime.

by Ellie Rushing | Tuesday, January 23, 2024 | 11:35 AM EST | Updated: 1:21 PM EST

The family of slain Temple University Police Officer Christopher Fitzgerald, who authorities say was shot and killed by 18-year-old Miles Pfeffer last year, said Tuesday that Pfeffer should be sentenced to death if convicted.

Shortly after seeing Pfeffer in court for the first time since his arrest 11 months ago, Fitzgerald’s family gathered outside the courthouse and called on District Attorney Larry Krasner to seek the death penalty in the case.

“What we’d like to see is this person to go through the pain that our son went through, to go through the suffering that our family is going through,” Joel Fitzgerald, a former Philadelphia police officer, said of his son’s alleged killer.

Well, that will never happen. Even if executed, the current method is lethal injection, where the Commonwealth would put condemned men to sleep like an unwanted kitten in the shelter; they aren’t going to shoot him and let him bleed to death. Mr Pfeffer’s family might suffer as the Fitzgerald family have, but they’ll suffer just as much if their precious baby boy is locked behind bars for the rest of his miserable life.

“It meets every threshold of the death penalty,” he said. “We’ll be waiting with bated breath to hear from the district attorney to see what they decide.”

Ellie Rushing of The Philadelphia Inquirer has already told us the answer the Fitzgerald family will almost certainly receive:

Krasner has long said he opposes the death penalty, and last year — just two days before Fitzgerald was killed — Gov. Josh Shapiro said the death penalty should be abolished in Pennsylvania.

The Governor does not have the authority to commute a death sentence on his own; he has to receive a recommendation for clemency from the state Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute a sentence or pardon a crime. Yet, despite a current death row population of 127 souls, no one has actually been executed this century.

There have been three executions in the Keystone State since the restoration of capital punishment, two in 1995 and one in 1999, but look at the chart: all three were what the Death Penalty Information Center labels “volunteers,” men who voluntarily dropped all of their appeals just to get it all over. Even if Larry Krasner did press for a death sentence, which he will almost certainly do not do, and even if Governor Shapiro signed a death warrant, which he has said he will not do, Mr Pfeffer, if convicted and sentenced to death would have an uncounted number of appeals. I’d point out here that Governor Tom Corbett, a Republican, signed almost fifty death warrants during his four years in office, 2011 through 2015, but not a single one was carried out.

So, what’s the purpose of sentencing a man to death when everyone knows it won’t be carried out? It’s better to sentence Mr Pfeffer to life without the possibility of parole rather than set up a situation in which he has dozens and dozens of appeals, drawing out any possible execution for decades, costing the Commonwealth untold thousands of dollars in additional expenses, and bringing Mr Pfeffer a little more publicity every time his appeal goes to court. Realistically, it’s better to just let him languish in prison for the rest of his miserable life, as forgotten by almost everyone as he can be.

Marissa Fitzgerald and her mother- and father-in-law said they were upset that the preliminary hearing had been delayed four times, something they said was a “privilege” extended to Pfeffer.

All four rescheduled appearances were requested by Pfeffer’s defense lawyers, not prosecutors. Joel Fitzgerald said prosecutors should have pushed for an earlier hearing.

The newspaper article noted that Mr Pfeffer has been jailed without bail since his capture at Riverside Correctional Facility, so it’s not as though he gained any real benefit. But in a murder case like this one, judges are going to be extremely careful not to do anything which would be grounds for appeal.

If Mr Pfeffer really is the murderer, he’s unlikely to see the sky as a free man again.

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1,891 lives saved in Kentucky!

I’m sure that columnist Linda Blackford and the rest of the editorial staff of the Lexington Herald-Leader are aghast, but almost 1,900 lives were saved!

Kentucky abortions dropped by nearly half last year, showing impact of statewide bans

by Alex Aquisto | Thursday, October 5, 2023 | 4:48 PM EDT | Updated: 5:11 PM EDT

The number of reported abortions provided in Kentucky last year dropped by roughly 43 percent, according to new annual report tracking the medical procedure.

The reduction in legal pregnancy terminations correlates directly with the commonwealth’s trigger law banning abortion and a six-week ban, both of which became enforceable last summer with the overturning of federal abortion protections by the U.S. Supreme Court. Continue reading →

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The one-world-government folks want to subject the United States to the United Nations, when they haven’t gotten their way under our laws

The one-world-government folks want to subject the United States to the United Nations, regardless of American law. From The Washington Post:

Almost 200 rights groups call on U.N. to intervene over U.S. abortion access

The U.S. cannot be a global champion of human rights when its own abortion rights are not protected, one activist group said

by Adela Suliman | Thursday, March 2, 2023 | 9:03 AM EST

Almost 200 human rights organizations from across the world have issued an “urgent appeal” to the United Nations to intervene to ensure the United States protects reproductive rights — after a Supreme Court ruling last year overturned the constitutional right to an abortion.

In a letter issued Thursday, nonprofits and civil society groups including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Global Justice Center, as well as dozens of smaller U.S.-based charities have written to the U.N. warning that “people residing in the US who can become pregnant are facing a human rights crisis.”

“(P)eople residing in the US who can become pregnant”? Guffaws! Footnote #1 of the letter, on page 5 of the .pdf file states, “While the remainder of this letter often refers to women and girls as the targets of laws restricting abortion, we recognize that although most people who can become pregnant and require abortion services are cisgender women, people with diverse gender identities are also affected and need abortions.” How can any sensible person take seriously the logic of people who would say something that stupid?

It comes after the Supreme Court ruling last year, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, struck down reproductive protections enshrined in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, igniting a seismic social and legal change in the country by shifting power to regulate abortions into the hands of individual states. A majority of justices argued that Roe v. Wade’s reasoning was “weak” and that the issue of abortion should be considered by “the people’s elected representatives,” in a decision that was a long-sought triumph for conservatives.

At least a dozen states have moved to ban or heavily restrict abortions since Dobbs.

The 196 signatories to Thursday’s letter describe “intensifying harms” occurring in the United States as a result of the legal ruling.

It says approximately 22 million women and girls of reproductive age in the United States are living in states where “abortion access is heavily restricted, and often totally inaccessible,” causing them to face a plethora of public health harms.

Of course, the letter writers think nothing of the harms which come to the unborn children who are slaughtered, all for the convenience of the pregnant woman. I’m reminded of Tuesday’s editorial in The Philadelphia Inquirer, in which the Editorial Board urged the City Council to rename Taney Street, named after Chief Justice Roger Taney, author of the Dred Scott v Sandford decision, who wrote that blacks are “so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” The Editorial Board, as you might guess, are all in on supporting abortion rights, despite the fact that abortion means that unborn children are, to paraphrase, “so far inferior, that they had no rights which adults were bound to respect.”

“By overturning the established constitutional protection for access to abortion and through the passage of state laws, the US is in violation of its obligations under international human rights law,” it says, detailing violations to the right to life, health and privacy, among others.

U.N. human rights bodies have previously spoken out against last year’s ruling, calling it a “major setback” and a “huge blow to women’s human rights and gender equality.”

Apparently “women’s human rights and gender equality” don’t include the human rights of the children aborted, half of whom are girls.

“We sent this letter to draw the world’s attention to the suffering that US abortion law is inflicting on women, girls and others who can become pregnant,” Christine Ryan, legal director of the Global Justice Center, which uses international law to advocate for gender equality, said in an emailed statement.

There’s considerably more at the original, but it’s much the same as quoted above, a cry that women have rights and not-yet-born children have none, along with the call that the United Nations should Do Something to bring the United States into line.

Well, f(ornicate) that! The United Nations has no authority that the United States is, or ought to be, bound to respect.

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Don’t waste time and money trying for a death sentence which will never be carried out

Sergeant Mark Fusetti is a retired Philadelphia Police officer, who last served on the Warrant Squad, and one of my electronic friends. His major concern right now — other than helping his friend Sam Oropeza gat on the ballot for a Philadelphia City Council At Large seat — is crime in the City of Brotherly Love. The fatal shooting of Temple Police Officer Christopher Fitzgerald, allegedly by a privileged punk kid from Bucks County, has Sgt Fusetti, and many of the other law-and-order conservatives in and around Philly rightly concerned.

There are a lot of responses to Sgt Fusetti’s tweet, and almost all of them call for the death penalty in this case. Continue reading →

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Are dog lives more important than humans in Philadelphia?

The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page has reported that 62 Philadelphians have been sent untimely to their eternal rewards as of 11:59 PM EST on Monday, February 20th. While that number is lower than the same date in 2021 and 2022, it’s higher than in 2020, which saw 499 ‘official’ homicides in the City of Brotherly Love. And, as we have reported frequently, very few of those killings — other than the fatal shooting of Temple Police Officer Christopher Fitzgerald, allegedly by a privileged punk kid from Bucks County — have received much press coverage from The Philadelphia Inquirer, our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, and the newspaper of record for the entire area.

Well, this morning, the newspaper 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. showed us just what shootings in the city are really important!

Off-duty FBI agent shoots dog in Center City

The incident occurred Monday evening on the 1500 block of Spruce Street. It was not immediately known if the dog survived.

by Robert Moran | Tuesday, February 21, 2023 | 7:38 AM EST

An off-duty FBI agent shot a dog outside a Center City apartment building Monday, the FBI and Philadelphia police said.

Video posted on social media showed the aftermath of the incident on the sidewalk in front of the Touraine residential high-rise on the 1500 block of Spruce Street.

The special agent was walking a small dog when she encountered at least one other person walking two dogs, according to witnesses. A fight broke out involving the three dogs.

It was not immediately known if the dog that was shot survived. The FBI did not identify the agent.

At the end of the story:

Animal rights organization Revolution Philly is planning to protest the animal shooting in front of FBI headquarters at 10 a.m. Tuesday.

“This woman is a trained professional and a dog owner. Her first reaction shouldn’t be to shoot first,” said Revolution Philly organizer Tiffany Stair in a statement. “This is unacceptable and we are demanding that she be held accountable.”

The entire article, exclusive of the headline, subheading, photos, and byline, was 237 words over nine paragraphs, a lot longer than the usual reports of killings.

Polar Bear, the Great Pyrenees who is trying to move in with us.

We have two dogs ourselves, and a third, a 150 lb Great Pyrenees we have named Polar Bear, who is trying to move in with us. If we didn’t know his actual human, who lives ¾ mile away from us, we’d let him, but his real human loves him. Bear loves our dogs, and us, more than his human. So, yes, to us, the shooting of a dog is a bad, bad thing.

But, radically enough, the idea that a dog was shot, and perhaps killed — that part is as yet unknown — is generating a protest by Revolution Philly, while the 230 reported shooting victims[2]Through February 20, 2023, including 46 fatally shot, plus 16 other murders, have mostly drawn nothing but the sound of crickets in the city, strikes me as a terrible thing.

Murder has simply been normalized in Philadelphia. Yes, Officer Fitzgerald’s senseless murder, by a punk who seemingly thought he was playing Grand Theft Auto in real life, has generated a lot of emotion in Philly, but for the most part, murder victims are mourned by their family and friends, and otherwise dismissed as just the same old, same old.

And why not? The city is governed by Democrats, has been since Harry Truman was President, and it seems as though preserving prenatal infanticide is the most important issue to them. It’s not as though teenagers don’t get that message, that people who are inconvenient can simply be disposed of, and it really isn’t a surprise that teenaged gangbangers and wannabes find life cheap enough that they will shoot people over the least provocation. The Democrats want to ‘explain’ the city’s killing spree as the result of poverty, racism, segregation, and community ‘disinvestment,’ but the 18-year-old white kid who (allegedly) killed Officer Fitzgerald was a privileged kid, living in his mother’s $1.2 million, 15-acre estate in Bucks County, who’d had one previous ‘contact’, a telephoned and internet reported bomb threat that got him one month’s probation in Bucks County, with law enforcement as a juvenile. For whatever reasons there were, his parents — who are now divorced, with a rumored, but unconfirmed by reliable sources, custody dispute — didn’t teach their son respect for life, and now he’s looking at spending the rest of his miserable life behind bars.

The death penalty, to which I am opposed anyway, is off the table: Governor Josh Shapiro (D-PA) has stated that he will not allow any executions to proceed as long as he is in office,[3]In Pennsylvania, the Governor does not have independent authority to commute capital sentences, but can only do so with the recommendation of the state Board of Pardons and Paroles. and District Attorney Larry Krasner (D-Philadelphia) has campaigned on, and vowed, never to seek the death penalty in any capital crimes committed while he is prosecutor. A photo of the alleged killer shows him in custody, leaning back, apparently awaiting questioning, with a posture that says, “What the f(ornicate) did I do? The rest of my life is trashed,” perhaps the best picture from this entire, sad episode. His father and mother — and the mother may be charged with a crime as well, for allegedly picking up her son after he called her for help — are going to have to live with that image, burned into their minds, wondering what they could have done differently.

There’s also a photo of him, as a juvenile, wearing a Biden-Harris t-shirt. Yeah, that’s a way not to rear your children right!

Philadelphia, and many other urban areas as well, are places in which human life has become cheap, and with life being cheap, life is being taken cheaply. When we have politicians telling us that human life before birth can be sucked out and destroyed, because some babies are just plain inconvenient, when we have parents supporting and voting for the politicians who support prenatal infanticide, we’re going to get more punks like the one who murdered Officer Fitzgerald. And we’re also going to get more punks roaming the streets of our major cities who apparently think nothing of blowing away rival gang members or girls that cheated on them or people who resist armed carjacking attempts or just look at them the wrong way.

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 Through February 20, 2023
↑3 In Pennsylvania, the Governor does not have independent authority to commute capital sentences, but can only do so with the recommendation of the state Board of Pardons and Paroles.
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Why is Lexington hiding this?

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

We previously reported on the arrest of Rigoberto Vasquez-Barradas, charged with fetal homicide in the first degree, a capital offense under KRS §507A.020, for allegedly kicking a woman who was 18-weeks pregnant thrice in the stomach, along with other forms of assault.

Mr Vasquez-Barradas was arrested on Friday, January 20, 2023, which was 2½ weeks, or 17 days ago. According to the Fayette County Detention Center, Mr Vasquez-Barradas is still behind bars, facing the same charges as we detailed in our previous story, though it now states that he “can post property bond” to meet his $300,000 bail.

The Lexington city government has a rather sketchy record of posting information in a timely manner, but after 17 days have passed, the Lexington Police Department’s Homicide Investigations Page still does not show the fetal homicide Mr Vasquez-Barradas allegedly committed. That the suspect is still behind bars, or so the Fayette County Detention Center records show as of 1:00 PM EST,> and still charged with fetal homicide, tells us that yes, it’s still considered a murder, but the city, for some reason, does not show it as one.

So, I have to ask: does the city, in which the public officials all support abortion, simply not wish to state that a fetal homicide under state law is actually a homicide?