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A stunning lack of perspective

For the #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading it’s all about racism. From Sunday’s Washington Post:

    ‘Lynchings in Mississippi never stopped’

    By DeNeen L. Brown | August 8, 2021

    JACKSON, Miss. — Since 2000, there have been at least eight suspected lynchings of Black men and teenagers in Mississippi, according to court records and police reports.

    “The last recorded lynching in the United States was in 1981,” said Jill Collen Jefferson, a lawyer and founder of Julian, a civil rights organization named after the late civil rights leader Julian Bond. “But the thing is, lynchings never stopped in the United States. Lynchings in Mississippi never stopped. The evil bastards just stopped taking photographs and passing them around like baseball cards.”

    Jefferson was born in Jones County, Miss., which was an epicenter of the Ku Klux Klan’s reign of terror during the civil rights movement. “Coming from Mississippi and seeing stuff intersect, talking about this stuff is like talking about what happened down the road,” said Jefferson, a Harvard Law School graduate who trained as a civil justice investigator with Bond.

    In 2017, Jefferson began compiling records of Black people found hanging or mutilated across the country. In 2019, Jefferson began focusing her investigation on Mississippi. In each case she investigated, law enforcement officials ruled the deaths suicides, but the families said the victims had been lynched.

    Historically, lynchings were often defined as fatal hangings by mobs, often acting with impunity and in an extrajudicial capacity to create racial terror. Crowds of White people often gathered in town squares or on courthouse lawns to watch Black people be lynched.

There’s much more at the original.

DeNeen L Brown is an award-winning reporter, but she is also someone who very much has an agenda:

    Brown has written extensively about the country’s history of racial terror lynchings and massacres. After Brown’s 2018 story on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre was published on the front page of The Washington Post, the mayor of Tulsa announced he would reopen the city’s search for mass graves of Black victims of the massacre. In October 2020, the city discovered a mass grave that may be connected to the massacre. Scientists will begin examining the remains this summer.

    Over more than three decades, Brown has been a ground-breaking reporter, with a strong writing voice uncovering stories about the Black community. At The Post, Brown covered night police, education, courts, politics, arts, theater and culture. She has been a staff writer in the famed Style section of The Washington Post and a staff writer for The Washington Post magazine, where she wrote award-winning narratives.

The problem is that, for an award-winning reporter, this article was not exactly the epitome of good journalism. Miss Brown extensively covers the mission of Jill Collen Jefferson, but provides virtually nothing in corroboration, and nothing that might call into question Miss Jefferson’s statements or conclusions.

    “There is a pattern to how these cases are investigated,” Jefferson said. “When authorities arrive on the scene of a hanging, it’s treated as a suicide almost immediately. The crime scene is not preserved. The investigation is shoddy. And then there is a formal ruling of suicide, despite evidence to the contrary. And the case is never heard from again unless someone brings it up.”

Is Miss Jefferson’s statement true? Miss Brown never investigates or questions it. She then proceeds to list the eight victims that Miss Jefferson alleges to have been lynched:

  • Raynard Johnson, 17: June 16, 2000: “There’s enough circumstantial stuff here that warrants a serious investigation. We will not rest until those who committed this murder are brought to justice,” Jackson told demonstrators before leading a march to the pecan tree where Raynard was found. “We reject the suicide theory.” In February 2001, the Justice Department announced it ended its investigation into Johnson’s death: “The evidence does not support a federal criminal civil rights prosecution.”

In other words, the federal Department of Justice, during the Administration of President Bill Clinton, investigated the evidence, and couldn’t find sufficient evidence to conclude that there was a lynching. Though the younger George Bush was President by the time this was announced, it was the first month of his term.

  • Nick Naylor, 23: January 9, 2003

Mr Taylor’s family claims that this was a murder, but no evidence other than that claim is provided.

  • Roy Veal, 55: April 22, 2004

A state police spokesman said that Mr Veal’s death was consistent with suicide, but that the case is with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation. No other information is given.

  • Frederick Jermaine Carter, 26: December 3, 2010: Frederick Jermaine Carter was found hanging from a tree limb in a White neighborhood in Greenwood, Miss. The state medical examiner ruled Carter’s death a suicide. Relatives called it a lynching and demanded for a federal investigation. Derrick Johnson, then-state president of the Mississippi NAACP, told reporters that the community had “lost all confidence in the ability of local law enforcement to investigate” the case of Carter’s hanging. He called on the Justice Department to investigate. A spokesperson for the department declined to comment on the case.

Note that Mr Carter’s death occurred in December of 2010, and the federal Department of Justice was under the control of President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, men not at all inclined to cover up a lynching and, especially in the case of Mr Holder, men not at all afraid to stir up divisions if they believed there was an incident of racial injustice or civil rights violations.

  • Craig Anderson, 49: June 26, 2011

This case actually was proven to be a hate crime, and three teenagers were convicted in federal court.

  • Otis Byrd, 54: March 19, 2015

Mr Byrd was paroled in 2006 following a 1980 conviction for murder. Miss Brown’s article noted that the FBI and Justice Department launched an investigation, but stated that there was no evidence to prove Mr Byrd’s death was a homicide. This was under the Obama Administration.

  • Phillip Carroll, 22: May 28, 2017: Phillip Carroll was found hanging from a tree in Jackson, Miss. Police called the death a suicide. Early reports said Carroll had been found with his hands tied behind his back. Police denied that account. “If there’s any other information or evidence that anyone may have to make us believe that it may not be a suicide, again, we’re open to any information and any evidence to aid us in the investigation,” Jackson Police Commander Tyree Jones told reporters. “But as of right now, we don’t have anything other than the fact that his death has been ruled a suicide.”

Jackson Police Commander Tyree Jones is black, so he’s not the type to cover up a racially motivated lynching.

  • Deondrey Montreal Hopkins, 35: May 5, 2019: Deondrey Montreal Hopkins, who lived in Columbus, Miss., was found hanging from a tree on a bank of the Luxapallila Creek. Columbus Police Chief Fred Shelton said Hopkins’s death was not a homicide. The Justice Department declined to comment on the case.

That’s it, that’s the end of Miss Brown’s article. And other than one, which was a matter of public record, there is no evidence of anything other than speculation by concerned parties and family members that these deaths were lynchings.

That does not mean that some of these cases weren’t actually murders, murders by people clever enough to have left no incriminating evidence. It also does not mean that some of these cases, if homicides, couldn’t have been carried out by black men rather than white. This is the problem with the award-winning reporter’s reporting: it’s nothing other than the speculation of Miss Jefferson. Were I the editor of The Washington Post, I would have read this story, and rather than give it the huge title seen on the newspaper’s website, I would have returned it to her with the instructions to get more, because this is agenda-driven journolism,[2]The spelling ‘journolist’ 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 … Continue reading not journalism.

I entitled this article “A stunning lack of perspective,” for a very good reason. DeNeen Brown was very, very concerned with eight possible lynchings, over the past 21 years, yet in St Louis, Missouri, as of August 7th of this year, there have been 109 homicides, and of those 109 murders, 100 have been of black victims, 81 males and 19 females. St Louis, with a population of 294,890 is almost evenly divided between black and white residents, yet 91.74% of the murder victims there are black. Miss Brown is very concerned with eight homicides of black men over 21 years, while more than eight black men have been murdered in the Gateway to the West every single month!

And of the 49 known suspects in those killings, 48 are also black, while one is listed as race unknown.

Why doesn’t that concern Miss Brown? While I cannot read her mind, one suspicion immediately comes to mind: there is no political advantage for the left to note the tremendous black-on-black homicide rate in America.

I use St Louis statistics because St Louis is not only a very high murder rate city, but one of the few to publish the racial statistics along with the other numbers. Other murder centers like Chicago and Philadelphia publish the numbers, but we generally don’t find out the racial breakdowns until the end of the year. P F Whalen noted, near the end of July, that Philadelphia has the Highest Murder Rate Of The Largest U.S. Cities,[3]In something of a stunning development, in the two weeks between the end of Thursday, July 22nd and Thursday, August 5th, Philly has only eight reported homicides! As often as I have reported on the … Continue reading but as far as the racial numbers are concerned, we don’t have the breakdown. We only know that last year, 86% of homicide victims were black, in a city that is only about 44% black. Of course, I have noted, uncounted times, that The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t care about homicides in the city unless the victim is an innocent, like Christine Lupo, a “somebody,” like a local high school basketball player, or a cute little white girl, like Rian Thal.

At least the Inquirer’s motives are clear: publisher Elizabeth Hughes has stated that she wants to make the Inquirer an “anti racist news organization,” and paying attention to the appalling black-on-black homicide rate in the city runs quite contrary to her goals.

Whether that is how the editors of The Washington Post think, I do not know.

Perspective is important. Yes, those eight men who died, over 21 years, in Mississippi, are important, but are they really more important that the 322 people who have poured out their life’s blood in Philadelphia’s mean streets? The only difference that I can see is DeNeen Brown’s apparent assumption that some or all of them were killed in lynchings by Evil White Men.

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

↑2 The spelling ‘journolist’ 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.
↑3 In something of a stunning development, in the two weeks between the end of Thursday, July 22nd and Thursday, August 5th, Philly has only eight reported homicides! As often as I have reported on the carnage in the City of Brotherly Love, I am shocked.
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Hold them accountable! Joana Peca of St Petersburg was murdered allegedly by a man who should have been behind bars at the time

Former Washington Times reporter and current blogger Robert Stacy McCain has another article up about the foolish decisions some people take, decisions which can send them unexpectedly to their eternal rewards:

Mr McCain’s focus is a bit different than mine. He focuses on the utter stupidity of women who choose to ‘date’, and have babies with, convicted felons and obvious criminals, along with the failure of feminist organizations to call out ‘violence against women’ when the (alleged) perpetrators are not evil white men. Much further down, he gets to the case at hand:

    So, having made that 1,000-word digression, we now return to the main topic, Joana Peca of St. Petersburg, Florida.

    The tattoo on her (remarkably abundant) cleavage could be cited as evidence of Joana Peca’s defective judgment. The “rationalization hamster” must have run itself silly attempting to justify such a choice. And I’m sure that David Futrelle and Laura Bates would accuse me of misogyny merely for calling attention to this, because any criticism of any woman for any reason is always misogyny, according to feminist logic. “Equality” seems to require that women go through life without ever encountering negative feedback, no matter how foolish or harmful their actions may be, so the effect of feminism in public discourse is to make women off-limits to criticism (unless they vote Republican).

    The problem with this, you see, is that without feedback — including the kind of feedback that might persuade a woman not to get tattoos on her breasts — all sorts of foolish behavior are likely to proliferate because, without critical feedback, bad judgment tends to become generalized.

    Say hello to Benjamin Robert “Bambi” Williams, age 38:

      Williams has a Pinellas County arrest record that spans about 20 years. He has been arrested in cases ranging from grand theft auto, possession of drugs with intent to sell, robbery and fleeing police. He was most recently arrested on charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm in January 2020. The state attorney’s office did not seek a prosecution.

      In 2007, Williams was arrested on charges of principle to attempted murder and strong-arm robbery, but those charges were dismissed, court records show.

    Now, if you had a daughter, wouldn’t you advise her to avoid associating with anyone who had such an extensive criminal record? Yes, but then again, if she’s got already tattoos on her cleavage . . .

      Detectives have identified Benjamin Robert Williams aka “Bambi” (DOB 12/31/1982) as the suspect in Saturday’s (July 31, 2021) shooting death of Joana Peca.

      Williams and Peca were involved in a romantic relationship and had a baby together. Peca was holding the infant when Williams shot her multiple times in the face. Her older child was sitting in the backseat during the shooting.

      A warrant has been issued for William’s arrest and SPPD is actively searching for him. Crime Stoppers is offering up to $5000 for information that leads to an arrest.

      Benjamin Williams is deemed to be armed and dangerous.

      He is linked to several open homicide investigations.

The part onto which I focused was different.

    He was most recently arrested on charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm in January 2020. The state attorney’s office did not seek a prosecution.
    The obvious question is: why didn’t the state’s attorney seek a prosecution?

Convicted felons in possession of a firearm are about the simplest cases around:

  1. The suspect is a convicted felon, a matter of record; and
  2. The suspect was arrested in possession of a firearm.

Just how much more open-and-shut does it get?

If Mr Williams is actually the one who murdered Miss Peca, then is not the state’s attorney who declined to prosecute Mr Williams, leaving him out on the streets, just as responsible for Miss Peca’s death?

How many murders could have been prevented if prosecutors and parole boards did their f(ornicating) jobs and locked up these criminals for the maximum allowable time under the law?

Look at the record:

    Williams has a Pinellas County arrest record that spans about 20 years. He has been arrested in cases ranging from grand theft auto, possession of drugs with intent to sell, robbery and fleeing police.

Why would any, any! prosecutor decline to prosecute someone like Mr Williams for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon? Someone like Mr Williams is not just some misunderstood young lad, drawn into bad decisions by older boys; he’s 38 years old, and has been ‘involved’ in the criminal justice system for two decades. This is the kind of case that any responsible prosecutor ought to pursue as hard as he could, to get this man male off the streets.

Sadly, none of the media accounts I have been able to find have told us why the unnamed state’s attorney declined to prosecute Mr Williams 19 months ago, nor do we know why some other previous charges were dropped.

Miss Peca was, in part, the victim of her own poor decisions, but she did not somehow deserve to die. If Mr Williams is the person who killed her, then it has to be asked: why do the prosecutors who declined to pursue felony charges against Mr Williams in January of 2020 not bear some responsibility for Miss Peca’s murder?

Under Florida statute Title XLVI Chapter 790 §790.23, someone in illegal possession of a firearm commits a felony of the second degree, punishable as provided in §775.082, for which the punishment is incarceration in the state penitentiary for up to 15 years.

In other words, on the day that Mr Williams allegedly murdered Miss Peca, he could have been behind bars, looking at not getting out until 2035!

It is at least possible that the arresting officers somehow fouled up, making the charge non-prosecutable, but someone, somewhere in law enforcement, needs to be held accountable.

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Store Owner Goes Off On Abusive Gender Confused: “You’re Not A Chick”

A big problem with today’s society is not just that so many want to be Victims: they want to force their opinions and beliefs on everyone else. They want Compliance. Acceptance is secondary, if even part of the equation. Too many want to get involved rather than just moving on, living and let live. Yes, there are times you should get involved, like, if you see a serious crime. These nags see everything as a serious crime

‘You are not a chick’: Video shows argument between trans councilwoman and store owner over anti-transgender sign

A Star Wars shop owner in Washington doesn’t “give a s***” about feelings anymore after a confrontation with a transgender councilwoman.

Councilwoman Tiesa Meskis, a biological male who identifies as a woman, confronted Don Sucher over a sign in his store that she said was offensive and anti-trans on Wednesday.

“If you are born with a d***, you are not a chick,” read the sign posted at the Sucher & Sons Star Wars Shop.

Meskis described the sign as offensive and requested Sucher to remove it.

She entered the store and confronted Sucher before he asked her to leave, which she did, a video of the incident showed.

The sign is scientifically correct. It’s at a private business. This is none Councilman Meskis’ business. You know he went there intentionally in order to cause a problem, force his mentally deranged opinion, and then play the Victim.

The argument poured onto the streets as the two can be seen yelling at one another.

“Trans women are women,” Meskis said in the video she posted online.

“You’re nuts,” Sucher said in response during the five-minute confrontation.

“I don’t care what they do, but don’t come in here and complain to me about stuff,” Sucher told KING 5, a local news station, after the incident. “I have free speech.” (snip)

“I don’t give a **** about feelings anymore,” he added. “I’m 70 ******* 8. I went to Vietnam to fight for all this ****. Do you think I care about some a******’s feelings? Absolutely not!”

Good for him, not backing down.

“What he wrote there was so demeaning and so dismissive of who I am, who any trans woman is,” Meskis said.

So what? Get over it. That’s life.

I haven’t been able to find out where the video came from. Did Meskis have someone filming, meaning it was a setup? And he and his Antifa Comrades plan to harass the owner

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Hold them accountable! If Brandon Dockery is the killer of Raymar Webb, then the Kentucky Parole Board which released him early, are also responsible for Mr Webb's death

We have previously noted how the Lexington Herald-Leader hid the available mugshot of accused murderer Brandon Dockery, even when he was on the loose and considered to be “armed and dangerous.” Mr Dockery was a previously convicted felon — that’s how the Lexington Police Department had a mugshot of him in the first place — and the Herald-Leader has not been at all afraid to post the photos of convicted felons, even after the implementation of the McClatchy Mugshot Policy, at least not as long as the accused criminals or convicted felons were white.

Robert Stacy McCain noted that it took a name like Leif Halvorsen to get the newspaper to publish his mugshot! 🙂

The Herald-Leader’s Karla Ward did some actual journalism in ferreting out Mr Dockery’s name, after police did not release it during the Kentucky State Police’s investigation of the officer-involved shooting which led to Mr Dockery’s capture, so the paper has to be congratulated for that. And now, reporter Jeremy Chisenhall has done so more investigative work, for which he deserves credit. Hey, I’ve criticized the journolism[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ 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 … Continue reading of the paper often enough that it behooves me to give credit when credit is due!

    Lexington homicide suspect was on parole after setting an apartment building ablaze

    By Jeremy Chisenhall | August 4, 2021 4:34 PM

    A Lexington man sentenced in 2012 to 45 years in state prison has been charged in a homicide that occurred earlier this year, not long after he was released on parole, according to court records.

    Brandon Dockery, 32, was sentenced in 2012 to 45 years in prison after he admitted to lighting a Lexington apartment building on fire. The fire was set after he got into a fight with people in one of the apartments. He destroyed several apartments, killed pets and forced residents to flee the building. One jumped off a third-floor balcony.

    Now Dockery has been charged with murder in a 2021 shooting after getting into a standoff with law enforcement that ended with him being shot, according to police and court records. He pleaded not guilty to the homicide, which happened about eight months after Dockery was released on parole.

Now I would add my usual “There’s more at the original” blurb, but, Alas! you cannot access it unless you are a Herald-Leader subscriber! Briefly, Mr Chisenhall’s article describes how Mr Dockery had his sexual advances toward a woman in an apartment building rebuffed, and was thrown out by her two brothers after he became aggressive; Mr Dockery, they stated, appeared to be intoxicated. Mr Dockery then threatened to kill them and burn down their building. He later returned with 95¢ worth of gasoline in a can, and set the building alight. An overhead photo in the Herald-Leader story shows the building as completely destroyed. Though Mr Dockery wrote a whining letter to Judge Pamela Goodwine, telling her that he had gone nuts temporarily insane when he torched the building, she was apparently unmoved, and sentenced him to 45 years in the state penitentiary.

And this is where things went bad. In the Bluegrass State, a felon becomes eligible for parole after serving only 20% of his sentence.

Mr Dockery, who should have been locked up until November 19, 2055, was turned loose after serving just 10 years, 8 months. He was, according to the Herald-Leader, released on October 23, 2020, which was a week before his parole eligibility date, as stated in the parole information I screen captured.

I will ask the question I have been asking all along: why shouldn’t the state Parole Board, which released Mr Dockery after serving just 23.7% of his sentence, be held accountable for Mr Dockery’s (alleged) murder of 30-year-old Raymar Webb? If the Parole Board had the option of keeping Mr Dockery locked up — an option they exercised following his first parole hearing — they should have done so. Because they did not, and if Mr Dockery really is Mr Webb’s killer, the Parole Board is in part responsible for Mr Webb being dead, stone-cold graveyard dead. If Mr Dockery is the actual killer, then Mr Webb would (probably) still be alive, if only the Parole Board had kept the accused behind bars, where he belonged.

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ 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.
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Hold them accountable!

The very title of “Judge” implies that we expect the holder of such a title to actually have good judgement, but there are times it seems that such an expectation is silly. We have recently reported on Delaware’s Superior Court Judge Vivian L. Medinilla, the utterly idiotic distinguished jurist who turned Keith Gibson loose on a probation violation which could have put him away for 6½ years, even though she was aware that he was a suspect in a murder investigation in Philadelphia, but would not consider that in her deliberations. Mr Gibson is now accused of having committed several additional murders after he was released, when he could have been safely behind bars.

Judge Medinilla didn’t even do Mr Gibson a favor. Instead of looking forward to being released after 6½ more years behind bars, Mr Gibson is now going to, if convicted, spend the rest of his miserable life in prison.

Judge Michael McLaughlin, from Cobb County government page.

Now we come to Cobb County, Georgia, Magistrate Judge Michael McLaughlin.

Judge Michael McLaughlin is the Dean of the Cobb County Magistrate Court bench. After first being appointed in 1985, he has served continuously with six different Chief Magistrates. Judge McLaughlin has heard every type of case filed in Magistrate Court and routinely handles the Court’s busy civil calendars.

In addition to his service on the bench, Judge McLaughlin ran a successful law firm for over 35 years. He has extensive experience in criminal law, and before taking the bench full-time, his practice most recently focused on family law and representing injured people. Judge McLaughlin is the co-author of Admissibility of Evidence in Civil Cases—a Manual for Georgia Trial Lawyers, which is updated and published annually. He has taught other judges through the Institute of Continuing Judicial Education and aspiring paralegals at Kennesaw State University.

Judge McLaughlin is a member of the Cobb County Bar Association and the Council of Magistrate Court Judges. He is a graduate of Florida State University and John Marshall Law School. He has resided in East Cobb with his wife Michelle for over 30 years. The McLaughlins have two adult children and attend Johnson Ferry Baptist Church and the Catholic Church of St. Ann.

Sounds like a very serious man, right? We turn to our good friend Robert Stacy McCain:

Austin William Lanz

Crazy people are dangerous

Robert Stacy McCain | August 4, 2021

This is a mugshot of Austin William Lanz, when he was arrested in April in Cobb County, Georgia, after breaking into a neighbor’s home. Lanz, who lived with his parents in Acworth, about 30 miles north of Atlanta, had spent months harassing the neighbor and the neighbor’s fiancée:

He was recorded on video by the security system roaming the house for 13 minutes and turned on all the lights, which police said indicated that he’d been “searching through the residence for something or someone.” He left without taking anything, according to arrest reports and court filings.

Lanz was arrested and booked on charges of burglary and trespassing charges. When informed he was being charged, Lanz objected, saying, “but I didn’t take anything,” the arrest report said. He then made statements to a police officer about how planes had been flying over the neighborhood and tracking his cellphone.

(What part of “crazy” do I need to explain here?)

While being processed at the county jail, Lanz . . . attacked two sheriff’s deputies in the intake area without provocation, including one who sustained a chipped bone and torn ligament in her knee. After he was restrained, Lanz reportedly accused the officers of being “gay” for teaming up on him and asked to be uncuffed so he could fight them one-on-one.

A judge reduced his bond in May to $30,000 and released him, imposing some conditions, including that he not take illegal drugs, that he undergo a mental health evaluation and that he not possess a firearm. . . .

(“Hey, this psycho attacked two deputies, but I’m going to turn him loose, on condition he get some help with his mental health.”)

There’s more at Mr McCain’s original, making his point that crazy people are dangerous. Mr McCain’s article title, Crazy People Are Dangerous is on its 27th usage.

I look at it differently. Mr Lanz, you see, took a bus to our nation’s capitol and killed a police officer.

The man who killed a Pentagon police officer at a nearby transit center Tuesday got off a bus, immediately stabbed the officer and then shot himself with the officer’s gun, the FBI says.

Officer George Gonzalez was killed in the line of duty after a burst of violence on a bus platform outside the headquarters of the U.S. military. The Pentagon was temporarily locked down.

The FBI said in new information Wednesday that Austin William Lanz, 27, of Georgia, is the suspect. Lanz died at the scene. A “civilian bystander” was wounded and had non-life-threatening injuries.

According to the FBI, Lanz got off a bus at the Pentagon Transit Center in Arlington at about 10:40 a.m. Tuesday and “immediately, without provocation, attacked Officer George Gonzalez with a knife, severely wounding him.”

A “struggle ensued” and Lanz mortally wounded Gonzalez.

Lanz then shot himself with Gonzalez’ gun.

Which brings me back to Judge McLaughlin. He was the judge who looked at the evidence, evidence of an obviously crazy man, and turned him loose! As Mr McCain noted, he attacked two deputies, and had been threatening his previous victims with a firearm, but Judge Mclaughlin thought that telling him that he:

  1. Could not possess a firearm;
  2. Could not take illegal drugs; and
  3. Must undergo a mental health examination

would persuade him to be a good little boy, would actually keep him from possession weapons or taking drugs.

Can anyone tell me why Cobb County Magistrate Court Judge Michael E. McLaughlin should not be held accountable for the crimes, for the murder, that an obviously crazy defendant that he released committed? Like Judge Medinilla, Judge McLaughlin did the defendant no favor. Instead of perhaps getting some mental health treatment, instead of perhaps spending a couple of years locked up, Mr Lanz is now stone-cold graveyard dead . . . and he took Officer Gonzalez with him.

If we held judges and parole boards accountable for the crimes of people they let go easily or early, that bovine feces would stop. Criminals would be sentenced to the maximum allowable time under the law, and parole boards wouldn’t release anyone before he had served every last day of his sentence. Keeping criminals off the streets might not be very sympathetic to them, but it would be a whole lot safer for the public.

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Political correctness obscures the history of a brave black frontiersman

As we were moving from Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania to our small farm in the Bluegrass State, our 624 mile trip took us down Interstate 68 in Maryland. Along that most scenic of Interstate highways, the Old Line State maintains a few elevation signs near the tops of mountains, like Keyser’s Ridge at 2,880 feet, and Meadow Mountain, the elevation of which I do not remember. They were interesting, in passing, but not so interesting that I felt the need to research them.

Negro Mountain sign on I-68 in Maryland; the sign has been removed,

But there was one I did research, because of its seemingly unusual name: Negro Mountain. From The Baltimore Sun:

    The great divide: Negro Mountain in Maryland and Pennsylvania retains its name despite controversy

    October 3, 2020 | 3:01 AM EDT

    PITTSBURGH — An Allegheny Mountain ridge stretching some 30 miles from the Casselman River in southern Somerset County to Deep Creek Lake in Western Maryland has been the focus of controversy as attempts continue to change a name dating to the French and Indian War.

    The name in question: Negro Mountain.

    The name has been used consistently at least since 1841, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Negro Ridge was cited in the Pennsylvania Senate Journal in 1842.

    “If a name is offensive to people — remove it,” said James Saku, a geography professor and coordinator of African American Studies at Frostburg State University in Maryland, located about 20 miles east of the site.

There’s more at the original, but I have to ask: why is the word that the Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, used to refer to his race, offensive?

Why was the mountain so named? The most widely accepted, but still not proven, story is that a free black man believed to have been named Nemesis, or possibly Goliath, the “body servant” of Col. Thomas Cresap, was killed in 1756 in a fierce battle with Indians during the French and Indian War.

    Cresap, an English-born frontiersman and land speculator in Maryland and Pennsylvania, named the mountain in honor of Nemesis’ race, according to an account from the Western Maryland Historic Library, part of the Western Maryland Regional Library in Hagerstown.

    That account also was published in Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette on June 17, 1756. Another account offers a different version, saying the man died while fighting with a Capt. Friend.

Lynn Bowman, an adjunct associate professor of English and speech at Allegany College of Maryland, has a darker version. She claimed that the west side of the mountain there was an area called [culturally inappropriate slang term derived from Negro] Hollow where black people were lynched, though that would seem to post-date the name of the mountain.

Well, who can know, but it wouldn’t have made much sense to name the mountain for Nemesis’ race if the second account is the true one.

But one thing is certain: I would never have heard of Nemesis, or Goliath if that was what he was called, had the mountain been named Nemesis Mountain; it would have held no interest to me. I also did not know that there were free black men on the frontier at the time; now, I do.

Alas Political correctness has struck!

    Negro Mountain signs ‘part of history’

    By Teresa McMinn | November 3, 2019

    CUMBERLAND — Kenneth Lloyd wants to buy the Negro Mountain signs, which disappeared from Garrett County roads earlier this year, and install them in his front yard.

    Negro Mountain occupies a 30-mile stretch of the Alleghenies from Deep Creek Lake north to the Casselman River in Pennsylvania.

    The ridge in Garrett County reaches 3,075 feet at its peak, and in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, marks the highest point in the state.

    The Maryland Department of Transportation State Highway Administration earlier this year removed four Negro Mountain signs — two from Interstate 68 and two from U.S. Alternate Route 40.

    “I’m highly upset,” Lloyd, a Philadelphia native who now lives in Grantsville, said of the missing signs.

    “That’s a part of the history of this country,” said Lloyd, who served in the U.S. Marines from 1979 to 1986 and now works as a truck driver. “Learn from it.”

    According to Lora Rakowski, acting director of the state highway agency’s office of communications, the removal of the signs cost $212 in staff time.

    “We know this issue involves an important piece of local history,” she said via email. “We also know that some people feel the signage was inappropriate.”

There is some dispute about the man’s name; it was not given in the contemporaneous stories. What is given is that he was a free black man, a frontiersman, who fought and died on that mountain. But his deeds, even if perhaps somewhat legendary, honor him, but, due to the political correctness of the #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading, fewer people will know of it.

And so the signs are gone. There will be no future travelers on I-68 in Garrett County, Maryland, who will see the odd sign, and decide to Google search for it, and what little remains of Nemesis’ memory will fade away.

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

    Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
    By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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Politico: Biden’s Border Plan A Has Gone Bust, What’s Plan B?

So, what was plan A, total anarchy at the border? Mostly refusing to enforce duly passed federal immigration law? Handcuffing Customs and Border Protection, as well as Immigration and Customs Enforcement and all other law enforcement attempting to stop illegals? Allowing illegals/migrants into the U.S. without any sort of medical tests, such as for COVID? And lots of other transmittable diseases? And then demanding that they all be given free citizenship so they become Democratic Party voters?

Biden’s vision for the border has gone bust. But what’s Plan B?

President Joe Biden in March wrote off a spike in the number of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border as a result, at least in part, of winter months being the safest time to make the trek. “It happens every single, solitary year,” he said.

Six months into his term, Biden and his team are being proved wrong.

The number of migrants apprehended at the border isn’t going down this summer, even as the heat makes the journey to the U.S. more dangerous. Instead, it has reached a 21-year high — and there’s a record number of unaccompanied children arriving, too.

China Joe and his Comrades are enabling parents sending their children on long, dangerous treks through Central America, to be preyed upon by all sorts of bad people.

As the administration, local officials, border agents and nonprofit leaders grapple with the day-to-day logistical challenges of apprehending and processing or expelling thousands of migrants, U.S. officials and immigration experts say they have theories but no concrete explanations for why the increase is happening now. Many see it as a confluence of destabilizing conditions, some new, some long-standing: a still-raging pandemic, worsening economic crisis and devastation from past natural disasters.

It’s very simple: if you refuse to do anything to stop it, it will grow. If your child keeps throwing tomatoes at the neighbors house and you do nothing to stop it, nothing to discourage it, they’re going to continue doing it. If someone is throwing firebombs at federal buildings and you don’t bother keeping them in jail nor prosecuting, they’re going to do it even more. If these “experts” can’t figure out why immigration has spiked, they should be fired. You know what’s going on, no need for me to spend more time writing the words you already know.

But tackling those root causes of migration is a long-term effort that can take years. And in the interim, Biden and his aides have been left with a tricky balancing act: remaining committed to building an immigration system that the president promised to be fair and humane, while also talking tough and looking at stronger enforcement tools to deter migrants.

Again, you know what the root causes are, including Democrats enabling this behavior. Is the immigration system thing supposed to be Plan A?

In recent weeks, Republicans have pointed to those numbers in stepping up their attacks against the president, branding the situation as the “Biden border crisis” in emails, ads and statements. On Wednesday, the Republican National Committee blasted out an email declaring that the latest estimated July apprehension figures “show Biden’s border crisis is raging completely out of control.”

Republicans pounce!

Fifty-two percent of registered voters, including Republicans, independents and even some Democrats, disapproved of the job Biden is doing on immigration, according to a new Morning Consult/POLITICO poll released Wednesday. Only 37 percent approved.

You actually have to attempt to do the job, don’t you, to be rated?

Johnson, like many Republicans, contends that Biden caused the situation at the border because of his rollback of certain Trump-era policies at the start of his presidency. Supporters of the president counter that in recent months, Biden has not made any major substantive policy changes that would explain the new uptick in arrivals. Those same supporters, nevertheless, say they’re frustrated, not necessarily with the administration’s policies but with their messaging.

China Joe doesn’t need to make any changes, all the previous ones have added up. As for messaging, well, what’s he supposed to say? The border is being overrun and he’s just letting them go, not even requiring them to get COVID tests?

The White House declined to provide comment on the increases in migrants or to allow an interview with a policy expert to talk about the border. The Department of Homeland Security pointed to documents from the White House and State Department outlining Biden’s immigration strategy. In March, Biden tapped Vice President Kamala Harris to tackle the root causes of migration from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. She has traveled to Guatemala and Mexico and visited the border town of El Paso, Texas, since then. Her office declined to comment for this story.

She hasn’t done squat, and Dementia Joe is directly responsible as the Chief Executive.

Last week, the Biden administration released a 21-point plan outlining how it will fairly and efficiently consider asylum claims, while ensuring a secure, well-managed border. In the framework, the White House acknowledged that its promised fair and humane immigration system “won’t be achieved overnight, especially after the prior Administration’s irrational and inhumane policies, but this Administration has a blueprint to get there and is making real progress.”

Real progress is stopping all work on a border wall? Real progress is catching the illegals and just letting them go with barely a promise to show up to court? Allowing migrants who show up at the border demanding to be let in to the U.S. in, with barely a promise to show up to court? Basically saying there are no consequences?

Politico thinks this isn’t working. It’s working exactly as Joe and the Dems planned: all an attempt to flood the U.S. with illegals and migrants, all in an attempt to force through an amnesty.

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Bummer: Woke US Women’s Soccer Protest Team Loses

I really don’t feel bad having rooted against Megan Rapinoe and the rest of her America hating comrades: they don’t like the U.S., so, they don’t deserve support

USWNT’s dreams of Olympic gold dashed in listless 1-0 semifinal loss to Canada

The U.S. women’s national team crashed out of its chase for Olympic gold with a dud of a 1-0 loss to Canada here on Monday, a fitting end to a pursuit in which the most dominant soccer team in the world never hit top gear.

Officially, the Americans will play for bronze on Friday because of a 75th-minute penalty, conceded by Tierna Davidson for a foul on Deanne Rose, awarded after a video review. Canada’s Jessie Fleming converted it. Backup U.S. goalkeeper Adrianna Franch just barely couldn’t save it.

But really, the Americans fell short of the final because they were poor, throughout the Games and here on a sleepy, sticky-hot evening at the Ibaraki Kashima Stadium. They had no rhythm. No composure. No verve.

Instead, there were errant passes. Sloppy touches. Fatigue. Frustration. And a first loss to Canada since 2001.

“Sucks,” Megan Rapinoe said, in response to a question about what was going through her head at final whistle. “Really sh—y.”

Yeah, well, maybe they should have spent more time practicing and getting their heads right rather than worrying about what kinds of things they were going to do show their hatred of the U.S.

Also

Totally looks like a woman, right?

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Is the Lexington Herald-Leader guilty of sheltering a criminal suspect?

As we have previously noted, the Lexington Herald-Leader is bound by the McClatchy Mugshot Policy, which states that McClatchy publications will not print photos of criminal suspects, unless certain conditions are met. One of the exceptions editors are supposed to consider — and all exceptions to the policy must be approved by an editor — is “Is there an urgent threat to the community?”

On Wednesday, July 28th, Lexington police officers, working with United States Marshals, attempted to arrest Mr Dockery at a home in the 1600 block of Thirlstane Court. The suspect allegedly shot at police, and at least one officer returned fire and wounded Mr Dockery. The Herald-Leader was all kinds of upset that the LPD would not release the names of either the suspect or the officer who shot him.

    Officials haven’t identified the Lexington police officer who fired his gun, nor have they identified the suspect who was shot. He was served with a murder warrant after being taken to a Lexington hospital, according to Lexington police. Police hadn’t yet confirmed who shot the man. It was unclear if U.S. Marshals also fired at him.

    Kentucky State Police are investigating the shooting and Lexington police told the Herald-Leader the release of any additional information would have to be approved by the state agency. Lexington police declined to answer several questions about the shooting during a press conference Wednesday after providing a news release.

The Kentucky State Police, rather than the Lexington Police Department, investigates all officer involved shootings. It would normally be considered a good thing that an agency not involved in the incident would do the investigations.

Well, for the Herald-Leader, which is reluctant to print the mugshots of even “armed and dangerous” criminals, not knowing which officer shot the suspect was just too, too much, so the newspaper kept investigating. At least so far, the officer has not been publicly identified.

    Documents divulge name of man injured in shooting involving Lexington police officer

    By Karla Ward | July 30, 2021 | 9:45 PM EDT

    Court documents provide a description of what police say led up to a shooting in which law enforcement officers injured a homicide suspect at a Lexington home Wednesday.

    The man who was shot is identified as Brandon Dockery, according to documents filed in Fayette District Court in a related case.

    Police said in the court documents that when they went to a home on the 1600 block of Thirlstane Court and made contact with Dockery at the front door, he kept “his hand in his pocket as if he had a weapon” and “continued to ignore officer’s commands.”

    Dockery can be heard saying “I don’t want to die,” on body camera footage, police said in the documents.

The article continues to note that the police initially used a stun gun to subdue Mr Dockery, and an exchange of gunfire followed when the taser apparently failed to incapacitate the suspect. A jammed handgun was found in Mr Dockery’s possession, which has investigators believing that the suspect shot at the arresting officers until it jammed on him.

While the Herald-Leader does not print mugshots of criminal suspects, The First Street Journal does, if we can obtain them. The mugshot of Mr Dockery is not from any Herald-Leader article, but from the Lexington Police Department’s homicide investigations page. I obtained this photo at the time of June 25th story, when Mr Dockery was still on the loose.

So, how did Karla Ward, the newspaper reporter, find out the name of the suspect shot, a name officials had declined to release prior to the completion of the investigation?

    Courtney Jade Brown. Screen capture from WKYT-TV.

    The information was included in a criminal complaint charging Courtney Jade Brown, 26, with first-degree hindering prosecution/apprehension in connection with Dockery’s apprehension. . . .

    The complaint against Brown states that officers and federal agents were doing surveillance at Brown’s residence on Thirlstane Court after learning that Dockery had been in contact with Brown recently and had been “staying there regularly since June.”

    When they saw Brown leave Wednesday morning, Lexington police immediately stopped her at the Speedway at New Circle and Meadow Lane.

    During an interview with a detective from the U.S. Marshal’s Service at the gas station, Brown said she didn’t know where Dockery was and lied when asked if he was at her home, the complaint states.

After interviewing Miss Brown, the LPD and US Marshalls went straight to her home, where Mr Dockery was found. Miss Brown was arrested, charged and released on Thursday.

Of course, the Herald-Leader did not choose to print Miss Brown’s photo either, even though my source for it, WKYT-TV is the newspaper’s ‘news partner,’ and the WKYT story was published at 4:38 PM EDT, three hours and 7 minutes prior to the Herald-Leader’s story. The Herald-Leader certainly had access to the photo.

Obvious question: if Miss Brown is guilty of sheltering Mr Dockery from the police, is the Herald-Leader guilty of the same thing? The residence in question is on a single family homes street, and if the Herald-Leader had published Mr Dockery’s mugshot, perhaps one of the neighbors might have seen it, recognized him, and reported it to the police. The police clearly suspected that Mr Dockery was at Miss Brown’s residence, as they were keeping the place under surveillance, but must not have had enough evidence he was there to execute a warrant there. Had a neighbor spotted the suspect, and reported it to the police, perhaps the warrant could have been executed weeks earlier.

Yes, I know: that would be a difficult case to make. But the McClatchy Mugshot Policy is clearly not helping law enforcement, or serving what so many media outlets have termed the “public’s right to know.” The Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists states:

  • Responsibility: The public’s right to know of events of public importance and interest is the overriding mission of the mass media. The purpose of distributing news and enlightened opinion is to serve the general welfare.
  • Freedom of the Press: Freedom of the press is to be guarded as an inalienable right of people in a free society. It carries with it the freedom and the responsibility to discuss, question, and challenge actions and utterances of our government and of our public and private institutions. Journalists uphold the right to speak unpopular opinions and the privilege to agree with the majority.
  • Ethics: Journalists must be free of obligation to any interest other than the public’s right to know the truth. . . . . Journalists will seek news that serves the public interest, despite the obstacles. They will make constant efforts to assure that the public’s business is conducted in public and that public records are open to public inspection.

Can someone tell me how the McClatchy Mugshot Policy and the Lexington Herald-Leader’s adherence to it, even in the case of armed and dangerous suspects, serves the public’s right to know or the general welfare? How does it serve the public’s interest, despite the obstacles? Mr Dockery has been criminally charged with murder, the most serious crime there is, yet the Herald-Leader chose to withhold from the public information which could have led to his apprehension as much as a month earlier.

Perhaps the McClatchy newspapers have chosen instead to adhere to the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journolists.[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ 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 … Continue reading

It’s simple: in their efforts not to “disproportionately harm people of color,”[2]Quote is actually from the Sacramento Bee, the lead McClatchy newspaper, and the first (as far as I know) to implement the no mugshot policy. the Herald-Leader is sacrificing the public’s right to know.

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ 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.
↑2 Quote is actually from the Sacramento Bee, the lead McClatchy newspaper, and the first (as far as I know) to implement the no mugshot policy.