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Everything is sweetness and light in Portland!

The city of Portland, Oregon, is located in Multnomah County; in the 2020 elections, Joe Biden carried the county by a huge margin, 367,249 (79.21%) to 82,995 (17.90%). I would say that it’s reasonable to describe Portland as a very liberal city.

How, then, in this bastion of leftward politics, can it be that while only 6% of Portlanders are black, black drivers account for 18% of traffic stops?

Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell

Police in Oregon’s largest city are being advised to no longer pursue low-level traffic infractions — including expired plates and broken headlights — unless related to an immediate safety threat, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler announced Tuesday.

In addition, if police do stop a driver they must receive recorded consent before searching the vehicle and clearly inform the person they have the right to refuse.

Wheeler said both changes are an attempt to refocus on immediate threats and are also occurring in response to data showing a a disproportionate impact on Black drivers for traffic stops and vehicle searches. While 6% of Portlanders are Black, he said they account for 18% of traffic stops in the city.

“The goal of these two changes is to make our safety safer and more equitable,” Wheeler said.

Portland is not the first large city to make such a move regarding traffic stops. Oakland, California, has had a similar police for the last several years.

The obvious question is: are Portland’s police officers racists, just looking to pull over cars driven by black people, or, is it possible, just possible, that black Portlanders actually commit traffic offenses at a greater rate?

Oh, wait, I’m sorry: it’s raaaaacist to even ask such a question!

After several paragraphs about the traffic stops, the Associated Press article got into what I saw as the meat of it:

Last summer, while officers’ priorities were shifted to protests, Portland was also experiencing its deadliest year in more than a quarter-century.

Gun violence has spilled over into this year, with at least 42 homicides so far. If nothing changes, Portland will surpass its all-time record for homicides of 70 set in 1987, when the city was in the midst of a gang siege.

Police estimate half of Portland’s more than 500 shootings this year, which have injured more than 140 people, are gang-related. In May, Wheeler warned that perpetrators are being told by gangs to shoot someone within 30 days or be shot and that people are traveling from other states to engage in violence in the Rose City.

The police are short on resources, in part due to the city slashing its budget by $27 million last year, and the department is 150 officers under its authorized strength.

Through the end of May, Portland saw 38 homicides, an average of one every four days. At the current pace, the city is on pace for 92 murders this year. With a city population of 662,549, that would give the city a murder rate of 13.89 per 100,000 population. Yeah, Philadelphia, St Louis and Chicago laugh at that puny rate, but it’s still damned high. How, in this very liberal city, where the policies of the left hold sway as much as possible, can we explain this? After all, the left have assured us that if we just do things their way, all will be sweetness and light?

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Yup, they did it again! The Lexington Herald-Leader publishes the photos of more white criminal suspects

We have noted, many times, how the Lexington Herald-Leader has eschewed publishing the photographs of criminal suspects who are black, but have not been so reticent when it comes to those who are white.

County jailer in Eastern Kentucky charged with DUI

By Liz Moomey | June 22, 2021 | 9:20 AM EDT

Carter County Jailer R W Boggs. Click to enlarge.

Carter County Jailer Robert “R.W.” Boggs was charged Sunday night with driving under the influence.

A Kentucky State Police trooper responded to a two-vehicle accident after Boggs hit a vehicle at the intersection of Ky. 773 and Lakeview Circle in Grayson.

According to a KSP news release, Boggs hit another vehicle twice while backing into a driveway on Lakeview Circle before stopping. The other driver exited their vehicle to inform Boggs he had hit their vehicle.

After field sobriety tests, police arrested Boggs for allegedly operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol and took him to Boyd County Detention Center.

There’s more at the original.

As the county jailer, Mr Boggs is a public official, and thus fits within the McClatchy mugshot policy for exception to the general prohibition on publishing mugshots. But, to me, so is Jason Lee Sharp, the East Jessamine High School teacher who was arrested and charged with rape, sodomy, and sexual abuse of a “person” under 16 years of age, yet the Herald-Leader not only declined to publish his mugshot, but when I linked his mugshot to their article, the paper removed the comments.

According to the mugshot policy, an editor had to have approved the publication of Mr Boggs’ photograph. Technically speaking, the photo of Mr Boggs is not a police mugshot, but the Herald-Leader used it as one.

Carter County is near the far eastern border of the Bluegrass State, bordering Boyd County and Ashland, one of Kentucky’s larger cities. The Ashland Daily Independent is far more of a ‘local’ newspaper to Carter County than the Herald-Leader, with Lexington being about eighty miles, over an hour’s drive along Interstate 64, to the west. The Daily Independent’s story on the arrest of Mr Boggs was slightly more detailed, but the Ashland paper did not publish Mr Boggs’ photo, or at least there is no photo attached to the story when I found it at 2:20 PM EDT.

Mr Boggs was charged with a relatively minor offense. No one was injured, and he has already been released from the Boyd County jail. The offense with which he has been charged is certainly not as serious as the charges against Mr Sharp.

But, that isn’t all.

Ky. man charged after 4-year-old found walking on a highway at night, deputies say

By Jeremy Chisenhall | June 22, 2021 | 7:46 AM EDT |Updated: 9:05 AM EDT

A Kentucky man was arrested over the weekend after deputies found a 4-year-old walking alone on US-25E at night, according to the Knox County sheriff’s office.

Deputies got a call about the small child walking about 2 miles north of Barbourville around 10:30 p.m. Saturday, according to the sheriff’s office. The caller said the child was walking on the white line of the road and nearly got hit by a car, according to deputies.

Deputies located the child, found out where he lived and went to his home.

“When the deputies went to the residence, they were told by the father that 62-year-old Darrell Myrick of Gray, had been left in charge of the child while the mom was away,” the sheriff’s office said in a social media post.

Myrick was arrested and charged with wanton endangerment, according to court records. He was held in the Knox County Detention Center on a $2,500 bond, according to jail records.

The Herald-Leader got the photo from the Knox County Sheriff’s Department Facebook page. Knox County is roughly 100 miles from Lexington, about an hour and 40 minute drive along Interstate 75 and then US 25E. Mr Boggs is a public official, but Mr Myrick is not; under what part of the McClatchy mugshot policy exceptions did whichever editor of the Herald-Leader who decided to include Mr Myrick’s mugshot justify his choice? He’s not a suspect in a hate crime, nor a public official, nor a serial killer or high profile crime suspect. He’s not an urgent threat to the community, in that he’s already in jail.

The Herald-Leader does, of course, enjoy the complete freedom of the press; the newspaper can print whatever it wishes. But I have to ask: for a newspaper which loves to hold other people accountable, who holds them accountable?

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An expected OpEd in The Philadelphia Inquirer A special pleader doesn't like Fulton v Philadelphia

In my article noting the Supreme Court’s decision in Fulton v Philadelphia, I wrote, “I anticipate an editorial in The Philadelphia Inquirer denouncing this decision.”

I had anticipated a main editorial by the Inquirer’s Editorial Board, so I missed on that one, but there certainly was a significant OpEd piece:[1]Fairness requires me to note that the Inquirer also published, on the same day, in the same OpEd section, Supreme Court decision is a win for religious freedom: Religious actors shouldn’t be forced … Continue reading

Supreme Court was wrong. Religious beliefs can’t be a free pass for discrimination. | Opinion

As I can attest from personal experience, the process of becoming a parent is highly intense, personal, lengthy, and emotionally challenging.

by John Culhane, For The Inquirer | June 21, 2021

The United States Supreme Court has just ruled against Philadelphia, and in favor of Catholic Social Services (CSS), in a case asking whether the agency can discriminate against same-sex couples by refusing to certify them as foster parents. Chief Justice John Roberts, in a judicial sleight of hand, crafted a narrow opinion that can’t be readily exported to other cases. As both a law professor and a gay father with first-hand experience dealing with the city’s foster care system, I have a complicated reaction to this decision. In the end, though, businesses and agencies that offer services to the public must do so with an even hand. Religious beliefs can’t be a free pass for discrimination.

The author, John Culhane, is the H. Albert Young Professor of Law at Delaware Law School, and through roughly 700 words he makes his case. Being homosexual himself, I see him as a special pleader.[2]As a Mass-every-Sunday Catholic, I suppose it would only be fair to admit that I am a special pleader as well. His OpED is based on legal arguments, and he certainly made one very valid point: Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion left Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 494 U. S. 872 (1990), in place, where Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas would have overturned it.

The Smith case held that religion could be subjected to civil and criminal law if such subject was not aimed at religion, but was completely neutral in its application. But facts are stubborn things, and the Smith case was about the state of Oregon refusing unemployment benefits to two persons who were discharged for using the hallucinogenic drug peyote, containing mescaline. It did not compel any individual to take an action against his faith, but does not shield him from the consequences of his faith related actions.

Skipping down several paragraphs, Mr Culhane continued:

In distinguishing the services that foster placement agencies provide from other public services, the Supreme Court is not totally off the mark. As I can attest from personal experience, the process of becoming a parent is highly intense, personal, lengthy, and emotionally challenging. It’s vital for the prospective foster or adoptive parents to have a strong and trusting relationship with those working for the agency they’re assigned to. My husband and I would not have wanted to work with CSS under any circumstances. It’s hardly surprising that, according to the record in this case, “no same-sex couple [had] even sought certification from CSS.” And “if it did, CSS would direct the couple to one of the more than 20 other agencies . . . all of which currently certify same-sex couples.”

Should this reassignment move be permitted? This isn’t like the earlier Supreme Court case involving a cake shop baker who refused to design a “masterpiece” for a gay couple. Even if the couple could just walk down the street to a more accommodating bakery, the refusenik shouldn’t get a pass: If you’re open to the public, you need to bake cakes for all comers. But the relationship between a foster care agency and prospective parents is nothing like that. So it’s no wonder that gay and lesbian couples have avoided CSS, and the court’s ruling likely won’t make any practical difference.

Clearly, Mr Culhane was disappointed with the decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop Ltd v Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 584 U.S. ___ (2018), in which baker Jack Phillips was not punished for refusing to bake a ‘wedding’ cake for a same-sex ‘marriage.'[3]Yes, you may infer from my placing the word ‘marriage’ in single quotation marks that I do not believe that, though legal, a homosexual ‘marriage’ constitutes a real marriage. But Mr Phillips was willing to bake cakes for all comers; he was simply unwilling to bake a cake with a particular message which was contrary to his religious beliefs; Mr Culhane did not address that distinction. Mr Culhane, I infer, would rather see Mr Phillips fined, or imprisoned, or at least driven out of business for his refusal to bake a cake with what he considered to be an objectional message.

More, Mr Culhane admitted that Catholic Social Services refusal to promote foster care or adoption to homosexual couples injured no one, because homosexual couples were not trying to avail themselves of CSS agency, and that there are more than twenty other agencies involved in the same area which would agree to provide foster care and adoption services to homosexual couples.

One wonders: were my wife and I trying to adopt a child, would Mr Culhane think it legally wrong of such an agency to take as a reason for blanket refusal that I do not, as stated in footnote 3 of this article, and footnotes 1 and 3 of my previous article on the subject that I do not believe in the validity of same-sex ‘marriage’ or homosexual couples adopting children? After all, the argument could be made that my religious positions could be harmful to a child, and I’d bet a case of Mountain Dew that Mr Culhane would believe just that.

Mr Culhane concluded:

Perhaps the court’s workaround led to a workable, practical solution here. But when the issue is squarely presented, the only defensible outcome is to apply the antidiscrimination law with an even hand.

The problem with that argument is that the Constitution, not just statutory law, but the Constitution itself, prohibits laws which restrain the free exercise of religion; Mr Culhane took no note of that in his admittedly limited OpEd piece. Though he stated that “the decision is still wrong and the Supreme Court misread the law,” it’s a bit difficult to make that case in a 9-0 decision; it wasn’t just the Justices appointed by the evil reich-wing Republicans who voted in favor of Catholic Social Services, but those appointed by Presidents Clinton and Obama.

There is more hope in this decision than some conservatives see. Only three of the Justices stated explicitly that they wanted to overturn Smith, Justice Amy Barrett wrote, in her concurrent opinion, which was joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh:[4]Justice Stephen Breyer joined with Justice Barrett in all but the first paragraph, and this quotation is from the first paragraph.

Petitioners, their amici, scholars, and Justices of this Court have made serious arguments that Smith ought to be overruled. While history looms large in this debate, I find the historical record more silent than supportive on the question whether the founding generation understood the First Amendment to require religious exemptions from generally applicable laws in at least some circumstances. In my view, the textual and structural arguments against Smith are more compelling. As a matter of text and structure, it is difficult to see why the Free Exercise Clause—lone among the First Amendment freedoms—offers nothing more than protection from discrimination.

Mrs Barrett was concerned that if Smith were overturned, there would be no precedent to replace it. But, if it comes right down to it, it seems that there are at least five Justices who would be willing to overturn Smith if the case before the Court required it; this case did not require it.

But another case will, and soon, and it needs to come up before Justice Thomas, who is 72 years old, leaves the Court, because it does not seem that the Chief Justice agrees. Not only did he not write such in his majority opinion, but he allowed the Smith standard to be used to uphold the unconstitutional closing of churches in Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley v. Sisolak, 591 U. S. ___ (2020) and South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, 590 U. S. ___ (2020) before Justice Barrett replaced Justice Ruth Ginsburg.

What should replace Smith? It’s simple: how about “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”?

References

References
↑1 Fairness requires me to note that the Inquirer also published, on the same day, in the same OpEd section, Supreme Court decision is a win for religious freedom: Religious actors shouldn’t be forced to leave their beliefs at the door to serve in the public square.
↑2 As a Mass-every-Sunday Catholic, I suppose it would only be fair to admit that I am a special pleader as well.
↑3 Yes, you may infer from my placing the word ‘marriage’ in single quotation marks that I do not believe that, though legal, a homosexual ‘marriage’ constitutes a real marriage.
↑4 Justice Stephen Breyer joined with Justice Barrett in all but the first paragraph, and this quotation is from the first paragraph.
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The Herald-Leader sticks to policy UPDATED!

This website has spent a good deal of bandwidth noting the Lexington Herald-Leader and the McClatchy Company’s mugshot policy. In particular, we have noted the Herald-Leader’s odd habit of violating that policy when it comes to white criminal suspects, but adhering closely to it when the suspects are black.

Well, in this case, the suspect is white, and the paper did not publish his mugshot. Given my disagreement with that policy, I will.

Jason Lee Sharp (Fayette County Detention Center)

Central Kentucky teacher arrested on rape, sexual abuse charges

By Karla Ward | June 19, 2021 | 4:55 PM EDT | Updated: June 20, 2021 | 1:06 PM EDT

Lexington police have arrested a Central Kentucky teacher, charging him with rape, sodomy and sex abuse.

Jason L. Sharp, 32, of Lexington, was arrested Thursday on charges of third-degree rape, third-degree sodomy and first-degree sexual abuse, court records show.

Sharp teaches math at East Jessamine High School, according to the school’s website.

There’s a little more at the link.

A couple of points:

  • While Mr Sharp was arrested on Thursday, reporter Karla Ward’s story did not initially appear until Saturday. Since the McClatchy policy is that an editor must approve the publication of a mugshot, and the Herald-leader does not even publish a Saturday edition, it is possible that no editor was available to approve the publication of the mugshot.
  • Miss Ward noted that, “The circumstances surrounding the charges were not immediately clear.” When one reads a story about a teacher being accused of a sex crime, the automatic assumption is that the victim or victims were students. The Herald-Leader article does not state that such is the case, and it is very possible that any victims of Mr Sharp’s might be adults and not students at East Jessamine or any other school.

The article notes that Jessamine County Schools Superintendent Matt Moore was informed of the arrest on Friday, and stated that the school and he would cooperate fully with any police investigation, “if requested,” a statement which would seem to state that the police had not made any such request at the time. The charges listed in his arrest record do not make any statement that his (alleged) victim was a minor.

One of the points in the McClatchy mugshot policy that editors are supposed to consider in their decision-taking is whether the suspect is a “public official.” That raises the obvious question: what is a “public official.” East Jessamine High School is a public school, making Mr Sharp a public employee. Does simply being a public employee make someone a public official? Since public education in Kentucky is primarily funded by the state, I am one of the Kentucky taxpayers who furnished his salary and benefits! Yes, I would define him as a public official.

But, given my criticisms of the newspaper for publishing the mugshots of white suspects while concealing those of black suspects, it behooves me to note when the paper follows McClatchy policies when it comes to white suspects.
_______________________________________________
Updated!: June 21, 2021

The Herald-Leader is now reporting that Mr Sharp’s alleged victim was a minor:

A Central Kentucky teacher charged with rape, sexual abuse and sodomy allegedly committed the offenses against someone who was under 16 years old, according to arrest records.

Jason L. Sharp’s alleged victim was under 16 years old when the sexual abuse happened in July 2018, police wrote in an arrest citation obtained by the Herald-Leader. Sharp teaches math at East Jessamine High School, according to the school’s website. Police wrote in Sharp’s citation that he made sexual contact with a minor while being “a person in a position of special trust.”

I added a link to this article to the comments section in the original article, in response to a commenter who asked the Herald-Leader for a mugshot of the alleged offender. Though the paper left in place three spam comments hawking online income jobs, it deleted my comments with links. Can’t let anyone see that mugshot!

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Why are police looking the other way until such situations lead to murder? That's kind of what happens under 'defunded' budgets and liberal city restrictions

My good friend Robert Stacy McCain noted that new national holiday Juneteenth “was celebrated in many communities with gunfire and mayhem”. He described several of those events, though he missed the one we noted previously in Lexington, and the three homicides on Saturday in the City of Brotherly Love.

This was the longest incident he documented:

AUSTIN, Tex. – A deadly weekend mass shooting in Austin’s famed entertainment district arose from a feud between two groups of Central Texas teenagers, according to a police affidavit filed Wednesday.

Harker Heights High School student Jeremiah Tabb, 17, was arrested at school Monday and remained in Travis County Jail on Wednesday. He is charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a second-degree felony punishable by two to 20 years in prison. . . .

In the arrest affidavit filed by Austin police filed in a Travis County district court Wednesday, a wounded male juvenile is quoted as telling detectives at an Austin hospital that he was with friends on East Sixth Street, a famous entertainment strip, when they began exchanging stares with a youth he identified as JT and JT’s friends.

“Exchanging stares”? Yeah, that’s reason enough, right?

The male juvenile, who was not identified by name, said he had attended the same Killeen middle school as JT, who said to the juvenile’s group, “What y’all wanna do? Y’all wanna fight?” The juvenile said he answered, “It’s whatever,” at which point JT pulled a handgun from his waistband and opened fire. A companion of the juvenile, also a juvenile, drew his own gun and returned fire. One person was killed and more than a dozen others were wounded.

Of course, the “wounded male juvenile” broke gang discipline, and ratted out Mr Tabb when shown a photo of Mr Tabb, claiming that Mr Tabb had already shot him in the leg a few days earlier.

Mr McCain then ended his post with three rhetorical questions:

  1. Why are groups of minors walking around downtown Austin after midnight?
  2. Why are these minors carrying pistols?
  3. Why are police looking the other way until such situations lead to murder?

I, of course, am the type to answer rhetorical questions! The answer to the first two is simple: their parents — assuming that there actually were parents who were supposedly responsible for these teenagers — didn’t rear them right, and didn’t care about what their ‘children’ were doing. I’ve said it before: you show me a bad kid, and I’ll show you some rotten parents.

What kind of parents don’t bring up their children to understand that it’s just plain wrong to shoot people? What kind of parents have failed to educate their children that murder — and if you shoot at someone, you must intend to kill him — is wrong? What kind of parents don’t tell their children that, if you kill someone, you might just spend the rest of your miserable life in jail?

Those teenagers were walking around Austin after midnight, and were walking around carrying pistols, because the same kind of ‘parents’ who failed on the three questions in the paragraph above are the ones who don’t give a f(ornicate) about where their kids are or what they are doing.

But the third question?

Austin cuts police budget by 1/3 amid national ‘defund’ push

The Austin City Council has voted to cut one-third of the city’s $434 million police budget amid national calls for “defunding” law enforcement in favor of spending more money on social services

By Acacia Coronado | Report for America/ Associated Press | August 13, 2020 | 6:52 PM

AUSTIN, Texas — In a unanimous vote, the Austin City Council moved Thursday to cut about one-third of next year’s $434 million police budget amid national calls for “defunding” law enforcement agencies in favor of spending more money on social services.

That will come to just over $150 million that will be redirected to social services in the 2021 fiscal budget, which starts Oct 1.

Further down came this gem:

Austin Councilman Gregorio Casar, one of the main proponents of cutting the police budget, called the move “unprecedented in Texas” and praised the decision following the vote.

“Extreme, anti-civil rights voices will try to send us backward and are already working (to) mislead people about this vote,” Casar said on Twitter. “But today, we should celebrate what the movement has achieved for safety, racial justice, and democracy.”

Really? “Safety, racial justice, and democracy”? I’m not certain just what the esteemed Mr Casar thinks is an achievement for safety. According to monthly reports posted by the Austin Police Department, there were 33 murders from January through the end of May; in 2020, the city recorded 19 murders in the same time frame. That’s a 73.68% increase; just how much “safety” has the defunding of the police department achieved?

Jeremiah Tabb (Austin Police Department photo).

“Racial Justice”? Young Mr Tabb, who is black, if he is convicted, could see “racial justice” meted out to him in the form of perhaps two decades behind bars. If the bullets which killed 25-year-old Douglas John Kantor during this gang shooting came from Mr Tabb’s gun, he could spend the rest of his miserable life behind bars.

All because two hostile groups were “exchanging stares”.

Mr Kantor wasn’t even a target; he was an innocent bystander, a visitor from Michigan.

So, why are police looking the other way until such situations lead to murder? Perhaps it is because dumbasses like Mr Casar cut the police department’s budget by a third!

So, where is the money cut from the police department going to go?

Beginning in October, about $21 million will fund social services, community resources including response to the coronavirus, mental health aid programs, violence prevention, victim services and food, housing and abortion access. Another $80 million will be redistributed to similar city services throughout the year, and $49 million will be spent on city’s Reimagine Safety Fund, which aims to provide alternative forms of public safety and community support besides policing.

Somehow the city’s “Reimagine Safety Fund” has managed to mean “you’re on your own.” Whatever “alternative forms of public safety and community support besides policing” don’t seem to have worked.

Austin, the state capital and home of the University of Texas, is the most liberal city in a conservative state. Joe Biden carried Travis County, where Austin is located, 435,860 (71.62%) to 161,337 (26.51%), and has been governed exclusively by Democrats. If all of the feel-good liberalism and racial and social justice ideas actually worked, Austin should be one of the safest places around.

Do you think that maybe, just maybe, reducing law enforcement doesn’t really work when it comes to keeping the public safe?

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A black Philadelphia preacher dares to tell the truth Will the #woke listen?

It’s no surprise that 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 at The Philadelphia Inquirer don’t listen to an evil reich-wing conservative like me, but will they listen to black Philadelphians, to a black Philadelphia Protestant minister?

On Father’s Day Sunday, faith leaders struggle for answers to Philly’s gun violence

“We think we are evolving, but we are going down,” the Rev. Herb Lusk, pastor at Greater Exodus Baptist Church, said following an overnight during which eight people were shot, one fatally.

by Joseph N DiStephano | June 20, 2021

Father’s Day morning, as Philadelphia police searched to identify suspects who shot eight people, one fatally, overnight, Christian leaders struggled to respond to the record-pace city violence that has killed at least 255 people so far this year.

Some felt called to blame fathers, or the absence of them. In too many American families, “people right now are wishing mothers ‘Happy Father’s Day,’” as they try to do double duty, the Rev. Herb Lusk, the former Philadelphia Eagle running back, lamented in his sermon at Greater Exodus Baptist Church on North Broad Street.

He called missing fathers and the lack of their guidance and good example a factor in the way “we are still killing each other. Right now. Black on Black crime. We think we are evolving, but we are going down. We are killing our babies.”

Sunday’s shootings followed three on Saturday, including a triple in Overbrook in which two men were killed and a 3-year-old boy was shot three times in the right leg, which Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw denounced as “sickening”.

There’s much more at the original.

The Philadelphia Police Department only updates its Current Crime Statistics page on weekdays, so the 255 homicides shown are accurate only through the end of Thursday, June 17th. The Inquirer article above sited one murder on Sunday and three on Saturday, with who knows how many on Friday. If the total is ‘only’ those four, for a total of 259 through 171 days, that’s still 1.515 per day, a number which has been slowly creeping up, and leaves the City of Brotherly Love on pace for 553 homicides for the year.

The Rev Lusk, himself a black man, dared to say what only conservatives have been saying, that this is “black on black” crime, that it is primarily young black men killing other young black men. The Rev Lusk dared to say what conservatives have long been saying, that absent sperm donors — I will not dignify a man male who abandons his children with the title of ‘father’ — are a significant cause of this.

The Philadelphia Tribune, a publication for the city’s black community, noted that, in 2020, black victims accounted for about 86% of the city’s 499 homicide victims, and 84% of the 2,236 shootings; black Americans make up only about 44% of the city’s population.

If the Rev Lusk can say this, why can’t the editors and staffers of the Inquirer, tell the truth? We have noted previously Elizabeth Hughes, publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer, and her determination to make her newspaper “an anti-racist news organization,” but has turned it into exactly that, a newspaper more concerned with racial identity and sorting out its news coverage that way than it has been about the “public’s right to know.” The vast majority of homicide victims in Philadelphia are black, but when one black gang banger kills another black gang banger, it isn’t really news anymore, not to the Inquirer. Instead, the paper paid more attention to the accidental killing of Jason Kutt, a white teenager shot at Nockamixon State Park, an hour outside of the city. That’s four separate stories; how many do the mostly black victims get?

For the woke, for the left, mentioning that so much of the violent crime is black criminals preying on black victims simply does not fit Teh Narrative, in which black Americans are being victimized by ‘systemic racism’, it does not fit within the worldview that, Heaven forfend! we blame the actual criminals for their crimes.

A truly “anti racist news organization” would not report the news through the filters of race and political correctness; a truly “anti racist news organization” would report the unvarnished facts, because it is only with a solid consideration of the facts that solutions can be formulated. So far, the staff and editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer have not been willing to do that.

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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It wasn’t a good Friday for me

Floyd, our ten + year old polydactyl tabby cat died on Friday. He had gotten sick just the previous day, but I guess it had been building for a while; his liver had failed.

Then, my computer died. I can’t complain, because I had bought a refurbished desktop tower, to save money. So now I’m on a new one.

At any rate, that’s why Sailor Curt’s comment was stuck in moderation for so long, and that’s why you didn’t see anything new from me since last Thursday.

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Two more murders in Lexington

Lexington isn’t Philadelphia, at least not yet, but it’s not for lack of trying!

The Lexington Herald-Leader’s Jeremy Chisenhall reported that on the afternoon of Thursday, June 17th, 38-year-old Jocko Dianti Green was shot in the parking lot of an apartment complex near the University of Kentucky Hospital; he dies a few hours later.

Mr Chisenhall’s final paragraph:

Lexington has had at least 55 non-fatal shootings this year. There have also been 20 homicides committed by shooting. Lexington reported 14 homicides and 49 non-fatal shootings at this time last year.

Sadly, that information became obsolete just two days later.

Lexington man killed in overnight shooting downtown

By Karla Ward | June 19, 2021 | 12:16 PM

A 30-year-old man died after a shooting in downtown Lexington early Saturday.

Lexington police Lt. Dan Truex said police found the man suffering from a gunshot wound in a parking lot near North Mill and West Short streets at about 1:40 a.m. Truex said “a large crowd” had gathered in the area.

The man, identified as Raymar Alvester Webb by the Fayette County coroner’s office, was taken to University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 2:07 a.m.

Lt Truex said that the LPD didn’t have any information on suspects.

That’s 21 homicides on the 170th day of the year. If the current rate of one murder every 8.111 days continues for the rest of the year, that figures out to 45 murders in the city for 2021. It was just June 9th that I noted, following another two homicides, that Lexington was on track for 43 homicides. The city’s record was 34 murders, set just last year. If Lexington sees 45 this year, it would not just break the old record, but blow it out of the water, with a 32.35% increase.

Of course, in the city’s tremendous battle against crime and violence, the Urban County Council wants to take no-knock warrants out of the hands of law enforcement!

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Socialism in education

Despite Thomas Jefferson’s soaring words in the Declaration of Independence, all men are not created equal. Some are taller than others, and greater height confers many advantages in life. Some are better-looking than others; we all know that better-looking people have advantages in life. Some are physically stronger, some are faster or quicker, some more athletic, and some more intelligent.

These things matter, and they most certainly matter in school.

If you happen to be one of the smarter ones, you will remember those times in school where your teacher had taught something, you got it, and then he taught the same thing again, because not everyone learned it the first time through. Since we want to believe that almost anyone can earn his high school diploma, teachers are expected to keep teaching the points necessary until everyone gets it. This, to put it bluntly, sets the education pace at the rate at which the dumber students learn.

Of course, educators know this, and have been addressing it for many years; these days they are called ‘honors programs,’ in which the smarter students have the opportunity to take classes in which the ‘slower learners’ are left out.

Vancouver School Board cuts honours programs

School board says honours programs create inequities between students

CBC News · Posted: June 16, 2021 6:07 PM PT

The Vancouver School Board is cutting honours programs for secondary school students effective this fall.

Honours math and science will be cut, and honours English has already been discontinued.

Eric Hamber secondary and Magee secondary are the last two schools to offer honours math and science, as conversations about cancelling honours programs began more than five years ago.

In an emailed statement to CBC News, a school board spokesperson said honours courses create inequities for students.

“By phasing out these courses, all students will have access to an inclusive model of education, and all students will be able to participate in the curriculum fulsomely,” the statement reads.

Fulsomely, huh? The Cambridge Dictionary defines fulsomely as “in a way that expresses a lot of admiration or praise for someone, often too much, in a way that does not sound sincere.” The Merriam-Webster gives a definition which allows, in some cases, it not to have a snarky intent, and, given the nature of the author, perhaps it wasn’t meant to be insincere, but I can see, in the evil corner of my mind, the school board not meaning it that way, but which ever individual who wrote it did.

When I read this, my mind went immediately to the notion of the ‘progressives’ when it comes to socialism. To the left, socialism means that everyone will be treated, and rewarded, equally, and that we will all have a sort of upper-middle class lifestyle. There will be no billionaires, but there will also be no poor.

Except, of course, several countries have already tried some forms of socialism: Venezuela, North Korea, the old Soviet Union, the eastern European nations under Soviet sway, and China.

What actually happened was that there were a few wealthy and powerful people, but the great mass of the population suffered through poverty and scarcity. The population were, generally speaking, more economically equal, but what they were was equally poor.

This is what the Vancouver School Board is doing. They can’t make the slower learners catch up to the smarter students, but they can hold back the smarter students to the pace of the slower ones. That, I guess, is real ‘social justice.’