Category Archives: Uncategorized

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The Kentucky General Assembly is trying to protect our rights But Andy Beshear will try to get around them

On Saturday, January 9th, the General Assembly passed legislation to curb the Governor’s ’emergency’ powers.

House Bill 1

Both chambers also passed through an amended version of House Bill 1, designed to allow any business, school, church or nonprofit to remain open so long as their COVID-19 policies meet or exceed the guidelines of the CDC.

The bill was amended in committee that morning following criticism from Gov. Andy Beshear in his Friday COVID-19 briefing, who pointed out that the myriad of guidance from the federal CDC is often vague and contradictory, if not more restrictive than the governor’s own regulations.

The newly amended HB 1 passed by both chambers and sent to Beshear now allows those entities to stay open if they meet either the CDC or executive branch guidance, whichever is least restrictive.

Sen. Ralph Alvarado, R-Winchester, said they bill would provide “stability and predictability” to businesses and schools dealing with Beshear’s orders. However, Sen. Reggie Thomas, D-Lexington, countered that Kentucky would become the “Wild West,” resembling other states with little COVID-19 regulations and far larger rates of cases, hospitalizations and deaths.

Senate Bills 1 and 2

Both chambers also passed through an amended version of Senate Bill 1 and Senate Bill 2, both tackling Beshear’s COVID-19 emergency orders and regulations that have been fiercely criticized by Republicans as an arbitrary abuse of power for months.

Senate Bill 1 limits the governor’s emergency orders under KRS 39A to 30 days unless extended by the General Assembly, in addition to requiring the attorney general’s permission to suspend a statute under an emergency.

Senate Bill 2 allows legislative committees to strike down a governor’s emergency administrative regulations.

Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) has already promised to veto the bills, but Republicans have not just veto-proof majorities in both chambers of the state legislature, but very strong veto-proof majorities. It requires a “constitutional majority,” meaning an absolute majority of all seats in each chamber, to override a gubernatorial veto. That means 51 votes in the state House of Representatives and 20 votes in the state Senate. Republicans hold 75 seats and 30 seats in those chambers, respectively.

The Governor has promised to challenge the bills’ legality in court if his vetoes are overridden.

In the Bluegrass State, the Governor has ten days, exclusive of Sundays, to sign or veto a bill; if he does neither, it becomes law without his signature. This means Thursday, January 21th. The bills, if vetoed, would be reconsidered when tghe legislature reconvenes on February 2nd.

This leads to a couple of timing issues. The Governor issued his most recent thirty day mandatory mask order in late December, to take effect on January 2th. This means he could, and almost certainly will, issue it again prior to the General Assembly overriding his veto. Since the bills will not become law until after the vetoes are overridden, he could issue it for 120 days, or even the entire year, and could claim that it was not subject to the new laws.

Put bluntly, I do not trust Governor Beshear or the state Supreme Court to respect our rights.

More, the Kentucky Supreme Court is simply not trustworthy. Officially non-partisan, it nevertheless tends to support Democratic positions when they are at issue. Following lower court rulings which granted injunctions against some of the Governor’s executive orders, the state Supreme Court consolidated the cases, and in July declared that it would decide all of the issues, and prohibited lower state courts from taking action on those orders. The Court then set September 17th as the date it would hear oral arguments, meaning that the Governor’s orders would be unchallengeable in state courts for two months.

Then, after that two month delay, the Court waited until November 12th to issue their ruling, which upheld the Governor.

Senate Bill 1 provides that the Governor’s executive orders can last for only thirty days. If the vetoes are overridden, that would mean that an executive order issued on February 2nd would be good until March 4th. A state Supreme Court which favors the Governor could, in late February, issue an injunction against enforcing the laws until the Court decides their legality, schedule oral arguments a couple months later, and then issue their rulings a couple months after that. That could easily take us into summer!

And if every i and j isn’t properly dotted, every t properly crossed, the state Supreme Court would side with the Governor.

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Twitter hates Freedom of Speech

To the surprise of exactly no one, Twitter has permanently banned President Trump.

And now Google blocks messaging app Parler from its store. Parler does not censor people, and was created precisely because Twitter and Facebook do censor people they don’t like . . . which primarily means conservatives.

Google has blocked the messaging and social network app Parler from its store.

The company cited the “urgent public safety threat” in restricting the app, touted as a free-speech alternative.

Google said in a statement that it reminded Parler in recent months of its policies requiring apps with user-generated content to remove “egregious content like posts that incite violence.”

A Google spokesperson told reports in a statement that the app is being suspended until it addresses issues.

Apple is threatening to do the same thing.

Sadly, as my good friend William Teach noted, Parler is kind of a joke:

The best thing about this is that either Parler will be forced to upgrade its software and site, or something else will replace it.

I’m old enough to remember the Free Speech Movement, a movement of the left. Now, the left hate the freedom of speech, or at least they hate it for people other than themselves.

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The Kentucky General Assembly is set to restrict Governor’s ’emergency’ powers Reichsstatthalter Andy Beshear waxes wroth

As we have previously noted, the Kentucky General Assembly is trying to limit Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) ’emergency’ executive powers, and the Governor is somewhat annoyed:

Beshear blasts GOP bills limiting COVID-19 restrictions. They advance anyway.

By Jack Brammer and Daniel Desrochers | January 8, 2021 | 3:22 PM EST | Updated 4:31 PM EST

Kentucky Republican lawmakers ignored cries of overreach from their Democratic colleagues Friday and approved in committee two major bills challenging Gov. Andy Beshear’s emergency orders to curb the coronavirus pandemic.

Separately, another committee did not act on a bill that would reshape the state’s courts system after Kentucky Supreme Court Chief Justice John D. Minton Jr. railed against it.

If the bills limiting Beshear had been in place since the pandemic started last March, “so many more of us could be dead or ill,” said Rep. Kelly Flood, D-Lexington. “This is a wholly inappropriate way to move.”

No, if the bills limiting the Governor had been in place, he would have needed the consent of the legislature to issue executive orders which lasted longer than thirty days. He still could have issued them; he simply would have needed to get the General Assembly to approve extensions.

The Senate State and Local Government Committee signed off on House Bill 1, which would allow businesses to stay open during an emergency if they comply with guidelines from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Beshear warned later Friday that HB 1 could have an array of unintended consequences because the CDC’s guidance is often unclear, outdated or contradictory. For example, he said the CDC’s official guidance still suggests that most businesses should be shuttered because of rising cases, “which does not need to happen,” Beshear said. CDC guidance also suggests that businesses must offer paid sick leave for their employees, he noted.

Loath as I am to agree with the Governor, he’s right on this point: these decisions should not be farmed out to federal agencies. I approve of the idea that businesses could remain open if they followed state guidelines, and, of course the state Department of Health could structure those guidelines based on outside recommendations.

Meanwhile, the House State Government Committee approved Senate Bill 1, sponsored by Sen. Matt Castlen, R-Owensboro. It would limit the Democratic governor’s executive orders under a state of emergency to 30 days unless the legislature extended them.

Both bills are expected to receive final approval in the chambers Saturday and be sent to the governor for his consideration. He pledged Friday to veto them, even though Republicans have the votes to override him.

If that happens, Beshear pledged to challenge their legality in court.

Well, of course he did. Being used to exercising dictatorial power, and having gotten away with it as he has, why would he want to see his ability to rule by decree restricted?

Once a bill is sent to the Governor, he has ten days, not counting Sundays, to sign or veto it; if he takes no action, the bill becomes law after ten days.

Under the proposal, an executive order that places restrictions on the functions of schools; colleges; private businesses; non-profits; political, social or religious gatherings; places of worship; or imposes mandatory quarantine or isolation requirements shall expire after 30 days unless it receives legislative approval.

Here’s where I violently disagree. Neither the Governor nor the General Assembly should have any authority over religious meetings or churches, or anything which restricts the right of the people peaceably to assemble.

I might not get a bill with which I am 100% happy, but as long as the Reichsstatthalter’s power is restricted, I will be happy.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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I’ll take “Stories we didn’t see last summer for $500, Alex.”

During the Summer if Fire and Hate, I saw a bunch of things on Twitter from conservatives, with pictures of violent Antifa and #BlackLivesMatter rioters, trying to get them recognized so that they could be arrested for arson and assault, but I never saw the credentialed media doing that. The Washington Post even published an ‘analysis’ by a thoroughly biased college professor claiming that This summer’s Black Lives Matter protesters were overwhelmingly peaceful, our research finds; Police and counterprotesters sometimes started violence. CNN ran the justifiably mocked banner noting “Fiery but mostly peaceful protests after police shooting.”

Contrast that with this, from the Lexington Herald-Leader:

Recognize someone in photos from the DC riot? The FBI wants to hear from you

By Tanasia Kenney | January 7, 2020 | 11:56 AM EST | Updated 2:04 PM EST

The Federal Bureau of Investigation wants the public’s help in identifying individuals who wreaked havoc and prompted a lockdown at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday.

A mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the nation’s Capitol building as lawmakers met to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s win, sparking violence that left four dead, several injured and dozens arrested, McClatchy News reported.

The FBI is now accepting tips, photos, videos and other digital media showing the chaos and destruction that unfolded on Jan. 6. Witnesses are asked to submit tips online, or call the FBI tip line at ‪1-800-CALL-FBI (1-‪800-225-5324) to provide any information that may be helpful to the investigation, according to the agency’s website.

“Our goal is to preserve the public’s constitutional right to protest by protecting everyone from violence and other criminal activity,” the FBI said.

I have no problem at all with attempting to identify and prosecute those protesters who broke the law, but the hypocrisy of the credentialed medias in trying to help law enforcement on this, coupled with their totally standing down during the left wing Antifa and Black Lives Matter protests is obvious and blatant.

We had states and cities imposing all sorts of restrictions on the right of peaceable assembly, yet turning a blind eye to the not-so-peaceable assemblies of last summer’s riots. We even had very liberal Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA) violating his own restrictions to join the protesters in a rally in Harrisburg.

The right of peaceable assembly allows protesters to make their voices heard; it does not confer the right to storm the Capitol, or any other building, and destroy property. A relatively small number of the hundreds of thousands who descended in Washington stormed the Capitol building, but somehow, some way, you never see the credentialed media mentioning that part. Odd, because they were certainly willing to do that for last summer’s protests!

I suppose that’s what happens when the credentialed media have surrendered to the #woke.
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Related article:

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Andy Beshear plays politics with COVID-19 again

Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) is playing politics with COVID-19 cases again. On Wednesday, January 6th, he told Kentuckians that the Bluegrass State had seen a record 5,742 new COVID-19 cases, with 34 fatalities.

Wednesday’s new case total is a head and shoulders above the state’s previous single-day record of 4,324 on Dec. 10. The all-time high comes a day after Beshear noted that the state’s day-to-day number of new cases were fluctuating, and his office was trying to figure out why. Tuesday’s new case tally, for instance, was 1,781 compared with Monday’s 2,319.

“Today’s numbers show how critically important a centralized effort and response is to defeating this virus,” Beshear said. The state has reported a total of 286,541 cases of the virus and 2,806 deaths.

Yet, despite the new record, Mr Beshear did not attempt to renew his school closing executive order, which expired January 4th.[1]The Governor had later recommended that schools stay closed until January 11th, but he did not make it an order. Danville Christian Academy, the lead plaintiff in Danville Christian Academy v … Continue reading

And Thursday was more of the same:

COVID-19 surging in Kentucky. 4,911 new cases & 37 deaths. Positivity rate nears 12%.

By Alex Aquisto | January 7, 2020 | 6:08 PM EST | Updated 7:06 PM EST

A day after Kentucky tallied a record number of new COVID-19 cases, Gov. Andy Beshear announced 4,911 more cases of the virus on Thursday, saying it signals a post-holiday spike.

“We are in a dangerous place,” Beshear said in an update.

Thursday’s new case total is the second-highest number the state has reported in a single day. On Wednesday, the state logged more than 5,700 new cases.

Beshear said it’s “now clear that we are seeing an escalation related to holiday gatherings. This is not the time to make it harder to react to this virus when it may be surging again.”

There’s more at the original, but, once again, the Governor is playing politics, urging the General Assembly not to limit his emergency powers. In it’s odd year, thirty-day session, the General Assembly, which the Governor explicitly cut out of the COVID-19 response because he knew the legislature would not approve all of his orders, is fast-tracking legislation which would limit the Governor’s executive orders under declared states of emergency, primarily limiting them to thirty days unless an extension is approved by the legislature.

House Bill 1 is the Republican legislature’s response to Beshear’s COVID-19 restrictions. Over the course of the pandemic Republican lawmakers have chafed at the capacity limitations and safety requirements Beshear has placed on businesses, schools and churches, with the latest round of outrage coming after Beshear closed restaurants and bars to in-person dining in the last weeks of November and ordered schools to switch to remote learning until January.

The Republican solution: businesses and schools can stay open as long as they “meet or exceed” guidance issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, detail their plan and post it on their door. Lawmakers have not specified which CDC guidelines must be followed, and the CDC’s page is built to offer tips on how to keep employees and customers safe more than to set standards for reopening.

The Kentucky Chamber of Commerce pushed a provision in the bill that would waive interest and penalties on employer’s unpaid unemployment insurance bills until 2022.

There also are provisions in the bill to allow family visitation for children in foster care during an emergency (the Beshear Administration prevented those visitations in November when cases were spiking, but they have resumed) and would allow residents of nursing homes to have one designated “essential personal care visitor” who would be exempt from any orders preventing visitation in nursing homes.

Senate Bill 1 would place a 30-day expiration date on any executive order from the governor that restricts the in-person meeting of schools, businesses and religious organizations unless the order is extended by the General Assembly. Local executives are given more flexibility under the bill for any emergency order they institute.

Should the governor hope to suspend a statute through executive order during an emergency the action would require approval from the Attorney General.

I have no doubt that if the General Assembly does not limit the Governor’s emergency powers, he would start issuing more orders as soon as the legislative session ended.

The bill also requires the governor’s office to give a report every 30 days about the contracts issued and revenues received while the state is under an emergency order. It attempts to prevent the governor from circumventing the legislature by issuing a new emergency order after 30 days on the same “or substantially similar” facts and circumstances of the original order.

The Governor’s pleas that “Today’s numbers show how critically important a centralized effort and response is to defeating this virus” and “This is not the time to make it harder to react to this virus when it may be surging again” make little sense, since the proposals would allow him to issue those executive orders, but would simply require that the state legislature approve any extension. But, despite the surging numbers, Mr Beshear once again declined to renew the expired executive order, because he knew that would just make the legislature even more likely to pass the bills limiting his authority. Republicans have veto-proof majorities in both legislative chambers.

The truth is simple: if the General Assembly does not pass the legislation restricting the Governor’s emergency powers, Mr Beshear would start using them the day the legislature adjourned. While the Governor can call a special session of the legislature whenever he wishes, to approve an executive order extension, the legislature does not have the authority to call itself back into session. Even if they did, the Republicans did not have a veto-proof majority in the state House of Representatives prior to the 2020 elections; now, they do.

References

References
↑1 The Governor had later recommended that schools stay closed until January 11th, but he did not make it an order. Danville Christian Academy, the lead plaintiff in Danville Christian Academy v Beshear, was open with in-person classes on Tuesday, January 5th. I personally verified this with a telephone call to the school.
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I think Joe Biden is too smart to try this, but the spittle-flecked left would love to see it

According to the Associated Press, an Iranian court has issued an arrest warrant for President Donald Trump, for the drone-strike which killed General Qassim Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. General Soleimani led the expeditionary Quds force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The Quds Force (Persian: نیروی قدس‎, romanized: niru-ye qods,Jerusalem Force) is one of five branches of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) specializing in unconventional warfare and military intelligence operations. U.S. Army’s Iraq War General Stanley McChrystal describes the Quds Force as an organization analogous to a combination of the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the United States. Responsible for extraterritorial operations, the Quds Force supports non-state actors in many countries, including Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the State of Palestine’s Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Yemeni Houthis, and Shia militias in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.

The Quds Force reports directly to the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei. After Qassem Soleimani was killed, his deputy, Esmail Ghaani, replaced him. The U.S. Secretary of State designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Quds Force as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) based on the IRGC’s “continued support to and engagement in terrorist activity around the world.”

President Trump specifically ordered the elimination of General Solemani, the Defense Department stating:

General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region. General Soleimani and his Quds Force were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more. He had orchestrated attacks on coalition bases in Iraq over the last several months – including the attack on December 27th (2019) – culminating in the death and wounding of additional American and Iraqi personnel. General Soleimani also approved the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad that took place this week.

This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans. The United States will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world.

Sounds like the killing was a good thing.

Most responsible American leaders would laugh at Iran’s arrest warrant, but when you have notable Philadelphia Inquirer columnists like Helen Ubiñas and Trudy Rubin calling for the President to somehow be punished, I would not be surprised if a lot of our friends on the left would support the President’s extradition to Iran, where he would face a death sentence.

More probable, of course, is that the left will be calling for all sorts of criminal charges against the President after he leaves office, but in the United States; they would like nothing more than the sight of him behind bars. I don’t think that the Justice Department under not-Supreme Court Justice Merrick Garland will pursue charges, but state prosecutors in New York seem eager to do so.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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Politically correct crime reporting

The Lexington Herald-Leader reported Tuesday on the 2020 homicide numbers in Kentucky’s second largest city, home of the University of Kentucky, and where I lived from August of 1971 through December of 1984. There were 34 homicides in the city in 2020, up from 30 in 2019, which was the previous record. With a guesstimated population of 323,152 in mid-2019, that puts the city’s murder rate at 10.53 per 100,000 population, far, far behind places like Philadelphia and Chicago. Lexington-Fayette County is the 60th largest city in the United States, larger than St Louis, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh.[1]Unlike some other larger cities, Lexington has no contiguous suburbs, in that the Lexington city and Fayette County governments merged in 1974.

Teens, disputes drove a Lexington homicide record. COVID-19 made cases hard to solve

By Jeremy Chisenhall | January 5, 2021 | 2:57 PM EST | Updated: 4:12 PM EST

Lexington Police Chief Lawrence Weathers, from the city website.

Many of Lexington’s record-breaking 2020 homicides were violent conclusions to arguments or other crimes involving male adults or teens.

There were 34 homicides in Lexington in 2020, a 13 percent increase from 2019, according to Lexington police data. The previous record was 30, set in 2019. The difficulty of identifying suspects in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic made matters worse for police.

“Everybody’s wearing masks,” Lexington Police Chief Lawrence Weathers told the Herald-Leader. “That puts a little extra work on us, and we have to corroborate a little bit more on some of the things without having a full face.”

Well, Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) did mandate that, so, how about that, even criminals are obeying the orders!

There’s a lot more at the original, which you can read at the embedded link.

Jeremy Chisenhall, the article author, included some graphics in which homicides were mapped by location, by time and day of the week, by the ages and sexes of the victims and suspects.

You know what’s missing? Any data or graphics on the race or ethnicity of the victims and suspects.

Now, I didn’t know if it was political correctness on the part of the Herald-Leader or Mr Chisenhall that omitted that information, or whether the Lexington Police Department failed to provide it, so I did the obvious thing: I went to the Police Department’s website. There I found a chart on homicide investigations, listing all 34 victims and the current dispositions of their cases, including named suspects, plus the ages of the victims and where they were killed. But it doesn’t disclose race or ethnicity.

The LPD certainly keeps that information, because in another chart, on the same page I found the homicide chart, is a three page .pdf file of assaults with firearms, which specifically states that it does not include homicides, in which the races, sexes and ages of the victims are specified.

I was able to dig a bit deeper. On the homicides page, the 25 named offenders were hyperlinked to their mugshots. Based on observation of mugshots and names, I counted 11 non-Hispanic black males, 2 non-Hispanic black females, 4 non-Hispanic white males, 1 non-Hispanic white female, 2 Hispanic white males, 1 black Hispanic white male, 2 unidentifiable suspects and 3 juveniles.

So, why did I have to manually count a number that the LPD provided much more easily available in shooting victims?

Why hide this stuff? The omission was so glaring that anyone could have noticed it, and Mr Chisenhall’s graphics made that even more obvious. Eventually, the city will have to report the numbers anyway. But we’re not supposed to talk about race, are we?

References

References
↑1 Unlike some other larger cities, Lexington has no contiguous suburbs, in that the Lexington city and Fayette County governments merged in 1974.
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Killadelphia reaches the milestone I didn't think they'd make it, but they did: 502 homicides in 2020.

This is part of the penitential rite at the beginning of Mass:

I confess to almighty God
and to you, my brothers and sisters,
that I have greatly sinned,
in my thoughts and in my words,
in what I have done and in what I have failed to do,
through my fault, through my fault,
through my most grievous fault;
therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin,
all the Angels and Saints,
and you, my brothers and sisters,
to pray for me to the Lord our God.

And I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, because, as Philadelphia was approaching 500 homicides for 2020, I was, morbidly enough, rooting for the city to reach the milestone of 500 homicides. And, according to the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, that ghastly goal was achieved, with 502 people bleeding out their lives in the city’s mean streets.

I noted, only a few days ago, that the City of Brotherly Love had, under the great leadership of Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, won the Silver Medal, with 489 homicides, tying the second place mark set in 1989, but that 1990’s 505 number seemed out of reach.

I had used an article in Wikipedia as my source, which gave that number. But, as of just a couple of days ago, the article changed, stating that 1990’s total was 497. And The Philadelphia Inquirer’s old website, philly.com, has interactive data which gives that same 497 number for 1990.

That may not be the last word, because the Inquirer’s Chris Palmer reported, on New Year’s Day:

The number of people killed last year — 499 as of late Thursday — is 40% higher than in 2019, and more than in all of 2013 and 2014 combined. The only time more people were slain in the city was in 1990, when police reported 500 homicides as violence surged alongside an intensifying crack-cocaine epidemic.

With that 505 number stuck in my brain, I had thought that Mr Palmer was simply using 500 as an approximation, but with the change in data from my source — now two sources — I have to wonder, is the 500 number an approximation, or precise?

Because, if it is precise, and the Police Department’s 502 number is accurate, Messrs Kenney and Krasner, and Miss Outlaw, have won the Gold Medal!

That’s a pretty sad award.

At any rate, a site search for 502 homicides on the Inquirer’s website, at 5:40 PM EST did not turn up any stories noting the ‘achievement.’

Now, I’m something of a math geek, and I do really radical things like run the numbers. It wasn’t so long ago, October 22nd, that I noted in an article entitled We need to stop pretending that #BlackLivesMatter, because in the City of Brotherly Love, it’s very apparent that they don’t, that the math said Philly was on track for 485 homicides.

And that had been a huge jump, because on August 18th, the daily averages led to a number of 439.

Of course, in mid-August, there was still a lot of warm weather left, and violent crimes tend to increase in the long, hot summer.

But by October 22nd, we were a month into autumn, cooler weather had prevailed, and supposedly, so would cooler heads. As I wrote then, the math was simple: 391 people killed in 295 days so far equals 1.325 people killed every single day. With 71 days left in the year, at that rate the city should see another 94 people sent to their deaths before the ball drops in New York City.

391 + 94 = 485.

But 502 killings in 366 days? That works out to 1.372 people being slaughtered, every single day of the year. In the last two months of autumn, and the first two weeks of winter, Philadelphia saw 1.563 homicides per day. The rate of death increased in the cooler months. December’s 48 homicides in 31 days works out to 1.548 per day, during what is supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year. December, after President Trump had been defeated for re-election, and COVID-19 vaccines had been developed and approved, yet the things on which the left would like to blame the increased crime rate now being diminished didn’t do much to lower the homicide rate.

I have been profuse in my criticism of Mayor Kenney, District Attorney Krasner and Commissioner Outlaw, and I do not take back a single word of it. But the real blame lies with not just the killers, but the parents who reared them. Yes, a no-nonsense “broken windows” policing and prosecution regime would reduce crime, the way Mayor Rudy Giuliani (D-New York) accomplished it, but the real key is reducing criminal thought in the minds of the people. If the kids are reared right, they won’t commit the crimes, regardless of the policing regimen.

Political leaders cannot rear our children for us; that’s up to parents and grandparents. But the Mayor and the District Attorney can look at what Mayor Giuliani accomplished, and if they don’t like his methods, they can at least appreciate his numbers. Philadelphia’s previous Mayor, Michael Nutter, and his Police Commissioner, Charles Ramsey, might not have been full on “broken windows” in their policies, but, as Robert Stacy McCain pointed out, there were more killings in Philly last year than in two consecutive years, 2013 and 2014, under Messrs Nutter and Ramsey.

Mr Krasner’s Twitter biography states, “District Attorney Larry Krasner fights for equal justice for the great people of Philadelphia. A fair and effective criminal justice system makes us safer.”  The one thing Mr Krasner’s policies have not done is to make Philadelphians safer.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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A novel, and bad, ruling from a British court

It has not been uncommon for foreign governments and judges to refuse to extradite prisoners to the United States if they faced potentially capital charges in the US, but this is a new one. A district court judge in the United Kingdom has refused to allow the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange because he might impose capital punishment on himself!

U.K. judge refuses extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to U.S.

by Jill Lawless, Associated Press | 6:31 AM EST

LONDON — A British judge on Monday rejected the United States’ request to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to face espionage charges, saying he was likely to kill himself if held under harsh U.S. prison conditions.

District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled that extradition would be “oppressive” because of Assange’s mental health.

She said Assange was “a depressed and sometimes despairing man” who had the “intellect and determination” to circumvent any suicide prevention measures taken by prison authorities.

The U.S. government said it would appeal the decision. Assange’s lawyers plan to ask for his release from a London prison where he has been held for more than a year-and-a-half.

There’s more at the original.

Mr Assange and WikiLeaks published the material sent to them by PFC Bradley Manning; Mr Manning was convicted for violating the Espionage Act, stealing government property, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and multiple counts of disobeying orders, and was sentenced to 35 years in prison. President Barack Hussein Obama, just before he left office, unjustly and irresponsibly commuted Mr Manning’s sentence to seven years in prison, and he was released in May of 2017.[1]In keeping with The First Street Journal’s stylebook, we always refer to Mr Manning, an mentally ill individual who believes he’s a woman, by his birth name and biological sex.

There remains something I believe to be a huge problem. Mr Manning was an American soldier, operating on American bases, and thus subject to American law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Mr Assange, however, is not an American citizen, was not in the United States when WikiLeaks published the material sent to them by then-PFC Manning, and Wikileaks is not based in the United States. The notion that American law extends beyond American political jurisdiction is a troubling one, and one I find repugnant. If American law extends outside of the United States’ legal jurisdiction, then any other country can claim that their laws extend inside the United States.

Mr Assange did do the United States a huge favor when WikiLeaks published e-mails hacked from John Podesta and the Democratic National Committee, information which helped to keep Hillary Clinton a private citizen.

But, I digress.

Mr Assange was not facing a capital sentence in the United States, and thus that commonly-used justification for denial of extradition did not apply. In this ruling, Judge Baraitser twisted the justification around to use it to claim that the prisoner might commit capital punishment on himself. If he did so, would that not be his choice? Is anyone really upset that such was Jeffrey Epstein’s choice?

Let me be clear here: I am opposed to capital punishment. I find it unreasonable in circumstances in which a prisoner has no power to escape, and it has become far more expensive than a sentence of life without parole. But if someone wants to kill himself, that ought to be his choice. The notion that we have suicide prevention measures in prison seems silly to me.

But Judge Baraitser has created something new, something which could be used by other nations and foreign judges to block extradition even when the criminal suspect has not committed any offense which would subject him to a possible death sentence. This is not a good thing.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

References

References
↑1 In keeping with The First Street Journal’s stylebook, we always refer to Mr Manning, an mentally ill individual who believes he’s a woman, by his birth name and biological sex.