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Conservative school administrators forced to resign over social media posts The only shocking thing is that The Philadelphia Inquirer printed the story

William F Buckley, Jr, famously said, “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.” The Pico Corollary to that would be that where liberals get concentrated into greater numbers, they channel their offense into actions against those with other views. And there are no more concentrated pockets of liberalism than in our public education systems. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

School administrators say they were forced to resign over conservative Facebook posts

by Maddie Hanna | December 18, 2020 | 6:36 PM EST

Two former administrators at Montgomery County public schools are suing their school districts, alleging that they were illegally forced out of their jobs over Facebook posts criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement and Democratic politicians.

Ashley Bennett — a former special education supervisor at the North Penn School District who appeared Thursday on Tucker Carlson Tonight — and Amy Sacks, a former elementary school principal in the Perkiomen Valley School District, said the districts violated their First Amendment rights, retaliating against them for comments made on their personal Facebook pages.

In Bennett’s case, she said she was forced to resign after a June 24 post that criticized Black Lives Matter, in the wake of national protests over the police killing of George Floyd. “I’m just trying to figure out WHICH black lives matter,” said the post, which someone else wrote but Bennett shared. “It can’t be the unborn black babies — they are destroyed without a second thought.” The post accused the movement of harming Black police officers, and media outlets of ignoring “black on black violence.”

I’m not a teacher or education professional, but I’ve certainly said the same things. The outrage over the killings of George Floyd, a convicted felon with a history of armed robbery and drug use, who was high on fentanyl and methamphetamines when caught passing counterfeit money generated a summer of Mostly Peaceful Protests™, and the left fêted Mr Floyd as though he was some kind of saint, when he was nothing but a criminal and a deadbeat dad. The Professionally Offended™ were outraged when two Philadelphia Police officers shot and killed Walter Wallace, even though body cam footage clearly showed the mentally unstable Mr Wallace approaching them with a raised knife. More Mostly Peaceful Protests™ occurred, and the story was in the Inquirer for days.[1]A site search for Walter Wallace returned 94 articles in the Inquirer.

Yet, just last week, the Inquirer ran an article telling us the names of the then 466 people murdered in the City of Brotherly Love,[2]In the seven days since that article was published, that number has increased by ten, to 476. because nobody other than their families and friends knew about them. Helen Ubiñas wrote:

The last time we published the names of those lost to gun violence, in early July, nearly 200 people had been fatally shot in the city.

Just weeks before the end of 2020, that number doubled. More than 400 people gunned down.

By the time you read this, there will only be more.

Even in a “normal” year, most of their stories would never be told.

At best they’d be reduced to a handful of lines in a media alert:

“A 21-year-old Black male was shot one time in the head. He was transported to Temple University Hospital and was pronounced at 8:12 p.m. The scene is being held, no weapon recovered and no arrest.”

That’s it. An entire life ending in a paragraph that may never make the daily newspaper.

Realistically speaking, a lot of the victims didn’t even get that much of a blurb.

Back to the original story:

While the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that public employees can express opinions on matters of public concern — in 1968 upholding Illinois public schoolteacher Marvin Pickering’s right to criticize his school board’s spending on athletics in a letter to the editor — North Penn argued that case might not apply to Bennett’s post.[3]Marvin Pickering v Board of Education of Township High School District 205, 391 U.S. 563 (1968).

“There is no clearly established body of case law as to whether the Pickering test shields from censure a teacher’s social media post dismissing Black Lives Matter as nothing more than an expression of hate for the United States President, denying the existence of systemic racism, and invoking ‘destroyed black babies’ and ‘black on black crime,’ ” the district said in the filing.

Note that the school district, in its legal filing, cites “the existence of systemic racism” as a given, as though it is not a subject up for debate. “(I)nvoking ‘destroyed black babies’ and ‘black on black crime’” is apparently an actionable offense, as though “black on black crime” isn’t a serious issue, and as though black women having abortions at nearly five times the rate white women do is not the truth.

I have said it before: We need to stop pretending that #BlackLivesMatter, because in the City of Brotherly Love, it’s very apparent that they don’t.

In Pickering, the appellant was fired for statements the school board claimed were detrimental to the functioning of the school system itself, namely a letter to the editor arguing against a tax increase for the schools. In the cases at hand, the statements made on social media had nothing to do with the operation of the schools, but were comments on the general political questions of the day, during a very political year. Were these private schools, then yes, those schools would have every right to fire the school administrators, because the First Amendment protects Americans against government action. The schools which went after Ashley Bennett and Amy Sacks were public schools, which are unquestionably part of the government.[4]In Pennsylvania, school districts have independent taxing authority, as fifteen years of my property tax bills unfortunately reflected.

While both cases were originally filed separately in state courts, in Montgomery County and Philadelphia, they have been consolidated and are now filed in federal court. This should probably be a good thing, but only time will tell that.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

References

References
↑1 A site search for Walter Wallace returned 94 articles in the Inquirer.
↑2 In the seven days since that article was published, that number has increased by ten, to 476.
↑3 Marvin Pickering v Board of Education of Township High School District 205, 391 U.S. 563 (1968).
↑4 In Pennsylvania, school districts have independent taxing authority, as fifteen years of my property tax bills unfortunately reflected.
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Rights delayed are rights denied — again!

As I noted in Rights delayed are rights denied, Governor Andy Beshear’s executive order closing all public and private Kindergarten through 12th grade schools had been expeditiously appealed, but the Supreme Court sat on the case. Now, in Danville Christian Academy v Beshear, the Court did just as I guessed it would: it let the case go moot.

On November 18, the Governor of Kentucky issued a temporary school-closing Order that effectively closes K–12 schools for in-person instruction until and through the upcoming holiday break, which starts Friday, December 18, for many Kentucky schools. All schools in Kentucky may reopen after the holiday break, on January 4. . . . .

The Governor’s school-closing Order effectively expires this week or shortly thereafter, and there is no indication that it will be renewed.

Uhhh, yes, there is! Governor Beshear has already ‘recommended’ that schools delay opening another week, until January 11th, and while he did not make that an order, quite possibly because he knew it would impact the case and it contradicted his own Court filing, he is now free to make it an order.

Under all of the circumstances, especially the timing and the impending expiration of the Order, we deny the application without prejudice to the applicants or other parties seeking a new preliminary injunction if the Governor issues a school-closing order that applies in the new year.

In other words, the Court would entertain a new case, should the Governor issue another executive order, but all of that takes time, and money. With Christmas break about to start, the Governor could easily wait until Saturday, January 2nd, to issue another executive order. Since the Sixth Circuit’s order is the current precedent, a trial judge would have to deny another request for a stay, then it be appealed to the Sixth Circuit, which would almost certainly rule the same way, followed by an application to the Supreme Court, and how many weeks more would the free exercise of religion and freedom of assembly be denied to the people of the Bluegrass State?

In his dissent, Justice Samuel Alito noted that the delay was not the fault of the appellants:

(I)n my judgment, it is unfair to deny relief on this ground since this timing is in no way the applicants’ fault. They filed this action on November 20, 2020, just two days after the issuance of the Governor’s executive order. And when, on November 29, the Sixth Circuit granted a stay of the order that would have allowed classes to resume, the applicants sought relief in this Court just two days later, on December 1. It is hard to see how they could have proceeded more expeditiously.

Justice Neil Gorsuch also dissented:

Nor should a Governor be able to evade judicial review by issuing short-term edicts and then urging us to overlook their problems only because one edict is about to expire while the next has yet to arrive. Come January 4, a new school semester will be about to start, and the Governor has expressly told us that he reserves the right to issue more decrees like these if and when religious schools try to resume holding classes. Rather than telling the parties to renew their fight in a month, asking the Sixth Circuit to resolve the case now, under accurate legal rules, would be better for everyone—from the parents who might have to miss work and stay home should decrees like these be upheld, to the state public health officials who might have to plan for school if they are not.

Courts have a broader equity at stake here too. In their struggle to respond to the current pandemic, executive officials have sometimes treated constitutional rights with suspicion. In Kentucky, state troopers seeking to enforce gubernatorial orders even reprimanded and recorded the license plate numbers of worshippers who attended an Easter church service, some of whom were merely sitting in their cars listening to the service over a loudspeaker.

Recently, this Court made clear it would no longer tolerate such departures from the Constitution. We did so in a case where the challenged edict had arguably expired, explaining that our action remained appropriate given the Governor’s claim that he could revive his unconstitutional decree anytime. That was the proper course there, as I believe it is here. I would not leave in place yet another potentially unconstitutional decree, even for the next few weeks.

For these reasons, I respectfully dissent. I would grant the application, vacate the Sixth Circuit’s stay, and remand the matter for further consideration under the proper legal standards.

As Justice Gorsuch noted, the Court could have vacated the Sixth Circuit’s stay, and then the expiration of the Governor’s order would have been forced to stay expired. If the Governor wanted to close religious schools again, he’d have to go at it differently.

I will admit it: I had higher hopes for Justices Thomas, Kavanaugh and Barrett on this case.

Of course, the vast majority of students in the Commonwealth attend the public schools, over which the Governor indisputably has authority. If the Governor wanted to close down the public schools, he could do so. Since it was only the religious private schools seeking relief, the Governor’s order would also apply to secular private schools.

As I wrote previously, I do not trust Governor Beshear: with the Supreme Court having dismissed Danville Christian Academy’s case as moot, I have very little doubt that Mr Beshear will once again enact executive orders restricting religious private schools. He has already indicated, as noted above, that he believes the schools should stay closed yet another week, and he could issue an order to that effect without any fear that the Supreme Court would invalidate it, because of the time factor.

I am hoping that the General Assembly, which will begin the next session in January with Republicans holding veto-proof majorities in both chambers, will amend KRS 39A to greatly limit the Governor’s ’emergency powers’ in a way which will both protect all of our constitutional rights from such orders and limit what executive authority he has to issue such orders to a brief time, requiring consent from the legislature for any extensions.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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Well, wahhh!

A few articles in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer caught my eye. In the first, it seems that college professors in the Keystone State are having a tough time during the COVID-19 pandemic.

‘Educators hurt when their students are hurting’: College faculty experience rising rates of stress, burnout due to COVID-19

by Bethany Ao | December 16, 2020 | 5:00 AM EST

Donald Wargo, an associate professor of economics at Temple University, in his home office in Radnor. Photo by Jessica Griffin, Philadelphia Inquirer staff photographer. Click to enlarge.

When Temple University transitioned from in-person classes to virtual in the spring because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Donald Wargo knew immediately that he had to reassess his goals for what he wanted his students to accomplish.

As virtual classes continued into the fall, Wargo, an associate professor of economics, tried to capture the atmosphere of an in-person classroom to the best of his ability — using icebreaker questions at the beginning of the semester to engage freshmen and assigning students to Zoom breakout rooms for small discussions. But it has been difficult to recreate that learning environment, he said.

“It’s our job to get students to learn,” said Wargo, who also serves on the executive board of Temple’s American Association of University Professors chapter. “And when our students are stressed from other things like social isolation or living at home that interfere with their learning, we are stressed.”

While the early days of the pandemic were undoubtedly hard for college faculty members as they dealt with campus closings and uncertainty about the fall semester, research shows that burnout rates and anxiety are still increasing 10 months later due to worsening student mental health and increasing fears of job loss.

There’s more at the original.

I do not know Professor Wargo’s salary, but, according to Glassdoor:

The typical Temple University Professor salary is $156,901. Professor salaries at Temple University can range from $137,463 – $175,610. This estimate is based upon 5 Temple University Professor salary report(s) provided by employees or estimated based upon statistical methods. When factoring in bonuses and additional compensation, a Professor at Temple University can expect to make an average total pay of $156,901.

While I normally don’t include photos from the Inquirer, because I try to minimize content to avoid plagiarism concerns, I did in this article. The photo shows Dr Wargo, in his home office in Radnor, a ‘Mail Line’ suburb of Philadelphia. The photo, taken from the outside, shows Dr Wargo in what appears to be a nice, glassed in sunroom, working remotely from his home. While I don’t know his address, and would not publish it if I did, and do not know what the estimated value of his home is, according to realtor.com, there are currently 160 homes for sale there, with a median listing price of $797,500. Radnor has a recent median average sale price of $916,500.

The area isn’t exactly poor.

Professors aren’t exactly underpaid, and are normally considered among the elites of our society, and, yes, there have been some job losses:

In addition to student mental health issues, a number of colleges and universities around the country have announced staff cuts and layoffs as a result of COVID-19. In October, five universities in Pennsylvania’s state system announced that they would lay off more than 100 full-time faculty. In September, Rutgers University eliminated dozens of adjunct positions, citing “unprecedented pandemic-related economic pressures.”

But, try as I might, my sympathy for the elites is somewhat limited by other news:

Retail sales fell 1.1% in November, biggest drop in seven months

by Joseph Pisani, Associated Press | December 16, 2020 | 11:20 AM EST

NEW YORK — Americans held back on spending during the start of the holiday shopping season, a troubling sign for retailers and the state of the U.S. economy.

U.S. retail sales fell a seasonally adjusted 1.1% in November, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. It was the biggest drop in seven months, and a steeper decline than Wall Street analysts had expected.

The report points to a weak start to the all-important holiday shopping season, which can usually account for a quarter or more of a retailer’s annual sales. It is also another sign that the pandemic is slowing the U.S. economy as retailers face tighter restrictions and people stay away from stores.

The Commerce Department on Wednesday also revised October’s report, saying that retail sales fell 0.1% that month, instead of rising 0.3% as it previously reported. Retailers had tried to get people to shop early, with Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart and others offering holiday deals in October.

There’s more at the original. But, imagine that: with a high unemployment rate, and all of the economic restrictions that governors like Tom Wolf (D-PA) have instituted to fight COVID-19, can anyone really be surprised? People living from paycheck-to-paycheck, in an economy in which government officials can simply order their jobs shut down, might be a little more conservative in their spending habits. And the people who have lost their jobs don’t have money to spend for Christmas, not when they are worried about putting food on the table and keeping the heat on during the winter.

Black Friday was also a bust. Typically one of the busiest shopping days of the season, shoppers mostly stayed home after health officials warned people not to shop in person, and retailers followed suit by putting their best deals online. Half as many people shopped inside stores this Black Friday than last year, according to retail data company Sensormatic Solutions.

I’m shocked, shocked! that people stayed home after the government told them it wasn’t safe to go to stores.

Gov. Wolf’s COVID-19 restrictions will decimate small businesses across the state | Opinion

Jennifer Stefano, For The Inquirer | December 16, 2020 | 9:15 AM EST

At Vecchia Osteria in Newtown, Bucks County, oversized Christmas balls hang from the ceiling and lighted garland frames each entry way. Dozens of tables sit empty, waiting for customers who won’t be coming. The only signs that the business is still open are three large, brown takeout bags under a framed portrait of actress Sophia Loren.

Owners Pasquale and Anna Palino and their young children immigrated from Italy in 1999. After a decade working the kitchens of Italian restaurants around Philadelphia, Pasquale opened Vecchia. Today, all five children, along with their two sons-in-law, work the business seven days a week. Earlier this year, they managed to survive the first round of Gov. Tom Wolf’s COVID-19 lockdowns. But the governor’s latest litany of restrictions — including a three-week indoor dining ban during the industry’s busiest time of year — threatens to destroy the American dream they spent a lifetime building.

“We are losing money every single day,” says Anna, a breast cancer survivor. The eatery, she points out, has lost not only regular, dine-in customers, but also income from holiday parties, catering, and gift cards sales that make the holiday season especially important for restaurants. The Palinos want to stop the virus from spreading, and say they follow every health rule. But they, like many, believe it is individuals taking personal responsibility, not government mandates, that will be required to stop the spread.

Pasquale and Anna have 30 employees who rely on them to earn a living. That’s why their family decided to keep paying all their employees and not to take any income for themselves. But how long can that last, they wonder?

There’s more at the original, but remember: those thirty restaurant employees are, if they are like the vast majority of restaurant employees, making at or near the minimum wage. They aren’t like Professor Wargo, nice and comfortable in his Radnor home, with, one would hope, some decent savings from his six-figure salary.

This is a lesson for the good professor and his colleagues. Yes, some of them are worried about their jobs, though relatively few have lost them. Rather, when colleges go virtual, it’s not the professors who lose their jobs, but the custodians who keep the buildings clean, the maintenance staff not needed because the buildings aren’t being used, the cooks and other service personnel in the cafeterias, where few people are now eating. Those are the people who were making far less than the professors, and those are the nameless ones who are losing their jobs. I have no idea how Dr Wargo, or any other individual professor voted, but what we do know is that college professors donated seven times more to Joe Biden than they did to President Trump. The elites, it would seem, wanted to vote for politicians who would put other people out of work.

For their own good, of course! The displaced workers might wind up out on the streets, homeless and jobless, but hey, they’ll be less likely to catch COVID, right?

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Some good news from the Supreme Court on Freedom of Religion But we still need more

I have frequently harped on written about Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) attack on religious freedom by closing down private religiously affiliated schools, and noted that the Supreme Court has still not acted upon Danville Christian Academy’s appeal of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upholding the Governor’s orders.

Danville Christian Academy’s case is facially different, because the Governor’s orders close down all schools, public and private, and are thus not treating the private or religious schools differently from the public ones, and that may be why the Supreme Court has not issued an injunction based on Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v Cuomo.

However, there is some good news from the Court today, as documented by Amy Howe in SCOTUSblog:

Justices revive religious groups’ attempts to block COVID-related restrictions in Colorado, New Jersey

by Amy Howe | Tuesday, December 15, 2020 | 3:21 PM EST

The Supreme Court on Tuesday tossed out a pair of lower-court rulings that had permitted states to enforce COVID-related restrictions at worship services. The two brief orders from the justices instruct the lower courts to take another look at religious groups’ challenges to restrictions in Colorado and New Jersey – and this time, the justices indicated, the lower courts should decide the challenges in light of the Supreme Court’s Nov. 25 ruling that lifted New York’s COVID-related limits on attendance at worship services.

Tuesday’s orders are further evidence of the broader impact of the New York ruling, which the justices have now invoked three times in three weeks to tell lower courts around the country that they should be more solicitous of religious groups seeking to worship without restrictions during the pandemic.

In the Colorado case, the justices threw out an Aug. 10 order by a federal district court that denied a request by High Plains Harvest Church, a small church in northern Colorado, to bar the state from enforcing capacity limits. Justice Elena Kagan dissented from Tuesday’s order, penning a brief opinion – joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor – in which she argued that the case was moot because Colorado has already lifted the limits at issue.

There’s much more detail at the original, but one thing is becoming increasingly clear: thanks to the replacement of Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with Amy Coney Barrett, there is now a Supreme Court majority which strongly believes in freedom of religion, at least as far as activity in church is concerned. There may be less of that strong belief when it comes to religious schools.

Thanks to Amy Coney Barrett replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg, we now have a Supreme Court majority that actually believe in the Freedom of Religion.

As an update to my article noting that the Court’s inaction on the Danville Christian Academy case, while Governor Beshaer’s response included the claim that his order was “a time-limited executive order that is set to expire in just four weeks,” January 4th, he has now “recommended” that in-person classes not be resumed until January 11th. With the case about to go moot — the Christmas holidays will be beginning in less than a week, and regularly scheduled classes wouldn’t resume until January 4th anyway — the Governor has not yet made it an executive order, so, presumably, it would not change his filing in the case.

But I do not trust Governor Beshear: if the Supreme Court dismissed Danville Christian Academy’s case as moot, I have very little doubt that Mr Beshear would once again enact executive orders restricting religious private schools. I am hoping that the General Assembly, which will begin the next session in January with Republicans holding veto-proof majorities in both chambers, will amend KRS 39A to greatly limit the Governor’s ’emergency powers’ in a way which will both protect all of our constitutional rights from such orders and limit what executive authority he has to issue such orders to a brief time, requiring consent from the legislature for any extensions.

That is what the Republican leadership have promised. However, a Supreme Court decision that religious schools are also protected under the First Amendment would provide relief for religious schools across the nation, where action by the General Assembly would protect only Kentuckians.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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Using the Freedom of Speech and of the Press to condemn other people’s Freedom of Speech

My good friend William Tech’s website, The Pirate’s Cove, has as it’s blog tagline, “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” That’s the important part of the First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” What part of “no law” is so difficult to understand?

Well, some very good people in Minnesota are very upset that the First Amendment protects the freedom of speech and religion of people they despise. From The Washington Post:

Facing a First Amendment fight, a small Minnesota town allows a White supremacist church

By Kim Bellware | December 14, 2020 | 6:00 AM EST

The nation’s ascendant White supremacy movement and small-town bureaucracy collided in rural Minnesota last week when a city council vote over a zoning permit made the 273-person city of Murdock the latest First Amendment battleground.

The Murdock City Council voted 3-1 during a virtual meeting Wednesday to allow the Asatru Folk Assembly to turn the run-down church it purchased in July into its first “hof,” or gathering place, in the Midwest. The looming presence of the obscure Nordic folk religion, widely classified as a White supremacist hate group by extremism and religious experts, promoted months of pushback from concerned residents.

The group purchased a building, and were planning to use it for a legal purpose. The Mayor and City Council didn’t like it, but them not liking it did not mean the city government had any right to block a legal assembly.

Some, naturally, argue that the First Amendment should not cover such a group:

Murdock’s issue underscores the deficiencies with the First Amendment and exposes a lack of neutrality in who it really protects, argued Laura Beth Nielsen, who chairs the Sociology Department at Northwestern University and wrote the 2004 book “License to Harass: Law, Hierarchy and Offensive Public Speech.”

“Right now, every local government is broke trying to deal with coronavirus. The idea that you would arguably subject yourself to a costly lawsuit — what town would want to do that?” Nielsen said. “But letting these organizations flourish and take root is scary, especially if you’re the Black or the Jewish family in town.”

She said Murdock’s individual battle is taking place in a broader legal and social environment where, “in the universe of the First Amendment, White people tend to win.”

White people tend to win? Surely there was little more offensive speech than that of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who called Judaism a “gutter religion.” He was condemned for that, but not fined or imprisoned, because his speech, no matter how vile, is protected by the First Amendment. The Reverend Al Sharpton has uttered plenty of anti-white and anti-Semitic bovine feces, but his statements, too, have, and deserve to have, the protection of the First Amendment. I do not have to like Messrs Farrakhan and Sharpton to believe that they have freedom of speech just as much as I do.

There’s a bit of irony in all of this, because Professor Neilsen is exercising her freedom of speech and freedom of the press to complain that other people’s freedom of speech and of peaceable assembly is “scary.”

The city council in Murdock, Minn., voted December 9 to grant a permit that allows the Asatru Folk Assembly, which has been identified as a white supremacist group, to gather at an abandoned church it bought. (Renee Jones Schneider/AP)

There’s much more at the Post original, with statements by other people, but I want to point out the final two paragraphs:

Nielsen, the Northwestern sociologist, noted that cities routinely restrict the First Amendment over issues it prioritizes, such as anti-pandhandling ordinances or obscenity laws.

“Even though the First Amendment is supposed to operate in this neutral way, when you dig in, hate speech against racial minorities is protected; harassment of women is protected,” Nielsen said. “In the big picture, the First Amendment is reinforcing who already has power.”

span style=”font-family: Georgia;”>To be fair, there is no quotation from the good professor that she believes the First Amendment should somehow be restricted; whether she says anything like that in any of her books, I do not know. But I do know that restrictions on speech, were they allowed, could condemn my website, given that our published Stylebook is not supportive of homosexuality and does not accept ‘transgenderism.’ With the incoming Administration of Joe Biden, RedState, where I frequently cross-post, could be shut down by the government for the many articles there which claim that the Democrats engaged in massive fraud and stole a presidential election they did not legitimately win.[1]I would note here that none of my articles make that claim.

When freedom of speech or the press is limited, the ox which gets gored depends on just who has the power to gore it.

The First Amendment has been used to protect many things I do not like: the American Nazi Party’s march in heavily Jewish Skokie, Illinois, the Westboro Baptist Church’s protests at the funerals of American soldiers, in Snyder v Phelps (2011), or the flag burning case, Texas v Johnson (1989), but it was right to protect those offensive actions. The First Amendment protects The Washington Post’s right to print Professor Neilsen’s objections. There are many things I’d rather not see voiced or printed, but it would be far, far worse for the government to have the power to ban them.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

References

References
↑1 I would note here that none of my articles make that claim.
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Rights delayed are rights denied

We have thrice previously noted Governor Andy Beshear’s executive order closing all public and private Kindergarten through 12th grade schools, and Danville Christian Academy’s legal actions to enjoin enforcement of that order against private religious schools. While the private religious initially won, the Governor appealed to the Sixth Circuit, and the appellate court agreed with him, leaving the religious schools closed.

That was two weeks ago. An application for a stay was filed with Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Tuesday, December 1st, and several subsequent motions have been filed, but today is Monday, December 14th, and the private religious schools’ constitutional rights have been held in abeyance for two full weeks now.

Two weeks, during Advent, a highly important time of the year for Christians. Being December 14th, there’s only a week of school left this year before closure for the Christmas holidays. If the Supreme Court does not act, immediately, there will be no operative decision from the Court on whether the Governor’s orders have violated our First Amendment rights to freedom of peaceable assembly and free exercise of religion, because the Governor’s order expires before school would normally resume in January. However, there is nothing currently preventing Mr Beshear from extending his executive order past January 4th.

The Governor claimed that his order was “a time-limited executive order that is set to expire in just four weeks,” as though it is somehow permissible to suspend our constitutional rights for a limited period, though he continues just two sentences later to say that he could, “if necessary,” extend the order beyond the current January 4, 2021, expiration of the executive order. The appellants responded that, even now, Mr Beshear is attempting “to lift the injunction prohibiting him from closing Kentucky’s houses of worship,” so that he can order churches closed as well. We have previously noted that the Governor wants all churches to be closed down, but the four Catholic bishops in Kentucky have decided to continue public worship.

Our authoritarian Governor just hates to be defied, and he’s trying to get the injunction in Maryville Baptist Church, Inc. v Beshear lifted so that he can order churches closed, as he did last spring.

COVID-19 is serious, and has been fatal in a small percentage of cases, but the threat to our Constitution and our rights is far, far greater, and the Supreme Court needs to slap down such attempts.

As we have previously noted, Republicans hold veto-proof majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly, and GOP leaders have stated that they intend to rein in the Governor’s emergency powers under KRS 39A, but, while that would be welcome, and should happen to prevent future abuse, the Supreme Court needs to say, and set the precedent, that our explicitly stated constitutional rights cannot be simply set aside because the government, any government claims to have a good reason to do so.

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Murder in Philadelphia: Is anybody there? Does anybody care?

Sometimes an article which would deserve a laughing out loud derision is about a subject which is in no way humorous. On Friday, December 11, 2020, Helen Ubiñas published an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer entitled “What do you know about the Philadelphians killed by guns this year? At least know their names.”

The last time we published the names of those lost to gun violence, in early July, nearly 200 people had been fatally shot in the city.

Just weeks before the end of 2020, that number doubled. More than 400 people gunned down.

By the time you read this, there will only be more.

Even in a “normal” year, most of their stories would never be told.

At best they’d be reduced to a handful of lines in a media alert:

“A 21-year-old Black male was shot one time in the head. He was transported to Temple University Hospital and was pronounced at 8:12 p.m. The scene is being held, no weapon recovered and no arrest.”

That’s it. An entire life ending in a paragraph that may never make the daily newspaper.

The truth is simple: Murders of young black men in Phila-delphia are simply no longer news.

Of course, Miss Ubiñas followed the Inquirer’s stylebook in claiming that these Philadelphians were “killed by guns.” No, they were killed by bad people, people who used guns as their tools. But the Inquirer doesn’t want to ever say that part.

I’ve told the truth previously: unless the murder victim is someone already of note, or a cute little white girl, the editors of the Inquirer don’t care, because, to be bluntly honest about it, the murder of a young black man in Philadelphia is not news. Unless the victim was a Somebody, the Inquirer didn’t care. If the victim is a white male, and the shooting probably accidental, yeah, that merits not just one but two stories.

And so we come to a story in Sunday’s Inquirer:

3 dead, 9 people shot in another violent overnight in Philly

by Katie Park | December 13, 2020 | 2:23 PM EST

Nine people were shot overnight Saturday, three fatally, in a series of violent hours in Philadelphia that included a double homicide, police said.

Two men died at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center after they were shot on South Ruby Street in West Philadelphia around 1:30 a.m., police said Sunday.

One of the men, who was 33, had been shot a total of eight times — three times in each leg, once in the chest, and once in the torso, police said. The other man, 25, was shot in the chest. Police said both died within minutes of each other around 2 a.m.

Take note: this was Saturday night; the weekend was not over when the Inquirer reported the story. The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Stats page on Sunday still shows 466 homicides, but that was of 11:59 PM EST on Thursday, December 10th; it’s normally updated during the business week around 8:00 AM.

At Broad Street and Hunting Park Avenue in North Philadelphia, a man between 20 and 25 years old died from a gunshot wound to the chest during a carjacking a little before 10:40 p.m., police said. He was pronounced dead about 20 minutes later at Temple University Hospital.

We cannot expect the Inquirer to report the names of those victims in the initial stories, because families have to be notified, but the truth is that the Inquirer will almost certainly not have any further stories on these victims unless the police are able to make arrests and charges in the cases listed. That’s the part Miss Ubiñas appeared to be decrying, but, with all of the layoffs over the years at Pennsylvania’s newspaper of record, perhaps a newsroom full of the #woke doesn’t really have the time to pursue such stories.

Going back to Miss Ubiñas’ story, roughly a third of the names have hyperlinks embedded, some to a website called the Philadelphia Obituary Project, and some to news stories about their killings. Still, in a lot of cases, such as this one about 22-year-old Isaiah Carter, all that it has is a photo and “If you have any information about this victim, please contact us at tips@phillyobitproject.com. Date: 2020-08-14 Location: 200 E Clearfield St, Philadelphia, PA”.

The Philadelphia Eagles, in the midst of a really bad season, replaced starting quarterback Carson Wentz with former Alabama and Oklahoma quarterback Jalen Hurts, and the Iggles beat the New Orleans Saints 24-21. There will be four or five, and maybe more, stories on the Inquirer’s website about this game, in which nobody died.

I guarantee there won’t be a bunch of stories about the at least three people who lost their lives in Philly’s mean streets, because it really isn’t news, and let’s be honest, other than their families, nobody cares.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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Larry Krasner draws a challenger

I have written frequently about District Attorney Larry Krasner, the anti-police crusader that George Soros helped get elected in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia. Mr Krasner ran promising to completely overhaul the prosecutor’s office, to:

  • Stop prosecuting insufficient and insignificant cases
  • Review past convictions, free the wrongfully convicted
  • Stop cash bail imprisonment
  • Treat addiction as an illness, not a crime
  • Protect immigrants while protecting everybody
  • Reject a return to the failed drug wars of the past
  • Stand up to police misconduct

Wikipedia noted of Mr Krasner:

In his first week in office, Mr Krasner fired 31 prosecutors from the District Attorney’s Office, including both junior and career supervisory staff. Up to one-third of the homicide prosecutors in the office were dismissed. Those fired represented nearly a 10% reduction in the number of Philadelphia assistant district attorneys.

In February 2018, Krasner announced that law enforcement would no longer pursue criminal charges against those caught with marijuana possession. That same month, Krasner instructed prosecutors to stop seeking cash bail for those accused of some misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies. Krasner said that it was unfair to keep people in detention simply because they could not afford bail. He also announced that the DA’s office had filed a lawsuit against a number of pharmaceutical companies for their role in the city’s opioid epidemic. Krasner instructed prosecutors to stop charging sex workers who had fewer than three convictions.

In March 2018, it was reported that Krasner’s staffers were working on creating a sentence review unit–the first of its kind in the country–to review past cases and sentences, and seek re-sentencing in cases when individuals were given unduly harsh punishments. Also in March 2018, it was reported that Krasner instructed prosecutors to: “Offer shorter prison sentences in plea deals. Decline certain classes of criminal charges. And explain, on the record, why taxpayers should fork over thousands of dollars per year to incarcerate people.” He said,

Fiscal responsibility is a justice issue, and it is an urgent justice issue. A dollar spent on incarceration should be worth it. Otherwise, that dollar may be better spent on addiction treatment, on public education, on policing and on other types of activity that make us all safer.

Given the approximately 40% increase in homicides in the city this year from 2019, a year which had the highest number of killings since 2007, it doesn’t seem as though Mr Krasner’s ideas have made anyone safer.

Well, now the District Attorney has drawn a primary opponent for next year’s campaign:

A former Philly homicide prosecutor fired by District Attorney Larry Krasner is challenging him for reelection

by Laura McCrystal | December 11, 2020 | 5:02 PM EST

A former Philadelphia homicide prosecutor who was among the staffers fired when District Attorney Larry Krasner took office will challenge the incumbent in next year’s Democratic primary.

Carlos Vega, who worked in the District Attorney’s Office for 35 years and was the first Latino homicide prosecutor in Pennsylvania, has been a vocal critic of Krasner. He plans to formally announce his candidacy Wednesday.

Vega left the District Attorney’s Office in January 2018, when Krasner fired 31 staffers during his first week. He filed a lawsuit against Krasner last year, alleging that his firing was based on age discrimination. Krasner has denied the firing was related to age, and the lawsuit is still pending in federal court.

Vega said in an interview Friday that his campaign will focus on victims of crime and their families, who have accused Krasner’s office of failing to keep them updated and excluding them from decisions.

Protesters, including Jamaal Henderson of ACT UP Philadelphia, gathered outside Philadelphia City Hall in June and called for allocating funds to community services instead of the police.. Photo by Alejandro Alvarez, The Philadelphia Inquirer,

What? A prosecutor focusing on the victims of crimes and their families, rather than Mr Krasner’s coddling of criminals? That’s kind of what the black community said they wanted, according to Thursday’s Philadelphia Inquirer, but, then again, the same people want cop killer Wesley Cook, who uses the fake name ‘Mumia Abu-Jamal’, released from prison, and want the police department defunded.

Mr Krasner should run on his record: 353 homicides his first year, up from 315 in 2017, 356 in 2019, and now up to 466 so far this year. With 20 days left to go in 2020, Philly has already seen its 3rd highest murder total in history, is on pace to easily break 1989’s 2nd place record of 489, and might just challenge 1990’s all time record of 505. If Mr Krasner is re-elected, after that record, then the City of Brotherly Love will have gotten what it deserves.

George Soros money got another ‘social justice’ district attorney elected, in Los Angeles, and he’s already doing the same stuff Mr Krasner has done.

Black Lives Matter? It sure doesn’t seem that they do in Philadelphia, where black men are being murdered every single day, and the District Attorney is more concerned about the murderers than the murdered.

Would Mr Vega be a better District Attorney than Mr Krasner? We can’t know if he would be much better, but one thing is certain; he couldn’t be any worse. The Inquirer article does have a link to a fund-raising site for Mr Vega, but given that it’s an Act Blue site, I will not link it. The site says that Mr Vega “worked to overturn wrongful convictions,” so he might just be on the social justicey side himself, just not as bad as Mr Krasner. What Philadelphia really needs is a tough, and I mean tough on crime Police Commissioner and District Attorney, people who will do for Philly what Rudy Giuliani did for New York City, catch and prosecute harshly the petty crooks when they are “Johnny Misdemeanor,” before they become “Johnny Felony.”
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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Black community in Philly protests against the police, but also complains that police aren’t solving enough killings Black community claim that #BlackLivesMatter, but don't do anything to prove that

I was doing some research, looking for a story I remembered, in which then Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey decried the “no snitchin'” culture in the heavily black neighborhoods of Philadelphia, when I came across a story about his announced retirement.

Philly Police Commissioner Ramsey to retire

by Aubrey Whelan and Claudia Vargas, Inquirer Staff Writers| October 14, 2015

Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey couldn’t stand the thought of burying another one of his own.

It was March, and he had long been thinking of retirement, ever since Mayor Nutter had won reelection. Even then, he had been “95 percent sure.” His career was at an apex – there had been presidential appointments, and prominent positions on national policing boards, and an unprecedented drop in homicides in a city once dubbed “Killadelphia.”

When 2015 ended, there had been 280 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love, an unfortunate jump from 248 the previous year, but overall he presided over a sharp drop in murder. In 2007, the year before he became Commissioner, there were 391 bodies laying in the city streets. In Mayor Michael Nutter’s (D-Philadelphia) and the new Commissioner’s first year, homicides dropped to 331, and then to 302 the following year. 2013 saw 246 homicides, the lowest number since 1967.

It seems that the city has re-earned that nickname.

As of December 9th, Killadelphia had seen 465 corpses homicides. That’s good for the bronze medal, 3rd place in all of the city’s long history, under Mayor Nutter’s successor, Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia), under ‘social justice’ District Attorney Larry Krasner, the beneficiary of George Soros’ campaign millions, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, who seems to be trying, but is little more than a pawn and tool of Mayor Kenney, and had her own ‘social justice’ history in Oakland and Portland.

What moved me to do that research in the first place? It was this article in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Under Fire

In 8,500 shootings since 2015, suspects have been charged in 1 out of 5 cases and convicted in just 9%.

by Chris Palmer, Mike Newall, Mensah M. Dean and Dylan Purcell | December 10, 2020 | 5:00 AM EST

Every trip outside the house for Jackee Nichols brings a new reminder of the pain.

Nichols is from a part of South Philadelphia that has been embroiled in a shooting conflict for as long as anyone can remember. In October 2018, that violence claimed her 15-year-old grandson. Police believe he was gunned down for living on the wrong block — but, like most shootings in Philadelphia, no one has been charged in the crime.

Now Nichols faces the daily torment of living among the people she suspects killed her grandson, Rasul Benson, leaving trauma to resurface in unexpected moments.

There is, of course, the very #woke notation that this article was “One in an occasional series about Philadelphia’s unchecked gun violence,” as though a gun, an inanimate object, is somehow responsible, and not the criminal mindset allowed to run rampant through Strawberry Mansion and not-so-Nicetown. “Gun violence” is the euphemism used by the credentialed media and the left to avoid blaming actual people.[1]In The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, I noted that “The term “gun violence” is, if you will pardon the pun, a politically loaded one, meant to convey the impression that an … Continue reading

Nichols, 57, a devout Muslim, raced home and cried and prayed for forgiveness, overwhelmed by the feeling that she has been ignored by police, abandoned by some in her neighborhood, and failed by a city she believes has turned an uncaring eye toward unsolved killings.

“It seems to me,” she said, her voice catching, “like you all forgot about my boy.”

Nichols’ pain is one shared by thousands of Philadelphians, because city law enforcement is failing to fulfill one of its most fundamental responsibilities: Secure justice when people are shot.

There are people in her neighborhood who know who murdered her grandson, but unless someone actually tells the police, gives them some clues as to who did it, and why, don’t blame “city law enforcement.” The police depend on the public to help them.

The article goes on to include some grisly statistics:

  • Out of almost 8,500 shootings since 2015, just 21% led to charges, less than 9% have reached a conviction.
  • As of November 1, just under one in six of this year’s nearly 1,900 shootings had led to a suspect in custody.

Then the #woke had to have their say:

What’s more, in a historically segregated city, where Black and brown neighborhoods have long suffered from government disinvestment, institutional racism, and heavy-handed police tactics, The Inquirer found that this system has disproportionately failed these communities.

Since 2015, almost 2,700 young Black men were wounded in shootings, but suspected triggermen were convicted in only 6% of their cases.

White men of the same age were three times as likely to see their shooters convicted.

Uhhh, if white victims of the same age were thrice as likely to see the men who shot them tried and convicted, isn’t it possible, just possible, that it was because a greater percentage of white witnesses cooperated with the police? Of course, the #woke among the Inquirer’s reportorial staff would never even ask that question. Instead, they’d frame the statistic, as they did, by blaming “institutional racism”. Remember, they forced Stan Wischnowski, senior vice president and executive editor of the Inquirer to resign, and the paper to issue an apology, because their precious little feelings were hurt.

Protesters, including Jamaal Henderson of ACT UP Philadelphia, gathered outside Philadelphia City Hall in June and called for allocating funds to community services instead of the police.. Photo by Alejandro Alvarez, The Philadelphia Inquirer,

One has to ask: why, if the black community in Philadelphia are so upset that the police are not solving many of the homicides in black neighborhoods, are so many from that community demanding that the city ‘defund the police’? Would not reducing the resources available to the Philadelphia Police Department be more probable to reduce the number of crimes that they can solve, the number of patrols they can do?

The article does note the ‘defund’ movement, but uncritically states that it’s the fault of the police because the black community do not trust them.

Police say they are embracing reform, developing smarter, more targeted tactics, and trying to overcome the challenge of making cases when so many witnesses don’t want to talk. Within the Philadelphia Police Department, many officers — including Commissioner Danielle Outlaw — have also grown increasingly outspoken about what they view as a criminal justice system and reform-oriented prosecutor’s office that have not cracked down hard enough on illegal guns.

“The criminal community, they’re more emboldened to go out and do more,” Outlaw said in an interview.

Conviction rates for nonfatal shootings and illegal gun possession have fallen since District Attorney Larry Krasner took office in 2018, according to data published by his office. Some police commanders also complain that repeat offenders now routinely get low bail or shorter sentences for gun crimes.

Still, Outlaw acknowledged that the Police Department is primarily responsible for building investigations to get suspected shooters off the street. And the failure to secure justice in the vast majority of gun-violence cases, she said, was “very concerning, for obvious reasons.”

I’ve noted the failures of Mr Krasner’s office previously, but they aren’t failures to him: he wants to see shorter jail terms, he wants to see fewer criminals convicted. And, once again, the “gun violence” trope is used.

Instead, the Inquirer published a sympathetic story, just the previous day, about cop killer Wesley Cook, who calls himself Mumia Abu-Jamal these days, and poor Mr Cook’s 39 years locked up for the murder of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner.

Supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal demand his freedom on the 39th anniversary of his arrest in the death of a Philadelphia police officer

by Mensah M. Dean | December 9, 2020

Supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1981, used the 39th anniversary of his arrest to call for his release from prison on Wednesday, saying he was innocent.

They also condemned the 1985 bombing of the MOVE compound in West Philadelphia and rejected a recent apology Philadelphia city councilmembers offered for the city’s actions that day in starting a fire that killed 11 people.

Well, in one way that apology was worthless: none of the Philadelphia councilmembers were in office thirty-five years ago, and none of them had anything to do with the MOVE action. How can anyone apologize for someone else’s actions?

The group, many of them MOVE members, gathered at the corner of 52nd and Larchwood Streets to demand freedom for Abu-Jamal, 66, a MOVE supporter who lived under a death sentence for two decades before his sentence was overturned by a federal judge in 2001. He’s now serving life without parole for the Dec. 9, 1981, slaying of Officer Daniel Faulkner.

Despite Abu-Jamal’s conviction and numerous failed appeals, his supporters maintain that he is not guilty of killing Faulkner, who was 25, and that his trial was tainted by racism and corruption.

Well, of course they do. There’s no evidence that Mr Cook[2]While I have not changed the fake name used in quoting the article, I will not go along with his ridiculous alias in my own words. did not shoot Officer Faulkner, but that doesn’t matter: they don’t care if he is actually innocent, but are deifying him precisely because he did kill a police officer. Yet the same people are complaining that the Philadelphia Police Department isn’t bringing murderers in their own communities to justice.

In virtually every one of the murders in Philadelphia, there are people who were not involved but who know who the killers are, who have all of the evidence the police and even the stupid District Attorney need to make the arrests and win the convictions, to lock these killers away for the rest of their miserable lives.

Instead, the left pretend that the problem is ‘mass incarceration,’ when the real problem is that not enough criminals are incarcerated, for not long enough.
______________________________________
Cross-posted on RedState.

References

References
↑1 In The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, I noted that “The term “gun violence” is, if you will pardon the pun, a politically loaded one, meant to convey the impression that an inanimate object was somehow violent all by itself. Sensible writers should use the term “shooting,” to make it clear that a person committed the violent act.” I do not use the term “gun violence,” save in direct quotes or to mock the concept that guns are somehow responsible for murder.
↑2 While I have not changed the fake name used in quoting the article, I will not go along with his ridiculous alias in my own words.