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“Based on the injuries and Riley’s physical condition, I suspected that foul play was involved” How many more innocent people are going to have to pay the ultimate price for Democratic policies of not enforcing the law?

Elwood P Dowd, the pseudonym for one of my good friend William Teach’s frequent liberal commenters, tried to conflate patriotic Americans with neo-Nazis:

White neo-Nazi and family “friend” Don Stephen McDougal was arrested for the murder 11 year old Audrii Cunningham. Audrii was found dead at the bottom of the Trinity River with apparent severe head trauma.

While all neo-Nazi’s are white, racist, anti-Semitic right-wingers, not all white, racist, anti-Semitic right-wingers are neo-Nazis. Or are they?

Do any of you Cove regulars proudly sport a swastika tattoo?

America would be a better place if all neo-Nazis were locked up for life.

True Fact: If Adolf Hitler were alive today, Don Trump and his MAGAt kult would support Adolf and the Nazis!! Admit it.

Perhaps, in his eagerness to conflate this (alleged) killer with patriotic Americans, the esteemed Mr Dowd left out a few things, things which were ferreted out by Robert Stacy McCain:

Say hello to Don Steven McDougal, 42, another repeat offender who never should have been let out of prison. Over the years, I’ve called attention to lots of criminals who fit this description. They keep getting turned loose until finally they commit an atrocity that makes nationwide headlines, but no matter how many times the lesson is repeated, people never seem to learn. Here is a summary of McDougal’s Texas record:

  1. February 2003: 3 years for assault of a public servant out of Liberty County
  2. February 7, 2006: 8 months for theft out of Harris County
  3. February 14, 2006: 180 days for possession of less than 1 gram of meth out of Harris County
  4. March 2007: 2 years for enticing a child out of Brazoria County
  5. July 2009: 180 days for unauthorized use of a vehicle out of Harris County
  6. February 2010: 4 years for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon out of Harris County
  7. September 2020: 2 years for unauthorized use of a vehicle out of Liberty County
  8. September 2022: McDougal is released after completing his sentence

That’s (seven) convictions over the span of about 20 years, so it seems that McDougal spent basically his entire adult life either (a) committing crimes or (b) serving prison time. At no time was he ever a law-abiding citizen, but they kept turning him loose until he finally killed somebody.

The dates boldfaced in the list were convictions for felonies. The Lone Star State has a three strikes and you’re out law, but, with four felony convictions, the George Soros-sponsored Harris County prosecutor Kim Ogg apparently didn’t seek that enhancement. Mr McDougal should have been in prison, serving a life sentence, when he (allegedly) killed Audrii Cunningham. Young Miss Cunningham is stone-cold graveyard dead due to liberal Democratic policies.

That, unfortunately was not the only one of Mr McCain’s crime stories relating to Democratic soft-on-crime-and-illegal-immigration policies:

Joe Biden’s Policy Gets a College Girl Killed, But White Lives Don’t Matter

by Robert Stacy McCain | Saturday, February 24, 2024

Since Joe Biden took office, millions of illegal aliens have been released into the United States. This is not an accident. This is Biden’s policy. Americans are literally being killed by this policy:

A Venezuelan illegal immigrant has been arrested and charged for the murder of Laken Riley, a nursing student who was found dead in a wooded area of University of Georgia at Athens (UGA) campus on Thursday.

Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, was arrested and booked into Clarke County Jail for the accused murder of Laken Riley and charged with malice murder, felony murder, aggravated battery, and other criminal violations including kidnapping, according to the Daily Mail.

Ibarra was released into the interior of the US by Customs and Border Patrol because the border crisis had worsened to a point where they did not have enough space at a detention facility to hold him.

Riley, 22, was found dead in the wooded area of campus after a roommate reported her as missing. UGA Police Chief Jeffrey Clark told reporters that this was possibly a “crime of opportunity.”

“He did not know her at all. I think this is a crime of opportunity where he saw an individual and bad things happened,” Clark said. . . .
Evidence consistent with blunt force trauma is what led to her death, according to police.

This is the first homicide that has been reported on the campus in 30 years, according to Clark.

The news of the murder broke amidst reports that there have been at least 7.2 million illegal immigrants crossing into the US since President Joe Biden took office not counting those immigrants who have gone undetected while crossing into the US.

My article title? It comes from Collin Ruggs’ tweet on the crime.

Given that the murder was (allegedly) committed by an illegal immigrant, we already know what will happen: the credentialed media will quickly forget it ever happened. A site search for Laken Riley on The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website, conducted at 1:28 PM EST, returned no hits. The New York Times did cover the story, but rather than telling readers that the accused killer is an illegal immigrant, they simpy stated, “while Mr. Ibarra lives in Athens, he is not a citizen of the United States.” It’s like I’ve said before: The credentialed media don’t exactly lie, but they conceal politically incorrect facts.

In both of these crimes, we can see liberal Democratic Party policies as strongly contributing factors. President Biden cancelled President Trump’s executive orders concerning illegal immigration and border control policies, and the result was clear and obvious: we’ve seen a treendous surge in illegal immigration since the dummkopf from Delaware took office. The Associated Press reported:

The White House is considering using provisions of federal immigration law repeatedly tapped by former President Donald Trump to unilaterally enact a sweeping crackdown at the southern border, according to three people familiar with the deliberations.

The administration, stymied by Republican lawmakers who rejected a negotiated border bill earlier this month, has been exploring options that President Joe Biden could deploy on his own without congressional approval, multiple officials and others familiar with the talks said.

That President Trump was able to significantly reduce — he didn’t eliminate it — illegal immigration without Congress changing our immigration laws, and that President Biden is now considering something similar, now that Democratic mayors in heavily Democratic cities are squalling that there’s just no more room for them since Governor Greg Abbott (R-TX) started shipping the illegals to those ‘sanctuary’ cities, proves one thing: the immigration bill, which would have allowed illegal immigration to continue, up to a point, was not needed!

So what do we have? We have Democratic prosecutor Kim Ogg, another George Soros minion, fighting “mass incarceration,” and Audrii Cunningham paid the price. We have Joe Biden and the Democrats being oh-so-sympathetic to poor, impoverished immigrants, and Laken Riley paid the price. How many more innocent people are going to have to pay the ultimate price for Democratic policies of not enforcing the law?

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World War III watch: Warmongers gotta warmonger!

It seems that the neoconservatives — who haven’t seemed very conservative when it comes to domestic policy — simply have never met a war in which they didn’t want the United States to fight. Of course, by that, they meant other Americans to fight, not themselves. We have previously reported on Bill Kristol, the neoconservative founder and later destroyer of The Weekly Standard, because as a dedicated #NeverTrumper he couldn’t stand to allow any support of Donald Trump in a magazine marketed to conservatives and Republicans. Mr Kristol and the other neocons, such as Max Boot and Jennifer Rubin, all love wars and want the United States to participate in them. Today’s left have managed to become so seduced by President Biden’s support for Ukraine in its war against Russia than even the very much not-a-neocon Amanda Marcotte was supporting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, albeit for different reasons.

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Trudy Rubin also fits into that category:

Are there four brave GOP House members with the courage to save Ukraine?

That’s all it would take to get the majority needed to bypass speaker Mike Johnson and get a vote on Ukraine aid to the House floor.

by Trudy Rubin | Friday, February 23, 2024 | 6:30 AM EST

Wanted: Four GOP House members with a tiny fraction of the courage of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny.

Saturday marks the second anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine. It comes one week after Navalny died in an icy Siberian prison for his fight for democracy and opposition to the Ukraine war.

Yet the United States is on the verge of surrendering Ukraine into Putin’s hands because House Republican leaders refuse to allow members to vote for urgent military aid for Kyiv, a vote that would most likely pass (as it did with in a bipartisan vote in the Senate).

Pressed by Donald Trump and extremist MAGA members, Congress may doom brave Ukrainians to destruction by a Russian dictator who despises the West — and is armed by Iran and North Korea. Nothing like this has been seen since British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain conceded part of Czechoslovakia to Adolf Hitler in 1938 in hopes of dissuading him from occupying more European lands.

Mrs Rubin is most certainly dedicated to fighting the evil Vladimir Vladimirovich — addressing someone by his given and patronymic names is considered polite and respectful in Russian — but her comparison is accurate only in the most inaccurate of ways. Adolf Hitler was only 49½ years old when the Munich Pact was signed on September 30, 1938, and France and the United Kingdom were neither willing to fight Germany, nor able to send much aid to Czechoslovakia at the time. The Wehrmacht was an unknown quantity at the time, but Josef Goebbels’ propaganda made the world believe it was a tremendous fighting force.

Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, is 71½ years old, and the Russian military, if not mostly exhausted by the two-year-long war in Ukraine, would still be in no shape to invade any other countries for perhaps ten years or more after their war with Ukraine is over.

These are undisputed facts which must be taken into account, but the neocons don’t really do that, because those facts just don’t fit the narrative they wish to push.

Whether Trump and GOP extremists succeed in gifting Ukraine to Putin may depend on whether four GOP House members have the courage to stand up to MAGA appeasement and defend America’s long-term security.

Here’s how it could work.

The best chance to skirt House Speaker Mike Johnson’s refusal to permit a vote on Ukraine aid would be via a discharge petition. That is a parliamentary maneuver that effectively bypasses the speaker to bring a bill before the full House for a vote — if a majority of members agree to do so. If all Democrats signed on, it would only require four Republicans to get the Ukraine supplemental aid bill to the floor.

Heaven forfend! “Trump and GOP extremists”! “MAGA appeasement”! Mrs Rubin is telling Inquirer readers that there is no reasoned debate here, that only the extremists could possibly, possibly! be opposed to wasting sending yet another $60 billion in money and war materiel to Ukraine.

But let’s tell the truth here: it doesn’t matter how much money and military aid we send to Ukraine, they cannot defeat Russia absent the US and NATO sending actual ground troops to fight Russia, and fighter aircraft and pilots to gain air superiority. That would mean the US and NATO in direct combat with Russia, a nation with a strategic nuclear arsenal.

Given Russia’s relatively poor showing against the Ukrainians, it would seem probable that American and NATO troops could push the Russians out of Ukraine, at least once they got there, but it has to be asked: at what point of a seeming military defeat would President Putin decide to cross the nuclear threshold? A concentration of US and NATO troops would be the perfect target for Russian ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons, and once that threshold is crossed, who could say when the nukes would stop being used? Would Russia even risk that deployment, rather than strike the deployment bases, either in Poland, a NATO member, or Ukraine once the troops moved into the country but before they reached the front lines?

There is something truly sickening about the fact that Johnson — and so many GOP supporters of aid for Ukraine — are too scared to allow Congress to vote on such a key measure. Johnson fears being ousted from his speakership by the MAGA clique, as was the previous speaker, Kevin McCarthy. House members fear that, if they buck the Trump line, a MAGA candidate will run against them in the GOP primary. And above all hangs the threat of physical danger to them or their families by deranged MAGA supporters who take Trump’s ugly rhetoric to heart.

Yet, surely, among more than 200 GOP House members, there are four whose belief in democracy and U.S. security would embolden them to take the risk.

Mrs Rubin, naturally, asserts that there’s a serious physical danger to any Republicans who voted to support this, “by deranged MAGA supporters who take Trump’s ugly rhetoric to heart,” but, shockingly enough, no such thing has happened to the Republicans in the Senate who voted to support Ukraine.

But, more importantly, Mrs Rubin noted that Republican House members who voted for such might face primary opponents. Well, if they fear primary opponents, then they must believe that their constituents wouldn’t support wasting sending more aid to Ukraine. Aren’t congressmen supposed to represent their constituents?

“This is not just about Ukraine, it is about our security,” (Representative Brendan) Boyle (D-PA) told me. “Putin is evil on the same level as Hitler. It is a lot less expensive to stand up to him now; if we wait until later, it will be much more costly in money and lives.”

Mr Putin might be “evil on the same level as Hitler”, but his military forces have not proven to be on the same level as the Wehrmacht in 1939. We are not likely to see Russian troops landing on the beaches of Maine and Virginia even if Ukraine collapses completely. We’re not going to see them invading even tiny Estonia, a NATO member roughly the size of New Hampshire and Vermont, because Ukraine has shown the Russians that they simply don’t have the wherewithal to do invasions well. Perhaps in ten years Russia will have rebuilt its forces enough to contemplate that, but Vladimir Vladimirovich will be 81 years old in ten years. if he’s even still alive then.

I don’t want to see Ukraine lose either, but I am not willing to waste American dollars and American weapons, and possibly American lives — remember: my older daughter is a reservist with the Army Corps of Engineers — to prop up Ukraine.

$60 billion in US aid would do what? It would help Ukraine to keep fighting the stalemate they’ve managed to achieve, but that’s all. $60 billion would keep the war going, and keep the killing on both sides and the destruction in Ukraine marching ever-forward, but it wouldn’t enable Ukraine to throw the Russians out of their country.

Mrs Rubin noted that the European Union have committed twice as much aid to Ukraine as the US has, to which I say, “Great! It’s a European problem; let the Europeans handle it! But leave the United States out of it.”

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Killadelphia: “Justice” in Philadelphia

We have previously noted that The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote major stories on the murder of Samuel Sean Collington, a Temple University student approaching graduation. Mr Collington was a white victim, murdered by Latif Williams, a black 17-year-old, in a botched robbery. On December 2, 2021,the Inquirer published 14 photographs from a vigil for Mr Collington, along with another story about him. This was a big story in the City of Brotherly Love, in part because Mr Collington was an intern with the City Commissioners’ Office and knew the ‘right people’, and in part because it was yet another example of violence and lawlessness around the Temple University campus. When my daughters were considering to where they would go to college, I absolutely vetoed Temple, because I knew the neighborhood.

Well, more than two years after the murder, young Mr Williams has finally been convicted:

Man convicted in 2021 murder of Temple University student Samuel Collington

Latif Williams, 19, of Olney, was found guilty of third-degree murder, possession of an instrument of crime, and illegal possession of a firearm in connection with the killing.

by Nick Valada | Tuesday, February 20, 2024 | 6:06 PM EST | Updated: Wednesday, February 21, 2024 | 1:52 PM EST

Latif Williams, photo by, Philadelphia Police Department, via KYT-TV, Philadelphia.

A Philadelphia man was convicted Tuesday in the 2021 murder of 21-year-old Temple University student Samuel Collington.Latif Williams, 19, of Olney, was found guilty after a one-day bench trial of third-degree murder, possession of an instrument of crime, and illegal possession of a firearm.

A “bench trial” is one in which the defendant is tried by a judge, without a jury; both the prosecution and defendant must agree to that type of trial for it to proceed.

A native of Prospect Park, Delaware County, Collington was a senior at Temple studying political science at the time of his murder. He was shot outside his apartment on the 2200 block of North Park Avenue near Dauphin Street on Nov. 28, 2021, in what police said appeared to be a robbery and carjacking.

Collington was expected to graduate in spring 2022 from Temple’s College of Liberal Arts. At the time of his death, he had recently received a high score on the LSAT, planned to attend law school in the fall, and worked as a democracy fellow in the Office of the Philadelphia City Commissioners.

“The District Attorney’s Office is grateful for the conviction of Latif Williams for this outrageous crime, which not only deeply impacted Mr. Collington’s family and loved ones but affected the entire Temple University community,” District Attorney Larry Krasner said. “I again extend my deepest condolences for the terrible loss of a promising young man.”

The cited article continues to tell readers some details about the case, and the fact that young Mr Williams was under police investigation in connection with several armed robberies in the area and an August 2021 carjacking of an elderly man. Mr Williams will be formally sentenced in May, and is scheduled to be tried for the carjacking on the same day.

Patrick Link, Williams’ attorney, said Tuesday that the third-degree murder conviction for his client was the “appropriate verdict,” as Williams was initially charged with first- and second-degree murder, which would have brought harsher sentences. A first-degree murder conviction calls for a mandatory sentence of life in prison.

Yeah, uh huh, right. What is “third-dgree murder” in Pennsylvania?

Pennsylvania Title 18 §2502. Murder.

  • (a) Murder of the first degree.–A criminal homicide constitutes murder of the first degree when it is committed by an intentional killing.
  • (b) Murder of the second degree.–A criminal homicide constitutes murder of the second degree when it is committed while defendant was engaged as a principal or an accomplice in the perpetration of a felony.
  • (c) Murder of the third degree.–All other kinds of murder shall be murder of the third degree. Murder of the third degree is a felony of the first degree.

Those are fairly simple definitions. Given that Mr Williams shot and killed Mr Collington while attempting to rob him, his crime would fit the definition of second-degree murder. Though not stated in the definition above, first-degree murder normally requires proof of premeditation, which would seem to rule it out in this case.

So, what are the penalties for murder in the Keystone State?

Pennsylvania Title 18 §1102.1. Sentence of persons under the age of 18 for murder, murder of an unborn child and murder of a law enforcement officer.

  • (a) First degree murder.–A person who has been convicted after June 24, 2012, of a murder of the first degree, first degree murder of an unborn child or murder of a law enforcement officer of the first degree and who was under the age of 18 at the time of the commission of the offense shall be sentenced as follows:
    • (1) A person who at the time of the commission of the offense was 15 years of age or older shall be sentenced to a term of life imprisonment without parole, or a term of imprisonment, the minimum of which shall be at least 35 years to life.
    • (2) A person who at the time of the commission of the offense was under 15 years of age shall be sentenced to a term of life imprisonment without parole, or a term of imprisonment, the minimum of which shall be at least 25 years to life.
  • (b) Notice.–Reasonable notice to the defendant of the Commonwealth’s intention to seek a sentence of life imprisonment without parole under subsection (a) shall be provided after conviction and before sentencing.
  • (c) Second degree murder.–A person who has been convicted after June 24, 2012, of a murder of the second degree, second degree murder of an unborn child or murder of a law enforcement officer of the second degree and who was under the age of 18 at the time of the commission of the offense shall be sentenced as follows:
    • (1) A person who at the time of the commission of the offense was 15 years of age or older shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment the minimum of which shall be at least 30 years to life.
    • (2) A person who at the time of the commission of the offense was under 15 years of age shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment the minimum of which shall be at least 20 years to life.

You will note, however, that there is no specific sentence listed for third-degree murder, which is simply listed as a first-degree felony. That’s indicated below:

Pennsylvania Title 18 §1103. Sentence of imprisonment for felony.

  • Except as provided in 42 Pa.C.S. § 9714 (relating to sentences for second and subsequent offenses), a person who has been convicted of a felony may be sentenced to imprisonment as follows:
    • (1) In the case of a felony of the first degree, for a term which shall be fixed by the court at not more than 20 years.

There is, however, no minimum sentence specified, though normally the sentence range is ten-to-twenty years. A second-degree felony in the Keystone State has a maximum sentence of ten years in the state penitentiary.

Lori D. Esq, a former prosecutor, tweeted:

DAO did waiver trial in front of Okeefe who only convicted of 3rd degree murder. But apparently Okeefe always gives 3rd degree discount yet Larry has policy that DAO always agrees to waiver unless a cop is a defendant. What a disgrace.

“Okeefe” is Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Scott O’Keefe.

So, let’s look at what made Mr Link so happy. Under Title 18 §1102.1(c)(1), a juvenile defendant of Mr Williams’ age at the time of the murder would be sentenced to a minimum of 30 years, up to a life sentence, with the possibility of parole. But with the third-degree murder downgrade, Mr Williams faces no more than 20 years, which would see him released, at the latest, at age 37 — assuming no consecutive sentences are applied, and that Mr Williams receives credit for time served — while Mr Collington will still be stone-cold graveyard dead.

We won’t know Mr Williams’ sentence until May, but at this point I am reminded of a couple of OpEds that the Inquirer published, both of which told readers that teenagers’ brains weren’t fully developed, and that we should treat them leniently, to give them chances to reform. We can’t know if Judge O’Keefe read them or will be influenced by them, but one thing we do know is that justice has not been done here.
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Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.

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Baristas on strike! Heaven forfend!

I was aware that some Philadelphia coffee shops were unionized, though I will admit that I didn’t see how that made much sense. In response to the tweet from The Philadelphia Inquirer pictured at the right, @JoeDollinger replied:

We have a barista union? Do people realize it’s not hard to make coffee?

@TooMader replied and repented being a capitalist stooge:

I never realized how overly capitalist I was pouring my own coffee at Wawa. Sorry comrades.

The Keurig coffee machine on our kitchen countertop, with one of my favorite coffee cups.

I applaud anyone who recognizes the superiority of Wawa coffee!

Alas! There is no Wawa close to us in the Bluegrass State, though one is planned for eastern Fayette County, where I-75 meets Richmond Road. However, rather than counting on baristas to serve me overpriced coffee, we have instead exploited another capitalist invention, the Keurig! Since Mrs Pico prefers a different coffee than I do, it’s the perfect thing for us, and, brewed one cup at a time, there’s no wasted half-pots of coffee in a carafe sitting around.

Local 80, Philly’s barista union, calls for Ultimo Coffee boycott

Local 80 is encouraging customers to “suspend their use of Ultimo Coffee products until owners settle a contract with their workers.”

by Jenn Ladd | Wednesday, February 21, 2024 | 6:00 AM EST

Local 80, the nearly two-year-old food service union that represents employees at various independent coffee shops in Philadelphia, announced it is calling for a boycott of Ultimo Coffee beginning today. The boycott comes a week after unionized Ultimo employees publicly authorized a strike, and a week before the union’s next bargaining session with the cafe’s owners.

Ultimo Coffee, Rittenhouse Square, from their website.

Ultimo’s four Philadelphia cafes unionized in late 2022. Owners Aaron and Elizabeth Ultimo and union employees have been negotiating a tentative first contract for just over a year. In January, employees at the Germantown and Graduate Hospital shops moved to decertify their unions, leaving just 12 workers represented under two Ultimo unions at the Newbold and Rittenhouse cafes.

Local 80 is encouraging customers to “suspend their use of Ultimo Coffee products until owners settle a contract with their workers,” according to a release.

The Ultimos could not be reached immediately for comment.

There’s more at the original.

Unions have power when the employees are highly skilled at some difficult to train and replace position; it’s not like Joe Schmuckatella can just walk in off the street and do skilled welding jobs. Electricians and plumbers require training, and if some of them were trained on the job while working as helpers — I was! — it still takes a long time.

But the photo used in the Inky’s tweet, by the newspaper’s staff photographer David Maialetti, shows “Barista Emily Halpern mak(ing) a hand pour coffee at Ultimo’s Catharine Street shop in Philadelphia on November 20, 2014.” Just how much training does it take to get a new employee to be able to pour hot water through coffee grounds in a filter to make a single cup of coffee? The barista shown is doing, in person, what our Keurig does: pouring a measured amount of hot water through coffee grounds — though a Keurig actually pressurizes the water a bit — to make a single cup of coffee.

So, why does Ultimo Coffee use baristas to hand pour the coffee in front of customers? I can see one reason: if they just had Keurigs lined up, customers might be able to see it and say to themselves, “Self, I can do this at home for maybe 50¢ a cup!” Of course, when it comes to the shop in tony Rittenhouse Square, perhaps saving money doesn’t really matter. And, depending upon how busy their shops are, they might need several people to handle customer service during peak hours.

That’s a bit simplistic, in that Ultimo’s website shows fancy shops in upscale locations, with seating both inside and out, as well as various breakfast foods. Showing a picture of a hard coffee mug, you can apparently sit down with your pretty wife and enjoy a pleasant breakfast, outside on Locust Street in nice weather, or inside if that’s what you prefer. But it’s still not the kind of job for which a new employee can easily be trained.

Unionization and the threat of strikes work when replacement workers cannot easily be found, and the company against which the strike is called cannot handle a long work stoppage.

A previous story in the Inquirer reported that “The Philadelphia Joint Board recently set up a relief fund for organized Ultimo employees.” But it also noted that:

“We will continue to work through all remaining issues with the Union, and we are confident that we will reach a mutually-agreeable solution,” the Ultimos said in a statement. “We are proud that the employees at our Newbold and Rittenhouse stores make an average of $25 per hour. Employees are guaranteed a minimum of $20/hour, including tips.”

What the heck does a cup of coffee and a croissant cost there that employees average $25 an hour? That 50¢ for a cup of coffee in my Keurig sounds better all the time!

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This is how newspapers can once again grow and thrive Newspapers have a value that television news does not, but editors and publishers are not trying to sell it

My good friend Robert Stacy McCain, formerly a professional newspaper reporter, wrote:

Sitting here with my office TV tuned to CNN — I watch CNN, so you don’t have to — I’m struck by the arrogance of their assumption that they get to decide what is and is not newsworthy, as if their audience had no other source of information about what’s going on in the world, and no desire to know anything else except what CNN is “reporting.”

The only difference between CNN and Fox News — other than the leggy reporterettes on Fox — is that CNN runs the same eight stories a day, where Fox only has five. If their audience truly does have no other source of information, they’re going to be fairly uninformed.

My Washington Post subscription, which is the least expensive one I have.

Some have mocked the fact that I subscribe to five newspapers, an expensive hobby, to be sure, because, with my nearly dead ears I prefer to read the news than watch or listen to it, but another aspect of newspapers is that they have more than a few stories a day. The homepage of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website currently shows 72 separate stories, and if more than a few of them are a couple of days old, that’s still a lot. Even a smaller McClatchy newspaper, the Lexington Herald-Leader, currently has 54 stories showing on its website main page at the moment.

How much do people lose by not reading newspapers anymore? Even the stories that CNN and Fox do cover are rarely covered in a lot of detail; only the things which show well on television get covered, because that is the limitation of the visual and entertainment medium.

My far more expensive Philadelphia Inquirer subscription. I could use a senior citizen’s discount right about now.

That is not to say that newspapers do not have their own biases, in their news coverage as well as editorial sections. The Inquirer most certainly does, and what my, sadly late, best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal does as well, though sometimes not as blatantly. But it’s easier to sift through the bias, and see where the bias is, to get around that, when the medium is the written word, when the reader can go back and reread a particular sentence or paragraph. As I have written previously, the credentialed media don’t exactly lie, but they conceal politically incorrect facts.

This is what newspapers need to sell! CNN’s eight stories and Fox’s five, hammered relentlessly toward audiences which come-and-go through the day, shouldn’t be able to compete with the dozens newspapers offer. Yeah, it takes the fact that I already know a lot, to find the parts that are omitted, and a jaundiced eye to see them, but for an at least reasonably-well educated reader — like Jethro Bodine, I is a sixth-grade graduate! — newspapers can and should be the medium of choice. And this is where Gabriel Escobar and Daniel Pearson of the Inky, and Richard Green of the Herald-Leader, need to concentrate their efforts.

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Does The Philadelphia Inquirer really want to excuse juvenile crime?

As we reported on Ash Wednesday, The Philadelphia Inquirer gave OpEd space to three Montclair State University ‘academics,’ in which they argued that the barins of teenagers are not fully matured by age 18, and that they should usually be treated as juveniles for several more years, to give them a chance for rehabilitation. Well, it was just a day later, that the newspaper gave more OpEd space, for two more activists to make the same point:

Locking teens up won’t make our city safer. It will have the opposite effect, and here’s why.

When young people commit nonviolent offenses, they should be able to learn from and make amends for their poor choices. We hope our new police commissioner knows this.

by Donna Cooper and Anton Moore, For The Inquirer | Thursday, February 15, 2024 | 6:00 AM EST

While it is incredibly welcome news that gun deaths in Philadelphia decreased in 2023 from the peaks of the COVID-19 years, there is so much work that needs to be done to prevent people — especially our young people — from going down the path that leads to violence.

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s selection of Kevin Bethel as police commissioner is a good one because — as the former chief of school safety — he has the right mindset and experience to invest in our children. Commissioner Bethel recognizes that the brain isn’t fully developed until a person’s mid-20s, which means young people make reckless decisions at 16, 17, and 18 years old that they would likely never make in adulthood. When those reckless decisions are nonviolent offenses, it is undeniably better to give children and teens the structure to learn from and make amends for their poor choices, not lock them up.

One obvious point: juveniles who are incarcerated are not out on the streets able to commit further crimes.

We have hope that Bethel understands this. He successfully led an expansion of the Philadelphia Police Department’s school-based diversion program, which responds to low-level misbehavior — like marijuana possession or bringing scissors to school — by linking kids to supportive services, instead of arresting them. These alternatives include academic support and mentoring to identify reasons why kids may be acting out. Since 2013, arrests in Philadelphia public schools have gone down by over 90%. (Bethel’s diversion program began in the 2014-15 academic year.) Youth in the program were also less likely to be suspended or arrested within five years after they went through the program than those students who were arrested at school.

We need to bring this same approach of diversion over arrest to the community.

Uhhh, the problem isn’t teens bringing scissors or pot to school; those things don’t get teens arrested on Philly’s streets. The problems are theft, destruction of private property, carjackings, shootings, fatal beatings, crimes which have identifiable victims.

Further down:

And yet, too many people assume that the only solution to stop youth crime is to lock children up long term.

While there are times when detaining teenagers is warranted, it cannot be the first and only response if we really want to end violence, because it doesn’t address the reasons so many kids are committing crimes in the first place.

Actually, it can. The criminal who is incarcerated or not incarcerated is not the only one who is learning a lesson here. The criminal, teenaged or otherwise, who is not incarcerated, who is treated as leniently as Curtis Wallace, Jr, was, learns the lesson that he’ll always get cut a break; that’s not a lesson the article authors have contemplated.

But it’s also the people around the malefactor who learn a lesson, the lesson being either that, hey, Curtis got busted, but was let go, so I’ll get let off, too, or the lesson that, dang, Curtis got busted and drew ten years in the state pen. The teenaged delinquents the authors contemplate getting whatever services and education that they expect might get that, were they to get their way, but the kids around the leniently treated criminal won’t; they’ll only see that their buddy got away with it.

Philadelphia needs to invest in a full array of services, including prevention and community-based services, to stop the cycle of arrest and incarceration. And we have the funds to do it: A recent economic analysis of the Philadelphia juvenile justice system showed an estimated $17 million in unspent funds each year — money that could be invested in evidence-based solutions that actually reduce crime by helping young people understand how to make better choices and make amends with those they’ve harmed.

And there we have it! The authors were very careful not to use the term “restorative justice,” that leftist prosecutors like Larry Krasner and Pamela Price like to employ, but that’s what “make amends with those they’ve harmed” means. And every place the George Soros-sponsored liberal prosecutors have taken power, crime rates have soared. The lessons of leniency have been well learned, as people with bad intentions have learned that they’ve less to fear than before. Even in the semi-deranged brains of the criminals, cost-benefit calculations are made, even if in forms we wouldn’t necessarily see as reasonable.

I have more than once mocked Mr Krasner as having a diabolically brilliant plan to get criminals off of Philly’s streets: keep excusing them and excusing them and excusing them until they commit a crime which gets them locked up for life, or, more efficiently, killed. That has been the result in the City of Brotherly Love. The problem with the authors’ OpEd is that they are taking seriously the notion that crime by juveniles should be excused, better to teach them a lesson.

The authors used the appointment of Kevin Bethel as their starting point, and even concluded with an appeal to him concerning ‘diversion’ of arrests to some sort of better program. But the duty of the Police Commissioner is to police the city. Even if the Commissioner believed in such diversion programs, such programs would be the purview of agencies outside of the Police Department.

We’ve actually seen such a ‘program,’ though not really stated formally, before, as the Broward County Sheriff’s Department kept letting Nikolas Cruz go, time after time, for his misdemeanors and even a couple of felonies. The school board did the same thing, keeping him out of the so-called ‘school-to-prison pipeline.’ Thus Mr Cruz had no criminal record, and was legally able to purchase the AR-15 with which he shot up the Margery Stoneman Douglas High School, sending 17 people to their deaths, and wounding 17 others.

He could have been in jail on St Valentine’s Day of 2018, but the leniency of the left kept him free as a bird. That is what such leniency does.

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Why do the credentialed media hide the news? Two police officers and a paramedic murdered, and the professional media are ignoring the story as much as they can

My good internet friend Robert Stacy McCain noted that the local police and credentialed media decided to keep secret the identity of the “suspect” who murdered two police officers and a paramedic on Sunday in the Minneapolis suburb of Burnsville.

Mr McCain noted:

(The alleged suspect) petitioned the court in 2020 to have his gun rights restored, which a judge denied.

However, the Associated Press reported:

The suspect, who officials said had multiple guns and large amounts of ammunition, also died.

Clearly, clearly! this report must be false. Since the (alleged) suspect was legally prohibited from owning or possessing firearms, he couldn’t possibly have had the weapons in question.

The only reasonable answer is that one of the children in the house owned and had the firearms, one of the kids shot the police officers and fireman, and the (alleged) suspect, in nobly trying to shield the children, wound up sacrificing his life.

I started this article early, but put it on the shelf, waiting to see if The Philadelphia Inquirer would update it, but nope, the 8:28 AM EST version of the story is the last one posted. More, it no longer shows on the main page of our nation’s third oldest newspaper, and the newspaper of record for the sixth largest city, and seventh largest metropolitan area in our country. And a site search for Shannon Gooden, made at 4:50 PM EST, the (alleged) suspect, returned nothing connected with this story.

Mr McCain, and many others, have wondered why the credentialed media kept the name, and thus the photo, of the (alleged) suspect under wraps, and many have suggested that it is because Mr Gooden is black, and that had he been a MAGA hat wearing white male, his name and image would have been all over the news. Perhaps that’s true, though there’s at least the possibility that the police were waiting until Mr Gooden’s family had been notified.

But it wasn’t just the Inky which never updated a story to identify Mr Gooden. A Google search for Shannon Gooden, conducted at 5:10 PM EST, returned only one national news source, CBS News, with the story on the first page. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune and Duluth News-Tribune, both had stories, but they’re local news sources, not national.

Two police officers and a fireman working as a paramedic, murdered, and this story is being quickly memory-holed.

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After six second chances, a Philadelphia thug does something which gets him stone-cold graveyard dead.

As we noted almost two years ago, when the Philadelphia Police Department tried to keep the identity of a police officer involved in a shooting which killed a common criminal, because then-Commissioner Danielle Outlaw claimed that the officer’s personal safety was at risk, The Philadelphia Inquirer put together its sources, and identified and published the identity of the officer.

Well, oops, they did it again!

Police are investigating a traffic stop that ended with an injured officer and fatally shot driver

A police officer shot Curtis Wallace Jr. on the Adams Avenue Bridge in Crescentville after he allegedly hit the officer with his car.

by Ellie Rushing | Friday, February 16, 2024 | 12:56 PM EST

Curtis Wallace, Jr, from a 2022 mugshot, via WTAE.

Philadelphia police on Friday continued to investigate an attempted traffic stop Thursday night that authorities said led to an officer being struck by a car, then pinned against a wall by the vehicle, before the officer shot and fatally wounded the driver.

Family identified the man who died as 36-year-old Curtis Wallace Jr. And while police declined to name the officer involved, multiple law enforcement sources identified him as 38-year-old Marckenson Smith, an eight-year veteran of the force.

So, when the Usual Suspects protest against this incident — they’ve even protested the police shooting of a thug who had shot an officer.

And, no, of course the Inquirer didn’t provide Mr Wallace’s old mugshot, but it didn’t take much searching to find it.

The incident began around 7 p.m. Thursday, when Smith attempted to pull over a white Ford Lincoln sedan at Roosevelt Boulevard and F Street in Crescentville, Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel said outside Einstein Medical Center Thursday night.

Bethel did not say what prompted the traffic stop, and a department spokesman on Friday said that remains part of the investigation.

You can follow the link to the newspaper’s original, to read the details which have been published. To me, the interesting part is toward the end of Miss Rushing’s story:

Records show (Mr Wallace) has a history of prior arrests and run-ins with the law.

In March 2015, records show he pleaded guilty to theft and receiving stolen property, and was sentenced to two years’ probation. Later that year in December, he was charged with aggravated assault after police said he broke into a house, beat a man with a metal pipe, dragged him out of the property, and threatened to kill him. Wallace pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 1½ months to a year in jail, plus two years’ probation, and was released on time served.

Really? What kind of sweetheart plea deal was he given? Under Title 18 §2702, aggravated assault is, depending on a couple of circumstances, either a First-degree or Second-degree felony, which under Title 18 §106 has a sentence of over ten years (b)(2) for First-degree, or a maximum of ten years (b)(3) for a Second-degree felony conviction. Yet Mr Wallace released on time served in jail awaiting trial. This was after he was already on probation.

He continued to violate this probation over the years, records show. In early 2019, he was charged with indecent assault, violating a protective order, and strangulation, but the charges were later dismissed for reasons that were not immediately clear.

Most recently, in January 2022, he was convicted of theft and conspiracy for breaking into a woman’s car and stealing her computer, $900 cash, and Burberry coat, records show. He was sentenced to up to 23 months in jail, plus 30 months probation, though he was immediately paroled and ordered to pay $5,000 in restitution.

Just a few months later, he was arrested and charged with orchestrating a catalytic converter theft ring in Allegheny County. Records show he pleaded guilty to theft and was sentenced to one year probation.

Mr Wallace appears to have spent much of his past few years on probation, but, despite continual violations, never had his probation revoked and sent to prison. It’s obvious that previous probation sentences, previous second and third and fourth and fifth and sixth chances, didn’t turn Mr Wallace to the straight and narrow, didn’t get him to reform his life and become a law-abiding citizen.

Instead, he got let go and leniently treated, and shown just about every courtesy possible, right up until he did something which put him on a slab in the morgue. I have previously joked that that was District Attorney Larry Krasner’s — though the Allegheny County event is not on Mr Krasner — brilliant policy to reduce crime by releasing criminals until they do something which gets them off the streets permanently.

Perhaps my joking isn’t all that much of a joke. But if Mr Wallace had been treated according to the laws passed by the Commonwealth’s elected representatives, who (supposedly) reflect the will of the people, he’d be alive today, alive behind bars, but at least able to look forward to getting out at some point.

He won’t be getting out of that pine box.

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The Lexington Herald-Leader once again tramples on McClatchy Mugshot Policy . . . for a white guy.

We have noted, dozens of times, the McClatchy Mugshot Policy. Though I have never been able to find it officially published, when it was first emailed to McClatchy reporters and editors, a couple of the recipients sent it out via Twitter, which is the source of the image to the left, with the full text being printed in the footnote.[1]McClatchy Mugshot Policy: Publishing mugshots of arrestees has been shown to have lasting effects on both the people photographed and marginalized communities. The permanence of the internet can mean … Continue reading

The Lexington Herald-Leader, a McClatchy-owned newspaper, has made several exceptions to the mugshot policy, but, as we have noted previously, a policy which was put in place because publishing mugshots “disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness,” has seen many of the exceptions made when the suspect in a crime is white, and very rarely when the suspect is black. This site, which does publish mugshots, has wondered why the newspaper concealed the pictures of Jo’Quon Anthony Edwards Jackson, or Juanyah J Clay?

Well, here they go again!

Suspended Lexington middle school principal resigns. State license board may take action

Mike Hale, photo by Fayette County Public Schools, and published here.

by Valarie Honeycutt Spears | Thursday, February 15, 2024 | 9:07 AM EST | Updated: Friday, February 16, 2024 | 6:47 AM ESTA Lexington middle school principal who has been suspended since April 2023 has resigned, a letter released Wednesday under the Kentucky Open Records Act said.

In April 2023, Fayette County Public Schools school officials placed principal Gregory Michael Hale on administrative leave. They have never said why, only citing “the public nature of the situation”. State child protection officials have not released details of their investigation to the Herald-Leader.

In a Oct. 2, 2023 resignation letter released to the Herald-Leader, Hale said, “My intent is to use my vacation, personal, emergency and sick leave. Therefore, I render my resignation as executive principal at Winburn Middle School effective June 11th, 2024. It has been wonderful working for Fayette Public Schools and I wish you and everyone in the system the very best.“

The spokesperson for the Kentucky state department that handles child protection said in April they were investigating a situation that resulted in Hale being placed on administrative leave. No other information was given at the time.

Read more here.

Yes, what my best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal did publish that photo of Mr Hale, which I screen captured at 8:44 AM EST on Friday. I did crop the photo for easier publication.

Mrs Spears’ report continued to tell us that the Kentucky Education Professional Standards Board, which licenses professional educators, denied an open records request on the case, stating that their investigation has not yet been completed, and that Fayette County Public Schools Chief of Staff Tracy Bruno stated that the district does not comment on personnel matters. State child protection officials did not respond to inquiries from the newspaper.

So, what do we have here? The references to state child protection agencies would naturally lead readers to infer that Mr Hale is suspected of some form of inappropriate contact with minors, but here we have a middle school principal who was suspended ten months ago, yet has not been charged with any crime, and the newspaper, if it has any inside information on the case, has not reported it. With the McClatchy Mugshot Policy stating, “The permanence of the internet can mean those arrested but not convicted of a crime have the photograph attached to their names forever,” would that not pertain even more strongly to a man who has yet to be arrested and charged with a crime?

References

References
↑1 McClatchy Mugshot Policy:

Publishing mugshots of arrestees has been shown to have lasting effects on both the people photographed and marginalized communities. The permanence of the internet can mean those arrested but not convicted of a crime have the photograph attached to their names forever. Beyond the personal impact, inappropriate publication of mugshots disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness. In fact, some police departments have started moving away from taking/releasing mugshots as a routine part of their procedures.

To address these concerns, McClatchy will not publish crime mugshots — online, or in print, from any newsroom or content-producing team — unless approved by an editor. To be clear, this means that in addition to photos accompanying text stories, McClatchy will not publish “Most wanted” or “Mugshot galleries” in slide-show, video or print.

Any exception to this policy must be approved by an editor. Editors considering an exception should ask:

  • Is there an urgent threat to the community?
  • Is this person a public official or the suspect in a hate crime?
  • Is this a serial killer suspect or a high-profile crime?

If an exception is made, editors will need to take an additional step with the Pub Center to confirm publication by making a note in the ‘package notes‘ field in Sluglife.