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“It’s a stinking business, Mr Rutledge, a stinking business!” It seems that Planned Parenthood is having difficulties finding physicians who want to perform abortions

In the musical 1776, Roy Poole, the actor playing delegate Steven Hopkins of Rhode Island, shouts to John Callum, who played Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, on slavery, “It’s a stinking business, Mr Rutledge, a stinking business!” That’s how I see abortion, and I am appalled that anyone would willingly be a part of it.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 940 OB/GYNs employed in Georgia in May of 2010, the fifth highest in the nation. The ‘location quotient’ for OB/GYNs in the Peachtree State was 1.38; BLS defines the term as:

The location quotient is the ratio of the area concentration of occupational employment to the national average concentration. A location quotient greater than one indicates the occupation has a higher share of employment than average, and a location quotient less than one indicates the occupation is less prevalent in the area than average.

There are 21 OB/GYNs employed in Georgia per 100,000 population, which is the highest number in the South, and one of the highest in the nation, but somehow, Planned Parenthood can’t find anyone in the Peachtree State willing to perform preborn infanticides! Continue reading →

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“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” — Benjamin Franklin

While Abteilung für Vaterländische Sicherheit is a more literal translation of Department of Fatherland Homeland Security, perhaps Reichssicherheitshauptamt, Reich Main Security Office, would be a more accurate one. And Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, frequently shortened to Propagandaministerium, was at least more honest than the ‘official’ name for Herr Biden’s Ministry of Truth, the ‘Disinformation Governance Board.’ As we hear about the Department of Fatherland Homeland Security and its new Ministry of Truth Disinformation Governance Board, now we get this story, from The Wall Street Journal:

FBI Conducted Potentially Millions of Searches of Americans’ Data Last Year, Report Says

Searches in national-security investigations came without warrants, could stoke privacy concerns in Congress

by Dustin Volz | Friday, April 29, 2022 | 6:22 PM EDT

Also see: William Teach: FBI Conducted Almost 3.4 Million Warrantless “Wiretaps” In 2021, Media Mostly Silent

WASHINGTON—The Federal Bureau of Investigation performed potentially millions of searches of American electronic data last year without a warrant, U.S. intelligence officials said Friday, a revelation likely to stoke longstanding concerns in Congress about government surveillance and privacy.

An annual report published Friday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence disclosed that the FBI conducted as many as 3.4 million searches of U.S. data that had been previously collected by the National Security Agency.

Senior Biden administration officials said the actual number of searches is likely far lower, citing complexities in counting and sorting foreign data from U.S. data. It couldn’t be learned from the report how many Americans’ data was examined by the FBI under the program, though officials said it was also almost certainly a much smaller number.

The report doesn’t allege the FBI was routinely searching American data improperly or illegally.

Well, no, but then again, it wouldn’t.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Various Supreme Court decisions, including Mapp v Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961), Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108 (1964), and Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23 (1963), have ‘incorporated,’ or applied the Fourth Amendment to state action as well. We take our constitutional rights seriously, but in its ever-expanding attempts to protect the United States, federal law has been gradually chipping away at those rights. And while the disclosure noted by the Journal occurred entirely under the Biden Administration, it has to be admitted that it has happened under Republican presidents as well. Remember: the Department of Fatherland Homeland Security was created under the younger President Bush following the September 11 attacks.

It was when the creation of that cabinet department was proposed that a very liberal friend of mine was calling it the Department of Fatherland Security. I gave it some credence, despite the fact he was pretty much a nutcase when it came to blaming the Bush family for everything bad under the sun.[1]The first World Trade Center bombing, she said, was aimed at the elder President Bush, even though he had already been defeated for re-election and left office, while the second was aimed at the … Continue reading

The disclosure of the searches marks the first time a U.S. intelligence agency has published an accounting, however imprecise, of the FBI’s grabs of American data through a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that governs some foreign intelligence gathering. The section of FISA that authorizes the FBI’s activity, known as Section 702, is due to expire next year.

While the ODNI report doesn’t suggest systemic problems with the searches, judges have previously reprimanded the bureau for failing to comply with privacy rules. Officials said the FBI’s searches were vital to its mission to protect the U.S. from national-security threats. The frequency of other forms of national-security surveillance detailed in the annual report generally fell year over year, in some cases continuing a multiyear trend.

The 3.4 million figure “is certainly a large number,” a senior FBI official said in a press briefing Friday on the report. “I am not going to pretend that it isn’t.” .  .  .  .

Congress last renewed Section 702 in 2018, and then-President Donald Trump signed the renewal into law after openly questioning the measure over unsubstantiated concerns that it was used to spy on his presidential campaign. It is set to expire again at the end of next year, and current and former intelligence officials have said they anticipate a bruising political battle.

At some point, a point I think has not only been reached, but passed, we need to start realizing that yes, there could be increased danger to our national security, but that the endangerment of our constitutional rights is a far, far, far greater threat to Americans than attacks from foreign governments or terrorist organizations. President Clinton was overly concerned about going after Osama bin Laden might somehow violate international law without the proper gathering of evidence first, to the point at which then-Secretary of State Madeline Albright insisted that Pakistan, the government of which was rife with Taliban sympathizers, had to be notified about a cruise missile overflight in the attempt to destroy Mr bin Laden and his associated in a campground in Afghanistan. The attack went ahead, but the al Qaeda leaders had left the scene hours before.

Yet since that time, we’ve created federal bureaucracies which trample upon our constitutional rights in attempts to protect our nation against outsiders. Is it really worth it to protect America if we have to cease being America to do so?

Section 702 should not be renewed, and we have to find some other way, even if it risks being less efficient, to protect the United States. Mr Biden’s Ministry of Truth should not be allowed, or funded.

References

References
↑1 The first World Trade Center bombing, she said, was aimed at the elder President Bush, even though he had already been defeated for re-election and left office, while the second was aimed at the younger President Bush, even though the planning and preparation for it had begun while Bill Clinton was President, and Al Gore was favored to win the 2000 election.
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Isn’t this interesting?

Screen capture from The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 30, 2022. Click to enlarge.

The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t print mugshots of people accused or rape and murder, but they made an exception for a cute white girl.

Kathleen Kane was Pennsylvania’s Attorney General from 2013 to 2016, when she was forced to resign. She won election after a campaign in which she accused Governor Tom Corbett (R-PA), a former state Attorney General, of dragging his feet in building up the child sexual abuse case against former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, stating that more boys could have been raped due to Mr Corbett’s slow process; Mrs Kane was never able to find such a victim.

The case Mr Corbett and his successors built was almost air-tight, and Mr Sandusky was convicted, and sentenced to 30 to 60 years behind bars, which is tantamount to a life sentence for someone of his age.

Former State Attorney General Kathleen Kane was jailed again to await a hearing on a DUI arrest

Kane previously served eight months behind bars for her attacks on a rival.

by Craig R McCoy | Friday, April 29, 2022 | 4:36 PM EDT

Former Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane was jailed Friday for violating her probation on a perjury conviction with her arrest last month on a DUI charge.

Kane, 55, turned herself in Friday morning after Montgomery County Judge Wendy Demchick-Alloy issued a warrant for her arrest for violating her probation. The judge had previously sentenced Kane to prison after presiding over the 2016 perjury case that cut short Kane’s meteoric political career.

Kane will stay behind bars until a hearing on the probation violation, unless her lawyer can win an earlier release. No date has been set for the hearing, at which the judge could which revoke Kane’s probation and keep her in jail, order her to get alcohol treatment, or impose no further penalty.

The state’s former top prosecutor was released on five years’ probation in the summer of 2019 after serving eight months for the perjury conviction at the Montgomery County jail in Eagleville, where she is now being held again.

There’s more at the original.

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Back where she belongs

The story isn’t really that interesting, and I would probably not have mentioned it, other than the Inquirer’s hypocrisy. The newspaper declined to print the publicly available mugshot of previously convicted felon Quintez Adams, accused of raping a woman on a SEPTA train, something most people would thing a far more serious crime than a DUI, but was perfectly willing to splash Mrs Kane’s mugshot across the internet, not only in the digital version of the story, but on Twitter as well.

Yes, Mrs Kane used to be a public figure, but she’s now just a convicted felon, with no public role, and hasn’t had a public role since she resigned as Attorney General six years ago. She does not live in Philly, but well up the Northeast Extension in Scranton. Following her conviction, the state Supreme Court disbarred Mrs Kane, so she’s no longer an attorney.

So, why publish Mrs Kane’s mugshot, but not the mugshots of the criminals apprehended and charged in the City of Brotherly Love? It couldn’t possibly be because most of the criminals in Philly are black, while Mrs Kane is a pretty white woman, could it?

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Hold them accountable!

What happens when the District Attorney does not take crime seriously?

It was a series of small decisions, taken the wrong way, and the result was that a woman was sexually assaulted.

Suspect in SEPTA sex assault masturbated in a probation office two weeks before, officials say — but wasn’t charged

Some in the court system are questioning whether Quintez Adams could have been prevented from allegedly sexually assaulting a woman on the subway on April 24.

by Chris Palmer | Thursday, April 28, 2022

Quintez Adams, photo by Philadelphia Police Department and is a public record. Photo via the Bucks Daily Voice. Click to enlarge.

The man accused of sexual assault on SEPTA’s Broad Street Line last week had masturbated in front of probation officers inside their Center City offices two weeks earlier, authorities said Thursday.

And though police took 28-year-old Quintez Adams into custody — landing him in jail for potentially violating his probation in a prior burglary case — they didn’t ask prosecutors to charge him with a crime for several weeks.

In the meantime, court records show, a city judge ordered that Adams be released and ended his probation. And just 12 days after that, police say, Adams sexually assaulted a woman on the subway.

  • Mr Adams had been convicted of burglary in 2014, and sentenced to three years in prison. After his release, he was put on probation. Due to several probation violations, his probation has been extended.
  • Mr Adams showed up for a probation meeting on April 4, 2022, and was visibly intoxicated. He had actually appeared on the wrong day. While seated, a probation officer found him masturbating in public. The police were called, and Mr Adams was taken into custody, and the probation officer taken to the police department’s Special Victims Unit to be interviewed.
  • Following the interview, the Special Victims Unit failed to issue an arrest warrant, even though he was arrested after committing an obscene act viewed by several probation officers.
  • Mr Adams could have been charged as a violation of his probation, but was not.
  • Nevertheless, the Adult Probation and Parole Department notified Common Pleas Court Judge Frank Palumbo of the incident. A week later, on April 12th, Judge Palumbo ordered Mr Adams released and his probationary period ended.
  • On Sunday, April 24th a woman was raped on SEPTA’s Broad Street Line. The alleged attack happened between the Erie and Girard Avenue stations around 12:30 PM, a crime caught on surveillance tape.
  • Mr Adams was arrested for that rape, for which he has been charged, along with indecent exposure at the probation office, and an indecent exposure incident at a hospital.

Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Frank Vanore said the Department would investigate why the Special Victims Unit did not issue an arrest warrant for Adams over the obscene act on April 4th, to see if there is some action which needs to be taken.

Now, why was Mr Adams allowed to skate, when the Philadelphia Police Department had him in custody? He violated his probation, yet Judge Palumbo turned him loose and ended his period of supervision. The Special Victims Unit knew what he had done, and knew he was a previously convicted felon on probation. They had everything they needed to keep him behind bars.

Because he was not behind bars on April 24th, an innocent woman was raped.

So far, I haven’t found George Soros-funded District Attorney Larry Krasner’s grimy fingerprints on this directly, but he has created an atmosphere in which crime is not taken seriously, because everyone knows he doesn’t really like to send anyone to jail, at least anyone not a police officer who stepped over the line. Did the Special Victims Unit just wave it off as something harmless, because they figured that let’em loose Larry would never prosecute? We don’t know, but can hope that Chief Inspector Vanore gets to the bottom of it.

Did Judge Palumbo somehow figure that the public masturbation, and intoxication, was somehow a meaningless crime, so no harm, no foul? Did he think that Mr Adams was simply no longer worth spending the city’s money?

At some point, people holding a public trust need to be held accountable! Judge Palumbo, most certainly, and the officers on duty with the Special Victims Unit at the time, definitely. Right now, a woman is dealing with the trauma of having been raped due to their refusal to do their duty!

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#Killadelphia

2537 North Colorado Street, from zillow.com sales listing. Click to enlarge.

When I read about yet another homicide in the City of Brotherly Love, I go to Google Maps to check the street, and to zillow to check the real estate prices.

Steve Keeley of Fox 29 reported via tweet:

Another Late Morning Homicide in North Philadelphia. @PhillyPolice do not yet know the identity or age of male shot in his head less than an hour ago at 10:27am @FOX29philly

The Police Department’s press release indicated that the murder occurred on the 2500 block of North Colorado Street. Zillow lists one home for sale on that block, 2537, for a listed price of $55,000 . . . which is overpriced by $54,999.96.

In a photo taken by Google Maps in July of 2019, the row house to the left of 2537, 2539, was still standing. In demolishing 2539, it appears that some structural damage was done, at least to the façade of 2537. However, someone has done some work on 2537, installing windows and a new front door on the unit. Still, without any interior photos of this place, I can’t imagine how anyone could put enough money into it to be even livable, and sell it for a profit in that neighborhood.

Following Google Maps down North Colorado Street shows a virtually bombed out area.

Someone put some money into 1710 West Huntington Street, and is trying to sell the rowhouse for $150,000. This unit is on the corner of West Huntington and the 2500 block of North Colorado Street.[1]There was another rowhouse actually on the corner, the lot facing West Huntington, but it has been demolished.

So, I have to ask: what was so important in this poverty stricken neighborhood that someone had to be killed over it? What was so important that someone thought it worth the risk of getting caught and spending the rest of his miserable life in SCI Phoenix?

The Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer said that racial segregation in housing determines how safe people feel in the city. I have to ask: just how are the people who can only afford North Colorado Street going to be able to afford to live in Manayunk?

References

References
↑1 There was another rowhouse actually on the corner, the lot facing West Huntington, but it has been demolished.
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Freedom of Speech and the Special Snowflakes™

Donald Trump used to call the credentialed media #FakeNews, but even he never set up a ‘Disinformation Governance Board‘, nor picked someone like Nina Jankowicz, who for months told us that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation, to head it.

On April 25th, she told us how she feels about #FreedomOfSpeech:

Not to worry, she got the word out to the leftists and Special Snowflakes™ in the credentialed media: Continue reading →

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The ‘journolism’ of The Philadelphia Inquirer The newspaper, which hates guns, tries to undermine the Philadelphia Police units trying to catch people illegally possessing weapons

No, that isn’t a typo in the headline: the spelling ‘journolism’ or sometimes ‘journolist’, comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.

Thomas J Siderio, Jr, in a photograph dated 2018, from The Philadelphia Inquirer Click to enlarge.

We have previously noted the killing of 12-year-old Thomas J Siderio, Jr, after he took a shot at the police, and The Philadelphia Inquirer’s attempts to drum up sympathy for a wannabe gang-banger with parents who are criminals. We have pointed out that while the Philadelphia Police Department wanted to keep the name of the officer who shot young Mr Siderio confidential, for the officer’s safety, the Inquirer dug in, found out the officer’s name, and published it, in what I can only believe is an attempt to get the officer killed. The Inquirer’s Editorial Board had already opined that the killing of a young, gun-toting punk who opened fire on police young Mr Siderio should “should make every Philadelphian outraged.” I guess that outrage means that the Inquirer ought to put a target on the officer, to try to get him killed, because that’s exactly what they have done. What apparently didn’t outrage the Editorial Board was the fact that a wannabe gang banger was carrying a weapon and took a shot at the police. Continue reading →

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The truth shall set you free, and the extreme left are afraid that Libs of Tik Tok will set some Democrats free of their party!

Why, I have to ask, is The Washington Post paying owner Jeff Bezos’ hard earned dollars to Elon Musk’s Twitter to promote an article doxing a conservative on Twitter? The image to the right is a screen capture, but if you click on it, it will take you to the original tweet.

Post writer Taylor Lorenz spent a lot of time investigating the Twitter account Libs of TikTok. LoTT’s schtick is to find the silliest things leftists put on the social media site Tik Tok, and snark them for sensible people on Twitter. Basically, LoTT is mocking people for their own exposed stupidity. My good friend Amanda Marcotte of Salon loved that LoTT was doxed, doubtlessly hoping that Chaya Raichik, a Brooklyn-based real estate salesperson and LoTT creator would lose her job, and her posting today is a hope that Mr Musk’s buyout of Twitter results in the whole thing being killed. Continue reading →

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The New York Times really hates freedom of speech . . . for other people

In 1971, President Richard Nixon sought a restraining order to prevent The New York Times and The Washington Post from printing more of the so-called “Pentagon Papers,” technically the Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force, a classified history and assessment of American policy and operations in the Vietnam war. The Times and the Post fought the injunctions in court, the Times winning in New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971). The Times was all about the First Amendment and Freedom of the Press.

It’s early yet, but at least thus far, the editors of The New York Times have not published an editorial attacking Elon Musk’s agreed-to purchase of Twitter, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t allowed one of their Editorial Board to opine against it.

Twitter Under Elon Musk Will Be a Scary Place

by Greg Bensinger | April 25, 2022 | 7:20 PM EDT

Twitter has never been a place for rational, nuanced speech. Expect it to get much, much worse.

The New York Times has always been a supporter of freedom of the press . . . when they were the guardians and gatekeepers of that freedom. It wasn’t that long ago when for someone to get his opinions heard beyond bullhorn range, he had to persuade an editor to give him column inches in the newspaper or air time on radio or television. It did not matter how “rational” or “nuanced” what you had to say might have been, if an editor didn’t approve, it wasn’t to be published or broadcast. Continue reading →