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Journolism at its finest: The Philadelphia Inquirer and one-sided reporting

We learned it in high school, if not earlier, how the Bill of Rights protected our rights as the citizens of a free republic. The First Amendment to the Constitution states:

    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.

The hand-written copy of the proposed articles of amendment passed by Congress in 1789, cropped to show just the text in the third article that would later be ratified as the First Amendment.

Over the course of our history, the Supreme Court has ‘incorporated’ most of the Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment, to include protections for the people from actions by states and local governments, and Americans alive in the 21st century are all used to the concepts of freedom of speech.

We have, sadly, noted how some of our major media sources are no longer so adamant about protecting our First Amendment rights.

Now comes The Philadelphia Inquirer, with a very slanted article about how some people have exercised their freedom of speech, and freedom of peaceable assembly, and how horrible it is! Continue reading →

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Another two bite the dust!

Independence Day, the Fourth of July, is the 185th day of the year, just a couple of days past the midway point of the year. Prior to today, the Lexington 2021 Homicide Investigation page lists 20 murders in the city so far this year. However, it omits the murder of Demonte Washington, 28, reported on May 22th in the Herald-Leader. My attempts to get to someone who has the information on Mr Washington’s omission from the list — it could have been rules a suicide or justifiable homicide — have thus far been fruitless. Continue reading →

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Would you believe that the city of Lexington wants to keep white people from moving into black neighborhoods?

Sometimes I read something, and I wind up just shaking my head at the obvious disconnect from reality of the writer. Are there no mirrors in some people’s houses? Can they not see themselves?

Report: 10 Lexington neighborhoods where residents are more likely to be forced out

By Beth Musgrave | July 2, 2021 | 10:30 AM | Updated: 12:”52 PM EDT

It’s the dirty side of redevelopment: The combination of code violations, rising property taxes or flipped properties with higher rent that drives lower-income residents from homes in some city blocks. Continue reading →

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Where there’s ‘heat inequality,’ Joe Biden wants to fight ‘racial injustice’ by making wealthier people poorer, not poor people wealthier

The Seattle Times print edition had a headline which has sparked uncounted internet meme’s, though the article title, when I found it online, was different; it had been updated six days later:

New maps of King County, Seattle show how some communities are harder hit by heat waves

By Evan Bush | June 23, 2021 at 6:30 PM PDT | Updated: June 29, 2021 at 8:30 AM PDT

If this weekend’s heat wave sends temperatures soaring well above 90 degrees in King County as meteorologists expect, some communities are likely to suffer much worse than neighbors mere miles away.

That take-away comes from a new map of temperature data throughout King County collected during a scorching day last July. The map, which was publicized by the county Wednesday, shows how the impacts of heat waves and the effects of climate change depend — even at a small scale — on where you live. Continue reading →

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Biden Administration stupidity on the death penalty

Regular readers of The First Street Journal, both of them, know that I am opposed to capital punishment. It isn’t because I am Catholic, although being Catholic informs my decision taking, but the belief that once we have a prisoner in a position where he can be executed without his consent, he is, by definition helpless, and it is not necessary to kill someone you hold helpless.

There has been a lot of talk recently about President Joe Biden, who purports to be Catholic, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops discussing whether he should be denied the Eucharist due to his support of abortion. He is, however, very much in line with the Church in his opposition to capital punishment, but there are obvious questions raised by this story from The Washington Post:

Continue reading →

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This may not be a good change Replacing elected officials with unelected bureaucrats leads to poorer service

I moved away from Hampton, Virginia in 2000, and while I liked the place, I wasn’t sad to no longer have to deal with the Hampton branch of the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles. Who knows, maybe it has been improved since the 1990s, but at least in the 1990s it was nothing more than Affirmative Action for special education students. The individual clerks at the stations in the long, long waiting room were ugly, bored, rude and stupid.

Moving to Delaware wasn’t too bad. Small state, and the DMV for New Castle County wasn’t great, but it wasn’t too terribly bad, either. It outclassed Hampton in every way.

Two years later, and Pennsylvania was a dream: license plate issues and renewals were handled by private notaries public, taking half the burden away from the local DMVs. Private businesses have to have polite people, or they go out of business. The Carbon County DMV office was small, and a bit of a pain as it was not open every day, but at least it wasn’t any worse than Delaware’s. Continue reading →

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Charles Booker is running for the Senate

In news which is no surprise, former state Representative Charles Booker has declared for the Democratic nomination to face incumbent Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) in the 2022 election.

Mr Booker said last March that he was “strongly considering” running for the Senate in 2022, and, as we have previously noted, in April formed an exploratory committee on the subject. Continue reading →

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The public support for the Lexington Police Department, and the hits to officers’ morale

I have said it before: in our urban black communities, they dislike the police more than they dislike the criminals in their midst. They are like the Palestinians in Gaza, tolerating, feeding, supporting, hiding, and providing sex for Hamas, no matter how much damage Hamas cause in Gaza, because they hate the Israelis more.

And so the black community in Lexington have made it their mission to hobble, if they cannot eliminate, the city’s Police Department. On Friday, June 25th, they got a little bit of that done, getting the city government to ban no-knock warrants. Continue reading →

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The solution to transgender bathroom issues from an unusual place Who'd have ever guessed that it would come from the Vatican?

In late June of 2016, the Pico family toured the Vatican. Lots of history, tradition and great art, about which thousands and thousands of people have previously written; it’s a subject on which I have little more to contribute.

But there is one very unexpected quirk I saw, just before we left, that addresses a problem for today. Near a public cafeteria were the public restrooms. Entering the men’s room, I noticed the typical urinals along one wall, some in use, and a middle-aged female janitor cleaning, while the restroom was in use. Well, that’s pretty European, I thought.

Then I got to the stalls. Unlike what we see in the United States, the stalls in that men’s room had walls and doors which were essentially floor-to-ceiling, providing complete privacy. And that’s the solution to the stupidity we are seeing in the United States these days. Continue reading →