Posted on by

New York Times OpEd: if you defend your property against rioters, you are racist!

No one would call having a fire extinguisher in your home or office or business racist. Rather, people would look at that as a sensible way of preventing or at least limiting damage if a fire did occur. I can’t think that any (sensible) person would see construction codes designed to limit damage from earthquakes or floods or structural collapse as somehow designed to discriminate on the basis of race. Boarding up your windows if you live in Florida or Carolina, and a hurricane is approaching? that’s perfectly sensible!

But, if you hear news that has a strong possibility of inflaming tensions and perhaps start a riot, boarding up your windows is raaaaacist, at least according to one writer in The New York Times:

Minnesota Values White Comfort More Than Black Lives

As I walk around my hometown, I see so many boarded up buildings. Who is really being protected?

By Justin Ellis | April 16, 2021

MINNEAPOLIS — The morning the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer charged with killing George Floyd, began, I was visiting my mom at a hospital just blocks from the courthouse. I remember noting that it was unseasonably warm for late March in this part of the Midwest. But that wasn’t the most striking part of the day. Nor was the long line of satellite trucks or the reporters from around the world surrounding the Hennepin County Government Center. Instead, what gave me pause was all the plywood that encased the ground floor of the hospital’s emergency department.

I came back to Minneapolis late last year to work on a book about how Black families have endured racism in the city where I grew up, and to support my mom during her cancer treatment. I’ve been keeping a mental list of the spaces that, since video surfaced of George Floyd’s final moments beneath Derek Chauvin’s knee, have become barricaded versions of their former selves. You can’t move through this city without noticing the hardware stores with floor-to-ceiling wood coverings, the shuttered restaurants that didn’t survive Covid or last summer’s fires, and the brunch spots and boutiques that have hired local artists to soften their fortifications with strained messages like “In This Together,” “Know Justice, Know Peace” and “Love Is All Around,” which reads like a cringeworthy homage to the theme song from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

But there was something especially crushing about the plywood surrounding a building meant to give aid and care to people suffering in the city, leaving just enough room to expose signs reading “EMERGENCY” and “TRAUMA CENTER.”

In the lead-up to Mr. Chauvin’s trial, city officials and business owners often talked about “bracing” for the public reaction, their focus seemingly on protecting the city’s buildings from any harm that might come from a repeat of the demonstrations against police violence that took place last summer.

Well, yes, they would. Justin Ellis, the author, had already noted that some businesses “didn’t survive . . . last summer’s fires.” Wouldn’t it make sense that businesses which did survive would want to protect themselves from potential riots this year if Derek Chauvin is acquitted, or at least convicted on some of the lesser charges rather than the grossly overcharged Murder 2?[1]To be convicted of second degree murder, the prosecution would have to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Derek Chauvin intended to kill George Floyd.

Mr Ellis was upset that a hospital boarded up its ground-floor windows, perhaps not considering that hospitals don’t get to close down for repairs when vandals bust out the glass. That hospital, all hospitals, have to treat patients without regard to their race, so in trying to protect the premises, that hospital was also trying to protect its ability to treat black patients as well as white ones.

Law enforcement made a plan for managing security around the Chauvin trial, a massive team-up between Twin Cities area police departments, state police, local sheriffs’ deputies and Minnesota National Guard members capable of flooding the region with thousands of officers at a moments notice.

The goal, as the Hennepin County sheriff put it in an op-ed for The Star Tribune, was “to preserve the First Amendment rights of those who wish to protest while, at the same time, fulfilling our mission of protecting property, ensuring public safety and guaranteeing the sanctity of the judicial process.” Naturally they named it Operation Safety Net. It’s not subtle. They want to offer comfort to those they deem worthy of saving, rather than the Black and brown residents who are subject to relentless brutality.

Why wouldn’t a Sheriff’s Department charged with keeping the public safe name an operation “Safety Net”?

How are we to read Mr Ellis’ OpEd piece other than allowing the potential demonstrators to burn, loot and destroy at will?

They’ve lived up to that promise almost every night outside the Brooklyn Center Police Department for the past week. In their quest to maintain order they’ve met demonstrators with increasing numbers of police officers and National Guard members, armed with tear gas, flash bang grenades and rubber bullets. All these defensive measures have upended the lives of families living across the street from the police headquarters at the Sterling Square Apartments, a complex filled with Black and immigrant families. It should be the safest place in Brooklyn Center; now residents are evacuating into area hotels.

Really? Are they evacuating into area hotels because the police are defending their headquarters, or because rioters have surged against the Police Department? The Police and National Guard wouldn’t be using there “tear gas, flash bang grenades, and rubber bullets” if there were nobody there, or if the Mostly Peaceful Protests™ weren’t somehow less than peaceful, weren’t trying to break in and burn the place down.

In reading Mr Ellis’ article, I came away with the undeniable impression that he was filled with rage, utter rage, when he wrote it. You can follow the link to his original and read it for yourself, and perhaps your impression will be different, but, to me, Mr Ellis wants the people of Brooklyn Center and Minneapolis to take to the streets, to express the rage he feels themselves, and to do so through violence and vandalism and arson. He said so pretty explicitly:

Whether you call this the result of white supremacy, or a white majority, the consequences are the same. The state has its boot on the necks of the Black people who make up less than 10 percent of its residents. When you are left at the mercy of the state and given no option to heal, fury becomes your voice and your only tool. And in preparing for the Chauvin trial and protecting property against the reaction to whatever verdict is announced, those who have power in Minnesota made clear to us, yet again, what matters most to them.

If “fury becomes your voice and your only tool,” why would Mr Ellis be surprised that some would choose to defend themselves and their homes and their businesses against that fury, against the violence for which Mr Ellis seems to be calling? Derek Chauvin is on trial, and may well be convicted on some charge. Kim Potter has been charged with second-degree manslaughter. But that isn’t good enough for Mr Ellis; he wants the people of Minnesota who did not kill George Floyd, and who did not kill Daunte Wright, to be punished as well. To him, resisting being beaten, burned or bombed is racist in itself, and you are racist if you don’t agree.

References

References
↑1 To be convicted of second degree murder, the prosecution would have to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Derek Chauvin intended to kill George Floyd.
Posted on by

Mayor Jim Kenney wanted to not increase police funding, to appease the left, and tried to sneak it through in other departments

We have not been particularly charitable toward Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia), nor any of the rest of the political leadership of the City of Brotherly Love, but this story from The Philadelphia Inquirer just thoroughly amused me:

Mayor Kenney said his budget wouldn’t increase police spending. It’s not that simple.

His proposal does include new investments for police. They’re just included in the budgets for other departments.

by Anna Orso and Laura McCrystal | April 15, 2021 | Updated: 6:25 PM EDT

Mayor Jim Kenney avoided taking a side in the political battle over law enforcement funding on Thursday when he said he’s proposing flat funding for the Philadelphia Police Department in the coming year.

But his proposal does include new investments for police. Some fund reforms. Others are tucked into budgets for different departments.

In addition to the $727 million police allocation that’s roughly equivalent to last year’s, the administration proposed funneling additional money for police-related reforms and programs through the Managing Director’s Office. And it set aside funding for expected raises as a result of upcoming contract negotiations with municipal unions, including the police.

Of the cash that would run through the Managing Director’s Office, about $6 million would fund a citywide program that pairs behavioral health specialists with officers responding to mental health-related 911 calls. Another $750,000 in spending for that office would expand training for police “to make positive decisions when put in difficult situations.”

There’s more at the original.

So, the Mayor is yielding to the leftist mobs, and not increasing funding for the Philadelphia Police Department, despite 145 homicides in the city, 35 more than the same date last year, a 31.8% increase, and last year saw a near-record 499 people bleed out their life’s blood in Philly’s mean streets.[1]The record was 500, set during the crack cocaine wars in 1990.

But he also knows that more funding is needed, so he’s hiding it in other areas of the city budget. There are more details in the Inquirer story.

But proponents of defunding the police criticized the proposal, saying tax dollars going toward reforms still prop up a system they see as harmful.

“Mayor Jim Kenney is trying to pull the wool over our eyes,” said Kris Henderson, executive director of Amistad Law Project, a West Philadelphia public-interest law center that advocates ending mass incarceration. “Resources that end up in the hands of police are police funding.”

So, what is the Amistad Law Project? They say they are “a public interest law firm and organizing project working to end mass incarceration in Pennsylvania and fighting to get our communities the resources they need to thrive,” without realizing that the problem isn’t ‘mass incarceration,’ but that too few people are locked up!

At some point, the soft-heartedness of the left has to be recognized for what it really is, soft-headedness.

Do the good people at Amistad think that, somehow, the 145 people who are now stone-cold graveyard dead, or the 499 who were murdered last year, got that way by the honest mistakes of nice guys? They are “attorneys and organizers,” and one has to assume that anyone who got into law school in the first place isn’t a complete idiot; they have to know that the people who are committing these homicides have mostly had previous brushes with the law, sometimes many brushes with the law. These are the people that the noble #SocialJusticeWarriors want to keep out of jail, but when they have been left out of jail for lesser offenses, some of them wind up going on to bigger and badder things.

When a 6-year-old boy was wounded, and a man killed when someone fired “at least” twelve shots at them as they were sitting in a parked car in the 800 block of South 53rd Street Wednesday evening, do the very concerned “attorneys and organizers” of Amistad think it was really nothing? Are they saying to themselves, “Well, at least the shooter, or shooters — the story said that there was “at least” one shooter but there could have been more — wasn’t incarcerated”?

It seems that almost every time we read about a suspect in a Philadelphia murder — in the too few times the police actually identify and catch him, anyway — we read that he already had a criminal record, that he couldn’t legally own the gun he used, and that he was already wanted on a parole violation. Such suspects usually could still be in jail, were they given the maximum sentence for their previous crimes.

Nikolas Cruz was not a victim of ‘mass incarceration,’ because the Broward County Sheriff’s Department let him go without charges on several occasions. Young Mr Cruz could have been in jail on an in-school assault charge, but the school board did not want to contribute to the “school to prison” pipeline, so he had no criminal record, was able to purchase his weapon legally, and now seventeen people are pushing up daisies, because oh-so-well-meaning people like the Amistad “attorneys and organizers” didn’t want to take his earlier crimes seriously.

In Philadelphia itself, Lewis Jordan, a.k.a. John Lewis, had been treated leniently by the office of then-District Attorney Lynne Abraham, and was out on the street when he could, and should, have been in jail. On October 31, 2007, Philadelphia Police Officer Charles Cassidy walked into a Dunkin’ Donuts, the scene of a previous robbery, to check on it, just as Mr Jordan was attempting to rob the place; Mr Jorden shot Officer Cassidy in the head, killing him. Had law enforcement treated Mr Jordan seriously, rather than dropping the charges if he’d attend drug counseling courses, he would have been in jail, and Officer Cassidy would have gone home to his wife that Hallowe’en.

More, Mr Jordan might have spent what, a year in the clink. No one can say whether he would have learned his lesson in prison, but if he had been locked up that day, as he could have been, he (probably) wouldn’t be on death row now.

Amistad opposes “mass incarceration,” but had criminals been treated more seriously for their lesser offenses, people like Mr Cruz and Mr Jordan would have a reasonable chance of walking free at sometime in the future. As it is, they will both die in prison.

This is what those who are soft on crime have wrought. Petty criminals who aren’t slapped down hard become bigger criminals, and worse things happen. At some point, the soft-heartedness of the left has to be recognized for what it really is, soft-headedness.

References

References
↑1 The record was 500, set during the crack cocaine wars in 1990.
Posted on by

Political correctness in the Lexington Herald-Leader? (Part3) I wonder if journalists have been replaced by journolists?

We noted, in two different stories, that while all of the other Lexington media sources published the picture of Juanyah Clay, who was being sought in the murder of 26-year-old Bryan D. Greene, whose body police found at the Eastridge Apartments on Alumni Drive on January 30th. The first linked story concerned the police looking for Mr Clay, so the publication of his photo could only have helped the police find him.

We also noted that in both of the earlier stories in the Lexington Herald-Leader included stock photos of the police stringing crime scene tape around an unspecified area, so the failure to use Mr Clay’s photo, which was freely available at the Lexington city government’s page as well as the Police Department’s Facebook page. Thus, it was not a matter of the newspaper having to pay someone for the photo.

And today, we have this:

Detectives detail multiple cases against Lexington man charged in Alumni Drive murder

By Morgan Eads | April 15, 2021 | 12:31 PM

At a court hearing Thursday morning, two detectives and a jail employee discussed the various charges against a man accused of shooting and killing a 26-year-old after he was already wanted for cutting off an ankle monitor while on conditional release in a different criminal case.

Juanyah J. Clay, 19, was arrested in March and charged with murder in the death of 26-year-old Bryan Greene, according to police.

Greene’s body was found on the night of Jan. 30 after someone spotted a large amount of blood outside an apartment at 2800 Alumni Drive, Lexington police detective Jeremy Atkins testified at the preliminary hearing Thursday. When police went inside the apartment they found Greene dead of what appeared to be multiple gunshot wounds.

Further down we find:

Clay was arrested on March 30 at a hotel on E. Lowery Lane, Lexington police detective Keith McKinney testified. He was found to have $1,020 in small bills, three concealed loaded firearms and unknown pills on his person, and a digital scale and marijuana was found in the room he was exiting, McKinney said. In addition to the charge of murder, Clay is facing two charges of drug trafficking and one charge of concealing a deadly weapon.

After his arrest, Clay admitted to Atkins that he shot Greene, Atkins testified. Clay also stated that another person was present at the time of Greene’s death, and that that person has since died. While Atkins did not testify to how that person died, he said that the person’s name was Markel Allen, which is the name of a 17-year-old who was shot and killed in Lexington on Feb. 17. That case is still under investigation.

At the time of Greene’s death, Clay had an arrest warrant out for violating the conditions of his release as he awaited trial on a separate burglary charge, according to court records. An employee of the Fayette County Detention Center testified Thursday that Clay was placed on an ankle monitor in May of 2020. He’s accused of cutting that ankle monitor off in June 2020 and throwing it out the window of a vehicle in Lexington, the jail employee testified.

Sounds like a bad dude! He was in possession of illegal drugs and the paraphernalia for selling it, and three concealed, loaded weapons, all while he was on the lam for a burglary trial.

But here’s the part that gets me. The Herald-Leader included this video in today’s story:

Underneath was the caption:

Lexington Police Chief Lawrence Weathers urged people with information regarding homicide investigations to speak with police. He said some witnesses don’t cooperate with police investigations, making it more difficult to identify suspects. By Jeremy Chisenhall

Jeremy Chisenhall was the writer of the first two stories, the ones referenced in my previous articles.

Now, if the Herald-Leader is going to post the video of Police Chief Lawrence Weathers urging people to come forward, why wouldn’t the paper publish the suspect’s photo, particularly when the suspect was at large, and information from the public could have proven helpful in finding him?

I do not know the newspaper’s policy on this, and when I tried to contact both Morgan Eads, who wrote today’s story, and Mr Chisenhall, who wrote the previous two, neither was available by telephone.

So, I will go back to my previous speculation of March 30th: if the newspaper’s website had enough bandwidth available for a generic crime story photo, why didn’t the Herald-Leader include Mr Clay’s photo instead? Wouldn’t Mr Clay’s photograph be much more useful to people who might just happen to see him on the streets than a picture of crime scene tape?

That’s the big question, why? And being the very politically incorrect observer of media bias that I am, one answer springs immediately to mind. Having written about the horrible damage the #woke and #BlackLivesMatter activists have done in the newsrooms of The New York Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer, I instantly thought: to have published the photo of a murder suspect who happens to be black might be seen as racist by the reporter or his editors.

Is there another explanation for this egregious failure of journalism? If there is, it hasn’t occurred to me. Perhaps someone else can give me a better answer, but right now, I’m calling it the way I see it: the newspaper cares more about political correctness than it does journalism. Journolism over journalism, perhaps?

Posted on by

Is it time to change the spelling of ‘journalist’ to ‘journolist’? The Associated Press and The Philadelphia Inquirer try to deify Daunte Wright

Sometimes it’s easier just to embed a few of my tweets than write a separate article/ Because of the way Twitter does embedding, I had to embed the second and fourth tweets to let readers see the whole thing.

We are supposed to thing that Daunte Wright was just an ever-so-nice young man, and the woman who was copulating with George Floyd, another criminal, a convicted felon and serious drug abuser, told us that young Mr Wright was just “a wonderful, beautiful boy.”

No, he wasn’t. According to the Associated Press story:

According to court records, Wright was being sought after failing to appear in court on charges that he fled from officers and possessed a gun without a permit during an encounter with Minneapolis police in June.

A search of court records shows Wright had a minor criminal record, with petty misdemeanor convictions for possession/sale of a small amount of marijuana and disorderly conduct.

So, resisting arrest and escaping, both criminal acts.

What Is Resisting Arrest?

Resisting arrest in Minnesota is also called obstructing legal process, arrest, or firefighting. A person is guilty of obstructing legal process if they intentionally obstruct, resist, or interfere with a police officer in the performance of legal duties, or obstruct, hinder, or prevent a person’s apprehension on a criminal charge.

The Minnesota legislature intentionally wrote the law in very broad terms. Under the law, resisting arrest means:

  • Refusing to be handcuffed;
  • Refusing to surrender;
  • Struggling with the police;
  • Wrestling or fighting with the police; or
  • Somehow preventing the police from making an arrest.

Acts such as running from police, refusing to stop for police, and escape from a detention facility are crimes governed by other Minnesota laws.

Penalties For Resisting Arrest In Minnesota

The possible sanctions for resisting depend on the severity and dangerousness of the conduct alleged by police. Minnesota law punishes resisting arrest as a felony if:

  • The person knew or should have known the act created a risk of death, substantial bodily harm, or significant damage to property; or
  • The act did cause death, serious bodily injury, or substantial property damage.

Felony resisting arrest carries a maximum state prison term of five years, a fine up to $10,000, or both fine and imprisonment.

Resisting arrest is a gross misdemeanor punishable by no more than one year in prison, a $3,000 fine, or both if the act or threat was forceful or violent but did not cause death, substantial bodily injury, or substantial property damage. Otherwise, misdemeanor resisting arrest carries a maximum sentence of 90 days, a $1,000 fine, or both.

Also see: Nothing Can Placate the BLM Riot Mob, and ‘Journalists’ Are Part of the Mob

Escaping from the police on an attempted arrest can be a felony in Minnesota if the escapee flees in a car, or a misdemeanor if he escapes on foot.

In Minnesota, you are required to have a valid permit to carry in order to possess a handgun in a public place. The penalties for carrying a handgun without a valid permit are strict. For a first offense it is a gross-misdemeanor and any repeat offense becomes a felony. It is your burden to prove that you have a valid permit to carry when requested by law enforcement.

It seems that this “wonderful, beautiful boy” had racked up some previous charges, and that’s why there was a warrant out for his arrest.

The officer who shot and killed Mr Wilson has resigned and is facing criminal charges; she may well be convicted, and it’s difficult to believe that she mistook her service weapon for her taser. But the credentialed media are hyping up the notion that Mr Wright was some kind of sweet, innocent kid. At some point, we need to be honest here and change the spelling of journalist to journolist.

Posted on by

Is Our Bishop Catholic? The Most Reverend John Stowe, O.F.M. Conv., Bishop of Lexington, supports things which are clearly not Catholic

When I saw this article referenced in my email, I had a sinking feeling that the Bishop of Lexington would be one of the two:

Two US bishops back pro-LGBT campaign calling for acceptance of men who claim to be female

Bishops Wester and Stowe joined the Human Rights Campaign in calling for ‘transgender individuals’ to be ‘treated with dignity and respect’

By Pete Baklinski | Friday, April 9, 2021 | 5:17 PM ET

The Most Reverend John Stowe, Bishop of Lexington

April 9, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — A U.S. Catholic archbishop along with a bishop and several priests joined up with the pro-LGBT Human Rights Campaign in releasing an April 1 letter affirming “transgender individuals” — men who claim they are women and women who claim they are men — while calling for an end to the “epidemic of violence” that they say such individuals face.

“We, Bishops, religious and lay leaders of the Roman Catholic Church join with the Human Rights Campaign in calling for an end to the epidemic of violence against transgender individuals,” states the letter signed by Santa Fe Archbishop John Wester and Bishop John Stowe of the Diocese of Lexington.

Yup, I guessed right: His Excellency, The Most Reverend John Stowe, O.F.M. Conv., Bishop of Lexington was one of the two.

The Catholic Church teaches, however, that the male and female sexes, man and woman, are biological realities willed and created by God. The view is backed by science which conclusively shows that the sexual difference between men and women exists in genetics, endocrinology, and neurology. Even from the very first moment of conception male cells containing XY chromosomes differ from female cells containing XX chromosomes.

The 2019 Declaration of Truths put out by several prominent Catholic bishops along with a cardinal states that it is a “rebellion against natural and Divine law and a grave sin that a man may attempt to become a woman by mutilating himself, or even by simply declaring himself to be such, or that a woman may in like manner attempt to become a man, or to hold that the civil authority has the duty or the right to act as if such things were or may be possible and legitimate.”

Is the Bishop of Lexington even Catholic? The Catechism of the Catholic Church is something with which our priests and bishops purportedly agree, yet here the Bishop of my diocese is telling the parishioners of his diocese that the Catechism is wrong, that the Bible is wrong, and that the Church throughout all of its millennia are wrong.

His Excellency the Bishop is a great priest in one regard. He has twice celebrated Mass in our small parish, for the Sacrament of Confirmation, and I can tell you, he is excellent at it. He is dynamic, he is active, and no one would ever be in doubt that he truly believes what he says. If you are Catholic, and you participate in a Mass he celebrates, you will come away inspired.

But while it’s clear that he truly believes what he says, is what he believes actually Catholic, actually Christian?

Wester and Stowe have a history of pushing the normalization of homosexuality within the Catholic Church. Earlier this year, they joined Cardinal Joseph Tobin of the Archdiocese of Newark and a few other bishops in signing a statement in partnership with the pro-homosexual Tyler Clementi Foundation in support of young people who identify as LGBT, telling them that “God is on your side.”

Photo from St Paul’s Catholic Church website. Click to enlarge.

This is what it’s website calls “Historic St. Paul Roman Catholic Church,” at 425 West Short Street in Lexington, Kentucky. It’s mission clearly includes supporting homosexuality among Catholics, and it is very clear that His Excellency the Bishop supports St Paul’s and its self-perceived mission. Trouble is, the Catholic Church, and the Bible, do not.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, concerning homosexuality:

§2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

§2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

§2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

What part of “under no circumstances can they be approved” do some priests and bishops find unclear?

Another photo from St Paul’s website; note the ‘rainbow’ stole being worn by a clergyman. Bishop John Stowe is at the far right of the photo. Click to enlarge.

It’s simple: the Church recognizes that some people simply are homosexual, but that while it is a sore trial for them, they are called to remain celibate. That is not what St Paul’s Catholic Church, a church in Bishop Stowe’s diocese, seems to do.[1]I will admit it: I was tempted to go to confession, as research, at St Paul’s, confess to homosexual acts, and see what the priest would say, but doing so would be a grave sin, and I will not … Continue reading

As we noted here, His Holiness the Pope explicitly ruled out ‘blessings’ for homosexual unions.

Richard Sipe, a former Benedictine monk and priest, wrote:

Roman Catholic clerical culture favors doctrinal rigidity, conformity, obedience, submission and psychosexual immaturity, mistaken for innocence, in its candidates. These are the personality elements that lead to advancement and power in the clerical system. Single men are more easily controlled if their sexuality is secret. Double lives on all levels of clerical life are tolerated if they do not cause scandal or raise legal problems. Sexual activity between bishops and priests and adult partners is well known within clerical circles. The secret system forms a comfortable refuge for unresolved gay conflicts. There is a new emerging awareness of the systemic nature of sexual/celibate behavior within the Roman Catholic ministry that is increasingly destabilizing to the church.

Dire consequences will follow the exposure of this sexual system embedded in a secret celibate culture. Authorities who are or have been sexually active, although not with minors, are hard put to publicly correct clerics who are abusing minors. The need for secrecy, the cover-up, extends beyond defending criminal activity of a sex abuser. The power and control that holds the Roman Catholic church together depends on preservation of the celibate myth. The Vatican and Pope John Paul II declared its inviolability.

The truth about secret sex in the celibate system portends grave danger. The reality of celibate violations extends beyond priests who abuse minors and the bishops who hide them.

And this points up another problem: if “sexual activity between bishops and priests and adult partners is well known within clerical circles,” that means that it is largely homosexual activity, something else expressly forbidden. How many priests are homosexual?

Of course, many factors influence a person’s decision to join the clergy; it’s not like sexuality alone determines vocations. But it’s dishonest to dismiss sexuality’s influence given that we know there is a disproportionate number of gay priests, despite the church’s hostility toward LGBTQ identity. As a gay priest told Frontline in a February 2014 episode, “I cannot understand this schizophrenic attitude of the hierarchy against gays when a lot of priests are gay.”

So how many gay priests actually exist? While there’s a glut of homoerotic writings from priests going back to the Middle Ages, obtaining an accurate count is tough. But most surveys (which, due to the sensitivity of the subject, admittedly suffer from limited samples and other design issues) find between 15 percent and 50 percent of U.S. priests are gay, which is much greater than the 3.8 percent of people who identify as LGBTQ in the general population. [2]The Centers for Disease Control conducted the National Health Institute Survey in 2013, and found that only 1.6% of the population are homosexual, with another 0.7% bisexual, and another 1,1% … Continue reading

In the last half century there’s also been an increased “gaying of the priesthood” in the West. Throughout the 1970s, several hundred men left the priesthood each year, many of them for marriage. As straight priests left the church for domestic bliss, the proportion of remaining priests who were gay grew. In a survey of several thousand priests in the U.S., the Los Angeles Times found that 28 percent of priests between the ages of 46 and 55 reported that they were gay. This statistic was higher than the percentages found in other age brackets and reflected the outflow of straight priests throughout the 1970s and ’80s.

The high number of gay priests also became evident in the 1980s, when the priesthood was hit hard by the AIDS crisis that was afflicting the gay community. The Kansas City Star estimated that at least 300 U.S. priests suffered AIDS-related deaths between the mid-1980s and 1999. The Star concluded that priests were about twice as likely as other adult men to die from AIDS.

The John Jay Report on the sexual abuse of minors by priests and deacons within the Church, 1950-2002, noted that 81% of the known victims, of an all-male clergy, were boys, and that they tended not to be smaller children, but boys entering and through puberty. This was not pedophilia, but homosexual attraction.

Sadly, the Bishop of Lexington has supported the misbegotten New Ways Ministry, and now transgenderism as well. I have no idea what Bishop Stowe’s sexual orientation is. He has taken a vow of celibacy, and I presume here that he has kept it. But homosexual orientation has been rampant in the Church, even if we aren’t certain what the exact numbers are, and the Bishop of Lexington has lost his way on sexual issues.

I get it: the left believe that it’s just wrong to deny homosexuals their desires, but a Catholic priest, a Catholic bishop, must follow the teachings of the Bible in which they all profess to believe, and the Bible is unambiguous in its condemnation of homosexual activity, in both the Old and New Testaments. While some have claimed that Jesus never personally addressed homosexual activity, specifically, they are incorrect.

Matthew 5:17 “Do not presume that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill.
18 For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke of a letter shall pass from the Law, until all is accomplished! 19 Therefore, whoever nullifies one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
20 “For I say to you that unless your righteousness far surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

The law included the prohibition on homosexual activity in Leviticus 18:22, and proscribes the penalty in Leviticus 20:13. There is no ambiguity whatsoever in this.

Our Bishop has lost his way. He is responsible for the instruction of the parishioners in his diocese in the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, but his most publicly visible teachings, the ones which have gotten the most attention outside of the Church, are teachings which contravene the doctrine of the Church. His piety appears to be beyond question, his internal faith in his beliefs strong, but his beliefs when it comes to sexual matters are just plain wrong. I understand his sympathies, but allowing his sympathies to teach that what is immoral is acceptable, that what is sinful is not sinful, leads the faithful not up the stairway to Heaven but down the highway to Hell.

References

References
↑1 I will admit it: I was tempted to go to confession, as research, at St Paul’s, confess to homosexual acts, and see what the priest would say, but doing so would be a grave sin, and I will not do that.
↑2 The Centers for Disease Control conducted the National Health Institute Survey in 2013, and found that only 1.6% of the population are homosexual, with another 0.7% bisexual, and another 1,1% either stating that they were ‘something else’ or declining to respond. This does not support the article’s contention that 3.8% of the population are homosexual.
Posted on by

The neoconservatives always want US troops somewhere! We have been in Afghanistan for 19½ years now; what can we accomplish by staying longer?

Being older than dirt — I turn 68 this coming Earth Day — I can remember the politics in the United States over the War in Vietnam. #NeverTrumper and neoconservative Max Boot, a Washington Post columnist, knows something about it as well.

Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal could be the first step to a Taliban takeover

Opinion by Max Boot | April 13, 2021 | 4:18 PM EDT

For South Vietnamese refugees, this month will always be known as “Black April.” In 1973, President Richard M. Nixon had concluded a one-sided peace deal with North Vietnam that led the United States to pull all of its troops out of South Vietnam while allowing the Communists to maintain 150,000 of their troops there. Hanoi began to violate the Paris Peace Accords as soon as they were signed, while the war-weary United States cut back aid to the South.

The result was a North Vietnamese offensive that resulted in the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975. The U.S. military had to hastily evacuate American personnel and some of the South Vietnamese they had worked most closely with. But hundreds of thousands of our allies were confined to brutal reeducation camps and hundreds of thousands more took to the seas as “boat people.” Many died while trying to flee.

President Biden was already in the Senate when this tragedy transpired. Yet he risks a repeat of this fiasco with his fateful decision, revealed Tuesday in The Post, to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11.

Mullah Mohammed Omar

Every bit of what Mr Boot wrote is true, but what of it? When the United States pulls its last 3,500 troops out of Afghanistan, the Taliban will take over in a matter of months, if not sooner. But we have been in Afghanistan for 19½ years now, and we haven’t wiped out the Taliban, and are not willing to wipe out the Taliban. There are Taliban fighters out there, right now, who weren’t even born when the United States invaded to roust out and destroy al Qaeda, and the Taliban, because Mullah Omar and the Taliban were protecting al Qaeda. What can we accomplish there if we stay, the way the esteemed Mr Boot wants, that we couldn’t in the 19½ years we have already been there?

The ancient Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus attributed to the Caledonian chieftain Calgacus the expression, “They make a solitude, and call it peace,” frequently expressed as “They make a desert and call it peace.”

The expression was used a lot during the War in Vietnam. Another came from an old political science professor of mine, Ernest Yanarella, concerning the Viet Cong: “They were more willing to die for their country than we were willing to keep killing them.”

And it seems to be true in Afghanistan as well: the only way to truly defeat the Taliban is how our allies and we defeated Germany and Japan: we killed so many of their fighting-aged men, wounded millions more, and thoroughly cowed the boys too young to fight but growing up, we destroyed their economy and their infrastructure, we rained down so much fire and steel that Germany and Japan simply couldn’t continue to fight.

We did not do that to the Vietnamese Communists, and we have not done it to the Taliban, because we just don’t want to keep killing and killing and killing. But if we are not willing to do that, there is no other alternative that gives us some sort of victory in Afghanistan.

It’s time to leave. Heck, it was time to leave ten years ago! There is simply nothing to be gained by staying.

So, yes, the Taliban will almost certainly win; so what? They will ban girls from being educated, they will set up a ridiculously repressive Islamist regime, they will kill their enemies and cow those who remain alive. But at some point we have to say, that’s their business, and not ours.

Posted on by

The Reich Governor sets his goals

This tweet caught my eye:

I can’t say that this is a surprise, but the meaning is clear: the officially non-partisan but effectively Democrat controlled state Supreme Court will uphold the Governor’s appeal. `

Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY)

Several lawsuits were filed in state courts to stop the Governor’s emergency decrees under KRS39A. On July 17, 2020, the state Supreme Court put a hold on all lower court orders against Mr Beshear’s orders and directed that “any lower court order, after entry, be immediately transferred to the clerk of the Supreme Court for consideration by the full court.” Three weeks later, the  Court set September 17, 2020, another five weeks later, to hear oral arguments by both sides.

The Court then waited for eight more weeks to issue its decision, upholding the Governor’s orders.

The pattern was clear and obvious: the state Supreme Court was trying to give the Reichsstatthalter time to run out the clock, hoping that the COVID problem would be beaten by then, and they could simply declare the lawsuits moot. It hadn’t been beaten, so the Court decided in favor of the Governor.

Republicans in the Bluegrass State ran against Governor Beshear’s authoritarian decrees, and the voters rewarded them with 14 more seats in the state House of Representatives, a 75-25 advantage, and 2 more seats, out of 17 up for election, in the state Senate, giving the GOP a 30-8 margin. Though the Governor claims that opinion polls show that Kentuckians support his actions, in the only poll that actually counts, the one held on election day, they voted strongly against his dictatorship.

The General Assembly met beginning in January, and immediately started working on legislation to rein in the Governor’s powers. Dictators love their dictatorial powers, so the Reichsstatthalter vetoed those bills; the legislature promptly overrode his vetoes, and the Reichsstatthalter then went to court to try enjoin the new laws from taking effect.

Taking the cases to heavily partisan Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd, the Governor got what he wanted, the Judge blocking several of the General Assembly’s laws but not actually ruling against them.

And now the authoritarians’ playbook becomes obvious. From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

Beshear sets goal of 2.5 million vaccinated to lift capacity restrictions on bars, restaurants

By Jack Brammer | April 12, 2021 10:22 AM, Updated 11:08 AM EDT

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said Monday he plans to remove capacity restrictions on nearly all venues, events and businesses that cater to 1,000 or fewer patrons once 2.5 million Kentuckians get their first vaccines against COVID-19.

Once that goal is reached, Beshear said, “We will remove the physical distancing restrictions and the curfew we have on bars and restaurants.”

What does that mean? It means that the Governor has given the courts their timetable, a specified amount of time that he says he needs to run out the clock. All the courts have to do is do nothing, until the Governor’s goals are reached, and then they can decide if he had the authority to do what he did.

In what he called “a pretty big announcement,” Beshear said all Kentuckians should be motivated to get the vaccine.

“If you are a restaurant, a bar, a store, a public pool, a country club, a grocery, a funeral home, a wedding venue, a concert hall, a museum, if you put on festivals, if you are a distillery, this is what you have been waiting for —a clear number and a clear goal to hit,” said Beshear.

He encouraged the businesses to make sure all their staff get the shots.

How, I have to ask, do businesses “make sure all their staff get the shots”? The only obvious way is for businesses to require such as a condition of employment, and have the right to see their employees’ medical records!

Even with the easing of the restrictions, Beshear said, Kentuckians still will have to wear masks until there is more control of the virus. He also said he will address larger venues later.

So, even when the Reichsstatthalter’s ‘goals’ have been met, he still wants to exercise that visible sign of subservience.

As of today, Kentucky is about 900,000 short of reaching the goal of 2.5 million vaccinated. More than 1.55 million Kentuckians have received their “first shot of hope,” said the governor.

With the current supply of the vaccine, Beshear said Kentucky could reach the 2.5 million goal in 3½ weeks, but said it most likely will be between four and six weeks.

But wait: if 1.55 million Kentuckians have received their first shot, in a two-shot series, that still means that they aren’t fully vaccinated. According to The New York Times, while 36% of Kentuckians have received the first dose, only 24% are fully vaccinated. That would mean that roughly only one million eligible recipients have received both shots, and there’s no guarantee that, with our dishonest Governor, he won’t decide that we’ll need another month under restriction, until 2.5 million are fully vaccinated.

COVID-19 is serious, but far more serious is the assault on our constitutional rights and the sheeple allowing the government to control their lives. Freedom, once lost, is very difficult to regain, and far, far, far too many Kentuckians have silently allowed this authoritarian dictator to do whatever the Hell he pleases.

Posted on by

What #socialjustice criminal prosecution has done for Philadelphia In his eagerness to avoid 'mass incarceration,' Larry Krasner has left violent criminals out on the streets

When I wrote on Saturday that there must’ve been at least 133 souls sent early to their eternal rewards by the end of Friday, April 9th, based on a story in The Philadelphia Inquirer, I realized that it could have been an undercount. The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page is only updated on the weekdays, so I knew the numbers when I checked this morning could be a surprise. I did check the Inquirer’s website several times yesterday, but saw no stories on city murders beyond the one referenced above.

But I will admit it: I hadn’t guessed that there would have been 139 homicides by the end of Sunday, April 11th! The above linked Inquirer story began with, “Two men are dead and six others injured in a total of five shooting incidents in less than nine hours Friday night into Saturday morning throughout Philadelphia, police said.” If there were no other attempted homicides, that could mean that five of the six wounded expired over the weekend, or it could mean that there were more murders, unreported by the Inquirer, over the weekend.

No matter: I’ve said it several times: to the editors of the Inquirer, killings in Philadelphia aren’t newsworthy unless the victim is a child, someone who was a ‘somebody,’ or a cute little white girl. We need to stop pretending that #BlackLivesMatter because in the City of Brotherly Love, it’s very apparent that they don’t.

Of course, the Inquirer did mention the homicide rate, just not in the context of the victims:

Philly DA Larry Krasner and challenger Carlos Vega enter election homestretch as gun violence surges

Krasner’s reelection campaign against primary challenger Carlos Vega is a key test for the reform movement that helped make him one of the most liberal big-city prosecutors in the country.

by Chris Brennan | April 12, 2021

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner is pitching his reelection campaign as a fight for criminal justice reform — and against a return to injustices of the past.

“Do you want the future, where we are going to continue to keep those kinds of promises?” Krasner, 60, asked voters during a candidate forum last month, citing his reform-based 2017 campaign. “Or do you want the past?”

Carlos Vega, his challenger in the Democratic primary, is offering voters a hybrid: A reform-minded, experienced homicide prosecutor who says Krasner is making the city “vulnerable and unsafe.”

“We need a more responsible approach to criminal justice reform, as well as prosecuting violent criminals,” Vega, 64, told the same Philadelphia Bar Association forum. “Four years ago, we were promised that, through justice, we’d have a safer city. Philadelphia is more dangerous now than it’s been in the last three decades.”

There’s a lot more at the original, but one thing stands out: ‘progressive’ law enforcement has not been law enforcement at all!

An Inquirer analysis last month found that although arrests for illegal gun possession have nearly tripled during Krasner’s time in office, conviction rates have fallen from 63% to 49%.

The District Attorney wants to blame everything and everyone other than himself for the increased homicide numbers in the City of Brotherly Love, but the truth is that Mr Krasner, then a liberal defense attorney, asked for the responsibility to prosecute criminals, and the voters very irresponsibly gave it to him. Even the editors of the Inquirer realized how poor a fit Mr Krasner would be as a prosecutor, endorsing Rich Negrin in the 2017 Democratic primary, and after Mr Krasner won the primary, shockingly endorsed Beth Grossman, his Republican opponent, in 2017.

We’ll see if the editors endorse Republican Chuck Peruto in the general election if Mr Krasner wins the Democratic primary.

“If you don’t believe punishment is a deterrent to crime, then leave,” Peruto said. “Because you’re stupid. Crimes must have consequences.”

Philadelphia Police Officers and FOP members block District Attorney Larry Krasner from entering the hospital to meet with slain Police Corporal James O’Connor’s family, because Mr Krasner’s policies had kept Corporal O’Connor’s killer out on the street in the first place..

Mr Krasner isn’t stupid; Mr Krasner is just plain evil. A stooge of anti-American financier George Soros, it isn’t that Mr Krasner doesn’t believe that punishment is a deterrent to crime, it’s that he doesn’t believe that crime is a serious problem, even as the dead bodies keep piling up in Philadelphia. Mr Krasner ran against ‘mass incarceration,’ when the real problem is that too many criminals who could and should have still been locked up were out on the streets early committing even more crimes.

One of the people who wasn’t in jail on Friday, March 13, 2020, was Hasan Elliot, 21. How did the District Attorney’s office treat Mr Elliot, a known gang-banger?

  • Mr Elliott, then 18 years old, was arrested in June 2017 on gun- and drug-possession charges stemming after threatening a neighbor with a firearm. The District Attorney’s office granted him a plea bargain arrangement on January 24, 2018, and he was sentenced to 9 to 23 months in jail, followed by three years’ probation. However, he was paroled earlier than that, after seven months in jail.
  • Mr Elliot soon violated parole by failing drug tests and failing to mate his meetings with his parole officer.
  • Mr Elliott was arrested and charged with possession of cocaine on January 29, 2019. This was another parole violation, but Mr Krasner’s office did not attempt to have Mr Elliot returned to jail to finish his sentence, nor make any attempts to get serious bail on the new charges;he was released on his own recognizance.
  • After Mr Elliot failed to appear for his scheduled drug-possession trial on March 27, 2019, and prosecutors dropped those charges against him.

On that Friday the 13th, Police Corporal James O’Connor IV, 46, was part of a Philadelphia Police Department SWAT team trying to serve a predawn arrest warrant on Mr Elliott, from a March 2019 killing. Mr Elliot greeted the SWAT team with a hail of bullets, and Corporal O’Connor was killed. Had Mr Elliot been in jail, as he could have been due to parole violations, had Mr Krasner’s office treated him seriously, Corporal O’Connor would have gone home safely to his wife that day.

That is what the City of Brotherly Love has for a District Attorney! Mr Krasner is more concerned about not locking up people than he was with the safety of both police officers and civilians, and Corporal O’Connor is stone-cold graveyard dead because of it.

‘Progressive’ policies have encouraged criminal behavior. When idiotic prosecutors like Mr Krasner don’t try to seriously punish lesser crimes, the bad guys remain out on the streets, and move on to bigger and badder crimes, and decent people get killed. Real #socialjustice would be trying to make neighborhoods, and, let’s face it, in Philadelphia we mean poorer, minority neighborhoods, safer for the people living there.

Posted on by

Show me a bad kid, and I’ll show you rotten parents, part 2

My good friend William Teach tweeted a story which follows up on my Show me a bad kid, and I’ll show you rotten parents:

And here’s the story:

Prosecutors: Boy shot by police was with man who fired gun

Associated Press | Saturday, April 10, 2021 | 5:43 PM

CHICAGO (AP) — A young man who was with a 13-year-old boy fatally shot by a Chicago police officer last month fired the rounds that drew the officer’s attention, prosecutors said Saturday.

Ruben Roman, 21, is seen on video firing the weapon that brought police to the Little Village neighborhood on the night of March 29. He and 13-year-old Adam Toledo fled the scene together, with officers in pursuit, prosecutors said.

Roman was arrested as another officer chased Toledo, who was holding a gun when the officer shot him, prosecutors said. That gun matched the spent cartridge casings that were found in the area where Roman was firing, prosecutors said.

“If the defendant does not bring the 13-year-old with him, if he doesn’t bring his gun with him while on gun offender probation, if he doesn’t shoot that gun seven to eight times on a city street with the victim standing in arms length of him while he’s firing those shots … none of it would have happened,” Assistant State’s Attorney James Murphy said in court, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Roman’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Courtney Smallwood, vigorously rejected the implication that Roman is responsible for Toledo’s death, noting that the gun was allegedly recovered from Toledo.

“The victim is dead at the hand of the Chicago police officers, not my client,” she said, calling Toledo’s death “tragic.”

There’s a lot more in the Chicago Tribune’s story, but it leaves as many unanswered questions as answered ones.

Toledo kept running as an officer ordered him to stop, then paused near a break in a wooden fence, Murphy said. The officer ordered Toledo to show his hands. Toledo was standing with his left side to the officer and held his right hand to his right side, Murphy said.

The officer told Toledo “drop it, drop it,” as Toledo turned toward the officer with a gun in his right hand, Murphy said.

The officer fired one shot, hitting Toledo in the chest. The gun Toledo was holding landed a few feet away, Murphy said. The officer radioed for an ambulance and began chest compressions on Toledo, who was ultimately pronounced dead at the scene, Murphy said.

The story does not say that young Mr Toledo raised his right hand or pointed the weapon at the officer. That’s an important detail, which responsible journalism would have covered.

One officer tackled Roman as Toledo kept running. As Roman was being arrested, he dropped a pair of red gloves, Murphy said. Those gloves tested positive for gunshot residue, according to Murphy.

We are not told why Mr Toledo was holding the firearm Mr Roman fired. That’s another bit of poor journalism.

Why was 13-yeaqr-old Mr Toledo with a 21-year-old convicted felon? We aren’t told. Why wasn’t young Mr Toledo at home with his parents? Why was a 13-year-old kid out in dark alleys at 2:35 on a Monday morning? No answers to those questions were in the Tribune.

This story reads like one in which a wannabe thug was with an adult criminal, engaged in criminal acts, and things went predictably bad.

The Tribune noted that, as of April 8th, 155 homicides had been recorded in the Windy City, 27 more than on the same date last year. As we noted back in January:

People think of Chicago under its ridiculous Mayor, Lori Lightfoot, as the nation’s murder capital. In 2020, the Windy City saw 769 homicides, 270 more than Philadelphia. But Chicago has a population of 2,710,000, while Philly’s is 1,579,000. Crime rates are compared by rate per 100,000 population, and that leaves Chicago with a homicide rate of 28.38 per 100,000.

Philadelphia laughs and says, “We can beat that!”, checking in with a murder rate of 31.60 per 100,000.

As of January 25th, Chicago had 44 homicides, compared to Philly’s 37, but the disparity in population means that the City of Brotherly Love was far ahead.

Nothing has changed, of course: Chicago is still ahead in absolute terms, but the City of Brotherly Love, with 132 murders recorded as of that same date, April 8th, is ahead when population is considered. Had the two city’s the same murder rate, Philadelphia should have seen 90 murders on the same date Chicago had 155; if Chicago had Philly’s homicide rate, the Windy City should have seen 224 bullet-riddled bodies on April 8th, not ‘just’ 155.

So, as ridiculous as Mayor Lightfoot is, Philadelphia’s Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw are doing an even worse job!

Chicago will be better off with Mr Roman back off the streets. He is a convicted felon who, on probation, appears to have continued his felonious ways. Young Mr Toledo? Given the path he was on, is there any reason to believe he would not turn out like Mr Roman? It is easier to see a 13-year-old boy, apparently without any substantial parental guidance, clearly consorting with adult felons, winding up as just another gang-banger in Chicago rather than as the next Barack Hussein Obama, had he lived.