Tag Archives: #Law

Posted on by

Lawfare! What goes around comes around

Our good friends on the left have been complaining for a while now that the federal Department of Justice has been ‘weaponized’ to go after President Trump’s opponents, but perhaps they ought to consider just who started this s(tuff). We have noted, dozens of times, how the Department of Justice, under now-thankfully-retired President Joe Biden, and the Republican-hating Attorney General Merrick Garland, relentlessly pursued the Capitol kerfufflers. We pointed out the scandal of the FBI surveilling what they called “radical traditionalist Catholics” as an “extremist threat“, and that then-FBI Director Christopher Wray lied through his scummy teeth about the extent of the surveillance. My good friend and occasional blog pinch-hitter William Teach has a story this morning on how the far-left persecutor prosecutor in Hennepin County, Minnesota, who grants lenient plea bargains and dismissed charges to real criminals in Minneapolis, wants to put federal law enforcement officers on trial for enforcing immigration laws.

Philadelphia’s George Soros-sponsored, criminal-loving and police hating District Attorney, Larry Krasner, who previously made a fool of himself with his spittle-flecked declaration that he would seek to find state charges against the January 6th Capitol kerfufflers who were pardoned by President Trump, despite the fact that the vast majority had already served their sentences, wants to do the same thing.

And now we have this, from the very much pro-prenatal infanticide Philadelphia Inquirer:

Biden’s Justice Department was overly aggressive in prosecuting a Bucks County antiabortion activist, Trump administration says

In a nearly-900 page report, officials said the prosecution of Bucks County resident Mark Houck — which ended with an acquittal — was an example of how the Biden administration “weaponized” the law.

by Chris Palmer | Tuesday, April 14, 2026 | 3:15 PM EDT

The Justice Department on Tuesday said federal prosecutors under former President Joe Biden “weaponized” the law to target people with antiabortion views, and said one of the key examples was a case in which the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia charged a Bucks County activist with seeking to intimidate workers and patients outside a Planned Parenthood clinic. That case ended in an acquittal.

Note the important part: Mark Houck was acquitted by a jury of his peers! The trial lasted five days, and the jury returned the verdict in just an hour; Mr Houck faced up to eleven years in prison.

Unlike the vast majority of the Capitol kerfufflers, almost all of whom were normal, working-class people, Mr Houck had solid legal help, as the Chicago-based Catholic public-interest law firm Thomas More Society sent attorneys to take up his case. St Thomas More was a previous ally of King Henry VIII who withdrew from public life when the King attacked the Catholic Church, all to secure a divorce, but was executed anyway for refusing to accept the King as head of the church in England.

In a nearly 900-page report released Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s administration said the Justice Department under Biden and then-Attorney General Merrick Garland was biased in how it sought to enforce the FACE Act, a federal law that makes it a crime to injure, intimidate, or interfere with anyone at abortion clinics, pregnancy centers, or houses of worship.

The report said that the Justice Department in previous years “ignored and downplayed” complaints unless they came from abortion advocates, and that it collaborated with abortion advocacy groups, sought tougher sentences against people who opposed abortion, and “engaged in inappropriate conduct and comments” while prosecuting abortion opponents.

The report is the first to be issued by the Justice Department’s “Weaponization Working Group,” an initiative created by then-Attorney General Pam Bondi to respond to Trump’s belief that past administrations had unfairly — if not illegally — manipulated the law to target political opponents.

Reporter Chris Palmer’s article noted that rather than allowing Mr Houck to turn himself in, the FBI sent sixteen armed agents to his home to arrest him, and noted several other points in the vindictiveness of the Biden Administration in pursuing him. Sanjay Patel, who aggressively pushed for the indictment, was recently fired by the Department of Justice, as were three other attorneys.

During his first presidential campaign, Donald Trump said that his opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, would be thrown in jail, and his supporters kept chanting “Lock her up!” throughout his term, but the Justice Department never filed charges against her. It was the Biden Administration which began the policy of pursuing legal action against Mr Trump and his supporters.

This far, there have been few actual criminal cases filed against Biden Administration officials, but many have lost their jobs. Former Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan was tried and convicted for obstruction of justice for trying to help illegal immigrant Eduardo Flores-Ruiz evade arrest by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, agents as he was about to leave the courthouse; Mr Flores-Ruiz was successfully arrested following a foot chase, pleaded guilty to illegal re-entry following a previous deportation, and has been deported.

Judge Dugan is scheduled to be sentenced on June 3rd, and while she faces up to five years in the big house, it is considered unlikely that, as a first offender, she will actually receive time behind bars.

Thoroughly biased Federal District Court Judge James Boasberg was recently bitch-slapped by a three-judge appeals court panel for trying to prevent illegals from being deported, but he has faced no criminal charges.

Now Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard Williams has sent a criminal referral to the Department of Justice over a conspiracy which resulted in the failed first impeachment of President Trump.

There are still 2¾ years remaining in the Trump Administration, and there remains plenty of time for the Democrats and obstructionists to find themselves criminally charged. Remember: they started this s(tuff), and what goes around, comes around!

Posted on by

Pennsylvania just became a little less safe

Well, of course.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat of course, opposes capital punishment, as do I, but the Governor of the Keystone State does not have arbitrary power to issue pardons or sentence commutations on his own. The most Mr Shapiro could do, as his predecessor Tom Wolf did before him, was to decline to sign any death warrants. But now, the Governor is happy that the state Supreme Court held that mandatory sentences of life without the possibility of parole for second-degree murder violate the state constitution.

We have previously noted this case.

Under Title 18§2502(b), murder of the second degree is a criminal homicide which is committed while defendant was engaged as a principal or accomplice in the perpetration of a felony. That’s pretty simple: the murderer is already committing a crime, so even if he wasn’t necessarily planning on killing someone, he was already on the scene, already planning on committing a crime, and prepared to kill if he thought it necessary.

Whether you’re the guy who fires the fatal shot or not, you’re still a really bad guy, and there’s no good reason for you to ever be put back out on the streets with decent people again.

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s story on the case can be found here. The opinion of the court can be found here. From the newspaper:

One of the lead lawyers in the case, Bret Grote of the Abolitionist Law Center, said the decision “will have profound ramifications” for the state’s criminal justice system, and that it “represents the culmination of decades of movement-building by incarcerated people and their families and communities.”

Ben Grote, huh? How unserious is Mr Grote? He couldn’t even be bothered to clean up his beta male beard before going before the state Supreme Court. But, alas! he won his case.

Image from main page of Abolitionist Law Center website, screencaptured on October 9, 2024.

Mr Grote works for the Abolitionist Law Center, which we have previously mentioned. What is not mentioned is that the Abolitionist Law Center is opposed to incarceration for anything, opposes all prison sentences, and would, if they could, free every murderer, every rapist, every drug dealer, and every assailant locked up in Pennsylvania’s prisons.

We challenge every point on the criminal punishment conveyor belt including policing, courts, jails and prisons, and various forms of legal supervision, as well as other aspects of the carceral machine.

Boldface in the original.

I might have ignored this story, especially since I was eating the very delicious lamb chops my wife made for supper, were it not for a very lovely lady on Twitter. Miss Long has in her Twitter bio a background illustration saying:

Roses are red,
No lives are blue,
Defund the Police,
Abolish ICE too.

Miss Long posted a series on Twitter, beginning here, praising the Abolitionist Law Center for its work. We already know that the Abolitionist Law Center wants to abolish prisons completely, to give dangerous predators some cockamamie “restorative justice” bovine feces.

Some people are beyond redemption, some people are simply evil and can never be trusted in society. Miss Long and the Abolitionist Law Center would see the gates of prisons thrown open and deranged killers like Wesley Cook let back out on the streets. They don’t even like, as noted above, “legal supervision,” which means probation and probation officers. Miss Long wants to see criminal illegal immigrants, some guilty of murder and rape, left free to terrorize innocent people.

I assume that Miss Long and the others believe that people are just innately good, and if the people we now see as bad guys are just left alone and shown sweetness and light, they’ll all be great people and credits to their communities.

Well, that’s just plain bovine feces. Some people simply need to be removed from society, for society to remain safe and secure for the people who are actually good citizens. I can’t even understand how some people can think differently.