On few issues do I get as much crap from fellow conservatives as my stance on the Death Penalty.

I support the death penalty for every possible reason, except one; the likelihood of executing the innocent.  And that, as it happens, is dispositive to me.  Since an equally-safe-to-the-public method – life in Supermax – exists, there is no moral reason to use the death penalty until such a time as humans are very nearly perfect.

And as Flash shows in the latest of the over fifty cases such cases that have cropped up since the return of the Death Penalty in 1977, we’re nowhere close to perfect yet, citing a WaPo article on a stay of execution in the case of Troy Davis, who was scheduled to die…today.

Oops.  That coulda been embarassing:

The prosecution’s case against Davis, 38, has crumbled in the 16 years since he was sentenced to death for shooting a police officer working a security detail in Savannah. Most of the key witnesses in Davis’s trial have recanted their testimony, and some have said they lied under police pressure.

Given that Death Row is no more secure than Supermax, what precisely does the public lose by demanding “perfection” – guilt beyond a rational doubt – in such cases?  Or abolishing capital punishment altogether?

The Strib gives a hearty “attaboy” to the North Minneapolis residents that fingered Charez Jones’ alleged killers:

Let us pause to praise those who gave information about the recent North Side murder of 14-year-old Charez Jones. Their actions led to several arrests just days after the high school student was killed on June 9. And their quick responses are fine examples of how a community can come together to combat violent crime.When neighbors step up and speak up, it sends just the right message to criminals: You will not be tolerated here. That’s among the best ways to counter the “Don’t Snitch” fear campaign of the criminals.

That, as far as it goes, is true.  It’s good when the law-abiding people of the neighborhood can stand up and point out problems to the authorites.

But it’s bad when the fact that they do it at all is notable. 

Those who think they “shouldn’t get involved” ought to know that law enforcement is at its best when the community cooperates. Rarely are cops around to actually witness a crime; they are called in after the fact. That’s why they rely so heavily on the eyes and ears of the community to help solve crimes. Community policing and involvement works.

But only if the people really believe it’s in their best interests to cooperate.

Minneapolis and Hennepin County have spent the last forty years building a “catch and release” system for criminals, welcoming new criminals (and the poor on which they prey first and most) and effectively ceding Phillips and huge swathes of the North Side to the gangs.

It’s been coming home to roost for a long time:

Community organizations and police are worried that things could get particularly difficult this summer because there is evidence that at least eight gangs or wannabe gangs are fighting over drug turf on the North Side. That means residents must be especially observant during these warm summer months and report what they see.

Like most highly challenged inner-city neighborhoods, the North Side is largely populated by good people who keep up their homes and care about their neighbors. They want nothing more than to get rid of the bad actors who use their streets for gunplay, drug dealing and other illegal acts.

And then…what? 

If you call the (overstretched) Minneapolis Police Department, and if they manage to make an arrest, it goes to the County Attorney, who…

…does what?

To make that happen, more neighbors must band together to support the kind of actions that led to the recent arrests. A “Protect our people and community” campaign must be stronger and more sustainable than criminal efforts to scare good people into silence.

And the only way you’ll get that is by revoking the DFL’s hereditary one-party rule over Minneapolis.

It was eight years ago last Saturday that the FBI ended its 24 year manhunt for Kathleen Soliah, who’d been living in Saint Paul as Sarah Jane Olson for a couple of decades.  Married to a local doctor who professed unawareness (successfully, even though he’d been a student radical in the sixties as well) that he’d been harboring a fugitive involved in a a murder and conspiracy to blow up police cars with the cops still in them.

She was arrested in leafy, “Leave It To Beaver”-esque Highland Park, where she’d lived for most of two decades.

The incident uncovered an old, fermenting rift in Twin Cities’ society; people who believed that since Olson/Soliah had spent two decades working as a politically-correct, ultraliberal DFL pseudo-radical, active in pro-“choice” and gun control and getting out the vote for far-left DFL candidates, that she’d more than paid her penance for her role in a conspiracy that, after all, had been back in the seventies when everyone was doing it, or wanted to, versus people who believed laws were for everyone.

On the first side; many of the Saint Paul DFL’s leading lights, who pitched in hundreds of thousands of dollars for Olson/Soliah’s legal defense fund and insisted loudly, sometimes shrilly, that Olson had more than paid her debt to society by just plain being her.

Tara McKelvey interviews Fred Peterson and Sophia Peterson, Olson/Soliah’s husband and daughter, in Marie Claire.

 I am prepared for some version of radical when I walk into the Highland Grill, a diner in downtown St. Paul, where I am meeting Fred Peterson for the first time. Instead, I get Middle America academic: Sitting patiently in a booth, Fred is wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a long-sleeved, black shirt. His gray-speckled beard matches his shaggy gray-brown hair, which is casually brushed off his forehead. I am surprised that daughter Emily has come with him. Slender, with long eyelashes, heavy mascara, and thick hair reaching past her shoulders, Emily maintains a defensive posture. On the subject of the SLA’s radicalism, she says, “Back then, everyone was.”

At 26, Emily is almost the same age as her mother was during the raid in ’74. “She lived in Berkeley,” Emily says, trying to explain her mother’s affiliation with the SLA. “It was kind of normal.”

I’m starting to see the problem here; it won’t be the last time.

Dr. and Sophia Peterson on the shootout that killed six SLA members:

 “That became Sara’s private business,” says Fred. “The LAPD massacre of the SLA was a bellwether event-the first televised SWAT team -” “Team murder,” Emily interrupts.

On harboring a fugitive – knowingly or not – for 20 years, former SDS member Peterson:

“You know, The Fugitive Becomes a Soccer Mom. They’re all stereotypical images of deceit. None of that applies when you’re just living a life and raising kids. People would say to me, ‘How could you accommodate such a depraved criminal mind? How can you live with the knowledge of what happened in the past?’ It captures the American psychodrama. But it was not real.”

I wonder if it was real for Myrna Opsahl’s?  Opsahl, whose death at the hands of those who became “unreal” fugitives, including Fred Peterson’s wife, was fobbed off by the SLA’s Emily Harris (as quoted by Patty Hearst) with the following statement:

Oh, she’s dead, but it really doesn’t matter. She was a bourgeois pig anyway. Her husband is a doctor. He was at the hospital where they brought her.”

Maybe Sophia Peterson never read that statement:

“I always tell people she wasn’t a terrorist. She was an urban guerrilla,” says Emily, smearing Blistex on her lips while waiting for the waitress to return. Like her mother, Emily has long hair and pale skin-a classic beauty. Today, she’s wearing a pink blouse that’s peeking out from beneath a worn, black leather jacket.

Along with her looks, she’s inherited her mother’s passion for social issues, working as a Head Start teacher with homeless 3- and 4-year-olds from a Minneapolis shelter to help them prepare for kindergarten. “It’s hard,” she says. “A lot of these kids don’t even have coats or boots.”

But on the other hand, most of their mothers weren’t slaughtered by ideologues, either.

 Let me digress here; I remember seeing the photos of the Peterson girls – and Dr. Peterson, for that matter – around the time of the arrest.  I figured there’s no way Dr. Peterson didn’t know she was a fugitive, especially when I heard about his background in the SDS.  But my heart went out to the kids, who were in their early and late teens at the time.  They didn’t ask for any of this.  Did they?

Well, not at the time.  But it seems to be a family legacy; a second generation of children of immense privilege wrapping themselves in phony “revolution” and…

…victimhood?

“In the end,” she says of Olson’s sentencing, “we had to watch our mother be pulled away by two big cops. The aftereffects have been debilitating. I don’t know if people can understand that.” …Sophia comes back downstairs and tells me no one can understand the suffering her family has experienced. She has a flair for drama: Describing her mother’s reaction to the second World Trade Center tower collapsing, Sophia places her hand over her heart and slouches toward the ground: “She said, ‘I’m screwed.'”

On the one hand, I can’t imagine the trauma. 

On the other hand, I know one family who can.  Perhaps young Sophia needs to talk to these people – the family of Myrna Opsahl, the woman that their mother was convicted of murdering.  Click on the link and read the entire site – including all the damning evidence against Soliah/Olson – before you go assigning too much sympathy.

As to Sophie Peterson’s 9/11 tableau – perhaps that was one “good” side-affect of the terrorist attacks; never again, G-d willing, would middle America look at terrorists with the same gauzy, soft focus that Soliah’s generation handed down to us.

I don’t know where Nick Coleman stood on Soliah/Olson eight years ago – I was busy with other things, and not reading him regularly in those pre-blog days – but he makes an appearance:

“She betrayed the people who befriended her by having lived this secret life. Her family and her friends have suffered incredibly,” he says. “At some point, you have to face these charges. And even though she had a family, the only honorable way out of this dilemma was to turn herself in. I’m kind of mad about it, to be honest.”

But as all of us who live in St. Paul remember, it was the smug moral equivocation of Soliah/Olson’s fellow Highland Park DFL cronies that set the tone of the day.  Prominent DFL politicians led the fund-raising and the demands that justice be set aside for one of their own who’d proved herself, if not repentant for murdering Myrna Opsahl and plotting to kill Los Angeles cops with firebombs, at least a good DFLer.  A pre-Powerline John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson wrote a seminal excoriation of this crew, “Kathy’s Clowns“, in the American Enterprise back in the winter of ’99:

The local response to her arrest was a vast outpouring of support. Democratic state legislators and former St. Paul mayoral candidates Andy Dawkins and Sandy Pappas were her most outspoken and visible defenders. Pappas, for whom Soliah had raised campaign funds, attacked the FBI for tracking her down and wondered aloud, “Don’t they have any real crimes to fight?” It is difficult to imagine what crimes Ms. Pappas considers more “real” than murder, bank robbery, and attempted murder. Welfare reform, perhaps.Dawkins’ comments on the case were equally bizarre. He has invoked events from Selma, Alabama to Kent State in defense of Ms. Soliah, as though they could somehow explain why it was reasonable to rob banks, assault bank customers, kill Myrna Opsahl, and attempt to murder war veterans and policemen. Dawkins says that the allegations against Soliah, if true, represent “a momentary lapse in judgment.”It is perhaps not surprising that Soliah would receive support from Democratic officeholders of the flakier sort. What is more surprising is the undeniable grass-roots movement that has emerged on her behalf. Soliah’s friends and allies have produced a cookbook containing her favorite recipes, held benefits to demonstrate their support, and raised $1 million to bail her out of jail. Local church groups and the “theater community,” in which Soliah was active, have rallied to her defense.

No less interesting than the magnitude of Soliah’s support are the virtues with which her advocates credit her. She is described as a “Democratic activist,” “a true humanitarian,” a “social activist, marathon runner, volunteer and soccer mom,” an actress who hosts fund raisers for Democratic candidates, a gourmet cook who “is involved in every peace and justice issue that comes along.” Peace and justice. Soliah’s brother encapsulated her defense in these words: “There’s not this dichotomy between what Kathy was and what she is now. She was doing the same things in the early ’70’s.” Terrorist or soccer mom; there’s not much difference, from a leftist point of view, as long as you’re devoted to “peace and justice.”

But eight years later, some of the neighbors – the “clowns” – still haven’t gotten the word (emphasis added):

Olson was a “spectacular artist,” says a friend and member of their church.  [A community theater colleague] recalls how Olson used to appear in local theater productions. “That woman does have charisma. To this day, it doesn’t really make sense to me. She’s a very gentle person. I think what Sara is guilty of is having made a bad choice of friends.”

Not a woman who needs redeeming, then?

“Redemption?” she shakes her head. “For Sara, I don’t see any – she was already rehabilitated, if that needed to be done. She’s [in prison] to be punished.”

 “If that needed to be done”.

McKelvey closes the piece:

It’s 11 o’clock at night, hours after my visit with Sophia at the family home. In my hotel room, I log on to my computer. I’m surprised to find an e-mail from her. In a heated, 17-line message, she says she wants nothing more to do with the article. It’s an emotional outpouring, and she sounds angry and paranoid-convinced I will distort her version of events…I wonder why she has decided to tell me this now. She’d known for weeks about the story; my business card was tacked up on her bulletin board.

Fred, too, retreated after our meeting in the diner, though in less explosive terms, expressing mixed feelings about the “tough questions” I’d asked. “Sara would express caution for sure-if not be outright chagrined,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Thanks for dinner?”

Via e-mail, I ask Emily if I can see her again. She wrote back this: “We, as a family, have experienced a deep hardship and sadness with our mother being away from us. About meeting with you on Sunday, I will have to see if I feel up to it on that day. I have your cell phone.”

She never called.

Kudos to McKelvey, who left the big questions – “do these people really believe all this everyone was doing it crap?” – for us to answer for ourselves.

(Thanks to commenter Soliah.com for the pointer)

Reade Seligman is going to sue Nifong:

Former Duke University lacrosse team player, Reade Seligmann, who had been cleared of charges he and two other players raped a hired stripper, says he feels sorry for disgraced prosecutor Mike Nifong’s family, but he added he was hurt by Nifong’s statement at last week’s hearing that he still thinks “something happened in that bathroom” at that now infamous team party last year.

“It was probably one of the most difficult parts of the hearing,” Seligmann, 21, told TODAY host Meredith Vieira during an exclusive interview on Monday. “I really did feel sympathy for his family … It’s been a tragedy that another family is going to have to suffer because of Mike Nifong’s actions, but after hearing him say that, it really did make it difficult to feel [for him].”

I’d be tempted to send a few bucks to any legal fund that went after Nifong – but there are many more, many worse cases of prosecutorial misconduct out there. 

On the one hand, it’s good to see that justice had prevailed in the Nifong/Duke case:

Time and time again, Mike Nifong strode into court and confidently proclaimed that three Duke lacrosse players raped a woman at a team party. He smirked when anyone suggested otherwise.

The Durham County district attorney thundered away in interviews, calling the players “hooligans,” framing the case as a racially motivated attack by privileged white students. He never even hinted that his case started out weak and soon became fatally flawed.

That self-assured Mike Nifong of 2006 couldn’t be more different than the disgraced man who left a courthouse through a side door on Saturday — quiet, humbled and disbarred.

This is a victory in many ways; for the judicial system, at a time when people are being released (not commuted, mind you) from death row at the rate of three every two years, in most case due to prosecutorial misconduct and witholding of evidence. 

It’s a victory, of course, for the lacrosse players who were found guilty by many of the lesser minds among the punditry due to nothing more compelling than “they were men”.

And maybe it’s a victory for people who refuse to smugly believe that rape is a crime immune to abuse.

Here are some things we hear a lot: Vindictive women use rape charges to get back at men. Women’s sexual histories can be informative in a rape case. Women who were “really raped” are easily identified by the way they behave.

None of them are true.

“None”.  Paradoxically, it’s a very big word.  We’ll come back to that.

Yes, there are some women (and men) who file false rape charges. They are, however, rare, usually quickly identified as false, and are almost always thrown out long before trial. In truth, many genuine victims of rape never see their cases reach trial due to lack of evidence; a genuine rape victim is exponentially less likely to see her attacker prosecuted than an erroneously charged man is to be prosecuted.

The piece goes on to claim that rape charges are about a third less falsely brought than auto theft.

Let’s accept a few things right up front (since if I don’t, some peabrain leftyblogger will write “Why Does Berg Hate Women?” or “Blogger Berg: Soft on Rape” or some such BS); society was disgracefully tardy in accepting rape in its many forms as a “real” crime.  For my part, I’ve done my bit of societal penance not only by advocating for women’s (and men’s) rights to self-defense, but by teaching one rape victim to shoot.  I am firmly behind empowerment.

But claims of false accusation vary widely:  one study claims that around 2% of rape charges are false, while on the other hand…:

A study of rape allegations in Indiana over a nine-year period revealed that over 40% were shown to be false — not merely unproven. According to the author, “These false allegations appear to serve three major functions for the complainants: providing an alibi, seeking revenge, and obtaining sympathy and attention. False rape allegations are not the consequence of a gender-linked aberration, as frequently claimed, but reflect impulsive and desperate efforts to cope with personal and social stress situations.” ( Kanin EJ. Arch Sex Behav. 1994 Feb;23(1):81-92 False rape allegations. )

In 1985, a study of 556 rape allegations found that 27% accusers recanted when faced with a polygraph (which can be ordered in the military), and independent evaluation showed a false accusation rate of 60%. (McDowell, Charles P., Ph.D. “False Allegations.” Forensic Science Digest, (publication of the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations), Vol. 11, No. 4 (December 1985), p. 64.)

One interesting discussion on the internet is at the CrimProf Blog, where this topic was raised, and a number of former AFOSI (Air Force Office of Special Investigations) comment on this 30% number.

But let’s take the shriekbloggers at “Shakespeare’s Sister”‘s numbers at face value (always a dicey proposition when leftybloggers are concerned), and assume that “only” 1.6% of all rape accusations in the US are false.  Each of those false accusations has every bit as much potential to destroy a life, a family, a job and career, as an actual rape does.  Even though the three Duke lacrosse players have been completely exonerated, there’ll be an asterisk by each of their names in the minds of some people forever – and the only thing that makes their case more egregious than any other is that so many in the media and the Sorosphere piled on their case (because nothing satisfies like lynching a “rich white male child of privilege”). 

So what about the other cases – where a person’s reputation is destroyed (indeed, “raped”) on a more local level?  Saying, as so many now are re the Duke case “Oops, I screwed up!  My Bad!  Sorry, although I’d be sorrier if you weren’t “rich” and white!” doesn’t really cut it.

People making false accusations of any crime – but especially extra-heinous crimes, like rape, where the punishment for real charges is and should be exceptionally harsh – should be charged, and punished ferociously – not merely because they intend to falsely destroy someone’s reputation, but because when the law can be openly abused without retribution, confidence in the law suffers.  Jonna Spilbor writes:

It’s not just about punishing one person for a very serious misdeed – though that is surely important, given the devastating impact on the three defendant’s lives. It’s also about the way her lies will wrongly be used by some to question the veracity of genuine victims of rape. Protecting Crystal Mangum isn’t protecting a victim; it’s making every future victim more vulnerable, in the prosecutor’s office and in the courtroom, to being wrongly disbelieved.

Thus, Crystal Mangum not only wronged the three defendants, but also all the women in this world who ever have been truly victimized, or who, sadly but unavoidably, one day will be. These are the unseen victims of Duke.

The law already allows those who falsely report crimes to be punished. I can’t imagine a better case for invoking it than this one.

Mangun committed a crime, counting on society’s justifiable revulsion with rape to carry the day.  Prosecutor Nifong abetted the crime for his own careerist profit.

Prosecution may be the least they deserve.  It’s the least society should do.

 There are a bunch of reasons I prefer Saint Paul to Minneapolis.  One of them is the cops.

Not the cops on the streets, of course; Minneapolis cops (a number of whom read this blog) are, cop for cop, as good as any, and their hearts are all in the same places.

But when you start talking about upper leadership?  Saint Paul’s chiefs come from within the department, and have worked their way up through the department’s ranks.  Most Minneapolis chiefs have been political appointees from elsewhere, with indifferent-to-lousy results.  And the civilian leadership?  Twelve years of moderate-DFL-to-GOP-come-lately administrations under Norm Coleman and Randy Kelly helped a lot.  And while I disagree with Chris Coleman on everything but bagpipes, he’s a much better, more serious mayor than RT Rybak. 

And every once in a while, the SPPD just plain shows some style: 

 “Smile. This area is under video surveillance and has been for three months. If you sell drugs or have sold drugs then an arrest warrant will be issued for you.”

It was in relation to a sweep last week:

After a three-month investigation called Operation Shamrock, officers fanned out last week to arrest 100 people charged with drug dealing. More than 30 were picked up right away, and arrest warrants were issued for the others.

Law enforcers responded to an increase of open-air drug sales, fighting, mugging and intimidation that occurred near bus stops. Bus riders and others complained of behavior that made them afraid to wait at certain bus shelters.

Cough Cough.  Sixth and Minnesota.  Cough.

Good riddance. 

Shoot a cop…

…get released?

Doesn’t happen, generally – unless the cop’s done something grossly wrong.  Cops and district attorneys take “shooting at cops” pretty seriously.  Rightly so.

We don’t exactly know what happened in the shooting incident on Highway 10 last week in which a civilian concealed-carry permit holder shot an undercover cop who was – according to the civilian – engrossed in road rage and pointing a gun at the shooter’s wife, as he drove his family in an SUV.

But the fact that the shooter was released without charges after a night in jail might, maybe, possibly, indicated that Minnesota’s latest concealed-carry permit holder to defend himself and his family might have been in the right:

Nearly 72 hours since he was involved in a rolling argument in Coon Rapids that led him to shoot an undercover police officer, Martin S. Treptow still believes he had little choice but to act as he did, his attorney Marc Berris said Saturday.

Endangered first by the officer’s “extremely aggressive” driving, and then stunned to see the officer point a gun at his wife, Treptow, 35, was simply trying to protect his family and himself, Berris said.

He added: “When all the facts come out, it’ll show he had absolutely no opportunity to deescalate the situation.”

Which is part of the burden that a citizen bears in a self-defense case; proving they weren’t a willing party to the conflict, that he/she tried every reasonable means to de-escalate, that the force was reasonable under the circumstances, and that there was a reasonable fear of death and/or great bodily harm – where “reasonable” means “a jury would buy it”. 

So you be the judge:

[Treptow’s attorney Marc] Berris, who said he is in the midst of his own investigation of the incident, offered this account of the Thursday altercation:

Treptow, his wife and their two children were heading to St. Paul when they were confronted by a man driving erratically, including pulling alongside Treptow’s SUV and yelling at him and his wife.

At one point, Treptow honked, but the feud continued. It came to a head along 99th Avenue NW. near Foley Boulevard NW. as the two vehicles were stopped behind other cars at a stop light.

According to Berris, the man, who Treptow did not know was a police officer, reached out his window and pointed a gun at Treptow’s wife. Treptow, who had been working as a security officer until last month and who has a permit to carry his gun, quickly reached across his wife and fired at the car. The officer was hit in the legs and an arm.

Still fearing for his family’s safety, Treptow drove away from the scene while his wife called 911, Berris said.

They stopped at a nearby gas station, where police took them into custody.

Which is far from abnormal, even if the alleged victim isn’t a cop.

While Treptow left jail after an evening, the Coon Rapids police aren’t saying much:

But for Coon Rapids police officials, such conclusions regarding the Thursday afternoon shooting are premature.

Sgt. Tom Hawley said Saturday that investigators are still analyzing evidence and trying to compile and sort through conflicting accounts from the parties involved and several witnesses. He said it could be several days to weeks before their work is complete.

We’ll know more than that, soon.

Joel Rosenberg writes:

Note the shape of the defense:  the cop was the aggressor; Treptow’s response was minimal initially; he was reasonably in fear of the immediate death or GBH for himself and/or his wife; he fled not out of mens rea but because he feared for his safety, and they immediately called 911.

Note how important that latter is. 

Money quote:  “When all the facts come out, it’ll show he had absolutely no opportunity to deescalate the situation.”

Just guesses: Treptow won’t get charged at all.  Officer Friendly will end up seeking other career opportunities.

Stay tuned.

Mexico is upset about the open border:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Friday that Washington is taking steps to address Mexican concerns the U.S. is not doing enough to stop illegal weapons from being smuggled across the border and into the hands of brutal drug gangs.

A meeting here of attorneys general from the U.S., Mexico and six other Latin American countries focused on Mexican complaints weapons from the United States are fueling a wave of cartel-related executions and violent crime that is battering the nation.

“We are concerned about the number of weapons coming into Mexico and Central America illegally from the United States,” Gonzales said. “There is more that we can do, and we are looking to do, to try and stem the flow of illegal weapons into Mexico.”

Maybe they should build a fence.

Amid the layoffs, buyouts and restructurings currently going on at the Strib, the rumor had it that Katherine Kersten’s column was saved at least in part because she has never worked as a beat reporter (just as at least one rumor has it that Doug Grow’s departure is tied to the paper’s plan to put him back on the street, due to his experience as a gumshoe general assignment reporter).

And yet her column Friday – about Minneapolis’ reticence to pursue illegal immigrants, even when they are committing crimes – puts to shame many of priorities of the paper’s “news” division (to say nothing of the local partisan agendafloggers dressed in “Ace Reporter” costumes).

Minneapolis, as a matter of city policy, tells its police not to act as surrogate Immigration agents. 

Supporters of the city’s hands-off approach point to a “separation” ordinance, passed in 2003. The ordinance prohibits police from becoming involved in routine immigration enforcement, where immigration is the main issue. Immigrants in the city won’t cooperate with the police if they fear deportation, the reasoning goes.

But that’s not supposed to include interfering with enforcing laws against crime…:

But the ordinance explicitly permits police involvement in investigations like the sex ring. “Nothing in this chapter,” it states, “shall prohibit public safety personnel from assisting federal law enforcement officers in the investigation of criminal activity involving individuals present in the United States who may also be in violation of federal civil immigration laws.”

On Wednesday, Rybak acknowledged that the ordinance doesn’t bar police from engaging in crime fighting just because immigration is involved. “When the issue is clearly prostitution, we will continue to stand strong against it,” he said.

Rybak’s next quote explains a lot about the miasma of dilettantism that besets Minnesota’s largest city:

But wasn’t prostitution the issue in the sex ring bust? “The line between what is prostitution and what is immigration was blurry,” Rybak replied.

I had to stop there for a minute.

“The line between what is prostitution and what is immigration is blurry”.

This is Minneapolis’ mayor. 

Saint Paul, though hamstrung by a similarly-lefty City Council, hasn’t quite slipped the surly bonds of reason:

The St. Paul Police Department, for its part, wasn’t troubled by “blurry” lines though it too has a “separation” ordinance. In fact, the St. Paul police helped lead the charge against the sex ring operators.

So it’s clear that at least one of the Twin Cities’ loony-left-of-center governments can tell the difference between illegal immigration and prostitution. 

Are Minneapolis citizens well-served when city leaders avoid law enforcement on the “blurry” lines theory — when the crimes at issue may involve illegal immigrants?

Mark Cangemi, now retired from ICE, doesn’t think so. Cangemi was special agent in charge of the sex ring investigation until December 2006. “In the guise of protecting citizens, the Minneapolis leadership is actually harming the most vulnerable,” he says…In Cangemi’s view, Minneapolis’ “separation” ordinance — and its overbroad interpretation — have created a wedge between city police and the feds. In an operation like the sex ring investigation, he says, officers would likely be hampered if they had to make an arrest. “They are afraid they will be chastised and disciplined for doing what they are sworn to do: serve and protect,” he says.

Cops, like Cangemi, talk about enforcing the law.

Mayor Giggles talks about clothes and confusion:

“It’s ICE that has created a wedge,” Rybak retorts. The agency has not removed the word “‘police” from its officers’ jackets, despite his request to do so. Rybak maintains that the word “confuses” people who believe that immigration and criminal enforcement should be separate.

“But we are police!” protests Cangemi. Rybak, he says, “is way beyond his level of expertise” in making such a demand of a federal agency. “Police” is an internationally recognized term, used by law enforcement worldwide. Last year, Cangemi sent Rybak an “open letter” making this point, but Rybak never responded, he says. Rybak’s spokesman says he doesn’t know whether that’s true. Meanwhile, it’s Minneapolis leaders’ priorities that confuse people.

And there, finally, Kersten is wrong.

Nothing confusing about R.T. Rybak’s “priorities”.

Protect his constituencies. 

Simple.

Some people do chutzpah well.  Others…not really.

For example – Tom Delay, getting booked for a trumped-up, politically-motivated ethics charge:

It’s like he’s daring his opponents; “go ahead.  TRY to use this at election time!”

Well played.

On the other hand, Minnesota Senate Majority Leader James Metzen – a DFLer – tries but fails during his photo after being picked up for allegedly driving while intoxicated:

(Photo via First Ringer at TvM)

At least, I hope that’s chutzpah he’s attempting.  Since he got picked up at almost twice the legal limit, I’d say it’s a toss.

At any rate; chutzpah is a gift.  People are born with it.  I’m not sure it can be created.

But if it can, Metzen needs some practice.

That is all.

While outrages like Columbine and the Virginia Tech massacre are all fresh in our minds as depressing reminders of man’s depravity, it’s useful to remember that whenever one is tempted to ask “can it get any worse”, the answer is usually “it already has been”.

The most horrific schoolhouse massacre in American history took place eighty years ago today in tiny Bath, Michigan, as a deranged farmer, Andrew Kehoe, arranged the most cold-blooded mass-murder of children in American history.

Kehoe arranged not one but three explosions:

1. The first, at his farm, served to draw firemen and rescuers away from the Bath School.
2. The second bomb – 500 pounds of dynamite – obliterated the north wing of the school, killing dozens of children and teachers.
3. The third bomb was in Kehoe’s car; he drove to the scene of his first blast, and detonated it, killing himself and several would-be rescuers.

It was a plot worthy of the most verminous Ba’athist. And it could have been worse; 500 pounds of dynamite under the other half of the school misfired and failed to detonate.

As bad as things get, remember; it’s probably been worse.

DC Administrative Law judge sues immigrant family for $65,000,000 over a pair of pants…

Jin Nam Chung, Ki Chung and their son, Soo Chung, are considering moving back to Seoul, seven years after they opened their dry-cleaning business in the nation’s capital, said their lawyer, Chris Manning.

“They’re out a lot of money, but more importantly, incredibly disenchanted with the system,” Manning said. “This has destroyed their lives.”

The customer, Roy L. Pearson Jr., who has been representing himself, declined to comment.

Pearson – whose Administrative Law judgeship isn’t partisan, but whose party you can pretty much guess given that he was appointed in the Democrat-strangled District of Columbia – has a history of frivolous lawsuits.  But he’d seem to have outdone himself this time:

According to court documents, the problem began in May 2005 when Pearson became a judge and brought several suits for alterations to Custom Cleaners in Washington. A pair of pants from one suit was missing when he requested it two days later.

Pearson asked the cleaners for the full price of the suit: more than $1,000.

But a week later, the Chungs said the pants had been found and refused to pay. Pearson said those were not his pants, and decided to take the Chungs to the cleaners and sue.

Manning said the cleaners have made three settlement offers to Pearson: $3,000, then $4,600, then $12,000.

But Pearson was not satisfied and expanded his calculations beyond one pair of pants. Because Pearson no longer wanted to use his neighborhood dry cleaner, he asked in his lawsuit for $15,000 — the cost of renting a car every weekend for 10 years to go to another business.

Manning said Pearson somehow thinks he has the right to a dry cleaner within four blocks of his apartment.

The bulk of the $65 million demand comes from Pearson’s strict interpretation of Washington consumer protection law, which imposes fines of $1,500 per violation, per day. Pearson counted 12 violations over 1,200 days, then multiplied that by three defendants.

Disbarment would be too good for this weasel, unless “disbarment” is really short for “dismissal with a rebar”.

Jim McDermott did to a political opponent what he doesn’t want the Administration to do, with probable cause, to people talking with terrorists overseas.

And while the Sorosphere doesn’t want you to know about it, he’s finally gotten spanked:

Rep. Jim McDermott had no right to disclose the contents of an illegally taped telephone call involving House Republican leaders a decade ago, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

After reading “retired diplomat” Dan Simpson’s non-muted plea for a totalitarian dictatorship to protect us from ourselves, I needed something to wash the stench of fascism from my nostrils

Policy wonk John Q. Wilson, from Pepperdine, arrived on cue:

  So far, not many prominent Americans have tried to use the college rampage as an argument for gun control. One reason is that we are in the midst of a presidential race in which leading Democratic candidates are aware that endorsing gun control can cost them votes.

I switched from being a gun-controller by habit to a Second Amendment activist about the same time as I became a conservative, during college.  It was a time when I despaired of ever seeing things as they are today…

…with gun control the notion of punishing the law-abiding for the crimes of the guilty being considered as big a third rail as, say, rationalizing Social Security.

Who says there’s no progress?

This concern has not prevented the New York Times from editorializing in favor of “stronger controls over the lethal weapons that cause such wasteful carnage.” Nor has it stopped the European press from beating up on us unmercifully.

Leading British, French, German, Italian and Spanish newspapers have blamed the United States for listening to Charlton Heston and the National Rifle Assn. Many of their claims are a little strange. At least two papers said we should ban semiautomatic assault weapons (even though the killer did not use one); another said that buying a machine gun is easier than getting a driver’s license (even though no one can legally buy a machine gun);  [Not actually true; if you pony up a big registration fee and pass a background check not a whole lot less intrusive than that for a Top Secret security clearance, you can get a Class III license, which allows you to buy fully-automatic machine guns.  In seventy years, exactly one person with a Class III license has committed a crime; it was a cop] a third wrote that gun violence is becoming more common (when in fact the U.S. homicide rate has fallen dramatically over the last dozen years).

But what are facts when one has a pseudo-religious  crusade at hand!

Note to Dan Simpson – and others who think that banning guns in the hands of the law-abiding is some sort of panacaea that’d lead us to a crime-free Eden:

If we want to guess by how much the U.S. murder rate would fall if civilians had no guns, we should begin by realizing — as criminologists Franklin Zimring and Gordon Hawkins have shown — that the non-gun homicide rate in this country is three times higher than the non-gun homicide rate in England. For historical and cultural reasons, Americans are a more violent people than the English, even when they can’t use a gun. This fact sets a floor below which the murder rate won’t be reduced even if, by some constitutional or political miracle, we became gun-free.

Of course, to many European observers, facts aren’t as important as agenda:

AS FOR THE European disdain for our criminal culture, many of those countries should not spend too much time congratulating themselves. In 2000, the rate at which people were robbed or assaulted was higher in England, Scotland, Finland, Poland, Denmark and Sweden than it was in the United States. The assault rate in England was twice that in the United States. In the decade since England banned all private possession of handguns, the BBC reported that the number of gun crimes has gone up sharply.

Oh, and strict, Euro-style gun control doesn’t prevent

Some of the worst examples of mass gun violence have also occurred in Europe. In recent years, 17 students and teachers were killed by a shooter in one incident at a German public school; 14 legislators were shot to death in Switzerland, and eight city council members were shot to death near Paris.    

The main lesson that should emerge from the Virginia Tech killings is that we need to work harder to identify and cope with dangerously unstable personalities.

And there’s the rub.  Advocates for the mentally-ill have made it very difficult – for some good reasons and some not-so-good ones – for the public to know a whole lot about peoples’  mental health backgrounds.  Knowing more about Cho’s judicial commitment, for example, might have done a lot more good to prevent the VT tragedy than putting more petty roadblocks in the way of the law-abiding gun owner.

It is a problem for Europeans as well as Americans, one for which there are no easy solutions — such as passing more gun control laws.

But like most such solutions, it’s not about solving things so much as helping a powerful and well-connected but impotent clicque feel that they’re doing something, even if that something is utterly useless.

A student’s creative writing essay – in which he was instructed not to censor himself! – leads to arrest, charges.

A high school senior was arrested after writing that “it would be funny” to dream about opening fire in a building and having sex with the dead victims, authorities said.

Another passage in the essay advised his teacher at Cary-Grove High School: “don’t be surprised on inspiring the first CG shooting,” according to a criminal complaint filed this week.

Allen Lee, 18, faces two disorderly conduct charges over the creative-writing assignment, which he was given on Monday in English class at the northern Illinois school.

Students were told to “write whatever comes to your mind. Do not judge or censor what you are writing,” according to a copy of the assignment.

I’m not sure what part bothers me the most here; that the student was arrested, that he was charged with “disorderly conduct” for essentially following his directions (albeit tastelessly and flippantly, as we’ll see below) or that if you take the statement below seriously, he was quite clearly looking to poke and prod the system:

According to the complaint, Lee’s essay reads in part, “Blood, sex and booze. Drugs, drugs, drugs are fun. Stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, s…t…a…b…puke. So I had this dream last night where I went into a building, pulled out two P90s and started shooting everyone, then had sex with the dead bodies. Well, not really, but it would be funny if I did.”

Officials described the essay as disturbing and inappropriate.

Lee said he was just following the directions.

“In creative writing, you’re told to exaggerate,” Lee said. “It was supposed to be just junk. … There definitely is violent content, but they’re taking it out of context and making it something it isn’t.”

The system is reacting with the same common sense that I’ve personally come to love about the public (and too many private) school systems:

Lee was moved to an off-campus learning program, and the district was evaluating a punishment, schools spokesman Jeff Puma said.

“It wasn’t just violent or foul language,” Puma said. “It went beyond that.”

The teenager’s father, Albert Lee, has defended his son as a straight-A student who was just following instructions and contends the school overreacted. But he has also said he understands that the situation arose in the week after a Virginia Tech student gunned down 32 people before committing suicide.

Defense attorney Dane Loizzo said Allen Lee has never been disciplined in school and signed Marine enlistment papers last week.

A conviction could bring up to 30 days in jail and a maximum $1,500 fine.

Maybe Lee should treat it as “performance art” parodying the institutionalized paranoia of a system that has lost the ability to discern reality.

As has been noted many times in this space, I suppor the death penalty for every possible reason except one – the possibility, indeed (given human nature) likelihood of executing the innocent.

And that is the only problem that matters; since life incarceration without parole is every bit as secure as the death penalty, and gets the prisoner just securely off the streets as death – and is reversible, if an error happens – then as much as I believe some criminals genuinely deserve death, it is the only genuinely moral approach.

Especially given this bit of news; DNA testing has just yielded its’ 200th complete exoneration:

The details of the latest exoneration are typically nightmarish: Jerry Miller served 25 years for a rape conviction and had already been paroled when DNA tests showed he could not have been the man who attacked a woman in a Chicago parking garage.

What’s also troubling is how common these exonerations have become since the first reversal in 1989. It took 13 years to reach the first 100 DNA exonerations, but just five to double that number. For prosecutors and judges, as well as defense attorneys, the exonerations raise a larger question: How many others, innocent of their crimes, are behind bars?

Advocates for extensive changes in the way cases are investigated and prosecuted see the 200 as the tip of a huge iceberg and use the word “epidemic.”

And if it’s truly that big a problem (and I allow in advance that it is in the various DNA, anti-death-penalty and reform advocates’ interest for us to think that it is), doesn’t that strike hard at the validity of the death sentence, at the very least?  If not the way prosecuting attorneys handle cases on a shockingly broad basis?

My NARN colleague Captain Ed has had his usual excellent commentary in re the Virginia Tech shooting yesterday.

But in his piece on the shootings this morning, he betrays a key misunderstanding (too much hobnobbing with Bill Buckley, perhaps?) of one of the issues:

However, concealed=carry permits would not necessarily have prevented this, either. As my cousin Mike pointed out in the comments yesterday, such permits require the holder to be 21 years of age or older. That would have disqualified at least three-quarters of the students on campus. It would have only taken one or two to confront the shooter in this case, and at Appalachian Law (also in Virginia), armed students successfully ended a rampage.

Well, Ed is right – all it would have taken was one.

Or none.

The key reason to have “shall-issue” laws in place is not just to kill criminals; it is to deter violent crime. 

And where have the highest-profile mass-shootings taken place?  Schools – which, by federal law, are “gun-free”.  Colleges, which have the option to follow the same route.  The New York subway, where Colin Ferguson murdered five people, knowing he’d have no resistance without a cop present (getting a carry permit in New York City is mainly a function of political connections).  Luby’s Cafeteria, in Lubbock Texas, long before Texas adopted a “shall issue” law (and where, famously, one woman watched her mother die of a gunshot wound, regretting having left her own gun in the car), an incident which helped lead Texas to adopt “Shall Issue”.  The McDonalds in San Ysidro, California, where 21 died; it’s as difficult for a civilian to get a permit in California as it was in 1981.

You don’t see many mass-murders at NRA conventions or NASCAR races. 

The possibility that a would-be killer might face armed civilians doesn’t guarantee safety, of course – but the legal guarantee that a would-be killer will not face such a threat (as was the case at Virginia Tech, Columbine, Red Lake, Cold Spring-Rokori, Pearl Mississippi and dozens of smaller shootings) certainly doesn’t make anyone safer.  A hard target is always safer than a soft target.

Back to Ed:

However, that student was a former law-enforcement officer who retrieved his service pistol from his car, not just a student with a carry permit.

True, and irrelevant.  Virginia had a “shall-issue” law in 2002; while former cops are more likely to have guns than the general public (thankfully, in that case), it wouldn’t have mattered if it were an ex-cop or “just” a student, a staffer or a passerby who shot or deterred the killer.  Statistically, armed citizens are every bit as effective as law-enforcment when it comes to face-to-face cases of self-defense.

The story is so old it hardly bears re-telling – but several decades ago, Israeli schools and their children were among Palestinian terrorists’ favorite targets.  Israel started allowing teachers to carry pistols – requiring it, in some instances. 

What do they know that we don’t?

As news of the various, horriffic incidents like at Virginia Tech, Red Lake, Columbine and other schools has come in over the years, I’ve built up a sizeable body of advice for my kids.

If someone points a gun at you and tells you “get in the car” – don’t.  Resist, fight back, run away.  Your odds of survival are better with a thug shooting at you if you’re a moving target than if you go to a secondary crime scene.  Even if you’re hit, a 9mm bullet has statistically about a 17% chance of killing you; at a secondary crime scene, your odds of survival are probably in single digits.

If someone tells you “get on your knees” or “line up” – don’t.   Run.  Break away, away from the shooter.  Hitting a moving, dodging target is a lot harder than it looks on TV.   Shooters like the dirtball at Virginia Tech or all the other school shootings are counting on compliant, scared victims; they found them:

One of his friends was in a Norris classroom targeted by the gunman, Jenkins said.

“He was very fortunate,” Jenkins said. “He said every single person in the room was shot, killed and was in the ground. He laid on the ground with everyone … he played dead and he was OK.”

Running and getting away throws off the shooter’s plan at the very least.  And again, even if the scumbag shoots, his odds of hitting you are much slimmer if you’re moving, and if he hits you, your odds of living are much better if you’re moving away, fast, than if he’s putting a gun to the back of your immobile head.

Oh, yeah – and if your school tries to “lock down” around you?  Get out.  Any way you can; break away before your teacher can lock the door – run over her, go out the window, whatever it takes; do not sit still with a bunch of other immobile targets.   At the very best, your school’s administrators’ primary motivation is to “manage the situation”, not protect you, personally.  Sitting ducks make easier targets.  Most of the dead in the Red Lake massacre three years ago were sitting in a locked-down classroom, like cattle penned up for the slaughter.  So were many of the dead at Virginia Tech today.

Speed and evasion are your best protection, until that blessed day when you can get your own carry permit. 

That is all.

My prayers go out to everyone involved in the massacre at Virginia Tech. 

Politics have no place in this horrific tragedy and ghastly crime  (As a personal aside; the shooter is reportedly dead.  I sincerely hope it was a cop that fired that last fatal bullet. I’m sick of these mass-murdering animals destroying dozens of lives and then checking out on their own).

But amid the shock, horror and (soon) grief, it’s worth noting that, according to the school’s policies and procedures guide, Virginia Tech is a safe zone for mass murderers “gun-free” school (emphasis added):

 2.2 Prohibition of Weapons

The university’s employees, students, and volunteers, or any visitor or other third party attending a sporting, entertainment, or educational event, or visiting an academic or administrative office building or residence hall, are further prohibited from carrying, maintaining, or storing a firearm or weapon on any university facility, even if the owner has a valid permit, when it is not required by the individual’s job, or in accordance with the relevant University Student Life Policies.  

 Any such individual who is reported or discovered to possess a firearm or weapon on university property will ked to remove it immediately.  Failure to comply may result in a student judicial referral and/or arrest, or an employee disciplinary action and/or arrest.

As Joel Rosenberg notes, a bill to allow law abiding permit-holders to carry guns on Virginia university campuses died in committee.

It’d be the depth of tastelessness to try to capitalize on this horror for political gain.  But when the shock wears off, it might be worth noting that disarming the law abiding doesn’t protect anyone.

One professor with a gun in his desk, one girl with a .38 in her purse, one student with a legal, permitted handgun, and this tragedy could have turned out very different.  Goodness knows obeying the University’s rules didn’t do anyone a damn bit of good.

In the past week, the house of cards has collapsed of its own febrile weight.  The Duke Lacrosse Rape case is no more.  There was no there, there.  Mike Nifong apparently ginned the whole thing up based on a fraudulent story, in a (successful) bid to pander for votes.

It has been, as a lawyer acquaintance noted, one of the most devastating shut-downs in the history of American jurisprudence, that rare case of misconduct so grotesque it may well take down an elected prosecutor.  Go ahead, look and see how common that is.

Jeff Fecke – local rent-a-blogger who works for “Minnesota Monitor”, the local plutolefty group blog, for which he took a “pledge” to be a good, balanced journalist – has been among the most vitriolic in condemning not only the accused, but those who assailed DA Nifong for what increasingly seemed to be gross misconduct (as, eventually, turned out to be fact), and in the end men as a gender.

Now, nobody’s accused Jeff of being the most discerning blogger.  Last fall, when local conservative bloggers launched charges [as yet unanswered] that Minnesota Monitor was supported by George Soros and other left-of-center plutocrats, Jeff responded with a photoshopped “cartoon” of local conservative bloggers, including me; (To be fair, he’s a better cartoonist than Ken Avidor.  To be fairer, neither of them is as visually or comedically talented as Swiftee). The balloon over my head has me saying something like “I’ll do what I always do – lead off with an unsubstantiated allegation” (or words to that effect.  I’m not going to go looking for it!).   

Cue Alannis Morrisette.

The subject of sexual assault rates an entire category on “Blog of the Moderate Left”, his long-running leftyblog; it includes many nuggets of wisdom (including putting the words “I am a rapist” in Vox Day’s mouth).

But on the issue of the Duke lacrosse case, he’s been modestly prolific – and immodestly absolutist in his conclusions.

On the third indictment, last fall:

A team captain.  Cue defense whining about how this is totally a witch hunt.

Interesting, since I thought Nifong was only trying this case to win the primary.

That’d be one of the “snarks by negation” that leftyblogs have perfected – and by “perfected” I mean “beat to death to the point where it’s become a stylistic cliche almost too depressing to mock anymore”.

Ironic in retrospect, though, huh?

On the news that one of the [formerly] accused had been convicted of assault against a gay guy:

I don’t know if either suspect is guilty [of the rape charge].  (I have my suspicions.)  But it does appear that these weren’t poor, innocent naifs who got set up by a scheming, drunk, black stripper.

Ah.  The old “it appears to me” standard.

On the first two arrests:

Well, I guess the case isn’t wholly without merit after all:  

Two 20-year-old Duke University lacrosse players were arrested early Tuesday on charges of raping and kidnapping a stripper hired to dance at an off-campus party.

Reade Seligmann posted a $400,000 bond and Collin Finnerty was in the process of doing so for the same amount, said Col. George Naylor of the Durham County jail. By posting bond, the players avoided making an initial court appearance later in the day.

Now, of course, we enter the twilight phase where there’ll be plenty of ad hominem attacks launched against the victim, because that’s how you defend an accused rapist–by turning the tables and smearing the accuser.  I wonder why rape is underreported?

I wonder why fraudulent charges aren’t reported often enough? 

On the lack of DNA evidence that was the first big hole in Nifong’s “Case”:

Orenthal James Simpson is almost certainly guilty of having killed two people, but a jury of his peers felt differently, and thus he walks free today, hunting for the “real killer” on golf courses throughout America.

Keep this in mind as people try to tell you that the absence of DNA evidence in the Duke Lacrosse rape case is proof that the men are innocent, and the woman is lying

If OJ did it, a bunch of privileged white kids must have done it!

Back before there were any arrests – back when it was just the “victim’s” word against every college kid (race indeterminate) in the greater Duke area, Jeff – perhaps overestimating his blog’s reach – called out:

There is no honor in covering up rape. Ever. So long as you remain silent, three rapists remain free–and so long as you remain silent, you give your assent that this is okay.

And that makes you almost as bad as them.

Got that?  It’s all our our fault!

That was as far as I could get. 

So, leftybloggers; Jeff Fecke indicted and convicted not only the Duke Lacrosse players – and a good chunk of male American to boot.

When comes the part that a “journalist” would get to next?  Apologizing for the slander on the characters of the three who were wrongly charged?  Apologizing for denying them the slim dignity that all accused in this country are supposed to be accorded – the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty?

Apologizing for denying them, over the past year, the one courtesy the media – every journalist – is supposed to accord the accused in this country; referring to their alleged guilt, rather than stating it as a proven fact?

Where is the justice?

(more…)

Photocop is DOA:

Drivers in Minneapolis won’t need to worry about smiling — or grimacing — for the cameras again any time soon.

The state Supreme Court agreed Thursday with the lower courts that the city’s so-called PhotoCop cameras at a dozen intersections are preempted by state law and therefore illegal.

Wave bye bye!

Mauricio Sanchez was sentenced to 23 months yesterday for hitting 11-year-old Gladys Reyes, dragging her a third of a mile, and then running away when another driver forced him off the road.

Reyes lost an arm, and is in intensive therapy to teach her to walk again.  Maybe.

Margaret from Crime Watch quotes the judge, and comments:

Before imposing sentence Wednesday, Spicer said that he doesn’t think Sanchez “is an awful man, but he made an awful decision.”

The judge said the incident began as an accident, but escalated into a serious crime with Sanchez’s decision to flee.

“I wish I could do more for the Reyes family,” Spicer said. “But I can’t repair the damages. It’s a sad day for all of us.”
These quotes show exactly what the logic is behind liberal sentencing. These judges try to look into the soul of a person and see whether they are really “a good person” or not. They aren’t judging the crime or even the fact that somebody had to take several steps to even be in a position to commit a crime. In fact, they really aren’t treating the perp like a adult, more like a child or an irrational person, whose imputed motives matter more than than either the actual crime or even the consequences of that crime. Nobody was asking this judge “to repair the damage”– even if such a thing were possible. They were asking for this guy to be punished for his crime.

Which, ludicrous as 23 months is for such a crime, probably won’t happen anyway:

The judge said that he expects Sanchez will face deportation back to El Salvador as a result of the conviction.We actually don’t even know how long this guy will be in jail. The Star Tribune reporter speculates as little as 16 months.

16 months.

I can’t write anything more about that.  It’s the written equivalent of speechlessness.

My first thought, before  I turned the sound up – “Wow. Kim Thayil from Soundgarden is  back in the news!”

No such luck.  The guy is alleged to have killed a 41-day-old baby.

A bruised upper lip. Broken ribs. A severe skull fracture.

The head injury would kill tiny Delijahjuan Winden on Tuesday, after only 41 days of life. The infant died when his caregiver, Daniel Leikas, raised him over his head and threw him into a car seat, according to charges filed Wednesday. He was frustrated because Delijahjuan was fussy and had been crying all night, the court document said.

“This is the first time I’ve seen an infant this young beaten this badly,” Minneapolis Police Capt. Mike Martin said.

Not to pre-judge – but I know that when I was looking for “caregiver” for babies, “looking like Satan” was a big showstopper.

Driving while intoxicated is a dumb idea.  Don’t do it.

OK.  With that out of the way…

Mothers Against Drunk Driving has become one of the third rails of national politics; like Patty Wetterling, they are deemed above criticism because of the loss (a few of) their founders suffered.

And yet MADD has favored, and continues to favor, quite a few measures that are completely noxious, on their way to a policy of national prohibition.  Lowering the legal driving Blood Alcohol Content to .08% is one such  measure; while any alcohol will indeed affect one’s driving, and different drivers react differently, the vast majority  of DUI arrests involve much higher BAC levels, and the majority of problems – accidents, etc – are caused by people who are blasted out of their minds.

MADD seems to be think no punishment is too severe for drunk drivers.

So one State Senator is really going against the grain with his proposals  to treat drunk drivers less onerously than the UN treats Serb war criminals:

Leading the charge in this unlikely battle is state Sen. Ron Latz DFL-St. Louis Park. As a criminal defense attorney and former assistant attorney general, Latz has worked on both sides of the DWI issue over the years.”I want to tinker with the system to make sure it works more fairly for everyone involved and improves public safety,” he explains. “And I think that will happen if both my bills get passed.”

Although all the details havent been ironed out, Latz plans to introduce a bill that will grant judges the authority to expand the use of [ignition-interlock breathlyzers] for repeat drunk drivers. Its a matter of common sense and “enlightened self-interest,” Latz says, pointing to the fact that a second DWI offense typically costs drivers their license for six months, making it harder for them to continue working or attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. “With those additional stresses, its even harder for them to become sober,” says Latz.

Observers like Steve Simon think ignition interlock, which is now commonly used in other states, is unlikely to have much opposition in Minnesota. Indeed, Mothers Against Drunk Driving launched a campaign last year touting the benefits of the devices for first-time drunk drivers.

So far so good.

But Latzs other measure, a bill to allow convicted drunk drivers to pay their $690 license reinstatement fee in installments, faces considerably more controversy. Both the DWI Task Force and the Department of Public Safety have declared their opposition to it.

But Latz says hes not trying to make it easier for drunk drivers. Instead, he says it will make the roads safer for the rest of us. He argues that many offenders, unable to muster the necessary cash, simply opt to drive without a valid license—or insurance. Statistics bear out the claim. Last year, there were a record 41,000 DWI arrests in Minnesota, yet only 29,000 people shelled out reinstatement fees.

Pragmatism?  Common sense?

MADD is going to hate it.

As I’ve noted elsewhere, I oppose the death penalty for one reason, and one reason only; the likelihood of executing the innocent. 

And of course, when people are executed for crimes of which there’d seem to be very little doubt – Saddam Hussein, for example – I’ve solemnly intoned that I find no joy in the execution of the sentence.

That is true.

But I’ll make an exception for this piece of filth:

Jurors deliberated about four hours before returning the verdict against John Evander Couey in the slaying of Jessica Lunsford, who was snatched from her bedroom in 2005 about 150 yards from the trailer where Couey had been living.

Her body was found in a shallow hole, encased in two black plastic trash bags. She had suffocated, and was found clutching a purple stuffed dolphin.

As the father of a two kids who watched the whole horrible, miserable spectacle of the kidnapping, the investigation and the arrest of this piece of animated rot, I will celebrate, boisterously, when Couey is finally excised from this earth.  If the needle goes in wrong and he endures one of those long, painful executions that the media occasionally barbers and phumphers about, I’ll buy a round for whatever table I’m sitting at.  If somehow Jeb Bush offers me the chance to dispatch him myself with a blunt knitting needle to the abdomen – so as to make Jack Bauer look like Mike Brady – I’ll take the challenge on with a smile, and pay my own airfare.

I will rejoice when Couey is executed, and possibly throw a party at the Berg house, and I won’t apologize to anyone about it. 

This, of course, is why we have an Eighth Amendment.  More’s the pity, in this instance.

That is all.