I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. When government doesn’t – can’t or won’t – provide the law and order that is its one unambiguously legitimate job, people will provide it for themselves.

And outside of libertarian fantasies, that can be an extraordinarily ugly thing:

On Monday, Haitian police confirmed that a civilian-organized lynch mob captured a group of gang members before beating them and burning them alive amongst gasoline-soaked tires.

Haitian police spokesperson Gary Desrosiers explained that the gang members had been roving the streets of the capital in a vehicle, which was in the process of being searched when the mob took over.

As the Daily Mail reports, thirteen gang members in total were somehow separated from police just before being arrested, and dragged into the street. They were beaten and stoned, then covered with gasoline-soaked tires and set ablaze.

This sort of thing isn’t unknown in America; organized crime and street gangs often bring, if not “law”, at least order to an area.

I’m just not sure if the mewling white progressives in Powderhorn Park prattling on about defunding the police are ready for this.

… on top of the property crime charts.

Everyone’s got something to kvetch about in the Daniel Perry case.

The usual crowd on the left is whinging that a white guy, just convicted of murdering a BLM “protester”, is getting pardoned by Governor Abbot.

Another, much smarter, crowd is reminding the world, “uh, the ‘protester’ was being ‘mostly peaceful’ by pointing an AK47 at Perry”.

For my part? While I don’t know all the specifics, it’d seem the main factor in Perry’s conviction – in Austin, at the hands of a Soros prosecutor, naturally – apparently happened not because of what he did during the incident, but because of what he said before:

Perry’s defense team argued that he acted in self-defense, but prosecutors contended that Perry instigated what happened. They highlighted a series of social media posts and Facebook messages in which Perry made statements that they said indicated his state of mind, such as he might “kill a few people on my way to work. They are rioting outside my apartment complex.”

While I don’t know the details, a zealous prosecutor can use such statements to impeach your “unwilling participant” status. It appears similar to the case of Alan Scarsella, who did many stupid things after shooting at people pursuing him and his friends at a BLM protest outside the Fourth Precinct in Minneapolis in 2015, but who appears to have gone to prison mostly because of a video he posted on the way to the event bragging about mixing it up with protesters. A good attorney could have possibly suppressed that “evidence” – but he had a public defender, so he might be out of prison now.

Which brings us to the proposed Berg’s Law of Armed Self-Defense:

“The first rule of armed self-defense is, you never talk about armed self-defense.

Don’t joke about it with your friends. Don’t brag about it on social media. Don’t have an angry outburst about protesters or rioters where unfriendly ears might hear you.

Keep it, like your firearms, hidden under the proverbial bushel basket.

Like I would, if all my guns hadn’t fallen into Mille Lacs. Which is fine, because guns terrify me and I’d never use one on a fellow human.

Unlike Uvalde and Parkland, the cops at the Covenant School shooting in Nashville did what cops (and citizens, for that matter) are supposed to do in the face of a spree killer: meet them with lethal force as quickly and effectively as possible.

As a general rule, spree killers spend a long time, sometimes years, planning their attacks, and frequently carry them out in a fugue state, almost a fantastical reverie. And resistance, especially with lethal force, even if it doesn’t kill or incapacitate them, frequently/usually makes them break off the attack, usually giving up or killing themselves as their fantasy comes to an abrupt end.

The Nashville cops appear to have done it right:

Here’s the body cam footage.

Warning: Extremely graphic.

And these cops, I will thank for their service.

I’ll do my due diligence and make my usual reference to my self-coined but completely accurate dictum:

Berg’s Eighteenth Law of Media Latency

Nothing the media writes/says about any emotionally charged event – a mass shooting, a police shooting, anything – should be taken seriously for 48 hours after the original incident.  It will largely be rubbish, as media outlets vie to “scoop” each other even on incorrect facts.

I will continue to observe this law.

But to speculate just a bit? I’m going to go out on a short sturdy limb and guess mass shooting at the Covenant School disappears down the memory hole.

The shooter, y’see, is a former student who, while being almost universally “deadnamed” in the media by her original, female identity, seemed to be pretty actively presenting her…er, him…er, xheirself as (what biologists used to call) male:

That’s two spree killings in one. year carried out by gender-dysmorphic people. The avalanche of mental illness spurred on by the lockdowns and America’s general spiritual and emotional decline is paying dividends for those who benefit from both.

Darn that NRA.

And I’m sure various cultural cues, like this and this…

…were utterly unrelated.

By the way – like most spree killers, the murderer chose the target because there was less chance of resistance. The school was a “gun free zone”, and had other vulnerabilities that beckoned:

[Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake] answered, “Yes,” [that Covenant was the only school targeted] but noted there was another location the suspect considered striking as well. However, he said the suspect did “a threat assessment” of the other location and decided there was “too much security.”

Draw your conclusions. I certainly am .

Unlike the Uvalde shooting, initial reports indicated the police response was fast, violent and decisive – something that the Feds long ago determined was a key factor for dealing with spree killers, and that this blog has noted time and again and again and again and again and again is of paramount importance in containing and ending these shootings.

“Hell is other people”, said the French existentialist philosopher.

Close, but no cigar.

Hell is, however, most things “public”.

Like the behavior in public waiting rooms on public transit lines by certain members of the public.

Metro Transit is shutting down the indoor waiting area at the Hennepin Avenue transit station due to what I’m going to start referring to as Southside Cardio: Drug Abuse, Prostitution and Street Crime”. :

“Over the last couple of years, these places have become more and more of a problem for us,” [MTC spokesman Drew] Kerr said. “There aren’t a lot of locations like this that are open right now for the public to just be and to stay warm. And that’s not what they’re intended for.”

Metro Transit officials said in an announcement Tuesday the closure of the Uptown station is also due to property damage and litter. The space will be reopened later in the year when contracted security officers are in place at the station and five other locations. Those stations include the Vertical Circulation Building/Central Station in downtown St. Paul, the Blue Line Lake Street/Midtown and Franklin Avenue stations, the Chicago-Lake Transit Center and the Brooklyn Center Transit Center.

The building near the Central Station in St. Paul already closed in December after a double homicide…”The amount of open drug use is the largest thing right now. Homelessness, as well. And we’re not social workers,” Timlin said.

Across the transit system, crime rose by 54 percent between 2021 and 2022. Metro Transit officials said last year, about a quarter of the calls for service were at the six stations where they’re bringing in security.

The crime will move to the neighborhoods, of course.

To: Lieutenant Governor Flanagan,
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Glad You’ve Discovered Light Rail Crime!

Of all the people who’ve been beaten, robbed and murdered on Twin Cities light rail platforms, it’s good to know you’ve paid attention to one of them, finally:

But clearly, you do not ride the light rail. I suspect you hitch a ride to the office with the state patrol, just like the governor. I’m gonna guess you haven’t ridden a train since long before you became Lieutenant Governor.

Just a quick tip from someone who rode the Vomit Comet (aka “Green Line”) day and night for a year and a half; when you’re out there on that platform, late at night, in the city you and the DFL created, you are absolutely, completely alone. Nothing there but you and God. None of your ex post facto happy talk is of the faintest bit of protection against The DFL’s Minneapolis.

To my credit, I figured it would be a victim like this, that got you to finally pay attention to street crime.

Sort of.

That is all.

Lori Lightfoot, out as mayor of Chicago, after failing to advance to the runoff, in Yesterdays election:

The top two vote getters – the liberal endorsed by the police union, and the center radical endorsed by the teachers – will face off in the runoff:

Mr. [Paul] Vallas, an adviser to the Fraternal Order of Police during its negotiations with Ms. Lightfoot’s administration, used the crime issue against her on the way to his first-place finish, calling for hundreds of new police officers.

Turns out blue city Democrats can reach a tipping point.

Exactly what that means will be interesting to see, where “interesting“ means in the classic rural Scandinavian sense of the term.

I mean, it’s a grand jury, intended to allow prosecutors to indict ham sandwiches, etc etc, bla bla.

But looking at this interview with the forewoman of the Trump grand jury in Fliorida…

…it’s hard to be filled with confidence in the future of one of the most important institutions in our democracy.

The goal of the Soros-funded district attorney is to make people distrust the system – by punishing the law-abiding and coddling the depraved – to the point where they demand a dictator to keep them safe.

We warned Hennepin County that that was Mary Moriarty’s goal.

The Good News: The tl:DR version of the story found in Alpha News’s tweet isn’t a great summary of the case.

The Bad News: the actual facts are even worse:

Her campaign was opposed by 32 senior Hennepin County prosecutors, including Catherine McEnroe, who is now under investigation by the Minnesota Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility, according to the Star Tribune.

McEnroe was leading the prosecution of 35-year-old Marco Tulio Rivera Enamorado, who was charged with one count of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. He allegedly raped his 14-year-old cousin when he was invited from Honduras to come live with her family in the summer of 2019.

McEnroe is accused of fabricating the contents of a note that was passed to her by a victim advocate during Enamorado’s trial Jan. 6.

So – so far, what we have is a prosecutor who went on record opposing Moriarty (bad career move) lying to a judge (bad legal move). Hard to tell, to a layman, if this is incompetence, revenge, or both.

But it gets worse; rather than take the hit and go forward with a different prosecutor in this rape case, Moriarty dismissed the chargfes:

A source with knowledge of the situation said there was no reason for the case to be dismissed, especially since two other prosecutors offered to take over the case.

“The conduct of the county attorney trying the case had nothing to do with the substance of the actual trial,” the source said. “That attorney absolutely could have continued on with the case. If there was concern about her candor to the court, then a supervisor could have acted as co-counsel to ensure the court that there would be truthfulness.”

Moriarty said her priority from the beginning was “trying to see if we could continue to prosecute this case, whether now or later after a mistrial might be declared.”

So Enamorado is free, can never be tried for the case again, and Mike Freeman is looking better and better.

You voted for this, Hennepin County.

Last February 9, in response to the shooting of Amir Locke, schools around the Twin Cities let their students walk out of school “in protest”.

Let’s be clear – these protests are about as spontaneous and organic as a Nuremberg Rally. The “student activists” who “plan” these walkouts are puppets. Muppets, really.

But I digress.

Amid all the hysteria over school shootings, one facts that gets lost is that schools are generally, statistically, the safest place for kids to be, there days, especially in places like North Minneapoli.

As Minneapolis discovered.

One of their students, DeShaun Hill – a football player and honor student – was shot while walking home.

A court has ruled that this was negligent, and awarded Hiill’s family $500K. I’ve added emphasis:

North High principal Mauri Friestleben was put on leave by the Minneapolis School District for her decision to let students walk out of class Feb. 9 to attend a sit-in at Minneapolis City Hall to protest the police shooting of Amir Locke. Friestleben was later allowed to return to her position.

Hill family attorney William Walker maintains Friestlben’s decision ultimately led to Deshaun’s death. 

“If that principal had not released these children over the instruction of the district… D. Hill would be alive today,” Walker told KARE 11 during a phone interview Tuesday, just hours before the vote. “They (Hill’s family) are devastated… You can talk to a mother who cries every day. D Hill Jr. was loved by everybody. He was the hope for this family.”

Walker said particularly disturbing is the fact that North families and caregivers were not informed about the decision to let students leave early, saying the Hills would have picked Deshaun up at school rather than let him walk home or to a public bus.  

The alleged killer – an apparent psychopath with a 12 year long criminal record – allegedly shot Hill for bumping into him on the street.

So, to sum up:

• Keep kids in school: $0
• Release them out onto the street, unsupervised, without telling families? $500,000
• Remaining at the leading edge of the social justice fashion curve: Priceless.

On Friday morning, someone tried to jack a van in the Phillips Neighborhood.

The would-be victim tackled the suspect and held him til the cops arrived.

Point of order: in a Minneapolis where Mary Moriarty is the district attorney, is the suspect…:

• The vanjacker, or
• the guy who tackled the vanjackier?

With Mary Moriarty in office as Henco “prosecutor”, one must not assume.

“It’s Been a Minute” (henceforth IBaM) s one of the current plague of podcasts repackaged as radio shows that plagues both public and commercial broadcasting. As we discussed yesterday, some are better than others – some are OK radio, some are utterly dreadful as radio.

IBaM is pretty clearly trying to sell infotainment coverage smothered in public broadcasting convention, but to a black audience. It is, by public radio standards, breezy, sometimes to the point of sounding just a little contrived. But radio standards, it’s not the worst podcast on the air.

But this past weekend’s episode – about the wave of social media misogyny aimed at rapper “Megan Thee Stallion”, after she was shot in the foot by her…uh, paramour, rapper Tory Lanez. It features a “senior producer” from, guess what, another NPR podcast – Gabby Bulgarelli from a podcast called “Louder than a Riot”, and you’re on your own with that one.

Dog Bites Man. There’s an old newsroom bromide, passed down through Journalism 101 classes throughout the past 100-odd years. “Dog bites man isn’t news. Man bites dog is news”. If something is the norm, the expected, the utterly mundane? If you’re not the man being bit, it’s not realy news.

Anyway – I listened to this epi of IBaM, so you don’t have to. But if you’re curious – smoke ’em if you got ’em.

Here’s the part I wanted to focus on. It’s around 6:00 into the segment:

BRITNEY LEWIS (HOST): The coverage of this trial feels somewhat muted compared to the coverage of another trail that gained a lot of public attention this year, Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard. Why do you think that this case feels so different?

BULGARELLI: One, nobody cares about black people. Two, it’s close to the holidays. Three, because it’s a closed court…in some ways they feel similar. A lot of the arguing (sic) against Megan feels similar to how people rallied against Amber in support of Johnny Depp…

LEWIS: Mmm Hmmm

BULGARELLI: …the way Megan has been made out to be a liar – I don’t think anyone believes Megan to be a victim, so they don’t care…

I can’t comment on the merits of Bulgarelli’s argument, presuming there are any.

But she’s ignoring two elephants in the room:

• Rappers shooting rappers is, regrettably and tragically, dog bites man. No, seriously – the list is long, and spans genres, coasts, even nations. It’s been a generation, and we still haven’t a conclusive idea who killed Tupac and Biggie. Ms. Thee Stallion was shot in the foot during a domestic squabble. It’s senseless, and stupid – but Ms. Thee Stallion survived, and will no doubt see her profile increase as a result. Oh, yeah – violent misogyny in the world of hip-hop doesn’t even rise to the level of dog-bites-man; it’s more like “Dog Licks Dog” . It’s ugly, and awful, and it’s the norm, to the point that pushing back against it is, in fact, the news in the show-biz press.
• On the other hand, what – besides skin color – distinguishes the Depp/Heard trial from the Lanez/Thee Stallion dust-up? A woman’s claims of victimhood have been torpedoed by overwhelming, sworn evidence that she was in fact an emotional and violent abuser – something mainstream narrative denies exists. Millions of men who’ve suffered, either in silence or in the face of open derision from cops, social service professionals and society at large saw at least some vindication, even if only vicarious. The dominant narrative – “the power differential means only men can commit abuse” – was stomped flat, opening the door for millions of men to perhaps, one day, be taken seriously.

The inconvenient truth for identity-thrashers like Bulgarelli is the Lanez/Thee Stallion is “Dog Bites Man”; Heard/Depp is “Man puts mayo and a slice of tomato on a dog and takes a big chomp”, trashing a different bit of identitarian dogma outside Bulgarelli’s career specialty.

Think anyone at NPR will cover that angle?

While people focus on Minneapolis’s ongoing decay, Saint Paul just broke its homicide record:

And there’s plenty of time to run up the score before New Years.

Remember – in 2016, there were 81 homicides in the entire state – 30 in Minneapolis, and (IIRC) 18 in Saint Paul.

Hard to believe Saint Paul is the sane city…

I used to think DFLers merely counted on voters being ignorant.

I was young and naive.

They actively promote ignorance:

Senator Morrison is an M.D, so she certainly isn’t stupid. She must know that the imponderably vast majority of those “children”. are boys aged 14+ who are involved in crime, mostly murdered by other young men like themselves, likewise started on the wrong path bright and early in life.

She must know that the only things that actually work to prevent that sort of carnage are:

• Using the sentencing enhancements for gun crimes that so helped in cleaning up New York City thirty years ago – the type that Mike Freeman and John Choi never use on criminals of any age, and that Mary Moriarty hahahahahahaha I can’t even finish the sentence with a straight face.
• Intervening with youth at risk of going into The Life.

Certainly she’s had this shown to her. There’s no way that hasn’t happened.

So she’s counting on promoting ignorance.

Look for a lot of that this session.

Two people murdered at downtown Saint Paul’s Central Avenue transit station on Monday night:

Officers responded about 8:30 p.m. to the corner of Fifth and Cedar streets, where they found two people suffering from apparent gunshot wounds in the stairway/elevator structure that connects the skyway to the Green Line Central Station light rail stop, according to Metro Transit Police spokesman Drew Kerr.

Both of the wounded people were taken to a nearby hospital, but they both later died, Kerr said.

Another man was murdered on the same station’s platform last spring.

The “Transit Memorial Day” post next June is going to be a doozy.

Anyone remember Mika McFeely? He’s sort of the Filene’s Basement version of Ed Schultz, another guy who got his start talking about grown men chasing balls around fields, and decided to go into being a political, talking head. He’s the Heitkamp family’s token liberal on KFGO in Fargo, and proof that the talent bench for progressive talk hosts in Fargo is even shallower than in the Twin Cities.

I wrote about him (checks notes), a little over 12 years ago, when he wrote easily the stupidest hatchet piece I’ve ever seen, about Mary Franson, during the 2012 elections.

Anyway – he came to Minneapolis over the weekend. Ironically, it was to see Les Mis, a play featuring an out of touch patrician class that attacks a plebaian class whose travails they neither share nor understand.

Oh, yeah – he had a great time!

In other words, he went to a show, with hundreds of other people, and then went to a tony restaurant on the south end of the gentrified North Loop. Back to the hotel – or on the road back to Fargo? – by 11!

And look – no crime!

Guess all those people talking about crime in Minneapolis are wrong!

Speaking of crime – tourist McFeely has an interesting perspective on recent Twin Cities history:

Not sure it’s “Anti”-Fa that’s shooting up crowds after bar closing on First Avenue.

But he’s getting a little warmer: “Anti”-Fa are the children of the Twin Cities bon vivant class. But they didn’t burn the Ordway, or Kenwood or Linden Hills. They burned East Lake and University – the places where immigrants and lots of entrepreneurs and workers try to earn a living.

But he didn’t go to a show on Lake, or Uni, or up at Plymouth and Sheridan, now, did he?

Well, I guess that settles it!

Minneapolis father chases car thieves who stole his car, with his four kids inside:

Derek Gotchie, the father of children, was close by and jumped into the stolen vehicle the suspect arrived in and chased his stolen car until he rear-ended the car near Plymouth Ave. N and Penn Ave N., according to the Minneapolis Police Department. 

The suspect then exited the vehicle and fled on foot. 

Let me be the first to day – hooray for toxic masculinity!

To: Every Single Progressive
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreperous Peasant
Re: Berg’s 18th Law

To some extent, I created Berg’s 18th Law to protect me, and people like me, from going out on long, brittle factual limbs.

The law is pretty clear:

Nothing the media writes/says about any emotionally charged event – a mass shooting, a police shooting, anything – should be taken seriously for 48 hours after the original incident.  It will largely be rubbish, as media outlets vie to “scoop” each other even on incorrect facts.

But after a couple of days of listening to people like you claiming that all conservative social and economic thought was a form of “stochastic terror” aimed directly at LGBTQIAetcetc people, it’s worth noting that I wrote it even more for you.

Shooting at an LGBTQetcetc club in Colorado over the weekend.

While the perp was apparently “on the radar” (in a state where the progressive prosecutor ensures there are no consequences for being there), expect this atrocity to be used less for gun control and more to demonize any criticism of LGBTQetcetc activism of any kind in any place – pushing the notion of “stochastic terrorism”:

“Stochastic terrorism” is just a silly concept that dovetails with “words are violence” and opens the gate for any favored group to shut down all debate because the very existence of the debate will drive people to violence. Of course, no one, at least no sane people, believes it exists, but it is a handy cudgel with which you can belabor your opponents.

“If you say you disagree with me, it must be because you want me dead”.

That’s how society gets to Orwell’s “Duckspeak” – when it becomes impossible to commicate in any but the most innocuous terms without fear of some consequences, rational or not.

Hard to live in a civil society with that hanging over every social question.

I’ve always detested “Generational” politics. Among all the things that divide us as a nation, artificial, externally-defined demographic trends have to be the dumbest of all.

Still, a huge chunk of the population perceives them – and perception is reality.

David Hogg – like many “prog” human message bots before and many more to come – repeats a set of chanting points that years of indoctrination have inflicted on a disproportionate share of Generation Zs:

Among all the ideas that are sapping the vitality of American civilization, there may be few more corrosive than the devaluation of the term “right”. To much of GenZ, the term is interchangeable with “virtues” at best, “stuff we want” at worst.

The notion that inalienable rights come with ineluctible responsibilities eludes many of all generations – but Millennials and Zeepers appear to be the most vocal in imposing their misapprehension on the world.

So if you’re a Zeep and reading this:

• There is no more “right not to be shot” (or to “Go to school and survive”) than there is a “right not to have a car crash” . There is a right to live – with a concomitant responsibility and moral imperative to see to your safety, and the safety of those you’re responsible for (a responsibility that law enforcement at Parkland fell dismally short at).
• You desire peace and tranquility – but it’s not an inalienable right. It can, indeed, be taken away arbitrarily and horrifically. One has a responsibility as an adult to maintain both of them – neither is guaranteed in anyway in the real world.

Hope that helps.

You voted for Mary Moriarty for Henco Attorney.

Granted, it was a closer race than one might have expected; the endorsed DFLer won by 20 points, rather than the expected 40-50.

Still, Henco spoke: they’re OK with carjackings, home invasions, random gunfire ripping through (black and brown people in North Minneapolis) houses, and criminals getting sprung over and over.

They made their choices. Now, they’ll be getting the consequences, good and hard:

Great job, voters. Enjoy the abortions.

[1] Yes, formally you’re still “citizens”. But honestly, “subjects” is a better term.

Since some prog will bleat “Why aren’t you condemning the attack on Paul Pelosi?” if I don’t say it – violence is bad. Don’t hit people with hammers, or anything else.

Speaking of people trying to exploit the episode…

The Star Tribune:

Rob Reiner, the intellectual thought leader of the modern Democrat party?

And look – here’s Ilhan Omar, on the attack on Paul Pelosi:

A far right white nationalist tried to assassinate the Speaker of the House and almost killed her husband a year after violent insurrectionists tried to find her and kill her in the Capitol, and the Republican Party’s response is to either ignore it or belittle it.

Here’s Angie Craig:

Here’s Amy Klobuchar:

On Meet the Press, Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar rued how Pelosi “has been villainized for years, and big surprise, it’s gone viral, and it went violent.” She said we have “to make sure we’re not electing more election deniers who are following Donald Trump down this road,” and “we have to do something about this amplification of this election-denying hate speech that we see on the Internet.”

I don’t expect Dems to be familiar with Berg’s 18th Law – but there may be no better case of it in all of history. Indeed, there might be a corollary to the the law – if the Democrats can use the story for political gain, 48 hours is waaaaay too short.

The facts? Much more prosaic:

All of this requires imposing a coherence on David DePape’s mind that simply doesn’t exist, which would be obvious to anyone who paused for a minute to consider and absorb the evidence.

Listen to the person who perhaps knows him best — the mother of his two children, a woman named Oxane Taub (a.k.a. Gypsy), herself a whack-job serving jail time for trying to abduct a 14-year-old boy she was infatuated with.

(As a press release from the local DA’s office put it: “Over the course of 14 months, she sent him numerous obsessive emails, created blogs directed at him, used his friends to send him messages and eventually tried to abduct him a few blocks from his school in Berkeley. While the case was pending, Taub also tried to dissuade the victim from testifying.” And she was the rational half of the couple.)

In an interview from jail, conducted by a local TV station, Taub said, “He is mentally ill. He has been mentally ill for a long time.” She said he was missing for a year and then showed up again “in very bad shape.” According to Taub, “he thought he was Jesus.” She added, “He was constantly paranoid, thinking people were after him. And it took a good year or two to get back to, you know, being halfway normal.”

My theory? Democrats – especially Minnesota DFLers – are looking at next week’s election, and figure painting themselves as victims of MAGA, and the “wave of conservative/white supremacist terror” they’ve been promising for the past 15 years, can’t hurt.

The story: woman in Hibbing arrested and charged with stealing Pete Stauber’s campaign materials.

In a Friday press release, the Hibbing Police Department announced that Lisa Linnea Fitzpatrick, 61, has been charged under Minnesota Statutes for intentionally removing mail from a mail depository without claim of right.

The offense is a felony and carries a maximum sentence of 3 years in jail, a $5,000 fine, or both.

The story behind the story:

Go ahead, Ms. Fitzpatrick. Take the deal, and give up the MNDFL officials who told you to do it.

If the SPPD and Ramco Attorney arrested and charged sign thieves, they’d need to rent a barge on the Mississippi to hold the suspects awaiting arraignment.

Or they would, if Republicans in Saint Paul bothered putting up signs anymore. Back when I still tried, the half-life was about six hours. Not sure we’d even be able to test John Choi on this.

SCENE: Mitch BERG has found a cache of hard-to-find chili paste at a Vietnamese grocery store, and is putting a half dozen in his basket. Distracted, he doesn’t see Avery LIBRELLE rounding the corner, wearing an N95 mask.

LIBRELLE: (Muffled behind mask) Mrrg.

BERG: Oh, ffffaaaaercrying out loud, how ya been…

LIBRELLE: (Muffled) Jw Shlll hm nmmr prfmkmmd m kem in crm.

BERG: Jim Shultz, the GOP candidate, has never prosecuted a case in court?

LIBRELLE: Ylm .

BERG: Huh. OK. Got a list of cases that Keith Ellison has prosecuted?

LIBRELLE: Hm pm Drmk Shmvm m prmm.

BERG: He put Derek Chauvin in prison? Sure – in exactly the same way that I fixed the plumbing in my bathroom. I hired a professional. The prosecuting attorney of record was a private practice lawyer that Ellison hired.

LIBRELLE: Hm rm thm cmmm!

BERG: He ran the case? Sure – the same way the MNDOT Commissioner runs a road construction project. MNDOT guy manages. He doesn’t do the surveying, engineering, or driving the steamrollers. Ellison managed the lawyers. But if he ever went into the courtroom, he was there as an interested spectator.

LIBRELLE: Thm Slmstm gmrm um fm Unumfm stem thmm “hm brm hm ekfpmfmm em m lorr tm br emrm deh”!

BERG: The Solicitor General of the United States said he”brought his experience as a lawyer to bear every day”? Perhaps. But that didn’t make him a prosecuting attorney. He has never sat at the prosecution table in a trial.

Long story short – do you list of cases where Ellison has been an actual lawyer of record for the prosecution in a criminal case?

LIBRELLE: Duh ym hem umm frm Schlmmm?

BERG: Do I have one for Schultz? No – but he’s never claimed to have one, and he’s not the one using his vaaaast courtroom experience to try to separate himself from Schultz.

So – you have that list of cases for which Ellison has been the prosecutor of record?

(Brief pause. Then LIBRELLE’s face goes red, and steam starts shooting from under the N95).

STORE CLERK: Did he…er…sh… (BERG shrugs shoulders) did this person try the chili paste?

BERG: You’d think.

And SCENE