Mike Freeman on why he doesn’t bother prosecuting straw buyers:

So let’s sum it up.

Minneapolis has an epidemic of shootings because:

1. The city is full of illegal guns, because
2. the DFL county prosecutor doesn’t prosecute gun crimes, in part because…
3. the DFL-controlled House hasn’t increased the penalties, and also because…
4. the DFL-controlled City Council, Mayor and the state’s DFL Attorney General think public safety is a “privilege” and crime is society’s fault

The common factor is the DFL.

Shot: Representative Omar with a devastating riposte to Jim Schultz, GOP candidate for Attorney General, giving us all a civics lesson:

Chaser: Keith Ellison, himself giving, in turn, a, uh, civics lesson of his own:

Which is it?

Is prosecuting violent local crime a job the AGO does when asked? Or is Keith Ellison a caped crusader patrolling the streets and heading off crime…

…badly and half-heartedly, and not at all until a month before an election?

Ted Nugent/Oathkeepers poll shows a supermajority of Americans blame “woke” politicians for the crime wave.

Wait – did I say Ted Nugent/Oathkeepers? I meant Harvard:

The correct answer to the poll is “yes’ to both, of course.

Rebecca Brannon – one of about seven or eight actual journalists in the Twin Cities – went to downtown Minneapolis Friday night/Saturday morning.

Or so she would have us believe:

Of course, it can’t be; I’m reliably informed that “downtown is back“, and that anyone who disagrees is a suburban tourist who gets his entire world view from Tucker Carlson.

But boy, if it weren’t fake news, it would be pretty grim, wouldn’t it?

Keith Ellison, after three years and 9 months of glorifying, aiding and abetting crime and the collapse of the rule of law…

…is “tackling gun crime“.

The lawsuit, filed in Hennepin County District Court, alleges Fleet Farm sold at least 37 firearms to two straw purchasers over the course of 16 months, despite red flags that some buyers were trafficking the guns to criminals and those otherwise prohibited from legally purchasing guns themselves. 

But – is it really “tackling gun crime”.

Pay attention. It’s Keith Ellison. Of course it’s a cynical artifice.

The alleged straw buyers were already arrested, tried and sentenced…

…by the Feds. Not by Mike Freeman, John Choi or Keith Ellison, none of whom cares about straw buyers, since it’s not a “sexy” crime (until five weeks before the election, anyway); nobody ever got elected Senator for chasing down a gang-banger’s grandmother.

It’s their job – but none of them are doing it.

Rob Doar at the MN Gun Owners Caucus explains the stuff the media won’t re Ellison’s deeply cynical action. Read the whole thread:

This lawsuit is just for show – to deflect away from three years and nine months of sloth and indifference…

…no. That goes too easy on Ellison.

He’s trying to deflect way from almost four years of using crime as a campaign prop.

Henco Sheriff David Hutchinson continues to get concierge service from the “criminal justice” system.

Minnesota’s Board of Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) has suspended the license of Hennepin County Sheriff Dave Hutchinson for 30 days, starting next month…The board voted to suspend his license for 180 days, however 150 days are stayed on the condition he doesn’t commit any similar offenses in the next three years.

So – he got his whiz test delayed, he got a VIP booking involving no jail time, he got the lightest possible charge, low enough not to cause his cashiering from the Sheriff’s Department, and now he’s getting a slap on the wrist from the POST board.

Think a GOP politician, to say nothing of a private schlub, would get this sort of treatment?

UPDATE: Welcome, fellow Power Line fans!

Let’s talk about Cayler Ellingson.

“Berg’s 18th Law” says that after any politically and emotionally fraught event – mass shootings, police killings, riots, pretty much any event over which people disagree – we need to wait at least 72 hours before taking anything we hear seriously from the media, since they will be more interested in scooping the competition than getting facts straight. I made an executive decision to stretch that deadline to a full week, since on a good day the mainstream media might know how to find North Dakota on a map.

Here are the things we know after a couple weeks:

1. After a street dance in McHenry, ND (population 64) on September 18, an extended altercation of some sort happened between the 18 year old Ellingson and 41 year old Shannon Brandt, of nearby Glenfield (population 94).
2. After a back-and-forth that went long enough for Ellingson to call his mother several times to ask for a ride home, Brandt hit Ellingson with his truck, and drove home.
3. Brandt, who has a DUI and some other low-level crimes on his record, was arrested there a few hours later, intoxicated. Ellingson died shortly after.
4. While being interviewed later, he said he thought Ellingson was an “Extremist Republican” who was calling friends to come and get him.
5. The Foster County [1] prosecutor (They’re called “states attorneys“ in North Dakota) initially charged Brandt with vehicular homicide, and released him on $50K in bail.

This – and a complete absence of coverage in mainstream media outside North Dakota – led to a tsunami of anger in conservative media, based around two points:

• the charges and bail seemed ridiculously lenient – and, according to some, politically so.
• the media coverage was lackadaisical, given the politics involved.

Let’s talk about both.

On the show, I pushed back on the first point; the job of Foster County’s State’s Attorney Kara Brinster is to bring charges she and her (tiny [2]) office can prove beyond a reasonable doubt given the evidence they have, without regard to public opinion or pressure. My theory – Brandt’s statement made “Criminal Vehicular Homicide” a slam dunk right away the morning after Ellingson’s death. Anything beyond that would take investigation – and the States Attorney has all the time they need to do that. The national criticism – up to and including Tucker Carlson – apparently didn’t faze Brinster. She investigated, got the evidence she needed, and had Brandt re-arrested on murder charges. He’s being held in the Stutsman County Jail [3]. If convicted of murder, he could get life without parole.

Some think it happened because of the national attention. I say BS – Brinster ignored the media (none of whom came within 100 miles of the story, literally) and did her job. Keith Ellison should so as well [4]. Criminal justice everywhere should be as lucky.

As to calling the original charge, and (statutory) bail, politically motivated? That’s a good way to show you have no idea about North Dakota politics. It’s perhaps the most conservative state in the union. Trump won by 30 points – and most of the Democrats live within ten miles of the Minnesota border; the Democrats who live west of ND Highway 1 would fit into two booths at Kroll’s Diner in Minot. State’s Attorney Brinster was elected in a county that likely voted 3:1 for Republicans.

So let’s park those allegations in the back 40 and let them quietly rust away.

Now let’s talk about the politics that are involved.

I’m not even talking about the fairly trite point – if a Republican had run down an 18 year old Democrat, it’d be national news, with commentators furrowing their brows and declaiming about tribalism and right-wing violence., regardless of the actual facts.

That’s a given; it’s background scenery with today’s media.

But let’s focus on the details of this case.

Shannon Brandt, according to reports, as a reputation around Glenfield of being a little mentally ill, possibly with a bit of a drinking problem. By appearances and reports, he’s the kind of doughy but dimly malevolent loser that everyone from a small town recognizes, polishing bar stools in double-wide taverns off of two-lane roads until they get enough liquid articulation to start talking, then yelling, and so on.

So he went to a street dance, gets into a fight with a kid less than half. his age, allegedly chases him down, runs him down and kills him…

…and the first thing he thinks of to try to excuse, or get sympathy for, his action is to claim he thought his victim was an “Extremist Republican?”

Last month, in an address full of bizarre thirties-retro authoritarian imagery, President Biden called Republicans “fascists”. An awful lot of Democrats took that statement very, ebulliently, gleefully seriously; they want to believe that the other half are part of a political philsosophy against which our grandparents went to war, fighting whom 412,000 of their generation died; people that anscestors, some of the still with us, spent the best years of their lives killing.

And lo and behold, mere days later, a demented drunk, whether acting out of considered political malice or drunk and mentally ill self-preservation, picks *that* excuse to ennoble, excuse, or at least try to explain killing a human being?

Have we connected those dots yet?

[1] Trivial but topical disclosure – I lived in Foster County, briefly, while working at the radio station in the county seat, Carrington. Being a ND native, I’d imagine I know people who know both the perp and victim, and likely the county attorney and the law enforcement involved, if I asked around for thirty seconds.

[2] The population of Foster County – the whole county – was 3,231 in 2020. About 2,000 of them live in Carrington alone.

[3] Further trivial disclosure – it’s two blocks from the house I grew up in.

[4] But can’t, and won’t.

The “Feeding Our Future” (FOF) scandal just keeps getting better and better.

Let’s sum up where we are so far:

1. 48 people were indicted on Thursday by the Feds.
2. Governor Walz claimed that Ramsey County Judge John Guthman, had ordered the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) – on pain of a contempt charge and potential jail time – to resume payments to the non-profit, as a result of litigation between FOF and MDE.
3. Guthman responded with a rare and complete rebuke of the Governor, saying that MDE and FOF had reached an agreement that FOF’s various deficiencies had been fixed, making the litigationi moot. That was one round of lies by Walz.

Then, yesterday, this came out; its an extended thread from Fox9 producer Seth Kaplan, and I urge you to read the whole thing:

Money shot:

There was never a mention by Judge Guthmann of criminal contempt and jail time being a possibility. It was always civil/financial contempt and penalties. There is a footnote on page 6 of the June 24, 2021 order reading: “The court’s order does not include a jail sanction so there is no need to address purge conditions.” It also reads “imposing financial and penal consequences for constructive civil contempt of court.”

So the fraud occurred on the administration’s watch – and when caught, Walz tried to throw a judge under the bus. The judge grabbed Governor Klink by the lapels and got his head wedged in there just a little further.

The media will memory hole this but good. But it’s got to be getting harder and harder to do.

Officer at the MOA with a “weapon of war”:

How about removing the “gun free zone” signs from the Mall, and let the miscreants draw their own conclusions?

Let’s talk about the Cayler Ellison case.

Berg‘s 18th law normally takes affect for the first three days after a politically charged event, since our main stream media is more concerned about ratings and “scoops“ than getting facts straight, especially in politically charged events.since our main stream media is more concerned about ratings and “scoops“ then about getting facts straight, especially in politically charged events.

And I’m going to make an executive call, and in this case extend the statutory Bergs 18th law deadline to a solid week, since the main stream media got no closer than 100 miles from McHenry, ND, the actual scene of the crime – i’ve seen no evidence of any journalists reporting from any place closer than Fargo.

But here’s what we know so far: at a street dance in McHenry last Sunday, some sort of altercation lead Shannon Brandt, age 41, to run down the 18-year-old Mr. Ellington. Ellington died of his injuries.

Brandt, Who has a drunk driving record and who blew over a .08 after his arrest, told of the 911 operator the afternoon that Ellingson was a member of a “extremist Republican“ organization.

Big media has soft pedaled this story. Conservatives say it’s evidence of media bias. Progressives hope it’s true, and that they can erase both another Republican and red state voter from the list.

Let’s consider the actual possibilities, Hare:

It’s The Bias, Stupid: for the past decade and a half, big media has been wedded to the idea that the next big wave of terrorism is going to be white, Republican extremists. A democrat extremist doing the actual terrorizing, much less killing? Is that – like the would-be Brent Kavanaugh assassin, or the many other examples of Democrats killing or attacking Republicans – doesn’t fit the narrative. Narratives beget lazy journalism.

But in McHenry North Dakota?

And it’s easy for journalists to get lazy when it comes to covering places like McHenry, North Dakota – in Foster County (where I lived, briefly), a very red place in one of the most Republican states in the union, a County were Donald Trump may have won by just shy of a three digit margin.

Which sets off a small warning bell with the conservative narrative: it’s easy to conceive of people roaming around looking to kill conservatives with impunity in places like Highland Park or Cambridge Massachusetts. but in rural North Dakota?

Let’s put a pin in that idea.

Of Course It’s The Bias – But Not The Bias You’re Thinking About: so let’s say that, rather than being it would be Democrat assassin roaming rural North Dakota looking for “Republican extremists“, you’re just a guy with a drunk driving record and, according to his neighbors, a history of troubling behavior. You’ve just gotten into a spat with someone less than half your age, at a street dance, and run them down.

What’s your alibi? The thing that you think that is going to make you a less unsympathetic perpetrator?

“He was a Republican extremist?“

The idea that there are people out there for whom that is their first thought, even in an alcoholic or psychiatric fog, should concern everyone, no matter what your politics.

Occam’s Shot Glass: let’s go back to the pin we put, earlier.

Brandt’s neighbors say he has a history of being, basically, nuts. He drinks a bit. He’s got a criminal record.

I don’t think I’m going to outside of Berg‘s 18th laws statutory boundaries to think perhaps this episode was both

• Less less of a political assassination then a crazy drunk Freestyling his way into the middle of America‘s toxic political divide, and
• Via his choice of “Republican extremist“ as his drunk/crazy excuse for having just committed a hit-and-run, a symptom of how toxic the political divide in this country actually is.

Hopefully we will find out sooner than later.

…is “doing the same thing, over and over and over, and expecting a different result”.

Apropos nothing:

Tax money will be shifted from taxpayers to non-profits that are, themselves, run and staffed by junior members of the city’s DFL political class. They’ll do studies, write reports, have events, and mostly cash checks, and crime will rise and (maybe) fall on its own rhythm (or, like Detroit and Newark and Baltimore and Saint Louis, not fall at all, ever) – but the DFL will be able to claim with a straight-ish face that they are “Dooooooing Something” about crime.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Couple finds their stolen business work van at a homeless “encampment” – naturally, after doing their own investigating.

They called the Minneapolis Police.

It didn’t go well:

If you are looking for a good periapocalpytic business opportunity, opening a “group of thugs for hire” to do things like retrieving expensive property the cops won’t – y’know, their job in a place that observes the rule of law – could be a booming business.

Since, among people who can’t afford to move elsewhere and aren’t willing to or can’t afford to just live with it, it’s going to wind up happening soon anyway.

“ The rule of law has collapsed so badly in a city we used to proudly brag about “owning“ that crime flourishes openly and without fear in the streets“

“And if you don’t accept an invitation to come see this collapse face-to-face, it is you who is the problem!”

Rights come with responsibilities.

Exercising rights without responsibilities is libertinism.

By the opposite token, having responsibilities without rights is tyranny.

With that thought in mind: Attorney General Ellison, trying to look “tough on crime” after 3.85 years of actively coddling it, is going after public enemy number 1: the businesses where the crime takes place:

It’s more than a little tempting to respond “turning a blind eye to violence – you’re going to be perp-walking Mike Freeman, John Choi and the entire 2020-2022 MInneapolis City Council?”

But no. That’d actually get at the ever-popular “root cause”.

What precisely are the stores options?

Call the police? And have the response come far too late to do anything? Or, even if the perps are arrested, watch them back on the street before the paperwork is filled out?

Hire private security? Whose only value is potential deterrence, maybe. If not? They call the cops. See above.

Hire off duty cops? Forget the expense – $60-80/hour – for the moment. Can the business even find any, whatever the price?

What precisely would the DFL ruling class like the knaves to do?

There is an ad running at my station, from some major police organization, urging people to not escalate issues with the police during routine contacts.

“It’s easier to de-escalate if you don’t escalate” , the add urges.Which is good advice, provided you trust both sides of the episode to be above board and trustworthy.

The ad sticks in my craw, knowing the advice is only as trustworthy as the system it speaks about.

Which, when you remember that police are an arm of government, gets to be a little less sustainable.

Which is why I’m hoping some police department, somewhere, is having a word with this particular wannabe stormtrooper.

Police departments have spent the last couple of years trying to rebuild their public image, after a decade of episodes of police overreach, arrogance and brutality. 

It’s people like this that make it really hard to “back to the blue“ without a big, bold asterisk afterwards.

UPDATE: The officer, Breanna Straus, apparently was suspended.

It wasn’t enough.

Gosh, why is it that Governor Klink and Co-Governor Flanagan can’t stop talking about abortion?

White, upper middle class progressive women – the people who are the new DFL base – never come to North Minneapolis, so it’s all OK.

I’m going to guess some internal poles give representatives Angie Craig and Dean Phillips a bit of a wake up call.

2022: representatives Craig and Phillips have a bit of a change of heart, just in time for midterms:

I’m going to guess that all those soccer moms in Lakeville and Wayzata aren’t amused at the news of carjackings filtering out to the burbs.

The governor – hurriedly switching from a T-shirt to some sort of suit, and from chucklehead fairgoers to “tough on crime“ governor – wants extra special consequences for the apparent gang banger who fired shots in the “gun free zone“ that is a Minnesota State Fair:

“If someone’s going to use a firearm in a crowded area where there’s innocent people and children, there needs to be a heavy penalty for that,” said the governor, calling on judges to get tougher.

Of course, the means to do that exist; the state already has a sentence enhancement – not only for people who shoot up the states biggest public relations vehicle, but for people who use guns in crimes at all.

Of course, the Ramsey County attorney John Choi, who would have jurisdiction in prosecuting the state fair shooter (if he’s ever arrested, much less prosecuted) has never, ever, not once sought that enhancement; at best, he’s dropped it as a sweetener for a plea deal; mostly – as in this shameful incident in 2015 – he doesn’t even bother.

Either did Susan Gertner, the prosecutor before him.

Either did Tom Foley, the prosecutor before her.

That’s 30 years worth of DFL prosecutors who have never, not once, applied in the sentence enhancement that governor “Dirty Harry“ Walz suddenly wants.

I stay pretty relentlessly civil, especially when discussing politics. There’s enough pointless anger out there.

But I’m going to say this, and I don’t care what you think about it: If you are part of the lefty social media mob that thinks “Kyle Rittenhouse is a murderer”, you are a flat-earther.

Complicated stuff follows. Stay with me, progressives.

You think someone’s trying to kill you. You shoot them – maybe fatally, maybe not. You’re arrested. The DA presses charges – assault, homicide, whatever.

To even be allowed to *argue* self-defense for assault or homicide, you have to show a judge evidence, to a legal standard, that:

• you reasonably feared being killed
• That threat was immediate – it was literally them or you, right then and there.
• you were not the aggressor [1]
• you used ONLY the force needed to end that lethal threat.
• in many states (including MN, but not WI), that you *reasonably* tried to get away [2].

That’s *before* the trial. If your evidence on any of those 4-5 criteria doesn’t stack up, you’ll be a defendant in a murder trial, not a self-defense trial.

Once you’ve gotten past that? On to trial!

And there, if the prosecution disproves any of those 4-5 factors beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury? You’re going to prison – for assault if nobody died, and murder if they did.

That’s a pretty high burden of proof for a “Murderer” to skate past. (Don’t think so? That’s just ignorant.

“But the judge was biased”

No, he wasn’t.

Rittenhouse may not have been a hero [3]. And if you think the whole episode is stupid and unfortunate, I don’t disagree – although in a moral society, the burden should fall on those who set out to damage and destroy others property.

Either way calling Rittenhouse a “murderer” is ignorant at best. And there’s an implied clause after “at best” [4]…

…but again, I try to stay civil.

I try. But I’m only human. It can’t last forever.

[1] And no, doing something you have every legal right to do does not make you an aggressor. Rittenhouse had a right to be where he was, and to carry a rifle. Don’t like it? Take it up with the Wisconsin Assembly.

[2] Where “reasonable” is defined by statute or, much more usually, in a stack of case law references that you have to be a lawyer to understand.

[3]But after seeing the mayhem that the entitled children of the politicalclass got away with scot-free in Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis and Kenosha, it’s not hard to understand why some people think he is a hero.

[4] And that implied clause may or may not but definitely does include the thought that a whole lot of the “Rittenhouse is teh murdererer” crowd think rioting and rioters are justified, which is a pretty problematic view.

MINNEAPOLIS IS BACK, BAYBEEEEEEE!!!!

And if you say otherwise, you’re probably from Fridley and live in your mom’s basement!

Oh, yeah. Minneapolis is back.

Pay no attention to the mass of criminals behind the curtain:

I bet Andy Lugar lives in his mom’s basement in Fridley!

Crime in Minneapolis is apparently intensely racist:

According to MPD data, 83% of the city’s shooting victims this year have been black. And in 2021, one black shooting victim was identified for every 150 black residents, while one white shooting victim was identified for every 3,768 white residents.

It’s worth noting at this point that the population of MInneapolis is 18.9% black. The imbalance among victims works out to about at 25:1 ratio, per capita.

But wait – the imbalances aren’t done yet:

A significant majority of homicides in Minneapolis, moreover, are committed by black suspects. In 2022, 89% of shooting suspects have been described as black (in cases where police obtain a suspect description from a witness).

As for age, two-thirds of Minneapolis’ shooting victims are 30 years old or younger.

So – young black men are extremelly disproportionally the perps and the victims in Minneapolis.

The lesson is clear, Minneapolis. Vote DFL harder

The governor is starting to make some Chuck Norris like noises about crime – an issue where polling says he’s very very weak:

But after two years where repeat offenders ravaged minority neighborhoods, his sentencing commission is still zephyr-soft on some of the hardest core criminals in the state:

After facing extensive public blowback last year, the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission on Thursday, July 21, again considered a proposal to reduce criminal sentences for those who commit a crime while in custody, on probation or supervised release.

And you can guess which ones going to get the media coverage, right?

In previous years, when the DFL won elections in Minneapolis and Saint Paul by Iranian-election-level margins, their activists would gather at “victory” parties and chant “We own this town! We own this town!

I wonder if they’ll be doing that this year?

Well, some people were out to celebrate: last night, as criminal sympathizers moved to the ballot for Henco Attorney and Sheriff in November, it’s hard to miss the constituents celebrating:

You’re right, DFL. You own this town

An apparent teenager was shot and killed on the Nicollet Avenue LRT platform on Tuesday afternoon, in broad daylight, during a Twins game.

#DowntownIsBack #Vibrant!

Minneapolis’s progressives sprang into action against the real problem…

…which is apparently “people who point out that Minneapolis has a problem”.

If only people would stop talking about crime, it wouldn’t be a problem, would it?

Woman in the Phillips neighborhood of south MInneapolis describes the break-ins and arason that followed her criticism of a neighborhood “homeless camp”:

“This would not happen in Kenwood. This would not happen in Lowry Hill, in Linden Hills. This would not happen by the lake. We’re on our 18th camp in a six-by-six neighborhood,” that homeowner told us when explaining the last two years.

She is fearful for her safety after what happened at her home. It’s why we are not showing the woman’s face or using her name.

After being out of town, she came home to a horrible scene two weekends ago. Every room in the house where she’s lived for 20 years was ransacked.

“Everything destroyed and torn apart. Doors kicked in. Everything I owned [was] trashed. Stolen. Bags of stuff stolen and taken out of the house,” she said.

She believes it was retaliation for speaking out about homeless encampments in the neighborhood.

The woman may be anonymous. but she knows how things work in a modern, “woke” city:

The woman was candid about what’s gone on.

“So, when the city talks about equity in every breath, every breath they say ‘in the eyes of equity.’ I’ll just say it’s bullshit, because if it was in the eyes of equity, they would be containing crime here in the Phillips community,” the woman said.

Liz Collen at Alphanews has the whole story:

When people can’t count on government to keep them safe, they’ll figure out a way to do it themselves. And that’ll get very ugly, very fast.