RUTHFULLY YOURS

The renowned eighteenth century French writer Voltaire is remembered for many of his observations. Among them is: “Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.”

Indeed, questions are indispensable to us as we go about our daily lives.

Think about it. We greet each other by asking variations of the question, “How are you?” This is true of virtually all societies and in all languages. When strangers seek entry into our homes we ask variations of, “Who’s there?” and “What do you want?”

Discussions, whether at work or in social situations, are centered around the give and take of questions and answers.

While there may well be an infinite number of questions that can be asked, all questions ultimately seek the answers to six fundamental questions—no matter what the subject is: Who, What, Where, Why, When, and How?

Lawyers who are examining witnesses in court are cautioned to never ask questions that they don’t already know the answers to.

To question authority is to challenge authority—this is the underlying principle of democracies, namely that citizens have the right to challenge their leaders by questioning their qualifications, and their decisions and actions, and consequently hold them accountable.

It is certainly indisputable that many of our politicians from both parties need to be challenged and made accountable!

The educational process in which teachers administer innumerable exams to students and use Socratic methods to help students learn and expand their knowledge and understanding continues to be a set of time-tested instructional techniques. The questions may take the form of multiple choice or essays, but no matter the format of the exam, the process is not unlike the way that the escape artist Harry Houdini managed to unshackle himself and escape from various locked restraints. Reportedly Harry taught himself how to regurgitate keys he had swallowed before being shackled. He then used those keys to open the locks.

The second officer to be tried in the Baltimore prosecutions arising out of Freddie Gray’s death in April 2015 has been acquitted in a bench trial.

The case against the officer, Edward Nero, was among the most inane brought by the incompetent, race-baiting prosecutor, Marilyn Mosby. As we’ve previously recounted, Gray died after suffering a severe spinal injury while in custody in a police van. Back in December, the first officer to be tried, William G. Porter, got a mistrial after a hung jury and is to be retried later this year.

Gray, a 25-year-old African-American man with a police record involving drug charges and minor crimes, was apprehended while acting suspiciously during a police crackdown in a high-crime area of Baltimore. Upon making eye contact with an officer he fled, leading police to chase and stop him, and to find a knife on his person. He was thus arrested. When placed in the van, Gray was wildly uncooperative with police, who did not belt him into his seat.

The medical examiner eventually concluded that police had no intent to harm Gray, and that the deceased would not have sustained his severe injury had he remained in the prone position in which police attempted to place him.Prosecutors reportedly concealed from the defense at Porter’s trial not only that Gray was found to be under the influence of narcotics at the time of his arrest, but also that he had claimed prior back injuries in the weeks prior to his death. Yet Mosby proceeded to charge six police officers, notwithstanding that a competent homicide investigation was not close to being completed. In a demagogic speech announcing the charges, she claimed she was responding to mob cries of “no justice, no peace.”

Mosby’s office has floated the notion that police lacked probable cause to arrest Gray and, therefore (the dangerously incorrect theory goes), that his arrest amounted to unlawful imprisonment.

For what it’s worth, I believe there was probable cause to arrest Gray. Probable cause is a non-technical assessment of the totality of the circumstances as they would be judged by an experienced police officer. Someone in a high-crime area who runs away as if he has just committed a crime upon seeing a police officer has engaged in suspicious behavior justifying an investigative stop; if, upon the frisk that routinely occurs during such a stop, the suspect is found to have a weapon that is illegal under municipal law (as lawyers for the police officers have contended this knife was), that is sufficient cause to make an arrest.

Nevertheless, even if we concede for argument’s sake that the facts of Gray’s arrest may not have risen to probable cause, the law allows the police to make a good-faith mistake of law without being guilty of the crime of false imprisonment.

The media loves to go to places like Birmingham, Newark or Flint and then try to indict us for our “apathy” and for not caring about how badly the people live. But the Democrats they keep electing are why they live that way.

Here’s what’s happening in Birmingham.

Birmingham City Council President Johnathan Austin, fresh from winning re-election to the council’s highest office, this week ordered that all four members of the council who voted against him must move out of their offices at City Hall, and into other spaces on the corridor.

But at least two council members – Kim Rafferty and Valerie Abbott – balked.

“I respectfully decline the reassignment of my office and staff,” Rafferty wrote to Austin Wednesday.

Abbott wrote that she will “not cooperate.”

And all of a sudden duly elected council members were squatters. In their own offices

This morning Council Administrator Cheryl Kidd, on orders from Austin, began the process of having the council members moved out. Kidd sought Public Works employees to physically clear out the offices so Austin supporters Sheila Tyson and Lashunda Scales could move into the spaces deemed more prestigious. Councilmen Jay Roberson and William Parker also were asked move, meaning that all council members would have to move, whether they wanted to or not.

The mayor’s office, which has authority over Public Works and other city workers – including the locksmith – instructed employees to disregard the order.

Austin has his own history of trouble with the law.

Birmingham City Council President Johnathan Austin was arrested on a DUI charge in Mountain Brook, authorities confirmed.

The arrest happened Dec. 19, 2014 but was not made public until today. Mountain Brook police officials said all arrest reports are furnished to the media upon request, and no one requested the report until today.

Birmingham is doing well under this type of management.

With his March 25 Facebook post, CAIR’s Dawud Walid cemented his position as a preacher of hate and radicalism. He has already become known to many Muslims as an extreme figure, who bullies anyone who disagrees with him, maligns dissidents, harasses gay Muslims, and foments anti-American sentiments.

It is beyond denial to ignore the fact that Muslims such as Walid are leading radicalizers of American Muslims, and their efforts are dedicated to pushing vulnerable Muslims away from integration and reform against Islamist movements.

Dawud Walid is the longtime executive director of Michigan’s chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). His Twitter profile currently bills him as a “human rights advocate and political blogger,” and his blog sells him as an imam who lectures on topics such as how to maintain your manners when dealing with hostile people (the irony of this will soon become abundantly clear), and how to address the very real problem of anti-Black racism within the Muslim community.

To anyone less familiar with Walid’s persona — especially online — he could easily appear to be a champion of civil rights, a man before his time in terms of addressing intra-community problems as well as hostilities between Muslims and non-Muslims. A more comprehensive review of his activities — or even just a cursory review of his commentary on one of the days he has chosen to lash out at anyone with whom he disagrees — reveals a more sinister, even cruel, man. Further, his true aim seems not to be civil discourse and community cohesion, but rather the furtherance of a particularly malignant, vicious strain of political Islam.

I have seen Walid demean, bully, and slander other Muslims for years. He has actively worked to silence discussion of critical issues, by working to shut down screenings of Honor Diaries, a film addressing the mistreatment of women in the name of “honor” culture; instigating online hate campaigns and witch hunts against dissidents — women in particular — and pushing Muslims to ostracize those with whom he disagrees. While this behavior has been abhorrent and has brought significant distress and even potential danger to those he has targeted, the broader public has paid little mind.

His most recent tirade on social media, however, may — and should — wake the public up to his real agenda.

On March 25 of this year, Walid took to social media to talk about the Easter holiday, and how he believes Muslims should treat Christians on this day. Rather than using the opportunity to offer best wishes to Christians and condemn the slaughter of Christians by ISIS, Walid urged Muslims not to “encourage infidels” by wishing Christians a “Happy Easter.” His comments were at best hateful, at worst incitement. His is the kind of thinking that leads to attacks such as the one against Christians in Pakistan over Easter, or when the Pakistani Taliban blew up a crowd of mostly women and children of Ahmadi Muslims, or when Asad Shah, stabbed 30 times, was assassinated recently in his store in Glasgow, Scotland, for wishing Christians a Happy Easter.