RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/05/illegals_accused_of_beating_cops_in_new_york_s_times_square_offered_slap_on_the_wrist_plea_deals.html

On what planet does assaulting a police officer merit a mere six months in the slammer?

Only Planet New York.

According to the Daily Mail:

Six of the migrants accused of assaulting two New York City Police Department officers in Times Square have been offered plea deals – including one who was re-arrested while out on $15,000 bail. 

Ulises Bohorquez, Yohenry Brito, Edgarlis Vegas, Darwin Andres Gomez-Izquiel, Wilson Juarez, Yorman Reveron and Kelvin Servita Arocha appeared in New York Supreme Criminal Court on Tuesday in front of Judge Laura Wood.

The Venezuelan migrants were charged with second-degree assault and the obstruction of a government admin following the attack on January 27 which was caught on video and all have pleaded not guilty.

They were offered this:

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office has offered plea deals to Bohorquez, Brito and Gomez-Izquiel for them to serve a year in prison in return to pleading guilty to second-degree assault.

Arocha and Juarez have been presented a deal where they serve six months in prison for pleading guilty to obstructing a government admin.

Yorman Reveron was also offered a deal of two years in prison in exchange for pleading guilty to second degree assault.

The rest of us would go to prison for ten years if we assaulted a police officer, but these illegals are special.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

The title of this essay comes from Stanley Kramer’s 1963 mad-cap comedy. With his dying words Smiler Grogan (Jimmy Durante) mentions a stash of loot buried under the “Big W.” The movie is about a bunch of crazies’ search for the money, reminding one of today’s political scene and the race for the Presidency.

We are not living a Hollywood film; but an alien from another planet would be excused for laughing. The ridiculousness of what is being said and done justifies a belly laugh. Writing recently in City Journal, Heather MacDonald noted: “Student protests have always been hilariously self-dramatic, but the current outbreak is particularly maudlin, in keeping with female self-pity. ‘The university would rather see us dead than divest,’ said a member of the all-female press representatives of UCLA’s solidarity encampment on X.” Yascha Mounk, an Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins, wrote in a recent issue of The Spectator of some “absurdist moments” at Columbia. Student protesters demanded the university deliver food and drink to them: “When a surprised journalist asked why the university should have such an obligation towards people engaged in blatantly illegal activity, she insisted they had a moral right to ‘basic humanitarian aid.’”

Max Boot, writing in The Washington Post, quoted the Columbia University Apartheid Divest manifesto: “We believe in liberation. All systems of oppression are interlinked: The fates of the peoples of Palestine, Kurdistan, Sudan, Congo, Armenia, Ireland, Puerto Rico, Korea, Guam, Haiti, Hawaii, Kashmir, Cuba, Turtle Island, and other colonized bodies are interconnected.” Really? Do the citizens of Ireland, Puerto Rico and Hawaii know they are colonized? Who besides Haitians and Koreans have colonized Haiti and Korea in recent years? And Mr. Boot asks: “What the heck is Turtle Island? A quick internet search revealed that this was the name used by some indigenous groups for Central and North America.” Do wizards at Columbia expect descendants of settlers to abandon the farms, towns and cities they and their ancestors have now lived on and in – in some cases for 400 years – so progeny of those long dead can occupy them?

More than seven million illegal (sorry, undocumented) migrants have crossed the southern border since Biden took office, roughly triple the number under President Trump. But this is not a crisis, according to the Biden White House. It is a “challenge,” said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

https://pjmedia.com/victoria-taft/2024/05/15/cohen-testimony-cross-x-n4929037

Even after five weeks, the Trump bookkeeping case in Manhattan is a “Potemkin Village,” according to law professor Jonathan Turley. That means it has all the appearance of being real, but upon closer inspection, there’s no there there. Indeed, the indictment of former President Donald Trump on 34 counts of bookkeeping errors, statute-expired misdemeanors that have been miraculously spun into a series of felonies, is the Seinfeld of criminal cases. But a jury could still find him guilty. “It’s Trump,” Manhattan jurors could say to themselves. “Of course, Cheeto-man must be guilty of something.” 

But after the prosecutors told Judge Juan Merchan that their case-in-chief was wrapped, though not officially rested yet, after Michael Cohen’s direct examination on Tuesday, there’s still confusion over what crimes Trump is alleged to have committed. It’s not a good look for the prosecutors and it’s disqualifying for a judge to allow this farce. If wizened legal minds can’t figure out the game prosecutors are playing, then what is the jury supposed to do with this smoke-and-mirrors monstrosity?

The running theory is that “election denier” District Attorney Alvin Bragg believes that Donald Trump stole the election from Hillary Clinton, and, to further that aim, paid lawyer fees to Michael Cohen who carried out the task of getting nondisclosure agreements from people telling bad stories and paying them to keep quiet. That part of the story isn’t illegal. What prosecutors allege is Trump knew that by putting these in the books as lawyer fees, he was committing a federal campaign finance violation. 

At least that’s what we think is going on. We’re left to wonder because the conspiracy they’ve told the jury they’ll reveal to prove fraudulent intent isn’t charged. Indeed, the case so far has shown that Trump had a hands-off policy on money issues, letting his CFO handle all of it. The case is a teetering Jenga-like mess with a sexy mattress actress and provable liar thrown in for background color. 

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20639/televise-trump-trials

The result of making us rely on partisan secondary sources rather than our own direct observations is inevitable distrust in the justice system. If “Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” lack of visibility is a major source of distrust.

The framers of the Constitution intended all judicial proceedings to be public – no secret trials. At the time of the framing, public meant open to print journalists. Today, public means audio and video publication.

The New York trial of Trump is a national scandal. There is no real crime. The judge has allowed testimony that is highly prejudicial and irrelevant. He has made numerous unfair rulings, of which the prosecution has taken advantage. The public has the right to see this abuse… so that we all can judge for ourselves and not allow possibly biased reporters to judge for us.

If you were flipping between CNN and Fox News following the cross-examination of Stormy Daniels in the New York criminal case against former President Donald Trump, you would have had the impression that the CNN commentator, who professed to be reporting what happened in the courtroom, described a completely different event from what the Fox News reporter, who was also in the courtroom, described. It was as if they had seen two different witnesses and two different lawyers.

The CNN commentator reported that Daniels had done a great job holding up against the incompetent cross-examination of Trump’s lawyer. The Fox News commentator reported that the extraordinarily effective Trump lawyer had totally destroyed Daniels’ credibility. Who were you to believe? The CNN commentator was an experienced lawyer who was purporting to describe accurately what had happened without bias or subjectivity. The Fox News commentator was a former judge and prosecutor with vast experience, who also claimed to be describing the cross-examination without bias. Neither of the commentators even pretended to paint a gray picture. One was starkly black, the other unambiguously white. No nuance in either account.