BOOKS Comments turned off

Criminal (In)Justice What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurts Most Rafael A. Mangual

Posted By on August 18th, 2022

https://www.manhattan-institute.org/mangual-criminal-injustice

In his impassioned-yet-measured first book, Rafael A. Mangual offers an incisive critique of America’s increasingly radical criminal justice reform movement, and makes a convincing case against the pursuit of “justice” through mass-decarceration and depolicing.

After a summer of violent protests in 2020—sparked by the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Rayshard Brooks—a dangerously false narrative gained mainstream acceptance: Criminal justice in the United States is overly punitive and racially oppressive. But, the harshest and loudest condemnations of incarceration, policing, and prosecution are often shallow and at odds with the available data. And the significant harms caused by this false narrative are borne by those who can least afford them: black and brown people who are disproportionally the victims of serious crimes.

In Criminal (In)Justice, Rafael A. Mangual offers a more balanced understanding of American criminal justice, and cautions against discarding traditional crime control measures. A powerful combination of research, data-driven policy journalism, and the author’s lived experiences, this book explains what many reform advocates get wrong, and illustrates how the misguided commitment to leniency places America’s most vulnerable communities at risk.

The stakes of this moment are incredibly high. Ongoing debates over criminal justice reform have the potential to transform our society for a generation—for better or for worse. Grappling with the data—and the sometimes harsh realities they reflect—is the surest way to minimize the all-too-common injustices plaguing neighborhoods that can least afford them.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

How Gender Radicalism Conquered Sacramento Schools: Christopher Rufo

Posted By on August 18th, 2022

https://www.city-journal.org/how-gender-radicalism-conquered-sacramento-schools

Sacramento City Unified School District instructs teachers to “normalize gender exploration” and promotes such identities as “genderqueer,” “polysexual,” and “two-spirit.”

Sacramento City Unified School District has adopted a queer theory–based pedagogy that encourages teachers to “normalize gender exploration,” confront their “cisgender privilege,” and maintain strict secrecy when facilitating a child’s gender or sexual transition.

I have obtained a collection of publicly accessible documents from Sacramento City Unified that traces the evolution of the district’s sexual politics. The process began a decade ago, when the district invited Elizabeth Meyer, a professor of Women’s, Gender & Queer Studies at California Polytechnic State University, to conduct presentations on how the district could adopt the principles of academic queer theory and translate them into K-12 pedagogy. The “foundational concepts” of this approach, according to Meyer’s presentation, follow the standard left-wing narrative. Western society has created a “Heterosexual Matrix,” composed of “Hegemonic Masculinity,” “Emphasized Femininity,” “Heteronormativity,” and “Heterosexism,” that underpins an oppressive system of “patriarchy,” “homophobia,” and “transphobia.” To liberate schools from this system, administrators and districts must adopt “queer pedagogy” and “anti-oppressive pedagogy,” which will disrupt the “commonsense view of the world” and replace it with queer alternatives, emphasizing “gender non-conformity” and “gender and sexual diversity.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The post-1967 turning point of US-Israel nexus: a new 7-minute video : Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on August 18th, 2022

 https://bit.ly/3Ppug3V

 
*In 1948, Israel was misconstrued by the State Department as a burden upon the US. 
 
*Since 1967, Israel has emerged as a formidable force-multiplier for the US, economically and militarily.
 
*The June 1967 Israeli military victory spared the US an enormous economic and defense setback, denying the USSR a dramatic geo-strategic bonanza.
 
*In 1970, Israel forced a pull-back of the pro-Soviet Syrian invasion of pro-US Jordan, which could have toppled all pro-US Arab regimes.
 
*The 1981 Israeli destruction of Iraq’s nuclear reactor prevented a potential nuclear confrontation during the 1991 Gulf War.
 
*The 2007 Israeli destruction of the Syria-North Korea nuclear reactor, averted a potentially nuclearized civil war in Syria. 

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Sanctuary Cities Seethe as Illegal Immigrants Actually Arrive Charles Lipson

Posted By on August 18th, 2022

https://www.newsweek.com/sanctuary-cities-seethe-illegal-immigrants-actually-arrive-opinion-1734120

The surest sign that public policies are simply virtue signals is when the messages don’t cost anything. The easiest way to tell when that signal starts to fail is to watch politicians flounder as the costs start to rise and voters demand relief.

It was free—and meaningless—for progressive churches to post banners calling themselves “nuclear free zones” during the Reagan era. Their dwindling congregations loved it. It was free, after George Floyd’s murder, to post woke catechism signs on your front lawn, proclaiming “In this house, we believe: Black Lives Matter, women’s rights are human rights, no human is illegal” and so on. Maybe the neighbors gave you high-fives. And for years it has been free for deep-blue cities to proclaim themselves “sanctuaries” for illegal immigrants. That’s changing now that voters want some sanctuary for themselves.

Changes like this happen when voters realize the old virtue signals actually entail serious costs—and that they will have to pay them. That is exactly what’s happening in New York City and Washington D.C. now that Texas governor Greg Abbott is sending those cities a few busloads of illegal immigrants from his state.

These progressive bastions were silent when the Biden administration flew planeloads of illegal immigrants to suburban airports in the middle of the night. TV coverage was prohibited, and the arrivals were secretly dispersed. Abbott’s buses, by contrast, arrive downtown greeted by local TV crews. Now you can hear the politicians screech.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China Is Winning the Economic Race with the US – The Consequences Will Be Profound by Judith Bergman

Posted By on August 17th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18792/china-economic-race

The [Harvard Belfer Center] report, “The Great Economic Rivalry: China Vs. the US,” predicts that at the current rate China will overtake the US economically within a decade.

When it comes to trade, China has now displaced the US. “When this century began, China was knocking on the door of the WTO and the U.S. was the leading trading partner of most major economies. Today, China has overtaken the U.S. to become the largest trading partner for nearly every major nation… by 2018, 130 countries traded more with China than they did with the U.S…..” — The Belfer Report.

China’s trade policies are not a matter of simply creating more wealth for China, but as with most things that China does, a way to increase China’s power and other countries’ dependency on it.

Today, the U.S. is the world’s largest debtor; China is the largest creditor.

When it comes to manufacturing, China already displaced the US a decade ago.

“China is now the world’s largest manufacturer and exporter of scores of essential goods, including 90% of refined rare earth minerals, 80% of solar panels, 50% of computers, and 45% of electric vehicles.” — The Belfer Report.

Crucially, China is severely challenging the US when it comes to innovation…. In 2013, the US was the number one top innovating country, according to the Bloomberg Innovation Index, but by 2020, it was not even in the top 10, having fallen to number 11…. China’s laser-like focus on frontier technologies has positioned it to dominate races like 5G and AI in the future.

China is determined to see this development to its goal of becoming the dominant power in the world by 2049.

What this new world economic order means for the future is probably difficult to imagine for the many who have grown up with the US as the leading world power and the accompanying celebrated values of freedom, democracy, and capitalism, taken for granted by so many.

China’s economic rise and the US response — or lack of such — will determine the predominant values of the 21st century — will it be China’s authoritarianism and disregard for freedom, democracy, and human rights or those of the US and the West?

China has closed the gap with the U.S. “in most economic races, even overtaking it in some,” according to a recent report from Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. The report, “The Great Economic Rivalry: China Vs. the US,” predicts that at the current rate, China will overtake the US economically within a decade.

Measured by purchasing power parity (PPP) — which compares national economies in terms of how much each nation can buy with its own currency at the prices items sell for in its market — China has already surpassed the US to become the world’s largest economy

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Manhattan D.A.’s Trump-Organization Case Ends with a Whimper By Dan McLaughlin

Posted By on August 17th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-manhattan-d-a-s-trump-organization-case-ends-with-a-whimper/

Allan Weisselberg, the 75-year-old former chief financial officer for the Trump Organization, is pleading guilty to the fairly piddling tax-fraud charges on which he was indicted by the office of Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg last July. The case was always obviously not about Weisselberg or the accused crime, but about showing some progress against Donald Trump and either (1) obtaining Weisselberg’s cooperation against Trump or (2) punishing him for not cooperating. Under the plea deal, Weisselberg is likely to spend only a few months in prison, and he will not cooperate.

What does this all mean? For Bragg, it likely means that his office is closing up shop on an overreaching, overzealous, overpriced witch-hunt of an investigation, and putting his resources to some better use. Some diehard enthusiasts of the perennial “walls are closing in on Trump” narrative note that Weisselberg may now be unable to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege against testifying, but how far does that get anyone? If Weisselberg were questioned about matters other than the small-beer tax issues he’s pleading to, he could still invoke the privilege unless granted immunity — but then, he could have been given immunity a long time ago if he was seen as an enthusiastic cooperator. The most that is likely to be accomplished would be to compel him to testify in the civil proceeding pursued by the New York attorney general’s office, but the exposure in that case does not present a realistic path to sending Trump to prison or making it impossible for him to run for office again. Anything else is noise; voters already assume that Trump is the kind of guy who cuts every corner on his taxes and in his business accounting that he can get away with. And Weisselberg is highly unlikely to be in position to incriminate Trump on anything bearing on the 2020 election or January 6.

Yet again: Maybe the legal system can finally find a silver bullet against Trump. But it still does not look that likely.

Let’s review why the collapse of the Manhattan D.A.’s case was inevitable. In March, the New York Times published the resignation letter from special assistant D.A. Mark Pomerantz to Bragg arguing for prosecuting Trump. As Charlie Cooke explained at the time, it is shameful in our system of justice to have a prosecutor do this kind of hit-and-run public argument where he accuses someone of a crime without even detailing the charges or walking through the supporting evidence, let alone making his case to a jury of the defendant’s peers. But taking the letter at face value, here is what Pomerantz said:

I believe that Donald Trump is guilty of numerous felony violations of the Penal Law in connection with the preparation and use of his annual Statements of Financial Condition. His financial statements were false, and he has a long history of fabricating information relating to his personal finances and lying about his assets to banks, the national media, counterparties, and many others, including the American people.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Green Fascists Are Destroying the World The green agenda needs to become the topic of open, honest, balanced, and very public debate. By Edward Ring

Posted By on August 17th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/16/green-fascists-are-destroying-the-world/

Earlier this summer, the CO2 Coalition was banished from LinkedIn. The CO2 Coalition, with only three full-time employees and an annual budget of under $1 million, had committed the unpardonable sin of sharing contrarian perspectives on climate science. Its work, produced by a network of volunteers that includes dozens of distinguished scientists, offers indispensable balance on a topic that requires honest debate now more than ever.

Among the many comments that followed LinkedIn’s decision, the mentality of the climate crisis mob came through loud and clear. If “the science is settled,” then any contrary perspective is dangerous and must be silenced. A typical comment: “Why does LinkedIn allow so much Climate Disinformation to persist throughout its platform?” Brigades of these content wardens continuously log complaints with LinkedIn against climate skeptics. The impeccable work of Bjorn Lomborg is one of their next targets.

This is not the environmentalism of previous generations, and this new zealotry does not negate or diminish the common sense concern for the environment that most reasonable people share. But this new breed of intolerant, fanatical environmentalism, manifested in the movement to avert a “climate crisis,” is perhaps the most virulent and dangerous expression of fascism in America today. If left unchecked, this fascistic climate change movement will destroy freedom and prosperity while it destroys the planet it purportedly wants to save.

Ideological and Economic Fascism Combined

This is not a frivolous accusation because, in this case, the shoe fits. There are two types of fascism. One is based on ideology and manipulates popular emotions, and the other is based on economics and appeals to elitist greed. The climate crisis movement has found a way to combine both.

Ideological fascism requires a tribal, us versus them mentality, and the climate crisis movement provides this. The climate warriors are the good guys, and the “deniers” are dangerous heretics who must be crushed. They portray the “climate emergency” as a crisis of existential dimensions, which must be resolved by any means necessary. 

As with any fascistic movement, green propaganda is hyperbolic, primal, and terrifying: rising seas, flooding, super fires, extreme weather, burning heat—and anyone who says otherwise is the enemy. The time for discussion has passed. And with every big storm or super fire, the potential for more militancy grows.

Economic fascism is variously defined, but the climate movement in the United States fits every credible definition, as it affects big business and big government. Some call it socialism with a capitalist veneer. That would certainly apply, as the industrialized Western nations are suddenly required to atone for causing the climate crisis by transferring wealth to the developing world, and the privileged American middle class must similarly atone by giving up their homes for apartments, their automobiles for buses and trains, their meat for insects, and submit to rationing of energy and water.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The incredible shrinking Merrick Garland By Silvio Canto, Jr.

Posted By on August 17th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/08/the_incredible_shrinking_merrick_garland.html

Maybe Attorney General Merrick Garland is the modern Inspector Javert, the French policeman who chased poor Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo’s classic novel, “Les Miserables.”  I don’t know if that’s a fair comparison, but it sure looks to me like AG Garland has become obsessed with former President Trump.  Or maybe the White House told him to get obsessed or else.

Maybe it’s better to go to legal scholar Jonathan Turley for a description of the man.   

This is how Mr. Turley sees it:  
In the cult classic, “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” the character Scott Stuart is caught in a thick fog that causes him to gradually shrink to the point that he lives in a doll house and fights off the house cat. At one point, Stuart delivers a strikingly profound line: “The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meet — like the closing of a gigantic circle.”

If one image sums up the incredibly shrinking stature of Attorney General Merrick Garland, it is that line in the aftermath of the Mar-a-Lago search.
It looks like things have grown more complicated for AG Garland, as Mr. Turley further explains:  
It is not that Merrick Garland is absent but that his presence often seems immaterial.
That’s correct.  He is there, but we can’t see the shrinking man.

Mr. Garland seemed like a good choice with he was nominated for Attorney General.  I mean that he’d be an attorney general who would avoid politics and stick to the job.  Unfortunately, he just can’t control his department’s leftist impulses, from targeting parents at school board meetings to overlooking the Hunter Biden scandal altogether.

And now he authorized, or we understand that he did, sending the FBI to a former president’s home.   

Apparently, no one at DOJ advised him of the blowback from a such a decision.  He seemed totally lost when he read from the TelePrompTer and sort of explained what he did.

Yes, the AG is shrinking faster and faster.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

DOJ Scrambles to Find Non-Existent Evidence of ‘Intent’ Desperation to prevent Trump from becoming the 47th President of the United States. Jonathan Emord

Posted By on August 17th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/08/doj-scrambles-find-non-existent-evidence-intent-jonathan-emord/

Under pressure from President Biden to find a way to prevent Donald Trump from becoming America’s 47th President of the United States, Attorney General Merrick Garland unleashed an army of FBI agents to scour Mar-a-Lago in search of something, anything that might fill in the enormous gap in DOJ’s case against the former president: The glaring absence of evidence of specific intent needed to bring any charge against former President Trump.  

While DOJ can snow a grand jury into believing lame evidence credible and succeed in indicting just about anyone (not difficult when the prosecution runs the show unopposed), it cannot be sure of a conviction from a court without evidence beyond a reasonable doubt of the specific intent necessary to prove its case. That evidence rarely exists and proof of it is, indeed, a very tall order. Short of planting evidence or making things up (in other words committing the kind of government corruption and fraud as occurred in the deceitful manipulation of evidence by DOJ and FBI in support of the Russia hoax or, more recently, in the FBI fabricated Whitmer kidnapping plot), DOJ is destined to hit a very high, virtually impenetrable burden of proof that will dash its partisan dreams to pieces.

From the warrant released by Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhardt on August 12, we see in attachment B the legal predicate offered by Justice for the search: 18 USC §§ 793, 1519, and 2071. For want of evidence, each statutory section fails in Trump’s case when evaluated fairly, and never should have been accepted as adequate justification under the Fourth Amendment for the unprecedented issuance of the warrant against a former President on the eve of his announcement of a second candidacy for that office. That want of evidence, of course, did not stop DOJ because the entire unprecedented pursuit is one driven by political motivations, not objectivity.  DOJ is not investigating a crime for which it has probable cause; it is trying to discover fragments of proof that can be woven into a tale of criminality to, at a minimum, place a cloud over candidate Trump’s head or, in their ideal scenario, justify preventing him from becoming the 47th President of the United States.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

NYC Mayor Adams’ Immigration Theater of the Absurd It is time for NYC to end its deadly “sanctuary policies.” Michael Cutler

Posted By on August 17th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/08/nycs-mayor-adams-immigration-theater-absurd-michael-cutler/

Out of obvious frustration with the current immigration crisis along the U.S./Mexican border Texas Governor Greg Abbott has resorted to sending busloads of illegal aliens caught entering the United States illegally in his state along the Mexican border, to New York City, Washington, DC and other cities far from the southern border to publicize the situation that Texans face because of Biden’s immigration policies.

On August 5, 2022, The Texas Tribune reported, Gov. Greg Abbott says Texas is now busing migrants to New York City

Here is an excerpt from that report:

The back and forth is steeped in political tensions as the Republican governor — running for reelection and considered a potential presidential candidate — tries to show that Democratic mayors are not as sympathetic to the plight of migrants as their party claims to be. Abbott’s critics have said he is using migrants as pawns in a cynical plot that does little to actually solve border problems.

Caught in the middle is President Joe Biden, who Abbott has long blamed for the border situation. Bowser has turned to the administration for help, asking last month for the Department of Defense to deploy the National Guard to her city. CNN reported Friday morning that the Pentagon has denied Bowser’s request.

New York also still wants help from the federal government.

“NYC will continue to welcome asylum seekers w/ open arms, as we have always done, but we still need support from DC,” Levy, the Adams spokesperson, said on Twitter.

Abbott sent a letter Monday to Adams and Bowser inviting them to the border region to “see firsthand the dire situation.” In rebuffing Abbott’s invitation, a spokesperson for Adams said Abbott should focus on helping “asylum seekers in Texas as we have been hard at work doing in New York City.”