The pardon of child rapist Tou Vang by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and state Attorney General Keith Ellison continues to reverberate. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security posted on X today,
So, if deporting a single child rapist doesn’t make the state better or safer, how about deporting a thousand rapists? 10,000? Comments like these appear to deny the existence of a tipping point. It’s the logical fallacy of faulty generalization: I know Tou, Tou’s a great guy, therefore the immigration of 100,000 child rapists into Minnesota will only make the state stronger and more diverse. Diversity is our strength. What could go wrong?
On Friday afternoon, the Minneapolis Star Tribune published a column (paywalled) by Ka Vang (unrelated to the deportee) under the headline,
Vang: DHS just deported a Minnesota man convicted of sexual assault. Let’s look more carefully at his pardon.
At the end of her column, Vang concludes that Tou’s deportation was “vengeance” rather than “justice.” I would put forward that the deportation was neither. It is simply the logical result of living in a land you are not authorized to reside in.
The word “mercy” appears in Vang’s column six times. Mercy is demanded for Tou, but not for the child victim.
Which brings us to U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the Democratic nominee for Minnesota governor this year.
In the very last sentence of its news story on the deportation, the Star Tribune quoted a statement from Klobuchar on Friday,
As a former prosecutor I have not supported pardons for sex offenders and would not have voted for this pardon.
Eight days earlier (July 2), the Star Tribune reported,
U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the DFL-endorsed candidate for governor, signaled that she, too, may have handled the Vang case differently.
“I would want to look at the entire record before making a decision on any pardon case, but as a former prosecutor I have not supported pardons of sex offenders.”
“The entire record.” That gave the senator plenty of wiggle room. It took her a full week, but she eventually figured out which way the wind was blowing. Or, perhaps she dug into the record. From Alpha News (trigger warning),
The girl told police the assaults occurred at least “four or five times.”
[I deleted this paragraph.]
When questioned by police, Vang admitted having sexual intercourse with the victim multiple times. He further claimed that the 10-year-old victim “should be arrested also because she was as much at fault.”
He also told investigators: “I made a mistake, but this is a minor thing. It is a cultural thing in Thailand to marry and have sex with girls as young as 12.”
Even by his own twisted logic, I would point out that 10 is younger than 12, not that that should make any difference.
The pump don’t work because the vandals took the handles.
