Black Lives Matter
March 29, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Oxford University reportedly is under pressure to stop, or at least curtail, the teaching of sheet music, musical notation, and even the classical music that was scored upon it. The rationale is that all of this is “too colonial,” and that Beethoven, Mozart, and music in general are “complicit in white supremacy.” It’s not just students and BLM groups that are pushing this insanity. In fact, professors seem to be
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March 5, 2021 — Steven Hayward
Gee—who could have predicted this (aside from me), from USA Today? Exclusive: Stark divide on race, policing emerges since George Floyd’s death, USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll shows Americans’ trust in the Black Lives Matter movement has fallen and their faith in local law enforcement has risen since protests demanding social justice swept the nation last year, according to an exclusive USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll. The debate over the intersection of racism and policing will
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March 4, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, I discussed the crime wave in Montgomery County, Maryland. Homicides, carjackings, and armed robberies are all up this year. In January, there were seven homicides. According to the chief of police, that’s an all-time record for a single month. As for armed robberies, they have increased by 40 percent. How will the County respond? Its task force on “Reimagining Public Safety” is recommending fewer police on streets and the
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February 11, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Following the January 6 riot at the Capitol, Joe Biden had this to say about the police force that, at a great personal cost, prevented the rioters from completely overrunning the building and injuring members of Congress, as well as the U.S. Vice President: Not only did we see the failure to protect one of the three branches of our government, we also saw a clear failure to carry out
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February 1, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
During the second half of 2020, we noted from time to time that homicides were increasing dramatically in American cities — a trend that coincided with BLM protests against the police. Now, the nationwide numbers are in. Homicide rates were 30 percent higher in 2020 than in in 2019, according to a new report by Professor Richard Rosenfeld and two others. This represents more than 1,268 additional murders (in a
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January 8, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
NBA players are a poorly educated group. But lack of education can’t explain the stupidity of some player remarks in response to the rioting at the Capitol and to the decision of local prosecutors in the Jacob Blake case. Players for the Boston Celtics and the Miami Heat issued a joint statement before the game between these two teams. They said: We play tonight’s game with a heavy heart after
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December 11, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Readers will recall that Mark McCloskey and his wife Patricia pointed guns at BLM protesters outside their home in St. Louis last July, and that Kim Gardner, the incompetent left-wing St. Louis circuit attorney, decided to prosecute the McCloskeys. But thanks to a ruling by a St. Louis judge, Gardner will not be allowed to prosecute Mark McCloskey; nor will her office be permitted to do so. The reason? Gardner
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November 28, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Peter Newsham is Washington D.C.’s police chief. He has been with the D.C. police force for 31 years. Newsham will step down from his job, which pays him nearly $300,000, right after Joe Biden is inaugurated. He will become the police chief of Prince William County, Virginia, a D.C. exurb, earning a salary of a little more than $200,000. Newsham’s resignation continues a trend of big city police chiefs stepping
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November 23, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
We have written often about the Soros-funded campaign to elect radical prosecutors. Its success has helped undermine the criminal justice system in St. Louis, for example. The next step for the same hard-left crowd might well be to elect radical judges. Doing so can erect a second barrier — a backup — to punishing criminals. In Maryland, four outside challengers won election to circuit courts this month. It’s extremely rare
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November 18, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, the Washington Post took a moment off from Trump bashing and Biden promoting to run an actual news story on its front page. The story had a surprisingly (for the Post) honest and direct headline: “Minneapolis violence surges as police officers leave department in droves.” Here are some excerpts from Holly Bailey’s report: The sound of gunfire has become so familiar across North Minneapolis that Cathy Spann worries she
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November 18, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
A local Virginia prosecutor has dropped charges against Virginia Sen. L. Louise Lucas, who was caught by the Portsmouth, Virginia police conspiring to topple a Confederate monument last summer. There was evidence from social media that Lucas encouraged people to attend a demonstration and help tear down the statute. And video taken by police showed Lucas telling officers that they could not arrest the demonstrators for what they were about
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November 16, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
There are two kinds of vice presidents, those who enter the office with chops and those who don’t. For purposes of the vice presidency, chops can be earned by high level service, by having mounted a credible presidential campaign, or by being the leader of a wing of the president’s party. Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, and Dick Cheney are probably the best examples in my lifetime of vice presidents who
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November 14, 2020 — John Hinderaker
Today the Million MAGA March took place in Washington, D.C. to support President Trump as he fights for honest election returns. Predictably, activists/communists/criminals from Antifa and BLM–the groups no longer seem to be distinct–turned out to make trouble. They attacked the Trump supporters; you can see a number of videos at ZeroHedge: “BLM/Antifa Thugs Attack Trump Supporters, Including Children, After D.C. ‘Million MAGA March.'” Here, you see Antifa/BLM thugs attacking
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November 12, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Bloomberg reports that the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department is “headed for a dramatic makeover” under Joe Biden. It quotes Linda Chavez, among others. She says that the Biden administration is certain to “undo the Trump years” the same way Trump tried to undo the Obama years — “but with a vengeance.” I don’t want to underestimate the extent to which a Biden DOJ will accommodate race-hustlers, but
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October 27, 2020 — John Hinderaker
Yesterday a man with a knife charged two police officers in Philadelphia. They retreated while yelling at the man to drop his knife. He continued chasing them, and they shot him. This is the video: There would be no story here if the man with the knife had been white, Asian or Hispanic, but because he was black, the city has exploded in violence. The Free Beacon headlines: “30 Officers
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October 22, 2020 — Steven Hayward
I did not know that the UK government has an official “Equalities Minister,” and that name sounds perfectly sinister and Orwellian. Regardless of whether such a ministry is a good idea, right now the Equalities Minister in Boris Johnson’s government is Kemi Badenoch, and this attack on “critical race theory” is so good that I want to amend the Constitution so she can come to the United States and run for
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September 30, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Ben Strauss of The Athletic takes a deep dive into the television ratings for this year’s NBA conference finals. He finds that the ratings themselves took a deep dive: [T]hese were two of the least-watched conference finals series ever, despite featuring the league’s most famous player (LeBron James) on the league’s most famous franchise (the Lakers). It happened despite Nielsen using “Out of Home” viewership for the first time ever
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