Crime
May 18, 2020 — Steven Hayward
One of Ronald Reagan’s most cutting one-liners back in the 1960s was, “A liberal’s idea of being tough on crime is handing out longer suspended sentences.” Those were the days of extreme leniency on crime amidst a sharply rising crime rate. The liberal answer was always that we needed to deal with the “root causes” of crime, ignoring that the root cause of crime is criminals. Fast forward 50 years,
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April 26, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Tara Reade’s claim that Joe Biden sexually assaulted her decades ago already had more behind it than did Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation of the same crime. Blasey Ford couldn’t produce any witness to say she complained about Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged misconduct at or around the time it supposedly occurred. Reade has two such witnesses, one of her friends at the time and her brother. Now, Reade has more corroboration. She
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March 26, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Tara Reade worked on Joe Biden’s Senate staff in the early 1990s. She claims that in 1993, Biden sexually assaulted her. In an interview with journalist Katie Halper, Reade alleges that on one occasion, Biden began kissing her without her permission, pushed her against a wall, reached under her skirt, and penetrated her with his fingers. According to Reade, he said “come on man, I heard you liked me.” The
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February 28, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
With 30,000 Americans a year dying from fentanyl, and likely more from other drugs that are laced with that substance, it’s time to crack down on fentanyl dealers. To that end, Sen. Tom Cotton has proposed the “Zero tolerance for Deceptive Fentanyl Trafficking Act.” The bill is co-sponsored by Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Kelly Loeffler. This law would create a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison for those
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February 21, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced Roger Stone to 40 months in prison, a sentence he’s extremely unlikely to serve. I maintained that the sentence is just and I agreed, in general, with Judge Jackson’s comments about Stone. However, Judge Jackson did not confine her sentencing speech to the defendant. She also waded into internal matters at the Department of Justice. The judge seemed to criticize Attorney General Barr, saying
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February 20, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced Roger Stone, President Trump’s friend and former crony, to serve three years and four months in prison for impeding a congressional investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Prosecutors originally wanted a sentence of seven to nine years. However, the Justice Department backed away from that position. In court today, the prosecution reportedly asked for “a substantial period of incarceration,” but did
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January 20, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Smash and grab robberies are rampant in San Francisco, where authorities do very little to discourage them. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, more than 31,000 people reported smash and grab robberies in the city in 2017 alone. Hoping to document such a robbery, “Inside Edition,” a television program, placed GPS trackers inside items in a car parked in an area well known for theft. The items were a $250
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January 18, 2020 — John Hinderaker
You probably remember the Rotherham child sex abuse scandal that came to light several years ago. Investigations have been ongoing since then, and one just-completed inquiry has made headlines in Great Britain. This is from the London Times: “Rotherham police chief: we ignored sex abuse of children.” A senior police officer admitted that his force ignored the sexual abuse of girls by Pakistani grooming gangs for decades because it was
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January 13, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
There’s good news and bad news about Kim Foxx, the Cook County state’s attorney who dropped all charges against actor Jussie Smollett after he staged a fake racist/homophobic attack against himself. The good news is that, according to the Washington Post, Foxx is facing vigorous challenges to her reelection. The bad news is that her main challenger agrees with Foxx on criminal justice policy. Foxx is part of the wave
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January 9, 2020 — John Hinderaker
In the New York Times, Thomas Edsall has a very long op-ed titled “Trump Wants Law and Order Front and Center.” The piece is a paean to the progressive trend in law enforcement–i.e., not enforcing laws–combined with fretting about whether the Republicans are likely to benefit politically. It does, I think, highlight an issue that will gain increasing prominence between now and November. Unexpectedly, the 2020 presidential campaign is drilling
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January 2, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
In 2019, Washington, D.C. had its highest number of homicides in a decade. The Washington Post, quoting unnamed city authorities, attributes the spike to “a proliferation of the use of firearms to resolve disputes.” This “proliferation” wasn’t confined to Washington. In neighboring Prince Georges County, Maryland, homicides increased by 20 percent. Nearby Baltimore, where murder has been on the upsurge since its police force was demonized by the left and
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December 28, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Kevin Drum is a left-of-center writer who is worth reading at Mother Jones. He often departs from liberal orthodoxy, as we’ve noted here in the past. To end this year, Drum offers “A Few Things Liberals Believe That They Shouldn’t.” Six, to be precise. They are: Head Start (and similar pre-K programs) raise student achievement. American health care is expensive because of private insurance. We have a retirement crisis. The
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December 20, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Which “deep state” figures will be indicted in connection with the scandalous handling of the Russia probe that targeted Donald Trump? I have to believe that Kevin (“Viva la Resistance!”) Clinesmith will be. You can’t let government lawyers get away with making material alterations to documents. Andrew McCabe might also be indicted. In 2018, Michael Horowitz found that the former FBI official “lacked candor” with James Comey, FBI investigators, and
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December 16, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Daniel Horowitz has reviewed ICE’s brand new comprehensive enforcement and removal operations report. ICE reported that it issued detainers on criminal aliens in fiscal year 2019 who were collectively charged with 2,500 murders. To put that in perspective, albeit via an imperfect comparison, Horowitz says that law enforcement agencies only arrested 9,049 individuals in total for homicide in 2018. This source places the total number of murder arrests in 2018
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December 1, 2019 — John Hinderaker
It has been widely reported that Usman Khan, the London Bridge terrorist, was released from prison in December 2018 after serving half of the term to which he was sentenced in 2012. Khan was one of a group of nine jihadists who were arrested in 2010 for plotting to blow up the London Stock Exchange. They also contemplated “Mumbai-style” terrorist attacks, and one of the plotters had a hit list
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November 17, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
A foreign correspondent I used to know liked to say that a good test for national decline is the smell of urine. In declining countries, one frequently smells it. Americans in certain jurisdictions can expect to smell more urine soon. Left-wing prosecutors, some financed by George Soros, will be decriminalizing urination in public. This is one of a several “quality of life” crimes the left wants to stop prosecuting. Some
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November 7, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
George Soros, the Hungarian billionaire, succeeded in toppling two fine Northern Virginia prosecutors this year in Democratic primaries. Pouring unheard of amounts of money into local prosecutor races in Arlington and Fairfax Counties, Soros was able to take down Commonwealth Attorneys Theo Stamos in Arlington and Raymond Morrogh in Fairfax. They will be replaced by prosecutors who are borderline qualified, if that, and who very likely will adhere to the
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