Crime
October 3, 2023 — John Hinderaker
It’s a stiff competition. Democratic Party prosecutors who have brought frivolous charges against Donald Trump are certainly in the mix. Nevertheless, I would award that title to Mary Moriarty, the County Attorney for Hennepin County, Minnesota. Hennepin is the state’s most populous county, and it includes Minneapolis along with a number of other high-crime towns. Nevertheless, Moriarty ran for office on a platform of not prosecuting criminals, and she is
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October 3, 2023 — Scott Johnson
In the early days of Power Line John and I wrote several columns for the local newspapers decrying the murder of 11-year-old Tyesha Edwards. Tyesha was doing her homework at the dining room table in November 2002 when she was caught in the crossfire of Minneapolis gangbangers. Myon Burrell was convicted twice of Tyesha’s murder and sentenced to life in prison. In our columns we made three basic points: 1)
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September 26, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Target Corporation has been even more woke than most large companies, but there are limits. Target has been vocal about the damage that organized retail theft is doing to its bottom line. Now the other shoe has dropped. The Wall Street Journal reports: Target is closing nine stores across four states because of theft and organized retail crime. The Minneapolis-based retailer said Tuesday stores in the New York City, Seattle,
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September 26, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Senator Robert Menendez wants to hang on to his Senate seat and who can blame him? It has served him well. The pending indictment against Menendez alleges a mind-boggling level of depravity and corruption. Among other things, he seems to have abused his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a disgusting manner. The betrayal of trust involved is difficult to fathom. Having dodged the bullet on the corruption
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September 23, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Many criminals are dumb, and some are crazy. But virtually all criminals pay attention to what concerns them the most: the likelihood of being caught and the severity of punishment for their crimes. Even the most deranged criminal does not commit his felony in front of a policeman. And the extent to which laws are enforced is the most important variable influencing whether laws are broken. We are reminded of
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September 22, 2023 — Scott Johnson
New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez has been indicted along with his wife and three other defendants in the Southern District of New York. The detailed three-count indictment runs to 39 pages and alleges a bribery scheme benefiting Menendez and his wife in exchange for official acts undertaken by the senator. The prosecutors seek forfeiture involving hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and numerous gold bars seized from a safe
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September 16, 2023 — John Hinderaker
This video is everywhere today. Two black teenagers steal a car and go joyriding. They film themselves as they rear-end another vehicle, then spot a man bicycling along the side of the road. They deliberately run him over, killing him, as they film the murder, laughing: If you doubt structural racism can impact people’s lives, you need to watch this video. pic.twitter.com/DqJdOS797D — Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) September 15, 2023 Comment
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September 13, 2023 — Lloyd Billingsley
Back around Labor Day, the Canadian government advised that 2SLGBTQI+ persons “could face certain barriers and risks when you travel outside Canada,” because “not all countries have the same values and legal system that we have in Canada.” That is indeed true, in ways that travelers might not imagine. LGBTQ are, respectively, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer. “I” means “intersex” and + is “inclusive of people who identify as
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September 10, 2023 — John Hinderaker
On Thursday evening our time, I was on Sky News Australia’s U.S. Report, hosted by James Morrow. We talked about the sentencing of Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio to 22 years in prison, two years longer than the maximum penalty prescribed by law, for participation in an “insurrection” that he missed. We contrasted that with the 10-year sentence, half of the presumptive punishment, for an arsonist/murderer who was engaged in
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September 8, 2023 — John Hinderaker
The familiar adage is that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. Support for that idea comes from this story: “Georgia special grand jury recommended charges for Sens. Lindsey Graham, David Perdue, Kelly Loeffler.” A special grand jury recommended that Atlanta’s district attorney seek to charge three current and former US senators in connection with former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential
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September 7, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Admittedly, the 21st century is still young, but so far the most annoying people on the planet during this century, hands down, are climate hysterics. And of that group, the worst are climate criminals who block traffic and engage in other types of illegal activity. We haven’t seen too much of this in the U.S., but it has been a real problem in Germany and other European countries. Here, a
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September 7, 2023 — John Hinderaker
That formula goes back, I think, to the 1980s, and while “neoconservative” has taken on a different meaning, it still holds true. The latest case in point is Shivanthi Sathanandan, a vice chairwoman of Minnesota’s Democrat-Farmer-Labor party. Like most Democrats, Sathanandan was anti-police and pro-criminal. In June 2020, she wanted to “dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department”: But that all changed on Tuesday. Ms. Sathanandan was carjacked and viciously beaten: The
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August 31, 2023 — John Hinderaker
In recent years, we have heard a lot about racism in law enforcement. Sometimes, those claims have turned out to be false. This one, however, is true: Heather Mac Donald shows that law enforcement in Oakland engages in vicious race discrimination under the leadership of District Attorney Pamela Price. Mac Donald obtained a copy of a Power Point used to train social workers in Oakland’s Victim Services Division. They are
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August 26, 2023 — John Hinderaker
I wrote here about the devastating impact of organized crime on America’s retailers. Which means, of course, the impact of organized crime on American consumers–all of us. Now another retailer has spoken up. Nordstrom CEO Erik Nordstrom slammed the brazen bandits who recently ransacked a Los Angeles-area outpost — swiping $100,000 worth of merchandise — as the upscale retailer announced it has suffered “historical losses” from shoplifters. These are organized
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August 26, 2023 — Elizabeth Stauffer
We’ve all seen the clip a thousand times. Speaking to a group of foreign policy experts at a 2018 Council on Foreign Relations event, President Joe Biden boasted that he threatened to hold back $1 billion of U.S. aid unless then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko fired Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who was investigating corruption inside energy company Burisma Holdings. Shokin’s office was also looking into the activities of Ukrainian oligarch Mykola
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August 25, 2023 — Elizabeth Stauffer
Former mobster Michael Franzese, 72, operated for many years as a caporegime in the Colombo crime family. He joined Fox News’ Jesse Watters on Thursday night to discuss the striking similarities between the Biden family’s alleged money laundering operation and his own experiences. (How much longer must we preface every mention of the Biden family’s activities with the word “alleged”?) Franzese funneled money through a series of 18 shell corporations.
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August 23, 2023 — John Hinderaker
No former Democratic Party office-holder ever goes hungry. Democrats are great at finding jobs for politicians that don’t quite work out. A case in point is Minnesota’s Melisa López Franzen. Franzen was briefly the Democratic Leader of the Minnesota State Senate. Alpha News describes the end of her political career charitably: López Franzen spent a decade representing the Edina area in the Minnesota Senate, culminating in her election as the
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