According to the Defense Department, there have been a total of 4,355 U.S. military deaths in Iraq since that war began on March 20, 2003. However, that number includes accidental deaths and other deaths not related to any hostile action. The actual number of American troops killed in action is 3,477.
Let me be perfectly clear: The death or serious injury of a single American soldier is a tragedy not only for the soldier’s loved ones, but also for the country as a whole. However, no American soldier, marine or sailor has been drafted. They are all volunteers. Even if they volunteered just for the educational benefits, everyone of them had to know that when they enlisted, they signed up to shoot at people and get shot at.
I recently talked to a veteran who served in the army eleven years and fought in Desert Storm. He told me that when the First Gulf War broke out a lot of soldiers exclaimed: “Hey, I didn’t sign up for this shit!” [Oh yes you did!] He said they tried everything they could think of to keep from getting sent to Kuwait. What sickened him most though, was that a lot of women soldiers deliberately got themselves pregnant just so they could get discharged from the army.
The Viet Nam War has made us soft. Americans have no stomach for casualties incurred in wars that are not seen as being fought in defense of our security and VITAL interests. We want our wars to be casualty free – no ground combat, just cruise missiles, aerial bombardments and unmanned drones.
Once the media began to keep a weekly tally on the number of Americans killed in action, public support for the Iraq War began to fade quickly. But, lets put those 3,477 battle deaths into proper perspective. Two WWII battles – Tarawa and Iwo Jima – come to mind.
The Battle of Tarawa, a tiny Pacific atoll, was fought from November 20 to November 23, 1943. During those four days, 1,677 of our marines and sailors were killed in action. The Battle of Iwo Jima was fought from February 19 to March 26, 1945. During those five weeks, 6,821 of our marines and sailors were killed in action.
3,477 combat deaths in six-and-a-half years of fighting pale by comparison to the number of our troops that were killed in action on the islands of Trarawa and Iwo Jima. I am not belittling the Iraq War deaths. I am merely pointing out that if Americans want to pull out of Iraq because of a comparatively small number of battle deaths, then our pledges to defend other countries seem like empty promises.
The United States has pledged to come to the defense of Israel if that country is attacked again by its enemies. Lets get real! I cannot imagine that Americans, with no stomach for casualties, are willing to shed one drop of blood in defense of a Jewish state, when an attack on that state will not be seen as threatening our security and vital interests.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
HAPPY HALLOWEEN
...it's the season..........
A cabbie picks up a Nun. She gets into the cab and notices that the VERY handsome cab driver won't stop staring at her. She asks him why he is staring.
He replies: 'I have a question to ask, but I don't want to offend you.'
She answers, ' My son, you cannot offend me. When you're as old as I am and have been a nun as long as Ihave, you get a chance to see and hear just about everything. I'm sure that there's nothing you could say or ask that I would find offensive.'
'Well, I've always had a fantasy to have a nun kiss me.'
She responds, 'Well, let's see what we can do about that: #1, you have to be single and #2, you must be Catholic.'
The cab driver is very excited and says, 'Yes, yes,- I'm single and Catholic!'
'OK' the nun says. 'Pull into the next alley.'
The nun fulfills his fantasy with a kiss that would make a hooker blush. But when they get back on the road, the cab driver starts crying.
'My dear child,' said the nun, 'Why are you crying?'
'Forgive me but I've sinned. I lied and I must confess; I'm married and I'm a Baptist.'
The nun says, 'That's OK. My name is Steve and I'm going to a Halloween party.'
A cabbie picks up a Nun. She gets into the cab and notices that the VERY handsome cab driver won't stop staring at her. She asks him why he is staring.
He replies: 'I have a question to ask, but I don't want to offend you.'
She answers, ' My son, you cannot offend me. When you're as old as I am and have been a nun as long as Ihave, you get a chance to see and hear just about everything. I'm sure that there's nothing you could say or ask that I would find offensive.'
'Well, I've always had a fantasy to have a nun kiss me.'
She responds, 'Well, let's see what we can do about that: #1, you have to be single and #2, you must be Catholic.'
The cab driver is very excited and says, 'Yes, yes,- I'm single and Catholic!'
'OK' the nun says. 'Pull into the next alley.'
The nun fulfills his fantasy with a kiss that would make a hooker blush. But when they get back on the road, the cab driver starts crying.
'My dear child,' said the nun, 'Why are you crying?'
'Forgive me but I've sinned. I lied and I must confess; I'm married and I'm a Baptist.'
The nun says, 'That's OK. My name is Steve and I'm going to a Halloween party.'
Friday, October 30, 2009
THE VICTIMS OF WAR CRIMES ARE ACCUSED OF BEING WAR CRIMINALS FOR DEFENDING THEMSELVES
FIGHTING THE LIES HARDER THAN FIGHTING THE WAR
by Mona Charen
Townhall.com
October 30, 2009
The war over the war in Gaza is heating up. Next week, the United Nations General Assembly will consider the tendentious Goldstone Report, the highest profile exercise in blaming the victim in the U.N.'s tawdry history. Simultaneously, lawyers in Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, and Norway are drawing up criminal indictments against IDF officers who participated in the Gaza operation. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that a number of names are on a police watch list for arrest and detention should they attempt to enter Britain.
Israel's enemies certainly seek to terrorize and demoralize Israel. But the more important campaign -- which is gaining traction -- is to delegitimize her and to brand Israel's self-defense as a war crime.
Because the United States has not yet descended to that level of moral inversion, I was able to sit down yesterday with Col. Ben Gruber, deputy commander of the armored division of the IDF, and one of the officers who participated in the Gaza campaign. Like 80 percent of the IDF, Gruber is a reservist. In civilian life, he's a computer scientist and father of five.
Soft-spoken and reflective, Gruber tries to think the best of everyone -- even Richard Goldstone. "He could not have read" this report before attaching his name to it, Gruber sighs. Readily acknowledging that mistakes are always made in war, and that those who intentionally transgress deserve punishment, Gruber is dumbfounded that the Goldstone report accuses Israel of "deliberately" targeting civilians.
Consider the assessment of Col. Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, and a veteran of the Gulf War and the conflicts in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, and Macedonia. "During Operation Cast Lead, the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare. Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population."
What army has offered 48 hours notice to its enemies of planned operations? Israel did so, dropping 2 million leaflets in advance of army movements. Twenty-four hours before the IDF moved on a suspected terrorist site, the army phoned civilians to warn them to evacuate. There were 100,000 calls. And five minutes before an operation began, the IDF sent out text messages. The calls and messages contained not just warnings, but instructions on which roads were safe to take and which schools or other buildings could be used for shelter. In the midst of the conflict, hundreds of trucks brought food, water, and medical supplies to Gaza.
In Rafa, Israel sought to close 225 tunnels (with 800 entrances) used to smuggle arms to Gaza from Egypt. The easiest and safest course for the IDF would have been to level the homes without warning that contained the entrances using air power or tanks. In Gaza City, to avoid civilian casualties, IDF infantrymen went house to house, encountering booby traps along the way and fending off seven attempted kidnappings.
Hamas was so confident that Israel would not knowingly shoot at civilians that they hid behind human shields throughout the short war. It was common, when word came of an impending attack, for Hamas to send children out to play in the streets at that moment. "Will I shoot?" Gruber asks. "I will not." There is video of a terrorist with a rocket launcher slung over his shoulder grabbing a 10-year-old boy by the collar and dragging him across the street to deter Israeli snipers. And it worked. Israel has similar video (from Reuters actually) showing U.N. ambulances ferrying armed men. "Yes," says Gruber with resignation, "the 'ambulances' were always at the front."
There are scores of other examples -- Hamas firing from mosques, schools, private homes, and hospitals. The very fact that Hamas used human shields betrays their admission that Israel abides by ethical standards in war fighting. They took advantage of Israel's moral qualms about harming non-combatants. Now they accuse Israel of the crimes they themselves committed -- deliberately targeting civilians by raining down 12,000 missiles on southern Israel since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Gruber grudgingly accepts the moral asymmetry. "I will not shoot a civilian for his sake, but also for the sake of my soul," he explains. The more intolerable injustice is the world's embrace of the lies and calumnies now peddled by the same people who sent those kids into the streets in a war zone.
by Mona Charen
Townhall.com
October 30, 2009
The war over the war in Gaza is heating up. Next week, the United Nations General Assembly will consider the tendentious Goldstone Report, the highest profile exercise in blaming the victim in the U.N.'s tawdry history. Simultaneously, lawyers in Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, and Norway are drawing up criminal indictments against IDF officers who participated in the Gaza operation. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that a number of names are on a police watch list for arrest and detention should they attempt to enter Britain.
Israel's enemies certainly seek to terrorize and demoralize Israel. But the more important campaign -- which is gaining traction -- is to delegitimize her and to brand Israel's self-defense as a war crime.
Because the United States has not yet descended to that level of moral inversion, I was able to sit down yesterday with Col. Ben Gruber, deputy commander of the armored division of the IDF, and one of the officers who participated in the Gaza campaign. Like 80 percent of the IDF, Gruber is a reservist. In civilian life, he's a computer scientist and father of five.
Soft-spoken and reflective, Gruber tries to think the best of everyone -- even Richard Goldstone. "He could not have read" this report before attaching his name to it, Gruber sighs. Readily acknowledging that mistakes are always made in war, and that those who intentionally transgress deserve punishment, Gruber is dumbfounded that the Goldstone report accuses Israel of "deliberately" targeting civilians.
Consider the assessment of Col. Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, and a veteran of the Gulf War and the conflicts in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, and Macedonia. "During Operation Cast Lead, the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare. Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population."
What army has offered 48 hours notice to its enemies of planned operations? Israel did so, dropping 2 million leaflets in advance of army movements. Twenty-four hours before the IDF moved on a suspected terrorist site, the army phoned civilians to warn them to evacuate. There were 100,000 calls. And five minutes before an operation began, the IDF sent out text messages. The calls and messages contained not just warnings, but instructions on which roads were safe to take and which schools or other buildings could be used for shelter. In the midst of the conflict, hundreds of trucks brought food, water, and medical supplies to Gaza.
In Rafa, Israel sought to close 225 tunnels (with 800 entrances) used to smuggle arms to Gaza from Egypt. The easiest and safest course for the IDF would have been to level the homes without warning that contained the entrances using air power or tanks. In Gaza City, to avoid civilian casualties, IDF infantrymen went house to house, encountering booby traps along the way and fending off seven attempted kidnappings.
Hamas was so confident that Israel would not knowingly shoot at civilians that they hid behind human shields throughout the short war. It was common, when word came of an impending attack, for Hamas to send children out to play in the streets at that moment. "Will I shoot?" Gruber asks. "I will not." There is video of a terrorist with a rocket launcher slung over his shoulder grabbing a 10-year-old boy by the collar and dragging him across the street to deter Israeli snipers. And it worked. Israel has similar video (from Reuters actually) showing U.N. ambulances ferrying armed men. "Yes," says Gruber with resignation, "the 'ambulances' were always at the front."
There are scores of other examples -- Hamas firing from mosques, schools, private homes, and hospitals. The very fact that Hamas used human shields betrays their admission that Israel abides by ethical standards in war fighting. They took advantage of Israel's moral qualms about harming non-combatants. Now they accuse Israel of the crimes they themselves committed -- deliberately targeting civilians by raining down 12,000 missiles on southern Israel since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Gruber grudgingly accepts the moral asymmetry. "I will not shoot a civilian for his sake, but also for the sake of my soul," he explains. The more intolerable injustice is the world's embrace of the lies and calumnies now peddled by the same people who sent those kids into the streets in a war zone.
STATE BUDGET CUTS AND FEDERAL COURT ORDERS JEOPARDIZE PUBLIC SAFETY
The nation's financial meltdown has left most of our states grappling with large budget shortfalls. California has been brought to the brink of bankruptcy, not only due to the economic crisis, but also because its Democrat dominated legislature has been on a spending binge for years. They don’t call California the “Welfare State” for nothing. Other states, particular the urban ones, are almost as bad off for the same reasons. Now, the chickens have come home to roost.
So how do these states cut their budgets? One way is to reduce correctional appropriations through the early release of prison inmates, either by early paroles or early discharges from sentences. These early releases come on top of the early releases resulting from federal court orders to reduce the overcrowding almost all of our prison systems have experienced.
Recently, the Los Angeles Police Protective League, LAPD’s union, released some alarming crime predictions on the early release of felons. According to independent research organizations, for every 5,000 felons who receive an early release, 45,500 new crimes will be committed over a three-year period, and 9,000 of those crimes will be violent felonies. Those predictions apply to all states, not just the State of California.
These alarming predictions should serve as a wake-up call for the budget strapped states and for the sanctimonious federal courts and their utopian concerns about prison overcrowding. Early releases, whether through budget cutting paroles and discharges or to comply with federal court orders, are seriously jeopardizing the public’s safety.
Every day, throughout the country, hundreds of parolees and other ex-cons are being arrested for rapes, burglaries, armed robberies and murders. Just read your local newspaper and you’ll see how alarming this situation really is. Many of these offenders are “Parolees At Large,” parolees who could not be located by their parole officers. Others, like sex offender Phillip Garido who kidnapped 11-year-old Jaycee Dugard, raped her repeatedly and held her captive for 18 years, fooled their parole officers into believing they were doing an exemplary parole.
Of course, the early releases are going to be mostly “non-violent” offenders. Oh yeah? The Bureau of Justice Statistics did a nationwide survey in 2004 which showed that 33 % of "non-violent" offenders had an arrest history for violence, 8 % of "non-violent" offenders were in possession of a deadly weapon when they committed their non-violent offense, and 70 % of "non-violent" offenders are arrested within 3 years of their release. The public can ill afford to take comfort in this. You can be sure that today’s non-violent offender may be tomorrow’s rapist, robber or murderer.
In the interest of public safety, the states must find other ways of cutting their budgets. They should continue to provide adequate correctional appropriations and put an end to early prisoner releases. And the federal courts should stop jeopardizing public safety by ordering the release of prisoners in order to solve an unfortunate prison overcrowding problem. When it comes to choosing between prison overcrowding and public safety, there can be only one choice.
So how do these states cut their budgets? One way is to reduce correctional appropriations through the early release of prison inmates, either by early paroles or early discharges from sentences. These early releases come on top of the early releases resulting from federal court orders to reduce the overcrowding almost all of our prison systems have experienced.
Recently, the Los Angeles Police Protective League, LAPD’s union, released some alarming crime predictions on the early release of felons. According to independent research organizations, for every 5,000 felons who receive an early release, 45,500 new crimes will be committed over a three-year period, and 9,000 of those crimes will be violent felonies. Those predictions apply to all states, not just the State of California.
These alarming predictions should serve as a wake-up call for the budget strapped states and for the sanctimonious federal courts and their utopian concerns about prison overcrowding. Early releases, whether through budget cutting paroles and discharges or to comply with federal court orders, are seriously jeopardizing the public’s safety.
Every day, throughout the country, hundreds of parolees and other ex-cons are being arrested for rapes, burglaries, armed robberies and murders. Just read your local newspaper and you’ll see how alarming this situation really is. Many of these offenders are “Parolees At Large,” parolees who could not be located by their parole officers. Others, like sex offender Phillip Garido who kidnapped 11-year-old Jaycee Dugard, raped her repeatedly and held her captive for 18 years, fooled their parole officers into believing they were doing an exemplary parole.
Of course, the early releases are going to be mostly “non-violent” offenders. Oh yeah? The Bureau of Justice Statistics did a nationwide survey in 2004 which showed that 33 % of "non-violent" offenders had an arrest history for violence, 8 % of "non-violent" offenders were in possession of a deadly weapon when they committed their non-violent offense, and 70 % of "non-violent" offenders are arrested within 3 years of their release. The public can ill afford to take comfort in this. You can be sure that today’s non-violent offender may be tomorrow’s rapist, robber or murderer.
In the interest of public safety, the states must find other ways of cutting their budgets. They should continue to provide adequate correctional appropriations and put an end to early prisoner releases. And the federal courts should stop jeopardizing public safety by ordering the release of prisoners in order to solve an unfortunate prison overcrowding problem. When it comes to choosing between prison overcrowding and public safety, there can be only one choice.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
The real reason that we can't have the Ten Commandments posted in a courthouse or Congress is this:
You cannot post 'Thou Shalt Not Steal,' 'Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery' and 'Thou Shall Not Lie' in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians.
It creates a hostile work environment.
You cannot post 'Thou Shalt Not Steal,' 'Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery' and 'Thou Shall Not Lie' in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians.
It creates a hostile work environment.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, CLICK, WHACK, WHACK, WHACK, WHACK
During the 1996 robbery of a Houston convenience store, Robert Lee Thompson, 34, shot store clerk Mubarakali Meredia four times but failed to kill him. After Meredia opened the cash drawer, he placed his pistol to the clerk’s neck and pulled the trigger a fifth time. The gun was out of bullets. Thompson then clubbed the wounded clerk with his pistol.
As they were fleeing the scene of the robbery, Thompson’s crime partner, Sammy Butler, 32, fired one shot, killing Mansoor Rahim, another store clerk. Butler was tried for capital murder but because the prosecution could not prove that he intended to kill Rahim, he received a life sentence rather than a sentence of death.
Thompson was tried for capital murder under Texas’ “Law of Parties” which holds all participants in such crimes equally responsible for any killing. Thompson was sentenced to death and after numerous failed appeals, he is scheduled to be executed next month.
Thompson and his attorneys are crying foul. Thompson says that his case “shows why the death penalty in Texas is corrupt. They’re trying to justify capital murder. Where is the capital murder?” His attorneys have petitioned the Board of Pardons and Paroles to recommend that the governor commute Thompson’s death sentence because the prosecution was unable to prove intent in Butler’s trial.
Please give me a few moments to wipe away my tears. Poor old Robert Thompson is going to be topped for a murder committed by his partner in crime who did not intend to kill the store clerk, while all he did was to shoot another clerk four times, tried a fifth shot not knowing the gun was empty and then pistol whipped his badly wounded victim.
The law of parties is a good one. When someone is killed during a robbery, all parties to the crime should be held equally responsible, and that includes the getaway driver. And if one of the robbers happens to get killed by a victim, all the other participants should be held responsible for their crime partner’s death.
As to Sammy Butler, I am at a loss to understand how any jury could arrive at a decision that he did not intend to kill his victim. The mere fact that Butler shot at Rahim shows intent! What part of that did the jury not understand?
Butler deserved to get the death penalty. He lucked out because he had some really stupid idiots on his jury. Thompson was not so lucky. Barring an adverse recommendation by the pardons board or a last minute reprieve, Thompson will be put to death next month. Justice demands that this piece of shit be executed. Thompson is another poster boy for the death penalty. And when he's gone, I'll shout: GOOD RIDDANCE!
As they were fleeing the scene of the robbery, Thompson’s crime partner, Sammy Butler, 32, fired one shot, killing Mansoor Rahim, another store clerk. Butler was tried for capital murder but because the prosecution could not prove that he intended to kill Rahim, he received a life sentence rather than a sentence of death.
Thompson was tried for capital murder under Texas’ “Law of Parties” which holds all participants in such crimes equally responsible for any killing. Thompson was sentenced to death and after numerous failed appeals, he is scheduled to be executed next month.
Thompson and his attorneys are crying foul. Thompson says that his case “shows why the death penalty in Texas is corrupt. They’re trying to justify capital murder. Where is the capital murder?” His attorneys have petitioned the Board of Pardons and Paroles to recommend that the governor commute Thompson’s death sentence because the prosecution was unable to prove intent in Butler’s trial.
Please give me a few moments to wipe away my tears. Poor old Robert Thompson is going to be topped for a murder committed by his partner in crime who did not intend to kill the store clerk, while all he did was to shoot another clerk four times, tried a fifth shot not knowing the gun was empty and then pistol whipped his badly wounded victim.
The law of parties is a good one. When someone is killed during a robbery, all parties to the crime should be held equally responsible, and that includes the getaway driver. And if one of the robbers happens to get killed by a victim, all the other participants should be held responsible for their crime partner’s death.
As to Sammy Butler, I am at a loss to understand how any jury could arrive at a decision that he did not intend to kill his victim. The mere fact that Butler shot at Rahim shows intent! What part of that did the jury not understand?
Butler deserved to get the death penalty. He lucked out because he had some really stupid idiots on his jury. Thompson was not so lucky. Barring an adverse recommendation by the pardons board or a last minute reprieve, Thompson will be put to death next month. Justice demands that this piece of shit be executed. Thompson is another poster boy for the death penalty. And when he's gone, I'll shout: GOOD RIDDANCE!
OFF-DUTY WITH GUN AND BOOZING A BAD COMBINATION
COP PULLED GUN ON HAUNTED HOUSE CHARACTER
wbaltv.com
October 28, 2009
BALTIMORE -- A Baltimore city police officer was charged with assault after he pulled a gun on a haunted house character over the weekend.
Baltimore County police said Sgt. Eric Janik, 36, pulled his gun on a haunted house employee dressed up as the killer from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" at the House of Screams show in Essex on Sunday.
Police said the employee approached Janik after the haunted house tour was over in a bid to get "one last scream."
Instead, Janik, who was off-duty, pulled his service weapon and pointed it at Michael Morrison's chest, authorities said.
"I was doing my normal scene at the haunted house, and as I was going out the backdoor with the chainsaw, the officer pulled his gun on me. Basically, he put his gun to my chest and as I was going back in, he said he was a cop," Morrison, the man in the costume, told 11 News.
He said he dropped the chain saw, which had no chain and was not dangerous.
Janik was with four other people, including his 9-year-old daughter and a female officer.
Charging documents show he denied pointing his loaded service weapon at Morrison. He said he pointed it at the ground.
Police said Janik also appeared to be drinking.
"Callers said he seemed to be very intoxicated. In fact, the people inside the House Of Screams noted that. When he was being process, two of the officers noticed his speech was slurred and there was a moderate odor of alcohol coming from his breath. He didn't seem to be taking this quite as seriously as he should have been," said Baltimore County police spokesman Bill Toohey.
Janik has been suspended without pay pending a formal suspension hearing. That hearing will be held Thursday.
Janik works patrol in the southeast district and has been on the force since 1995.
wbaltv.com
October 28, 2009
BALTIMORE -- A Baltimore city police officer was charged with assault after he pulled a gun on a haunted house character over the weekend.
Baltimore County police said Sgt. Eric Janik, 36, pulled his gun on a haunted house employee dressed up as the killer from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" at the House of Screams show in Essex on Sunday.
Police said the employee approached Janik after the haunted house tour was over in a bid to get "one last scream."
Instead, Janik, who was off-duty, pulled his service weapon and pointed it at Michael Morrison's chest, authorities said.
"I was doing my normal scene at the haunted house, and as I was going out the backdoor with the chainsaw, the officer pulled his gun on me. Basically, he put his gun to my chest and as I was going back in, he said he was a cop," Morrison, the man in the costume, told 11 News.
He said he dropped the chain saw, which had no chain and was not dangerous.
Janik was with four other people, including his 9-year-old daughter and a female officer.
Charging documents show he denied pointing his loaded service weapon at Morrison. He said he pointed it at the ground.
Police said Janik also appeared to be drinking.
"Callers said he seemed to be very intoxicated. In fact, the people inside the House Of Screams noted that. When he was being process, two of the officers noticed his speech was slurred and there was a moderate odor of alcohol coming from his breath. He didn't seem to be taking this quite as seriously as he should have been," said Baltimore County police spokesman Bill Toohey.
Janik has been suspended without pay pending a formal suspension hearing. That hearing will be held Thursday.
Janik works patrol in the southeast district and has been on the force since 1995.
DIVERSION VS. PUBLIC SAFETY
ALTERNATIVES TO INCARCERATION WORK (NOT)
By Bob Walsh
PacoVilla’s Corrections blog
October 28, 2009
If at first you don't succeed, keep on trying with government help. It works, at least if you are a dangerous crazy person.
Charlie Fonilloa Sekona, 20, was arrested in March of this year for thumping on a Costco worker who was sweeping the sidewalk in front of the Costco on 10th St. in San Francisco. Good old Crazy Charlie just beat on the guy for no reason whatsoever. Prosecutors in San Francisco (where the death penalty is dead and criminal behavior is acceptable for illegal aliens) put him in a diversion program instead of jailing him.
It worked out OK for Crazy Charlie, but not so good for Eric Buschman, 49, who was stabbed to death in front of his own home by Crazy Charlie two weeks ago. He and a buddy were unloading some camping equipment from a pick-up truck when good old Crazy Charlie walked, shanked him, and walked away. Buschman's wife and daughter were in the house and were unhurt, as were Buschman's friend. The public defender said, after his arrest, "He was doing really well, apparently."
I guess defense attorney's have a different standard than actual human beings.
By Bob Walsh
PacoVilla’s Corrections blog
October 28, 2009
If at first you don't succeed, keep on trying with government help. It works, at least if you are a dangerous crazy person.
Charlie Fonilloa Sekona, 20, was arrested in March of this year for thumping on a Costco worker who was sweeping the sidewalk in front of the Costco on 10th St. in San Francisco. Good old Crazy Charlie just beat on the guy for no reason whatsoever. Prosecutors in San Francisco (where the death penalty is dead and criminal behavior is acceptable for illegal aliens) put him in a diversion program instead of jailing him.
It worked out OK for Crazy Charlie, but not so good for Eric Buschman, 49, who was stabbed to death in front of his own home by Crazy Charlie two weeks ago. He and a buddy were unloading some camping equipment from a pick-up truck when good old Crazy Charlie walked, shanked him, and walked away. Buschman's wife and daughter were in the house and were unhurt, as were Buschman's friend. The public defender said, after his arrest, "He was doing really well, apparently."
I guess defense attorney's have a different standard than actual human beings.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE
A bunch of left-wing Jewish supporters of President Obama’s pro-Palestinian policies recently formed a group to counter the pro-Israel lobbying efforts of AIPAC. J Street, a self-proclaimed pro-Israel lobby opened its first nationwide conference this week with 1,500 left-wingers in attendance. The lobby is largely funded by billionaire George Soros, a long-time adversary of Israel.
According to the Jerusalem Post, Soros is one of a "tiny minority of American Jews” who have played a role in undermining support for Israel in the Democratic Party, and they now seek "to undermine Israel’s position in the U.S. in general.” Soros invited Jewish billionaires Peter Lewis and the Bronfman brothers, Charles and Edgar, to join forces with him and left-wing Jewish American organizations – including American Friends of Peace Now, the Israel Policy Forum and Brit Tzedek v’Shalom – to construct a political lobby, J Street, designed to weaken the influence of AIPAC.
J Street supports the Arab demands for Israel’s withdrawal from all lands captured during the 1967 war and a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capitol. J Street also strongly supports Obama’s demand that Israel freeze all settlement building activities.
The new group has a significant number of Arab and Muslim donors. And Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street’s director, has a checkered past of doing business with Israel's Arab enemies.
Former Israel diplomat Lenny Ben-David, writing on his private blog last week, cited Ben-Ami’s having been a senior vice president for Fenton Communications, which signed a contract with a foundation in Qatar to lead an anti-Israeli campaign on American college campuses.
Ben-David also challenged J Street’s claim that “about five” of its donors are Muslims and Arabs. He wrote, “A partial listing quickly extracted from the U.S. Federal Election Commission shows more than 30 contributors, many with ties to Arab-American organizations.” Previous reports have stated that Arabs and Muslims contribute approximately 10 percent of J Street’s $3 million annual budget.
With left-wing Jewish friends like these, Israel doesn’t need any enemies.
According to the Jerusalem Post, Soros is one of a "tiny minority of American Jews” who have played a role in undermining support for Israel in the Democratic Party, and they now seek "to undermine Israel’s position in the U.S. in general.” Soros invited Jewish billionaires Peter Lewis and the Bronfman brothers, Charles and Edgar, to join forces with him and left-wing Jewish American organizations – including American Friends of Peace Now, the Israel Policy Forum and Brit Tzedek v’Shalom – to construct a political lobby, J Street, designed to weaken the influence of AIPAC.
J Street supports the Arab demands for Israel’s withdrawal from all lands captured during the 1967 war and a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capitol. J Street also strongly supports Obama’s demand that Israel freeze all settlement building activities.
The new group has a significant number of Arab and Muslim donors. And Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street’s director, has a checkered past of doing business with Israel's Arab enemies.
Former Israel diplomat Lenny Ben-David, writing on his private blog last week, cited Ben-Ami’s having been a senior vice president for Fenton Communications, which signed a contract with a foundation in Qatar to lead an anti-Israeli campaign on American college campuses.
Ben-David also challenged J Street’s claim that “about five” of its donors are Muslims and Arabs. He wrote, “A partial listing quickly extracted from the U.S. Federal Election Commission shows more than 30 contributors, many with ties to Arab-American organizations.” Previous reports have stated that Arabs and Muslims contribute approximately 10 percent of J Street’s $3 million annual budget.
With left-wing Jewish friends like these, Israel doesn’t need any enemies.
Monday, October 26, 2009
CORRECTIONAL OFFICERS
All over the country correctional systems are being buffeted by court orders to reduce the number of inmates in overcrowded prisons and by state budget cuts. Early releases, whether by parole or discharge, pose a dangerous threat to public safety.
The following predictions apply to all states, not just to California. For every 5,000 felons who receive an early release, 45,500 new crimes will be committed over a three-year period, and 9,000 of those crimes will be violent felonies. Applied to the 20,000 felons set for release under the [California] budget proposal, this would result in an estimated 182,000 new crimes being committed [in California] over the next three years -- 35,000 of them violent felonies! [“Alarming Crime Predictions” (7-18-09)]
Prison budget cuts are being made by reducing the number of correctional officers and other institutional staff. These reductions pose a threat to the security of the prison and to the safety of correctional officers and other prison employees.
The public is rather ignorant of what it takes to be correctional officer and what they do to carry out their duties. Correctional officers are much more than mere prison guards. They are, or at least they should be, part of the inmate “treatment” team. It’s really a tough job with few rewards. Correctional officers are just as confined in prison as are the inmates. The only difference is that when their shift is over, they get to go home. As a matter of fact, in some prisons the inmates enjoy more freedom than the officers.
Bob Walsh worked for 24 years with the California Department of Corrections and retired as a Lieutenant about 4 ½ years ago. He is a regular contributor to PacoVilla’s Corrections blog. In today’s PacoVilla’s blog, Paco reproduced Bob’s essay, “The California Crisis” from the CorrectionsOne website. While Bob dealt with the California prison budget crisis, his comments reflect what is happening nationwide.
Bob Walsh believes that it is up to the correctional officers themselves to make the public aware of how important their jobs are and all they entail. Here are his comments concerning correctional officers:
The concept of “you get what you pay for” is not new, and it is very real: You can pay a kid from the neighborhood $10.00 to mow your lawn, but would you pay the same kid to adjust your transmission or paint your car? Probably not, and if you do happen to have a skilled transmission mechanic or body and paint person doing odd jobs in your neighborhood, you’re probably going to have to pay them a lot more than 10 bucks an hour.
We’ve [Correctional Officers] got to get the word out
Correctional officers are not the knuckle-dragging semi-literates from the movies and television, despite what some from the media, the prisoners and their families and the advocates tell you. They can’t be. A semi-literate would never get through the academy, and a basic thug, even a fairly well concealed one, would eventually expose his true colors and be shown the door.
You don’t need (and you shouldn’t pay for) a lawyer cross-trained as a SWAT team officer to work in a prison, but you also shouldn’t have Paul Blart (of the Mall Cop movie) doing the job either. Blart might save a few dollars an hour for a few weeks — maybe even a few months if you’re lucky — but once the escapes, lawsuits and dead bodies start to stack up, you’ll realize your mistake.
So now all that is necessary is for those in our profession to successfully convince the general public of that.
The following predictions apply to all states, not just to California. For every 5,000 felons who receive an early release, 45,500 new crimes will be committed over a three-year period, and 9,000 of those crimes will be violent felonies. Applied to the 20,000 felons set for release under the [California] budget proposal, this would result in an estimated 182,000 new crimes being committed [in California] over the next three years -- 35,000 of them violent felonies! [“Alarming Crime Predictions” (7-18-09)]
Prison budget cuts are being made by reducing the number of correctional officers and other institutional staff. These reductions pose a threat to the security of the prison and to the safety of correctional officers and other prison employees.
The public is rather ignorant of what it takes to be correctional officer and what they do to carry out their duties. Correctional officers are much more than mere prison guards. They are, or at least they should be, part of the inmate “treatment” team. It’s really a tough job with few rewards. Correctional officers are just as confined in prison as are the inmates. The only difference is that when their shift is over, they get to go home. As a matter of fact, in some prisons the inmates enjoy more freedom than the officers.
Bob Walsh worked for 24 years with the California Department of Corrections and retired as a Lieutenant about 4 ½ years ago. He is a regular contributor to PacoVilla’s Corrections blog. In today’s PacoVilla’s blog, Paco reproduced Bob’s essay, “The California Crisis” from the CorrectionsOne website. While Bob dealt with the California prison budget crisis, his comments reflect what is happening nationwide.
Bob Walsh believes that it is up to the correctional officers themselves to make the public aware of how important their jobs are and all they entail. Here are his comments concerning correctional officers:
The concept of “you get what you pay for” is not new, and it is very real: You can pay a kid from the neighborhood $10.00 to mow your lawn, but would you pay the same kid to adjust your transmission or paint your car? Probably not, and if you do happen to have a skilled transmission mechanic or body and paint person doing odd jobs in your neighborhood, you’re probably going to have to pay them a lot more than 10 bucks an hour.
We’ve [Correctional Officers] got to get the word out
Correctional officers are not the knuckle-dragging semi-literates from the movies and television, despite what some from the media, the prisoners and their families and the advocates tell you. They can’t be. A semi-literate would never get through the academy, and a basic thug, even a fairly well concealed one, would eventually expose his true colors and be shown the door.
You don’t need (and you shouldn’t pay for) a lawyer cross-trained as a SWAT team officer to work in a prison, but you also shouldn’t have Paul Blart (of the Mall Cop movie) doing the job either. Blart might save a few dollars an hour for a few weeks — maybe even a few months if you’re lucky — but once the escapes, lawsuits and dead bodies start to stack up, you’ll realize your mistake.
So now all that is necessary is for those in our profession to successfully convince the general public of that.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
AS YOU SOW, SO SHALL YOU REAP (2)
The California medical marijuana law has been perverted to the extend that there are now thousands of pot pharmacies and marijuana clubs throughout the state. Every Tom, Dick, Harry, Mary and Jane has come up with an affliction for which physicians are prescribing marijuana. Thousands of pot dealers and growers have become multi-millionaires in the medical marijuana business.
The Californians who thought they were being compassionate by voting for the use of marijuana to alleviate the suffering of glaucoma, cancer and AIDS patients got scammed. California doctors are now advertising that they will prescribe marijuana for “medical problems.” Those can include anxiety, insomnia, discomfort from Botox injections or breast implants, heartburn, sunburn, razorburn, or you name it. In effect, the medical marijuana laws have legalized pot for anyone who wants to light up a joint.
The perversion of the medical marijuana laws reminds me of what happened with peyote. In 1970, the state of Texas legalized peyote for use in religious ceremonies by members of the Native American Church and a federal law confirming this protection was enacted in 1995. Guess what? Between 1970 and 1995 there was a ten-fold increase in the number of Americans claiming to be of Indian descent.
Now conservative columnist Kathleen Parker is advocating the decriminalization - a euphemism for legalization - of marijuana. When she protests that the war on drugs has criminalized otherwise law-abiding citizens, she is saying that illegal drug users are no different than those otherwise law-abiding citizens who exceed the speed limit, run stop signs and violate other traffic laws.
The fight for legalization no longer pits just liberals against conservatives. It has now become a generational divide. The Woodstockers are now in charge and many of that generation, Democrats and Republicans alike, do not see marijuana as a dangerous drug.
If pot were to be legalized, it would open up the floodgates to the use not only of marijuana, but to other drugs - coke, meth, opiates - as well. That is because marijuana has always been and continues to be "the gateway drug." So when Parker talks about criminals being empowered by the war on drugs, what do you think the legalization of marijuana will do for the drug cartels?
A WAY TO GET POLICE CHIEFS OUT OF POLITICS
In our country, most cities operate either under a strong mayor system of governance or under a city administrator system. In the strong mayor system, the mayor appoints all city department heads, including the chief of police, and they serve at his pleasure. In the administrator system, the mayor or city council appoints a professional city manager who appoints all department heads.
It is NOT common knowledge that most city police chiefs are NOT free to run their departments absent of political interference. Everyone knows that county sheriffs have to be elected to their jobs every four years or so. On the other hand, police chiefs who are appointed by a mayor have to run for office every day. If they displease they mayor they are out of a job pronto. Thus, they have to serve the mayor’s political ambitions in order to keep their jobs.
The City of Houston offers a good example. The city’s strong mayoral government has led to a succession of police chiefs who are most notable for being the political puppets of whichever mayor happened to be in office. Houston will soon be saying goodbye to Mayor Bill White who is now running for a seat in the U.S. Senate. The city will also be saying goodbye to police chief Harold Hurtt because the next mayor will want to appoint his own chief.
There is a much better way to select police chiefs than to have them appointed by a mayor who requires that the first priority of his police chief is to make sure that the police department does not get in the way of his political ambitions.
A city would be well advised to establish an independent police commission for the purpose of selecting the city’s chief of police. That commission would not only select the police chief, but it would also establish general guidelines for the police department. The chief would then be free to operate within those guidelines, absent of political interference. The commission would also be able to fire the chief, but only for malfeasance in office and only if he fails to follow the guidelines or turns out to be incompetent.
To ensure their independence, the members of the commission should be elected rather than appointed, as is the case in Los Angeles.
The city would be divided into five police commission districts. Candidates for a seat on the police commission would run for office in each district. A candidate would have to show proof that he/she had been an actual resident within his/her district for a minimum of five years. The election should be non-partisan – no candidate should be identified as Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Marxist, or whatever.
The police commission can be established at little cost to the taxpayers. Its members should be paid only one dollar a year plus their out-of-pocket expenses. In this way, only the most civic minded candidates would run for that office. The commissioners should not have to meet more than once a month unless some emergency would require additional meetings. As for staffing, the commission would only need a secretary, probably a part-timer at that.
No mayor would want to give up his power to appoint the police chief, but by having a five member independent police commission make the selection, the police chief would be free from political interference, thus allowing him to run the police department for the good of the whole community.
It is NOT common knowledge that most city police chiefs are NOT free to run their departments absent of political interference. Everyone knows that county sheriffs have to be elected to their jobs every four years or so. On the other hand, police chiefs who are appointed by a mayor have to run for office every day. If they displease they mayor they are out of a job pronto. Thus, they have to serve the mayor’s political ambitions in order to keep their jobs.
The City of Houston offers a good example. The city’s strong mayoral government has led to a succession of police chiefs who are most notable for being the political puppets of whichever mayor happened to be in office. Houston will soon be saying goodbye to Mayor Bill White who is now running for a seat in the U.S. Senate. The city will also be saying goodbye to police chief Harold Hurtt because the next mayor will want to appoint his own chief.
There is a much better way to select police chiefs than to have them appointed by a mayor who requires that the first priority of his police chief is to make sure that the police department does not get in the way of his political ambitions.
A city would be well advised to establish an independent police commission for the purpose of selecting the city’s chief of police. That commission would not only select the police chief, but it would also establish general guidelines for the police department. The chief would then be free to operate within those guidelines, absent of political interference. The commission would also be able to fire the chief, but only for malfeasance in office and only if he fails to follow the guidelines or turns out to be incompetent.
To ensure their independence, the members of the commission should be elected rather than appointed, as is the case in Los Angeles.
The city would be divided into five police commission districts. Candidates for a seat on the police commission would run for office in each district. A candidate would have to show proof that he/she had been an actual resident within his/her district for a minimum of five years. The election should be non-partisan – no candidate should be identified as Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Marxist, or whatever.
The police commission can be established at little cost to the taxpayers. Its members should be paid only one dollar a year plus their out-of-pocket expenses. In this way, only the most civic minded candidates would run for that office. The commissioners should not have to meet more than once a month unless some emergency would require additional meetings. As for staffing, the commission would only need a secretary, probably a part-timer at that.
No mayor would want to give up his power to appoint the police chief, but by having a five member independent police commission make the selection, the police chief would be free from political interference, thus allowing him to run the police department for the good of the whole community.
EXPLAINING THE BIRDS AND BEES IN THE COMPUTER AGE
DADDY, HOW WAS I BORN?
A little boy goes to his father and asks, "Daddy, how was I born?" The father answers:
Well, son, I guess one day you will need to find out anyway!
Your mom and I first got together in a chat room on Yahoo. Then I set up a date via e-mail with your mom, and we met at a cyber-cafe.
We sneaked into a secluded room and googled each other. There your mother agreed to a download from my hard drive.
As soon as I was ready to upload, we discovered that neither one of us had used a firewall; and, since it was too late to hit the delete button, nine months later a little Pop-Up appeared that said:
“You Got Male!"
A little boy goes to his father and asks, "Daddy, how was I born?" The father answers:
Well, son, I guess one day you will need to find out anyway!
Your mom and I first got together in a chat room on Yahoo. Then I set up a date via e-mail with your mom, and we met at a cyber-cafe.
We sneaked into a secluded room and googled each other. There your mother agreed to a download from my hard drive.
As soon as I was ready to upload, we discovered that neither one of us had used a firewall; and, since it was too late to hit the delete button, nine months later a little Pop-Up appeared that said:
“You Got Male!"
Thursday, October 22, 2009
ANSWERING KATHLEEN PARKER'S ADVOCACY FOR THE LEGALIZATION OF MARIJUANA
Yesterday’s Houston Chronicle ran an op-ed piece by conservative columnist Kathleen Parker in which she praised the Obama administration for ordering the U.S. Attorneys, the DEA and the FBI not to enforce the federal prohibition against the use and possession of marijuana in those states where pot users are in compliance with state law.
Parker went far beyond praising the Obama administration’s new pot policy. What she wrote was an advocacy for the legalization of marijuana. Parker used a misleading term - “decriminalization” - which anyone with half a brain knows to be a euphemism for legalization.
I am certain that the overwhelming majority in the law enforcement community would be absolutely infuriated with her legalization advocacy. That is why I responded to Parker as follows:
Dear Ms. Parker
I read most of your columns and usually agree with your views. However, when you advocate the decriminalization, a euphemism for legalization, of marijuana it would appear that you have either taken leave of your senses or inhaled too much of that funny tobacco smoke exhaled by your potted pals.
For starters, many reputable physicians do not believe that medical marijuana has any actual medical benefits. There are many prescription drugs on the market that will take care of the ailments medical marijuana is prescribed for.
Then take a good look at what has happened in the Sunshine State. In California, the law legalizing marijuana for medical purposes has turned into a scandalous perversion of the law’s intent. Every Tom, Dick, Harry, Mary and Jane seems to be suffering from some kind of affliction that enables them to obtain a marijuana prescription. Pot dispensaries have sprung up like weeds and there are now a bunch of “medical” marijuana clubs operating openly. Los Angeles alone has an estimated 1,000 medical marijuana clubs and dispensaries. Hundreds of pot “pharmacists” have become multi-millionaires.
As for pot itself, Marijuana has been recognized as a gateway drug from the very beginning and it continues to remain a gateway drug to this day. Contrary to the claims of the legalization crowd, pot is an addictive drug. And when the use of marijuana becomes prosaic, many of its users will switch to harder drugs like cocaine, methamphetamines and opiates.
You wrote that “the drug war has empowered criminals while criminalizing otherwise law-abiding citizens.” I beg your pardon! It is the users of illegal drugs that have empowered criminals, not the war on drugs. And when druggies choose to break the law, they have chosen to criminalize themselves. Pot heads chose to become criminals when they first toked up. The war on drugs did not force them to smoke marijuana or to use any other illegal drugs.
As for the drug traffickers , especially those from the Mexican drug cartels, they flourish only because of the insatiable hunger for pot, coke, meth and heroin by law breakers from our side of the border. It’s the law of supply and demand.
I could go on and on, but this should give you a good idea of why your column advocating the legalization of marijuana has infuriated many of us in the law enforcement community. We are convinced that the legalization of any drugs that are now prohibited will have a very deleterious effect on our country.
Respectfully submitted
/Signed/
Parker went far beyond praising the Obama administration’s new pot policy. What she wrote was an advocacy for the legalization of marijuana. Parker used a misleading term - “decriminalization” - which anyone with half a brain knows to be a euphemism for legalization.
I am certain that the overwhelming majority in the law enforcement community would be absolutely infuriated with her legalization advocacy. That is why I responded to Parker as follows:
Dear Ms. Parker
I read most of your columns and usually agree with your views. However, when you advocate the decriminalization, a euphemism for legalization, of marijuana it would appear that you have either taken leave of your senses or inhaled too much of that funny tobacco smoke exhaled by your potted pals.
For starters, many reputable physicians do not believe that medical marijuana has any actual medical benefits. There are many prescription drugs on the market that will take care of the ailments medical marijuana is prescribed for.
Then take a good look at what has happened in the Sunshine State. In California, the law legalizing marijuana for medical purposes has turned into a scandalous perversion of the law’s intent. Every Tom, Dick, Harry, Mary and Jane seems to be suffering from some kind of affliction that enables them to obtain a marijuana prescription. Pot dispensaries have sprung up like weeds and there are now a bunch of “medical” marijuana clubs operating openly. Los Angeles alone has an estimated 1,000 medical marijuana clubs and dispensaries. Hundreds of pot “pharmacists” have become multi-millionaires.
As for pot itself, Marijuana has been recognized as a gateway drug from the very beginning and it continues to remain a gateway drug to this day. Contrary to the claims of the legalization crowd, pot is an addictive drug. And when the use of marijuana becomes prosaic, many of its users will switch to harder drugs like cocaine, methamphetamines and opiates.
You wrote that “the drug war has empowered criminals while criminalizing otherwise law-abiding citizens.” I beg your pardon! It is the users of illegal drugs that have empowered criminals, not the war on drugs. And when druggies choose to break the law, they have chosen to criminalize themselves. Pot heads chose to become criminals when they first toked up. The war on drugs did not force them to smoke marijuana or to use any other illegal drugs.
As for the drug traffickers , especially those from the Mexican drug cartels, they flourish only because of the insatiable hunger for pot, coke, meth and heroin by law breakers from our side of the border. It’s the law of supply and demand.
I could go on and on, but this should give you a good idea of why your column advocating the legalization of marijuana has infuriated many of us in the law enforcement community. We are convinced that the legalization of any drugs that are now prohibited will have a very deleterious effect on our country.
Respectfully submitted
/Signed/
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
A CRIME FIGHTING SYSTEM THAT REALLY SEEMS TO WORK
From the Free Dictionary: CompStat originated in the New York City Police Department in 1994, under leadership of Police Commissioner William Bratton and his Deputy Commissioner Jack Maple. It is a multilayered dynamic approach to crime reduction, quality of life improvement and personnel and resource management. CompStat employs Geographic Information Systems and was intended to map crime and identify problems. In weekly meetings, ranking NYPD executives meet with local precinct commanders from one of the eight patrol boroughs in New York City to discuss the problems. They devise strategies and tactics to solve problems, reduce crime, and ultimately improve quality of life in their assigned area. The system is also in use in other major metropolitan cities including Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, Maryland. Baltimore actually calls their system Citistat.
Los Angeles police chief William Bratton has done a commendable job and will be hard to replace when he leaves at the end of this month. He brought the CompStat system with him to Los Angeles. CompStat has proven to be a success in every law enforcement jurisdiction where it is in use.
In Houston, unfortunately, Mayor Bill White and his puppet police chief, Harold Hurtt have stubbornly refused to adopt the CompStat system despite the repeated efforts of commercial real estate broker Jay Wall and a group of other civic minded citizens to have this system instituted by the Houston Police Department..
A word of caution though. Crime statistics nationwide have often been cooked to make city and county law enforcement agencies look better and/or to make their entities look less dangerous than they actually are. That has certainly been true in Houston where the murder rate was reduced by listing homicide victims as suicides, even though they had been shot multiple times. My question is: Can the Los Angeles crime reduction numbers really be trusted?
CHIEF BRATTON HIGHLIGHTS CRIME DROP AT NEW COMPSTAT CENTER OPENING
At the unveiling of the LAPD center, police chief touts the force's success
By Tony Castro
Los Angeles Daily News
October 20, 2009
In one of his final acts as police chief, William Bratton unveiled the new CompStat center in the new Los Angeles Police Administration Building on Tuesday, giving him another opportunity to outline his success in reducing crime.
During Bratton's tenure from 2002 to 2009, homicides in the city dropped 53 percent, rapes 38 percent, robberies 28 percent and aggravated assaults 67 percent, according to the latest crime figures.
"My successor will have his or her work cut out for them to keep this goal," said Bratton, 62, who leaves at the end of this month to work at a global security firm in New York.
The CompStat opening included a large cake bearing the center's logo and Bratton's name that was rolled out by officers to commemorate both the unveiling and Bratton's role in reducing crime.
The statistics also showed a significant drop in property crimes during his tenure. Overall, crime fell 38 percent, including a 53 percent drop in violent crime and 32 percent in property crime.
Other major drops included 33 percent in thefts from cars and 26 percent in burglaries.
The LAPD under Bratton also took a big bite out of gang crime - down 34 percent overall, including 59 percent in gang-related homicides.
"There is a possibility," said Bratton, "we could end this year with as few as 300 homicides or close to it, and that's extraordinary when you think that in 1990, we had 1,100."
Bratton said the CompStat system will help reduce crime even more in the future.
"We are fast approaching a state," said Bratton, "where we are going to be able to predict with some degree of certainty where crime or crime patterns are emerging and can be stopped before they effectively emerge."
Los Angeles police chief William Bratton has done a commendable job and will be hard to replace when he leaves at the end of this month. He brought the CompStat system with him to Los Angeles. CompStat has proven to be a success in every law enforcement jurisdiction where it is in use.
In Houston, unfortunately, Mayor Bill White and his puppet police chief, Harold Hurtt have stubbornly refused to adopt the CompStat system despite the repeated efforts of commercial real estate broker Jay Wall and a group of other civic minded citizens to have this system instituted by the Houston Police Department..
A word of caution though. Crime statistics nationwide have often been cooked to make city and county law enforcement agencies look better and/or to make their entities look less dangerous than they actually are. That has certainly been true in Houston where the murder rate was reduced by listing homicide victims as suicides, even though they had been shot multiple times. My question is: Can the Los Angeles crime reduction numbers really be trusted?
CHIEF BRATTON HIGHLIGHTS CRIME DROP AT NEW COMPSTAT CENTER OPENING
At the unveiling of the LAPD center, police chief touts the force's success
By Tony Castro
Los Angeles Daily News
October 20, 2009
In one of his final acts as police chief, William Bratton unveiled the new CompStat center in the new Los Angeles Police Administration Building on Tuesday, giving him another opportunity to outline his success in reducing crime.
During Bratton's tenure from 2002 to 2009, homicides in the city dropped 53 percent, rapes 38 percent, robberies 28 percent and aggravated assaults 67 percent, according to the latest crime figures.
"My successor will have his or her work cut out for them to keep this goal," said Bratton, 62, who leaves at the end of this month to work at a global security firm in New York.
The CompStat opening included a large cake bearing the center's logo and Bratton's name that was rolled out by officers to commemorate both the unveiling and Bratton's role in reducing crime.
The statistics also showed a significant drop in property crimes during his tenure. Overall, crime fell 38 percent, including a 53 percent drop in violent crime and 32 percent in property crime.
Other major drops included 33 percent in thefts from cars and 26 percent in burglaries.
The LAPD under Bratton also took a big bite out of gang crime - down 34 percent overall, including 59 percent in gang-related homicides.
"There is a possibility," said Bratton, "we could end this year with as few as 300 homicides or close to it, and that's extraordinary when you think that in 1990, we had 1,100."
Bratton said the CompStat system will help reduce crime even more in the future.
"We are fast approaching a state," said Bratton, "where we are going to be able to predict with some degree of certainty where crime or crime patterns are emerging and can be stopped before they effectively emerge."
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
AMERICA'S BREEDING GROUNDS FOR TERRORISTS
Ripe for the plucking: Those who are imprisoned after falling into a violent life-style are predisposed to be seduced by and converted to a religion of violence.
ARE AMERICA’S PRISONS INCUBATING RADICAL ISLAMISTS?
By Michael B. Farrell
The Christian Science Monitor
October 18, 2009
San Francisco - Radical Islam spreads many ways. Through jihadist chat rooms and via fiery sermons, Islam's violent fringes seek newcomers to fight in the name of Allah. Now, evidence is mounting that American prisons, where about 35,000 inmates convert to Islam annually, are cause for concern, too.
Experts disagree over how fertile the ground is for prison radicalization, but the list of worrisome cases is growing.
•In 2005, federal agents thwarted attempts by a Muslim prison gang in California to attack synagogues and military sites.
•In 2008, a Seattle barber and prison convert was killed while fighting with Al Qaeda militants in Somalia.
•In May, four ex-convicts in New York were charged with plotting to strike Jewish targets.
•Last month, a red-headed Midwesterner named Michael Finton, who reportedly converted to Islam in an Illinois prison, was arrested on suspicion of attempting to blow up a federal courthouse in Springfield, Ill.
Mr. Finton and the others are a tiny minority of some 240,000 American inmates who've converted to Islam since 9/11. But since 2001, counterterrorism officials have stepped up efforts to identify and disrupt what FBI Director Robert Mueller recently called "pockets of radicalization" in state and federal prisons.
But how deep and influential are those pockets? And how dangerous? According to two recently published studies, concerns may be overblown about the ability of Al Qaeda or like-minded militants to cobble together terror cells by tapping disaffected Muslim-American prisoners.
"It doesn't seem to be happening. If prisons are incubators for radicalization, you'd think we would have seen it by now," says Bert Useem, a sociologist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. His three-year study on radicalization appeared in the August issue of Criminology and Public Policy.
Professor Useem and Obie Clayton, a sociologist at Morehouse College in Atlanta, interviewed 210 prison officials and 270 inmates in 27 medium- and maximum-security state prisons. "The claim that prisons will generate scores of terrorists spilling out onto the streets of our cities ... seems to be false, or at least overstated," they concluded.
Similarly, a June article in the British Journal of Criminology, by criminologist Mark Hamm, debunks many post-9/11 theories about prison radicalization, namely the idea that austere Muslim clerics in Saudi Arabia were making inroads with prison converts in America.
"There's no indication of proselytizing coming from outside the walls," says Dr. Hamm, a professor at Indiana State University in Terre Haute, in a phone interview. "Prisoners are radicalized by other prisoners."
Unlike Useem and Clayton, Hamm gives credence to the idea that prisoner radicalization poses a national and international security risk. While US agents have discovered only one prison-born operational terrorist cell – a group called Jamiyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh, or JIS – the possibility exists that others could follow.
While conducting interviews with 30 felons classified as violent in California and Florida prisons, Hamm said one Muslim inmate said: "People are recruiting on the yard every day. It's a ripe climate for terrorism. It's scandalous. Everybody's glorifying Osama bin Laden. But these Muslims come to Islam with the same gang mentality they had on the streets."
Hamm is also concerned about young converts who become mesmerized by violent jihad. That appears to have been the case with Ruben Shumpert, the Seattle barber who converted to Islam and fought withAl Shabab in Somalia.
Finton, meanwhile, is accused of having similar jihadist aspirations. On Oct. 7, a federal grand jury in Illinois indicted Finton, whose nickname, Talib Islam, means "student of Islam," with trying to detonate a phony bomb supplied by the FBI.
Useem and Clayton, however, wrote that "the simple fact that an offender, after release, becomes involved in terrorist activity does not sufficiently demonstrate that the prison experience caused his radicalization."
Inevitably, Hamm says, imprisoned converts to Islam blend religion and gang culture into what many scholars dub prison Islam, or, informally, "prislam." It's a hybrid of the religion that is usually manipulated by Muslim gangs and espoused by their leaders.
While young and disaffected inmates often convert to Islam for religious or personal reasons, many have practical reasons, too.
"The reason people convert to Islam in prison is to reform themselves. They see the need for some sort of spiritual basis to reform their lives," says Lawrence Mamiya, a professor of religion and African studies at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. "It also provides protection ... they will receive the protection of other Muslims."
Nation of Islam (NOI) popularized the Muslim faith among black prison inmates in the late 1950s. But when that movement splintered in the '70s, Sunni Islam took hold. While NOI remains active in penitentiaries, African-Americans are far more likely today to convert to Sunni Islam, and the majority of Muslim chaplains working with the correctional system are Sunnis.
After 9/11, Sunni prison chaplains came under intense scrutiny. Security hawks charged them with spreading hate. A 2003 Wall Street Journal article exposed the radical teachings of some Muslim chaplains in New York. The day after the article appeared, Sen. Charles Schumer (D) of New York called for the dismissal of particular clerics who he said preached "Al Qaeda-type extremism to inmates."
The New York Department of Corrections quickly barred those imams from working in its prisons. Amid the controversy, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) enacted new rules for vetting religious service providers in its institutions.
"The BOP utilizes the same vetting and hiring process for all chaplains, regardless of faith affiliation," said Edmond Ross, a BOP spokesman, in an e-mail. "In recent years this process has been enhanced to ensure full-time chaplains meet significant requirements for academic training, experience, thorough backgroundd checks, and a demonstrated willingness and ability to provide and coordinate religious programs for inmates of all faiths."
Mr. Ross said that while the BOP does "not believe there is widespread terrorist-inspired radicalization or recruiting occurring in federal prisons, we do recognize that the potential for inmates to be radicalized is present."
Though many say radical imams are the root of the problem, others say Muslim chaplains may be a solution.
"Prisons ought to hire more chaplains and encourage more moderate Muslims to lead that outreach," says Hamm. "When there is a shortage of chaplains to provide religious guidance, into that void comes inmates with exotic religious messages."
----------
From PacoVilla’s Corrections blog: "People are recruiting on the yard every day. It's a ripe climate for terrorism. It's scandalous. Everybody's glorifying Osama bin Laden. But these Muslims come to Islam with the same gang mentality they had on the streets." – California prison inmate.
ARE AMERICA’S PRISONS INCUBATING RADICAL ISLAMISTS?
By Michael B. Farrell
The Christian Science Monitor
October 18, 2009
San Francisco - Radical Islam spreads many ways. Through jihadist chat rooms and via fiery sermons, Islam's violent fringes seek newcomers to fight in the name of Allah. Now, evidence is mounting that American prisons, where about 35,000 inmates convert to Islam annually, are cause for concern, too.
Experts disagree over how fertile the ground is for prison radicalization, but the list of worrisome cases is growing.
•In 2005, federal agents thwarted attempts by a Muslim prison gang in California to attack synagogues and military sites.
•In 2008, a Seattle barber and prison convert was killed while fighting with Al Qaeda militants in Somalia.
•In May, four ex-convicts in New York were charged with plotting to strike Jewish targets.
•Last month, a red-headed Midwesterner named Michael Finton, who reportedly converted to Islam in an Illinois prison, was arrested on suspicion of attempting to blow up a federal courthouse in Springfield, Ill.
Mr. Finton and the others are a tiny minority of some 240,000 American inmates who've converted to Islam since 9/11. But since 2001, counterterrorism officials have stepped up efforts to identify and disrupt what FBI Director Robert Mueller recently called "pockets of radicalization" in state and federal prisons.
But how deep and influential are those pockets? And how dangerous? According to two recently published studies, concerns may be overblown about the ability of Al Qaeda or like-minded militants to cobble together terror cells by tapping disaffected Muslim-American prisoners.
"It doesn't seem to be happening. If prisons are incubators for radicalization, you'd think we would have seen it by now," says Bert Useem, a sociologist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. His three-year study on radicalization appeared in the August issue of Criminology and Public Policy.
Professor Useem and Obie Clayton, a sociologist at Morehouse College in Atlanta, interviewed 210 prison officials and 270 inmates in 27 medium- and maximum-security state prisons. "The claim that prisons will generate scores of terrorists spilling out onto the streets of our cities ... seems to be false, or at least overstated," they concluded.
Similarly, a June article in the British Journal of Criminology, by criminologist Mark Hamm, debunks many post-9/11 theories about prison radicalization, namely the idea that austere Muslim clerics in Saudi Arabia were making inroads with prison converts in America.
"There's no indication of proselytizing coming from outside the walls," says Dr. Hamm, a professor at Indiana State University in Terre Haute, in a phone interview. "Prisoners are radicalized by other prisoners."
Unlike Useem and Clayton, Hamm gives credence to the idea that prisoner radicalization poses a national and international security risk. While US agents have discovered only one prison-born operational terrorist cell – a group called Jamiyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh, or JIS – the possibility exists that others could follow.
While conducting interviews with 30 felons classified as violent in California and Florida prisons, Hamm said one Muslim inmate said: "People are recruiting on the yard every day. It's a ripe climate for terrorism. It's scandalous. Everybody's glorifying Osama bin Laden. But these Muslims come to Islam with the same gang mentality they had on the streets."
Hamm is also concerned about young converts who become mesmerized by violent jihad. That appears to have been the case with Ruben Shumpert, the Seattle barber who converted to Islam and fought withAl Shabab in Somalia.
Finton, meanwhile, is accused of having similar jihadist aspirations. On Oct. 7, a federal grand jury in Illinois indicted Finton, whose nickname, Talib Islam, means "student of Islam," with trying to detonate a phony bomb supplied by the FBI.
Useem and Clayton, however, wrote that "the simple fact that an offender, after release, becomes involved in terrorist activity does not sufficiently demonstrate that the prison experience caused his radicalization."
Inevitably, Hamm says, imprisoned converts to Islam blend religion and gang culture into what many scholars dub prison Islam, or, informally, "prislam." It's a hybrid of the religion that is usually manipulated by Muslim gangs and espoused by their leaders.
While young and disaffected inmates often convert to Islam for religious or personal reasons, many have practical reasons, too.
"The reason people convert to Islam in prison is to reform themselves. They see the need for some sort of spiritual basis to reform their lives," says Lawrence Mamiya, a professor of religion and African studies at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. "It also provides protection ... they will receive the protection of other Muslims."
Nation of Islam (NOI) popularized the Muslim faith among black prison inmates in the late 1950s. But when that movement splintered in the '70s, Sunni Islam took hold. While NOI remains active in penitentiaries, African-Americans are far more likely today to convert to Sunni Islam, and the majority of Muslim chaplains working with the correctional system are Sunnis.
After 9/11, Sunni prison chaplains came under intense scrutiny. Security hawks charged them with spreading hate. A 2003 Wall Street Journal article exposed the radical teachings of some Muslim chaplains in New York. The day after the article appeared, Sen. Charles Schumer (D) of New York called for the dismissal of particular clerics who he said preached "Al Qaeda-type extremism to inmates."
The New York Department of Corrections quickly barred those imams from working in its prisons. Amid the controversy, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) enacted new rules for vetting religious service providers in its institutions.
"The BOP utilizes the same vetting and hiring process for all chaplains, regardless of faith affiliation," said Edmond Ross, a BOP spokesman, in an e-mail. "In recent years this process has been enhanced to ensure full-time chaplains meet significant requirements for academic training, experience, thorough backgroundd checks, and a demonstrated willingness and ability to provide and coordinate religious programs for inmates of all faiths."
Mr. Ross said that while the BOP does "not believe there is widespread terrorist-inspired radicalization or recruiting occurring in federal prisons, we do recognize that the potential for inmates to be radicalized is present."
Though many say radical imams are the root of the problem, others say Muslim chaplains may be a solution.
"Prisons ought to hire more chaplains and encourage more moderate Muslims to lead that outreach," says Hamm. "When there is a shortage of chaplains to provide religious guidance, into that void comes inmates with exotic religious messages."
----------
From PacoVilla’s Corrections blog: "People are recruiting on the yard every day. It's a ripe climate for terrorism. It's scandalous. Everybody's glorifying Osama bin Laden. But these Muslims come to Islam with the same gang mentality they had on the streets." – California prison inmate.
Monday, October 19, 2009
AS YOU SOW, SO SHALL YOU REAP
The following states allow some use of marijuana for medical purposes: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.
In California, the law legalizing marijuana for medical purposes has turned into a scandalous perversion of the law’s intent. Every Tom, Dick, Harry, Mary and Jane seems to be suffering from some kind of affliction that enables them to obtain a marijuana prescription. As you sow, so shall you reap! Pot dispensaries have sprung up like weeds and there are now a bunch of “medical” marijuana clubs operating openly. Hundreds of pot "pharmacists" have become multi-millionaires.
It seems as though the authorities in Los Angeles are not quite as tolerant as their brethren up north in the San Francisco Bay area. The L.A. cops appear ready to crack down on cannabis clubs and dispensaries. Lots of luck!
I suspect that some of the other medical marijuana states may be experiencing problems similar to those in California. Federal law prohibits the use and possession of pot. But not to worry. Just today, Obama’s liberal Justice Department issued a new policy to federal prosecutors, the DEA and the FBI, ordering them not to enforce those federal laws in the states where pot users are in compliance with state law. Oh goodie goodie!
Here is part of The New York Times report on the situation in Los Angeles:
LOS ANGELES PREPARES FOR CLASH OVER MARIJUANA
By Solomon Moore
The New York Times
October 17, 2009
LOS ANGELES — There are more marijuana stores here than public schools. Signs emblazoned with cannabis plants or green crosses sit next to dry cleaners, gas stations and restaurants.
The dispensaries range from Hollywood-day-spa fabulous to shoddy-looking storefronts with hand-painted billboards. Absolute Herbal Pain Solutions, Grateful Meds, Farmacopeia Organica.
Cannabis advocates claim that more than 800 dispensaries have sprouted here since 2002; some law enforcement officials say it is closer to 1,000. Whatever the real number, everyone agrees it is too high.
And so this, too, is taken for granted: Crackdowns on cannabis clubs will soon come in this city, which has more dispensaries than any other.
For the first time, law enforcement officials in Los Angeles have vowed to prosecute medical marijuana dispensaries that turn a profit, with police officials saying they expect to conduct raids. Their efforts are widely seen as a campaign to sway the City Council into adopting strict regulations after two years of debate.
It appears to be working. Carmen A. Trutanich, the newly elected city attorney, recently persuaded the Council to put aside a proposed ordinance negotiated with medical marijuana supporters for one drafted by his office. The new proposal calls for dispensaries to have renewable permits, submit to criminal record checks, register the names of members with the police and operate on a nonprofit basis. If enacted, it is likely to result in the closing of hundreds of marijuana dispensaries.
Mr. Trutanich argued that state law permits the exchange of marijuana between growers and patients on a nonprofit and noncash basis only. Marijuana advocates say that interpretation would regulate dispensaries out of existence and thwart the will of voters who approved medical cannabis in 1996.
Whatever happens here will be closely watched by law enforcement officials and marijuana advocates across the country who are threading their way through federal laws that still treat marijuana as an illegal drug and state laws that are increasingly allowing medicinal use. Thirteen states have laws supporting medical marijuana, and others are considering new legislation.
No state has gone further than California, often described by drug enforcement agents as a “source nation” because of the vast quantities of marijuana grown here. And no city in the state has gone further than Los Angeles. This has alarmed local officials, who say that dispensary owners here took unfair advantage of vague state laws intended to create exceptions to marijuana prohibitions for a limited number of ill people.
“About 100 percent of dispensaries in Los Angeles County and the city are operating illegally,” said Steve Cooley, the Los Angeles County district attorney, who is up for re-election next year. “The time is right to deal with this problem.”
Mr. Cooley, speaking last week at a training luncheon for regional narcotics officers titled “The Eradication of Medical Marijuana Dispensaries in the City of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County,” said that state law did not allow dispensaries to be for-profit enterprises.
Mr. Trutanich, the city attorney, went further, saying dispensaries were prohibited from accepting cash even to reimburse growers for labor and supplies. He said that a recent California Supreme Court decision, People v. Mentch, banned all over-the-counter sales of marijuana; other officials and marijuana advocates disagree.
In California, the law legalizing marijuana for medical purposes has turned into a scandalous perversion of the law’s intent. Every Tom, Dick, Harry, Mary and Jane seems to be suffering from some kind of affliction that enables them to obtain a marijuana prescription. As you sow, so shall you reap! Pot dispensaries have sprung up like weeds and there are now a bunch of “medical” marijuana clubs operating openly. Hundreds of pot "pharmacists" have become multi-millionaires.
It seems as though the authorities in Los Angeles are not quite as tolerant as their brethren up north in the San Francisco Bay area. The L.A. cops appear ready to crack down on cannabis clubs and dispensaries. Lots of luck!
I suspect that some of the other medical marijuana states may be experiencing problems similar to those in California. Federal law prohibits the use and possession of pot. But not to worry. Just today, Obama’s liberal Justice Department issued a new policy to federal prosecutors, the DEA and the FBI, ordering them not to enforce those federal laws in the states where pot users are in compliance with state law. Oh goodie goodie!
Here is part of The New York Times report on the situation in Los Angeles:
LOS ANGELES PREPARES FOR CLASH OVER MARIJUANA
By Solomon Moore
The New York Times
October 17, 2009
LOS ANGELES — There are more marijuana stores here than public schools. Signs emblazoned with cannabis plants or green crosses sit next to dry cleaners, gas stations and restaurants.
The dispensaries range from Hollywood-day-spa fabulous to shoddy-looking storefronts with hand-painted billboards. Absolute Herbal Pain Solutions, Grateful Meds, Farmacopeia Organica.
Cannabis advocates claim that more than 800 dispensaries have sprouted here since 2002; some law enforcement officials say it is closer to 1,000. Whatever the real number, everyone agrees it is too high.
And so this, too, is taken for granted: Crackdowns on cannabis clubs will soon come in this city, which has more dispensaries than any other.
For the first time, law enforcement officials in Los Angeles have vowed to prosecute medical marijuana dispensaries that turn a profit, with police officials saying they expect to conduct raids. Their efforts are widely seen as a campaign to sway the City Council into adopting strict regulations after two years of debate.
It appears to be working. Carmen A. Trutanich, the newly elected city attorney, recently persuaded the Council to put aside a proposed ordinance negotiated with medical marijuana supporters for one drafted by his office. The new proposal calls for dispensaries to have renewable permits, submit to criminal record checks, register the names of members with the police and operate on a nonprofit basis. If enacted, it is likely to result in the closing of hundreds of marijuana dispensaries.
Mr. Trutanich argued that state law permits the exchange of marijuana between growers and patients on a nonprofit and noncash basis only. Marijuana advocates say that interpretation would regulate dispensaries out of existence and thwart the will of voters who approved medical cannabis in 1996.
Whatever happens here will be closely watched by law enforcement officials and marijuana advocates across the country who are threading their way through federal laws that still treat marijuana as an illegal drug and state laws that are increasingly allowing medicinal use. Thirteen states have laws supporting medical marijuana, and others are considering new legislation.
No state has gone further than California, often described by drug enforcement agents as a “source nation” because of the vast quantities of marijuana grown here. And no city in the state has gone further than Los Angeles. This has alarmed local officials, who say that dispensary owners here took unfair advantage of vague state laws intended to create exceptions to marijuana prohibitions for a limited number of ill people.
“About 100 percent of dispensaries in Los Angeles County and the city are operating illegally,” said Steve Cooley, the Los Angeles County district attorney, who is up for re-election next year. “The time is right to deal with this problem.”
Mr. Cooley, speaking last week at a training luncheon for regional narcotics officers titled “The Eradication of Medical Marijuana Dispensaries in the City of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County,” said that state law did not allow dispensaries to be for-profit enterprises.
Mr. Trutanich, the city attorney, went further, saying dispensaries were prohibited from accepting cash even to reimburse growers for labor and supplies. He said that a recent California Supreme Court decision, People v. Mentch, banned all over-the-counter sales of marijuana; other officials and marijuana advocates disagree.
REDUCING PRISON POPULATIONS AT GREAT RISK TO THE PUBLIC
What is happening in Colorado is happening all over the country.
EARLY PAROLES ARE DANGEROUS
By Kenneth R. Buck
The Denver Post
October 18, 2009
Four years ago in the quiet town of Platteville, a grandmother who should have been playing bridge with friends, lay dying in her home — bleeding from cuts to her throat. For 15 minutes her attacker, Terry Sanchez, watched her die before he ransacked her home looking for items to steal. At the time of the crime, he was on parole.
This wasn't the first time Sanchez had burglarized a home. Two months before, Sanchez was involved in another burglary and sexual assault. In fact, Sanchez had a long criminal history of burglary, and he admitted on several occasions to trading stolen items for drugs. For 21 years, Sanchez had been in and out of prison, paroled numerous times. And with each parole release, he became more brazen in his crimes.
Will we have to endure more accounts like this as the state's plan to release inmates early to parole goes into effect? Parole recidivism rates are approaching all-time highs. Every year we see an increase in the number of prisoners who were paroled and are now returning to prison. In fact, from 2000 to 2008 in Colorado, releases to parole increased 126 percent while parole returns to prison for a new conviction increased 195 percent.
The parole system is a revolving- door this state can no longer keep up with. Of the inmates released in 2005, 33.9 percent returned to prison within one year; 53.2 percent returned within three years. Similar return numbers can be found every year for the past 10 years. Last year, 41 percent of Colorado's 11,038 admissions to prison were parole returns.
Ten of the 25 criminals on a recent list of Weld County's Most Wanted had new arrest warrants for, among other crimes, parole violations. The parole supervision department has seen a 175 percent funding increase from 2000 to 2008 but Colorado taxpayers aren't seeing a beneficial return on their parole investment.
Yet the state says releasing a few thousand inmates early to parole will help balance the budget. In reality, the money they claim early release will save now will have to be spent to remedy this action in the future.
Many parolees re-enter the system because they have committed a new crime. Those crimes will cost each of us money: victims will pay, communities will suffer, and more money will need to be directed to the entire criminal justice system. The end result will not be a monetary savings for the state, but an increased financial burden for taxpayers and compromised public safety for all.
The state, however, is hoping you won't think about these consequences; it is hoping that you will be lulled into a false sense of security by reports that crime is down and early release to parole will not change that. Crime is down and that's good news, but don't forget how that decrease in crime was achieved.
Tough-on-crime legislation passed in the '90s has led to longer incarceration times. Legislation including changing life sentences for first-degree felonies to life without parole in 1990, added sentencing requirements for habitual offenders in 1993 and the three-strikes legislation of 1994 has contributed to crime reduction. When criminals are in prison, they aren't committing more crimes.
Purse strings are being tightened everywhere. Smart budgeting, however, means looking not only for ways to save money today but also making sure greater problems aren't created for tomorrow. The early release could cause future emotional and financial harm to Colorado taxpayers. It is a dangerous idea.
----------
Kenneth R. Buck (weldda@co.weld.co.us) is Weld County district attorney and has declared his candidacy for the U.S. Senate.
EARLY PAROLES ARE DANGEROUS
By Kenneth R. Buck
The Denver Post
October 18, 2009
Four years ago in the quiet town of Platteville, a grandmother who should have been playing bridge with friends, lay dying in her home — bleeding from cuts to her throat. For 15 minutes her attacker, Terry Sanchez, watched her die before he ransacked her home looking for items to steal. At the time of the crime, he was on parole.
This wasn't the first time Sanchez had burglarized a home. Two months before, Sanchez was involved in another burglary and sexual assault. In fact, Sanchez had a long criminal history of burglary, and he admitted on several occasions to trading stolen items for drugs. For 21 years, Sanchez had been in and out of prison, paroled numerous times. And with each parole release, he became more brazen in his crimes.
Will we have to endure more accounts like this as the state's plan to release inmates early to parole goes into effect? Parole recidivism rates are approaching all-time highs. Every year we see an increase in the number of prisoners who were paroled and are now returning to prison. In fact, from 2000 to 2008 in Colorado, releases to parole increased 126 percent while parole returns to prison for a new conviction increased 195 percent.
The parole system is a revolving- door this state can no longer keep up with. Of the inmates released in 2005, 33.9 percent returned to prison within one year; 53.2 percent returned within three years. Similar return numbers can be found every year for the past 10 years. Last year, 41 percent of Colorado's 11,038 admissions to prison were parole returns.
Ten of the 25 criminals on a recent list of Weld County's Most Wanted had new arrest warrants for, among other crimes, parole violations. The parole supervision department has seen a 175 percent funding increase from 2000 to 2008 but Colorado taxpayers aren't seeing a beneficial return on their parole investment.
Yet the state says releasing a few thousand inmates early to parole will help balance the budget. In reality, the money they claim early release will save now will have to be spent to remedy this action in the future.
Many parolees re-enter the system because they have committed a new crime. Those crimes will cost each of us money: victims will pay, communities will suffer, and more money will need to be directed to the entire criminal justice system. The end result will not be a monetary savings for the state, but an increased financial burden for taxpayers and compromised public safety for all.
The state, however, is hoping you won't think about these consequences; it is hoping that you will be lulled into a false sense of security by reports that crime is down and early release to parole will not change that. Crime is down and that's good news, but don't forget how that decrease in crime was achieved.
Tough-on-crime legislation passed in the '90s has led to longer incarceration times. Legislation including changing life sentences for first-degree felonies to life without parole in 1990, added sentencing requirements for habitual offenders in 1993 and the three-strikes legislation of 1994 has contributed to crime reduction. When criminals are in prison, they aren't committing more crimes.
Purse strings are being tightened everywhere. Smart budgeting, however, means looking not only for ways to save money today but also making sure greater problems aren't created for tomorrow. The early release could cause future emotional and financial harm to Colorado taxpayers. It is a dangerous idea.
----------
Kenneth R. Buck (weldda@co.weld.co.us) is Weld County district attorney and has declared his candidacy for the U.S. Senate.
DEATH PENALTY OPPONENTS' CELEBRATION PREMATURE
According to Barry Scheck’s Innocence Project, Cameron Todd Willingham was executed by Texas in 2004.because of junk-science testimony. Willingham received the death sentence after a jury found him guilty of murdering his three young daughters by setting fire to their house in 1991.. The jury relied heavily on the testimony of two arson investigators. Willingham proclaimed his innocence in an obscenity laced death chamber statement
The New York based Innocence Project has produced a prominent arson expert who claims that the Texas arson investigators’ testimony was unreliable and that the fire was accidental, not arson. The media’s coverage of this story has convinced just about everybody that Texas executed an innocent man. Death penalty opponents are jumping up and down with joy.
But hold your horses! It seems that the death penalty opponents’ celebration has been rather premature. It has just been revealed that Willingham confessed to his ex-wife when she visited with him for almost two hours on death row just nine days before his execution.
The Fort Worth Star Telegram is reporting that in 2004, former peace officer Ronnie Kuykendall,, the brother of Willingham’s ex-wife Stacy, gave a Navarro County district attorney’s investigator an affidavit on the confession.
The affidavit states that Stacy called a family meeting on 2-8-04. “Stacy asked all of us to come into the living room; at this time she started crying and told us about her visit with Willingham,” repeating her ex-husbands assertion that he had set the fire to try to head off his wife’s divorce threats, the affidavit said. Willingham “figured if he did this she would stay with him, and she could get her tubes untied and that they could start another family.”
But wait, that’s not all. Just this month, Tony Ayala, a neighbor of Willingham’s at the time of the deadly fire, gave a sworn statement to a Corsicana police detective that puts the lie to Willingham’s protestations of innocence.
Contrary to what other witnesses reported, Ayala said he saw a man running out of the burning house and back his car out of a carport. He returned inside to get some boxes but didn’t mention that anyone was in the house until an ambulance and fire trucks arrived. “That’s when he first said anything about kids being in the house.” In 1991, Ayala tried to tell the Corsicana police what he had seen and heard at scene of the burning house, but they were not interested in taking down his statement.
Willingham claimed that he had tried to rescue his children, offering his first and second degree burns as evidence of his frantic efforts, but the retrieval of the boxes would explain how he got burned.
As for the arson expert produced by the Innocence Project, University of Houston Law Center professor David Crump had serious reservations about his conclusions. In a letter to the Houston Chronicle, Crump had this to say: “For example, criticizing a burn-pattern conclusion, as the expert did, because the [arson investigation] report does not explicitly rule out electrical sources in connection with the burn pattern, sounds to me like an academician’s put-down of a field investigator.”
Crump has good reason to question conclusions reached by an expert who, from his lofty perch in academia, studied an arson investigation report many years after it was written and at a great distance from the scene of the fire.
So, for all you bleeding heart death penalty opponents, it’s time to come back down to earth. The arson investigation report aside, there is good evidence that Texas did NOT execute an innocent man when they put that piece of shit, Willingham, to death. Score one for us death penalty proponents, big time!
The New York based Innocence Project has produced a prominent arson expert who claims that the Texas arson investigators’ testimony was unreliable and that the fire was accidental, not arson. The media’s coverage of this story has convinced just about everybody that Texas executed an innocent man. Death penalty opponents are jumping up and down with joy.
But hold your horses! It seems that the death penalty opponents’ celebration has been rather premature. It has just been revealed that Willingham confessed to his ex-wife when she visited with him for almost two hours on death row just nine days before his execution.
The Fort Worth Star Telegram is reporting that in 2004, former peace officer Ronnie Kuykendall,, the brother of Willingham’s ex-wife Stacy, gave a Navarro County district attorney’s investigator an affidavit on the confession.
The affidavit states that Stacy called a family meeting on 2-8-04. “Stacy asked all of us to come into the living room; at this time she started crying and told us about her visit with Willingham,” repeating her ex-husbands assertion that he had set the fire to try to head off his wife’s divorce threats, the affidavit said. Willingham “figured if he did this she would stay with him, and she could get her tubes untied and that they could start another family.”
But wait, that’s not all. Just this month, Tony Ayala, a neighbor of Willingham’s at the time of the deadly fire, gave a sworn statement to a Corsicana police detective that puts the lie to Willingham’s protestations of innocence.
Contrary to what other witnesses reported, Ayala said he saw a man running out of the burning house and back his car out of a carport. He returned inside to get some boxes but didn’t mention that anyone was in the house until an ambulance and fire trucks arrived. “That’s when he first said anything about kids being in the house.” In 1991, Ayala tried to tell the Corsicana police what he had seen and heard at scene of the burning house, but they were not interested in taking down his statement.
Willingham claimed that he had tried to rescue his children, offering his first and second degree burns as evidence of his frantic efforts, but the retrieval of the boxes would explain how he got burned.
As for the arson expert produced by the Innocence Project, University of Houston Law Center professor David Crump had serious reservations about his conclusions. In a letter to the Houston Chronicle, Crump had this to say: “For example, criticizing a burn-pattern conclusion, as the expert did, because the [arson investigation] report does not explicitly rule out electrical sources in connection with the burn pattern, sounds to me like an academician’s put-down of a field investigator.”
Crump has good reason to question conclusions reached by an expert who, from his lofty perch in academia, studied an arson investigation report many years after it was written and at a great distance from the scene of the fire.
So, for all you bleeding heart death penalty opponents, it’s time to come back down to earth. The arson investigation report aside, there is good evidence that Texas did NOT execute an innocent man when they put that piece of shit, Willingham, to death. Score one for us death penalty proponents, big time!
Sunday, October 18, 2009
WHAT WAR CRIMES?
Ever since its war with Hamas last December and January, Israel has been accused by the Muslim world and by UN relief agencies of committing atrocities amounting to war crimes against the civilian population in Gaza. The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which has had a long history of hostility toward the Jewish state, formed a commission to look into these charges.
The Goldstone Commission reported that Israel did commit war crimes which caused the deaths of over a thousand Gaza Civilians. It disregarded the fact that Israel dropped tons of warning leaflets and even made thousands of telephone calls to Gazans warning them of specific targets that would be attacked, something no other country at war has ever done. It also disregarded the fact that Hamas placed its rocket launchers in the midst of dense population centers and stored its rockets and ammo in schools, hospitals and mosques.
With the Goldstone Report in hand, the Arabs are now demanding that Israel’s leaders, field commanders and soldiers be brought before the International Court of Justice. The UNHRC voted overwhelmingly to accept the Goldstone Report. The commission gave Hamas a slap on the wrist by also accusing it of committing war crimes for firing rockets at Israeli civilian targets, which they had been doing for years. Those rocket attacks precipitated Israel’s attack on Gaza.
Now, the former commander of all British troops in Afghanistan has, in no uncertain terms, denounced the findings of the Goldstone Commission. Here is that story as reported by Israel Today:
‘ISRAEL DID EVERYTHING TO PROTECT GAZA CIVILIANS’
Israel Today
October 18, 2009
The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Friday voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Goldstone Report accusing Israel of war crimes during the recent Gaza war. No surprise there. But there was one bright spot during the session - the testimony of a top British military officer who insisted that Goldstone was wrong, and that Israel had in fact gone out of its way to protect innocent lives in Gaza.
In his address before the council, Commander (ret.) Richard Kemp, who previously commanded all British forces in Afghanistan, said that during the conflict that raged in Gaza from mid-December of last year till mid-January, "the Israel Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare."
Kemp noted that the IDF dropped over two million leaflets over areas of Gaza and made hundreds of thousands of phone calls to warn civilians prior to attacks on terrorist forces, often eliminating the crucial element of surprise. Israel also called off many attacks on terrorist forces for fear of harming civilians being used as human shields.
While other modern Western armies would probably take the above measures while being scrutinized by the media, Kemp said they would not go the extra mile like the IDF did by allowing huge quantities of humanitarian aid to enter Gaza at the very height of the fighting.
Kemp also pointed out that the only real evidence Goldstone had of Israeli war crimes were the testimonies of individual Palestinians living in Gaza, and since they live under the thumb of a violent terrorist regime, they cannot constitute credible evidence.
"Hamas, like Hizbullah, are expert at driving the media agenda," he said. "Both will always have people ready to give interviews condemning Israeli forces for war crimes. They are adept at staging and distoring incidents."
Indeed, Palestinian Authority Minister of Justice Ali Al-Khashan told reporters in Ramallah on Saturday that any lawsuits against Israelis on the basis of the Goldstone Report will have to wait, since the report contains no concrete evidence of war crimes, nor has the PA been able to find any.
"We do not have any documentation for the Israeli crimes," Al-Khashan admitted.
He said the PA is trying to get around this hurdle by becoming a member of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, where it can more easily launch cases against Israelis even without compelling evidence.
The Goldstone Commission reported that Israel did commit war crimes which caused the deaths of over a thousand Gaza Civilians. It disregarded the fact that Israel dropped tons of warning leaflets and even made thousands of telephone calls to Gazans warning them of specific targets that would be attacked, something no other country at war has ever done. It also disregarded the fact that Hamas placed its rocket launchers in the midst of dense population centers and stored its rockets and ammo in schools, hospitals and mosques.
With the Goldstone Report in hand, the Arabs are now demanding that Israel’s leaders, field commanders and soldiers be brought before the International Court of Justice. The UNHRC voted overwhelmingly to accept the Goldstone Report. The commission gave Hamas a slap on the wrist by also accusing it of committing war crimes for firing rockets at Israeli civilian targets, which they had been doing for years. Those rocket attacks precipitated Israel’s attack on Gaza.
Now, the former commander of all British troops in Afghanistan has, in no uncertain terms, denounced the findings of the Goldstone Commission. Here is that story as reported by Israel Today:
‘ISRAEL DID EVERYTHING TO PROTECT GAZA CIVILIANS’
Israel Today
October 18, 2009
The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Friday voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Goldstone Report accusing Israel of war crimes during the recent Gaza war. No surprise there. But there was one bright spot during the session - the testimony of a top British military officer who insisted that Goldstone was wrong, and that Israel had in fact gone out of its way to protect innocent lives in Gaza.
In his address before the council, Commander (ret.) Richard Kemp, who previously commanded all British forces in Afghanistan, said that during the conflict that raged in Gaza from mid-December of last year till mid-January, "the Israel Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare."
Kemp noted that the IDF dropped over two million leaflets over areas of Gaza and made hundreds of thousands of phone calls to warn civilians prior to attacks on terrorist forces, often eliminating the crucial element of surprise. Israel also called off many attacks on terrorist forces for fear of harming civilians being used as human shields.
While other modern Western armies would probably take the above measures while being scrutinized by the media, Kemp said they would not go the extra mile like the IDF did by allowing huge quantities of humanitarian aid to enter Gaza at the very height of the fighting.
Kemp also pointed out that the only real evidence Goldstone had of Israeli war crimes were the testimonies of individual Palestinians living in Gaza, and since they live under the thumb of a violent terrorist regime, they cannot constitute credible evidence.
"Hamas, like Hizbullah, are expert at driving the media agenda," he said. "Both will always have people ready to give interviews condemning Israeli forces for war crimes. They are adept at staging and distoring incidents."
Indeed, Palestinian Authority Minister of Justice Ali Al-Khashan told reporters in Ramallah on Saturday that any lawsuits against Israelis on the basis of the Goldstone Report will have to wait, since the report contains no concrete evidence of war crimes, nor has the PA been able to find any.
"We do not have any documentation for the Israeli crimes," Al-Khashan admitted.
He said the PA is trying to get around this hurdle by becoming a member of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, where it can more easily launch cases against Israelis even without compelling evidence.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
ANOTHER BEAR-IN-CAR STORY
That car burgling bear in Colorado reminded me of an incident that took place many years ago, shortly after WWII.
On the eve of a football game between Baylor and Texas A&M, three or four enthusiastic Aggies drove over to Waco in a nice convertible. During the middle of the night they broke into the cage holding Baylor’s mascot, a real live bear, and managed to lead the beast away.
Now around the State of Texas, Aggies are known for a certain type of brilliance. I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of Polish jokes, especially if you live back East and around the Midwest. In Texas, we just substitute the word “Aggie” for “Pollack” and that should give you an idea as to what kind of brilliance Aggies are known for.
The Aggies put Baylor’s bear into their convertible and drove merrily back to College Station. Apparently the bear was not too comfortable in the back seat because by the time they arrived at Texas A&M, the convertible top had been completely shredded and much of the upholstery had been ripped apart. Or maybe the bear was just plain pissed off at his kidnappers.
You would think that the near totaling of the convertible would have been punishment enough. Nope, it wasn’t. After the kidnapping Aggies obtained some medical attention for numerous scrapes and bruises, they were suspended from school.
A&M's president telephoned Baylor's president and apologized profusely. The bear, which was none the worse for wear, was held at A&M's veterinary school until its keepers arrived to take charge of their mascot. Baylor authorities declined to file any criminal complaints.
On the eve of a football game between Baylor and Texas A&M, three or four enthusiastic Aggies drove over to Waco in a nice convertible. During the middle of the night they broke into the cage holding Baylor’s mascot, a real live bear, and managed to lead the beast away.
Now around the State of Texas, Aggies are known for a certain type of brilliance. I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of Polish jokes, especially if you live back East and around the Midwest. In Texas, we just substitute the word “Aggie” for “Pollack” and that should give you an idea as to what kind of brilliance Aggies are known for.
The Aggies put Baylor’s bear into their convertible and drove merrily back to College Station. Apparently the bear was not too comfortable in the back seat because by the time they arrived at Texas A&M, the convertible top had been completely shredded and much of the upholstery had been ripped apart. Or maybe the bear was just plain pissed off at his kidnappers.
You would think that the near totaling of the convertible would have been punishment enough. Nope, it wasn’t. After the kidnapping Aggies obtained some medical attention for numerous scrapes and bruises, they were suspended from school.
A&M's president telephoned Baylor's president and apologized profusely. The bear, which was none the worse for wear, was held at A&M's veterinary school until its keepers arrived to take charge of their mascot. Baylor authorities declined to file any criminal complaints.
COMPASSIONATE COPS REFUSE TO JAIL CAR BURGLAR CAUGHT RED HANDED
Who says cops are not compassionate?
Last Wednesday, around 2:30 a.m., a couple was awakened in their Colorado Mountain Estates subdivision home near Florissant, Colorado when their car alarm sounded. When they looked out they saw what appeared to be a light moving around inside their car. They called 911.
A swarm of deputies from the Teller County Sheriff’s Department rushed to the scene, surrounded the car and caught a burglar red handed. The burglar turned out to be a young bear who got trapped in the car.
It is common knowledge that bears can easily open car doors. But in this case, when the door somehow got closed, the culprit could not open it from the inside. One of the deputies, obviously a compassionate cop, opened the passenger door of the car and allowed the buglar to make a clean getaway.
The inside of the car was damaged extensively while the bear rummaged around until the deputies arrived. Having been granted his freedom, has this bear learned his lesson or will he take advantage of those compassionate cops by going on to burglarize other cars?
Last Wednesday, around 2:30 a.m., a couple was awakened in their Colorado Mountain Estates subdivision home near Florissant, Colorado when their car alarm sounded. When they looked out they saw what appeared to be a light moving around inside their car. They called 911.
A swarm of deputies from the Teller County Sheriff’s Department rushed to the scene, surrounded the car and caught a burglar red handed. The burglar turned out to be a young bear who got trapped in the car.
It is common knowledge that bears can easily open car doors. But in this case, when the door somehow got closed, the culprit could not open it from the inside. One of the deputies, obviously a compassionate cop, opened the passenger door of the car and allowed the buglar to make a clean getaway.
The inside of the car was damaged extensively while the bear rummaged around until the deputies arrived. Having been granted his freedom, has this bear learned his lesson or will he take advantage of those compassionate cops by going on to burglarize other cars?
Friday, October 16, 2009
THE SKY MAY NOT BE FALLING IN
Something for the 'sky is falling in' eco-nuts to mull over:
THE SECOND BATTLE OF COPENHAGEN
by Pat Buchanan
Townhall.com
October 16, 2009
Before President Obama even landed at Andrews Air Force Base, returning from his mission to Copenhagen to win the 2016 Olympic Games, Chicago had been voted off the island.
Many shared the lamentation of Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, "What has become of America, when Chicago can't steal an election?"
A second and more serious battle of Copenhagen is shaping up, in mid-December, when a world conference gathers to impose limits on greenhouse gases to stop "global warming." Primary purpose: Rope in the Americans who refused to submit to the Kyoto Protocols that Al Gore brought home in the Clinton era.
The long campaign to bring the United States under another global regime -- the newest piece in the architecture of world government -- has been flagging since 2008. Then, it seemed a lock with the election of Obama and a veto-proof Democratic Senate.
Why has the campaign stalled? Because global warming has stalled. The hottest year of modern times, 1998, came and went a decade ago.
As BBC climate correspondent Paul Hudson writes: "For the last 11 years, we have not observed any increase in global temperatures. And our climate models did not forecast it, even though manmade carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise."
What this powerfully suggests is that what man does and does not do is far less responsible for climate change, if it is responsible at all, than other factors over which he has no control.
Consider. Though the emissions of carbon dioxide rose constantly throughout the 20th century -- with the industrialization of the West, Japan, Southeast Asia and, finally, China and India -- global temperatures have not risen steadily at all. They have fluctuated.
John Sununu, writing in the St. Croix Review, says the Earth underwent "cooling in the 1920s, heating in the 1930s and 1940s, cooling in the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s, warming in the 1980s and 1990s, and cooling in the past decade."
But if there is no crisis, why are we even going to Copenhagen? And if there is no causal connection between carbon dioxide and global warming, what is the true cause of climate change?
Some scientists say that 98 percent of the Earth's temperature can be explained by the sun. When the sun's energy increases, a matter over which man has zero control, the Earth's temperature rises. When the sun's energy diminishes, the Earth's temperature falls.
One solar scientist, Piers Corbyn, claims to have found a link between solar charged particles hitting the Earth and global warming and cooling.
Others, like professor Don Easterbrook of Western Washington University, contend that the oceans explain climate change. As they heat and cool cyclically, the Earth heats and cools. And where the oceans were cooling for 40 years before the 1990s, they have lately been heating up. Easterbrook says these cycles tend to last for 30 years.
As Hudson notes, there are scientists who claim they have taken all these factors into consideration and insist that the Earth, over the long haul, is warming. But Hudson cites Mojib Latif of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who says we are in the fist stage of a long-term cooling trend that will last another 10 to 20 years.
The anecdotal evidence almost daily contradicts Al Gore and the end-of-times environmentalists. Lately, there have been record-breaking cold spells in the Midwest and West. Snow came to Colorado this October, postponing a baseball playoff game. The hurricane season turned out to be among the mildest on record. Contrary to predictions, the polar bear population seems to be doing fine.
While the ice cap at the North Pole is receding, the Antarctic ice cap, which contains 90 percent of the world's ice, is expanding.
Moreover, receding ice in the Arctic is opening up a northwest passage from Europe to Asia. The Russians believe the immense mineral resources of the Arctic may soon be accessible. While we wring our hands, they are rushing to get them.
The mounting evidence that global warming has halted and man is not responsible for climate change has thrown the Kyoto II lobby into something of a panic. Barbara Boxer and John Kerry are re-branding the Senate cap-and-trade bill as a national security measure.
If, however, cap-and-trade, which the Congressional Budget Office says will be another blow to economic growth, can be stopped before the Copenhagen summit in December, the republic may have dodged another bullet. And the goal of the globalists -- an end to the independence and sovereignty of the United States, and the creation of a world government -- will have sustained yet another welcome postponement.
THE SECOND BATTLE OF COPENHAGEN
by Pat Buchanan
Townhall.com
October 16, 2009
Before President Obama even landed at Andrews Air Force Base, returning from his mission to Copenhagen to win the 2016 Olympic Games, Chicago had been voted off the island.
Many shared the lamentation of Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, "What has become of America, when Chicago can't steal an election?"
A second and more serious battle of Copenhagen is shaping up, in mid-December, when a world conference gathers to impose limits on greenhouse gases to stop "global warming." Primary purpose: Rope in the Americans who refused to submit to the Kyoto Protocols that Al Gore brought home in the Clinton era.
The long campaign to bring the United States under another global regime -- the newest piece in the architecture of world government -- has been flagging since 2008. Then, it seemed a lock with the election of Obama and a veto-proof Democratic Senate.
Why has the campaign stalled? Because global warming has stalled. The hottest year of modern times, 1998, came and went a decade ago.
As BBC climate correspondent Paul Hudson writes: "For the last 11 years, we have not observed any increase in global temperatures. And our climate models did not forecast it, even though manmade carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise."
What this powerfully suggests is that what man does and does not do is far less responsible for climate change, if it is responsible at all, than other factors over which he has no control.
Consider. Though the emissions of carbon dioxide rose constantly throughout the 20th century -- with the industrialization of the West, Japan, Southeast Asia and, finally, China and India -- global temperatures have not risen steadily at all. They have fluctuated.
John Sununu, writing in the St. Croix Review, says the Earth underwent "cooling in the 1920s, heating in the 1930s and 1940s, cooling in the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s, warming in the 1980s and 1990s, and cooling in the past decade."
But if there is no crisis, why are we even going to Copenhagen? And if there is no causal connection between carbon dioxide and global warming, what is the true cause of climate change?
Some scientists say that 98 percent of the Earth's temperature can be explained by the sun. When the sun's energy increases, a matter over which man has zero control, the Earth's temperature rises. When the sun's energy diminishes, the Earth's temperature falls.
One solar scientist, Piers Corbyn, claims to have found a link between solar charged particles hitting the Earth and global warming and cooling.
Others, like professor Don Easterbrook of Western Washington University, contend that the oceans explain climate change. As they heat and cool cyclically, the Earth heats and cools. And where the oceans were cooling for 40 years before the 1990s, they have lately been heating up. Easterbrook says these cycles tend to last for 30 years.
As Hudson notes, there are scientists who claim they have taken all these factors into consideration and insist that the Earth, over the long haul, is warming. But Hudson cites Mojib Latif of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who says we are in the fist stage of a long-term cooling trend that will last another 10 to 20 years.
The anecdotal evidence almost daily contradicts Al Gore and the end-of-times environmentalists. Lately, there have been record-breaking cold spells in the Midwest and West. Snow came to Colorado this October, postponing a baseball playoff game. The hurricane season turned out to be among the mildest on record. Contrary to predictions, the polar bear population seems to be doing fine.
While the ice cap at the North Pole is receding, the Antarctic ice cap, which contains 90 percent of the world's ice, is expanding.
Moreover, receding ice in the Arctic is opening up a northwest passage from Europe to Asia. The Russians believe the immense mineral resources of the Arctic may soon be accessible. While we wring our hands, they are rushing to get them.
The mounting evidence that global warming has halted and man is not responsible for climate change has thrown the Kyoto II lobby into something of a panic. Barbara Boxer and John Kerry are re-branding the Senate cap-and-trade bill as a national security measure.
If, however, cap-and-trade, which the Congressional Budget Office says will be another blow to economic growth, can be stopped before the Copenhagen summit in December, the republic may have dodged another bullet. And the goal of the globalists -- an end to the independence and sovereignty of the United States, and the creation of a world government -- will have sustained yet another welcome postponement.
DRUG CARTELS DO NOT GET MILITARY-STYLE WEAPONS FROM TEXAS GUN DEALERS (2)
On 3-27-09, I blogged "Drug Cartels Do Not Get Military-Style Weapons From Texas Gun Dealers." I wrote that President Obama, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder are all claiming that the Mexican drug cartels are getting 90 percent of their military assault weapons from the United States, mostly from Texas gun dealers.
On 4-22-09, I blogged “Not From Texas Gun Dealers.” I noted that the 90 percent figure has been repeated many times, but FactCheck.org says it's bogus: "The figure represents only the percentage of crime guns that have been submitted by Mexican officials and traced by U.S. officials. ... U.S. and Mexican officials both say that Mexico recovers more guns than it submits for tracing ... ". And FactCheck says Mexico only submits those it already has reason to believe came from the United States.
The Obama administration is clearly and deliberately misleading us in an effort to get public and congressional support for the reinstatement of the expired ban on military assault weapons. Yesterday, the Houston Chronicle published a letter from Joan Neuhaus Schaan, a fellow for Homeland Security and Terrorism programs in the prestigious James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.
Schaan’s letter unequivocally demonstrates that the Obama administration has been throwing out bogus statistics. Of the weapons acquired by Mexican drug cartels, only 20-25 percent come from the United States. And that's a helluva long way from 90 percent. Here is her letter as it appeared in yesterday’s Chronicle:
MISLEADING GUN STATISTIC
The Associated Press article “ATF: Houston effort helps fight gun flow to Mexico” (chron.com, Oct. 1) cited an often quoted but misleading statistic in the debate on the magnitude and significance of the role of U.S. weapons in Mexican violence. Specifically, the percentage of weapons recovered in Mexico that originate in the United States is not 90 percent, but in the neighborhood of 20 percent to 25 percent. The 90 percent figure was primarily derived from congressional testimony of William Neville in April 2009. At the time he stated that of the weapons submitted by Mexico for tracing, which were successfully traced, 90 percent came from the United States.
Looking at the statistics more closely, they paint a different picture. The statistics required to calculate a figure must be derived from a variety of sources, not all of which correlate precisely, but do correlate approximately. The 2008 CENAPI (Government of Mexico's Planning, Analysis and Information Center for Combating Crime) data indicates seizures of 29,824 firearms in Mexico in 2008. Other reports indicate 27,000 to 29,000 weapon seizures. According to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, in fiscal year 2008, 7,743 firearms were submitted for tracing, and approximately 6,700, or 87 percent, were traced to the United States. Of those successfully traced, two-thirds were U.S.-manufactured and one-third had been imported into the U.S. and trafficked across the border.
While it is clear the United States plays a part, the portion of the responsibility should not be overstated. The figure appears to be closer to 20 percent to 25 percent. Other weapons are believed to come from Asia, Europe, South America and the Soviet bloc states.
Increasingly the weapons arriving in Mexico from other source countries are of military grade, as the cartel arms race rages. These military-grade weapons are not for sale to individuals in the United States, however; to the extent U.S. military weapons have been found, they have most likely been sold to or provided by the U.S. government to another government and subsequently diverted.
What is the result of the 90 percent myth? Significant resources are being dedicated to the weapons trafficking along the U.S.-Mexico border, but anecdotal evidence suggests the searches have resulted in more cash than weapons. The increased searches clearly have a valuable deterrent effect, but the more significant issue is that of military-grade weapons arriving in Mexico on its shores and from Central American neighbors.
Joan Neuhaus Schaan, fellow for homeland security and terrorism programs, Baker Institute, Rice University
On 4-22-09, I blogged “Not From Texas Gun Dealers.” I noted that the 90 percent figure has been repeated many times, but FactCheck.org says it's bogus: "The figure represents only the percentage of crime guns that have been submitted by Mexican officials and traced by U.S. officials. ... U.S. and Mexican officials both say that Mexico recovers more guns than it submits for tracing ... ". And FactCheck says Mexico only submits those it already has reason to believe came from the United States.
The Obama administration is clearly and deliberately misleading us in an effort to get public and congressional support for the reinstatement of the expired ban on military assault weapons. Yesterday, the Houston Chronicle published a letter from Joan Neuhaus Schaan, a fellow for Homeland Security and Terrorism programs in the prestigious James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.
Schaan’s letter unequivocally demonstrates that the Obama administration has been throwing out bogus statistics. Of the weapons acquired by Mexican drug cartels, only 20-25 percent come from the United States. And that's a helluva long way from 90 percent. Here is her letter as it appeared in yesterday’s Chronicle:
MISLEADING GUN STATISTIC
The Associated Press article “ATF: Houston effort helps fight gun flow to Mexico” (chron.com, Oct. 1) cited an often quoted but misleading statistic in the debate on the magnitude and significance of the role of U.S. weapons in Mexican violence. Specifically, the percentage of weapons recovered in Mexico that originate in the United States is not 90 percent, but in the neighborhood of 20 percent to 25 percent. The 90 percent figure was primarily derived from congressional testimony of William Neville in April 2009. At the time he stated that of the weapons submitted by Mexico for tracing, which were successfully traced, 90 percent came from the United States.
Looking at the statistics more closely, they paint a different picture. The statistics required to calculate a figure must be derived from a variety of sources, not all of which correlate precisely, but do correlate approximately. The 2008 CENAPI (Government of Mexico's Planning, Analysis and Information Center for Combating Crime) data indicates seizures of 29,824 firearms in Mexico in 2008. Other reports indicate 27,000 to 29,000 weapon seizures. According to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, in fiscal year 2008, 7,743 firearms were submitted for tracing, and approximately 6,700, or 87 percent, were traced to the United States. Of those successfully traced, two-thirds were U.S.-manufactured and one-third had been imported into the U.S. and trafficked across the border.
While it is clear the United States plays a part, the portion of the responsibility should not be overstated. The figure appears to be closer to 20 percent to 25 percent. Other weapons are believed to come from Asia, Europe, South America and the Soviet bloc states.
Increasingly the weapons arriving in Mexico from other source countries are of military grade, as the cartel arms race rages. These military-grade weapons are not for sale to individuals in the United States, however; to the extent U.S. military weapons have been found, they have most likely been sold to or provided by the U.S. government to another government and subsequently diverted.
What is the result of the 90 percent myth? Significant resources are being dedicated to the weapons trafficking along the U.S.-Mexico border, but anecdotal evidence suggests the searches have resulted in more cash than weapons. The increased searches clearly have a valuable deterrent effect, but the more significant issue is that of military-grade weapons arriving in Mexico on its shores and from Central American neighbors.
Joan Neuhaus Schaan, fellow for homeland security and terrorism programs, Baker Institute, Rice University
Thursday, October 15, 2009
VIOLENT YOUTHS ARE THUGS, NOT DELINQUENTS
In Chicago, four 16 to19-year-old youths were charged with beating, clubbing and stomping a 16-year-old honor student to death. Why? Because he just happened to be walking along when he found himself caught in the middle of a fight between two rival gangs. In Florida, a 15-year-old boy was doused with rubbing alcohol and set on fire by four 15-year-olds and a 13-year-old. Why? Because he tried to keep them from stealing his father’s bycicle.
In every American city, gangbangers as young as the mid-teens are shooting up neighborhoods intending to kill rival gang members, but often killing or wounding innocent bystanders. Young kids are selling dope on street corners, robbing convenience stores and committing other serious crimes, crimes for which adults would be sent to prison in a hot New York minute.
Our outmodet juvenile laws were designed for "delinquents in need of help" on the assumption that children are still in a developmental stage and are incapable of forming criminal intent or understanding the consequences of their wrongful acts.
Our state and federal laws have set an arbitrary age, usually 18, at which an offender is judged to be an adult. In some states it is 16 or 17. If a juvenile commits a really serious crime, he can be referred from a juvenile jurisdiction to an adult court.
I've always believed that setting an arbitrary age divide was a lot of horseshit. Delinquents are those little farts who commit petty crimes, not those assholes who shoot up neighborhoods, sell dope, commit armed robberies and other serious crimes. And certainly not those youths in Florida who set that young kid on fire, or those thugs in Chicago who beat that honor student to death. It is way past the time for us to stop classifying dangerous youths as delinquents.
Our laws on juveniles should be rewritten to protect the public from young criminals. Instead of letting a juvenile court determine whether a juvenile should be tried as an adult, it should be the other way around. For serious crimes, a youth should be handled as an adult from the get-go and then the courts can determine whether or not he should be referred to a juvenile court as a delinquent.
And our laws should also be changed to allow release to the media of the names and pictures of juveniles who have been charged with serious crimes. Florida already does this and the names and pictures of those five fire setting thugs were made available for publication right after they were arrested.
Here are Bob Walsh’s thoughts on the pukes who participate in gangbanger shootings:
VIOLENT YOUNG SOCIOPATHIC ASSHOLE
By Bob Walsh
PacoVilla’s Corrections blog
October 14, 2009
Andrew Aradoz is 16years old and, if he doesn't get killed in prison, with be sucking up taxpayers money for the next 24 years or so.
In June of 2007, when he was 14 years old, he and a couple of homies started blasting with a .45 at a few rivals in a supermarket parking lot in the teeming metropolis of Woodland. They hit one of their targets, a 15-year old gangbanger associate who very nearly died as a result, likely costing the taxpayers a ton of money while saving his sorry ass.
The driver, Kory Sanchez, who was over 18 at the time, got 19 years for attempted murder to benefit a criminal street gang.
Aradoz, aka Savage to his road puppies, got a total of 24 years and some change for attempted murder, car theft, use of a firearm and various gang enhancements. He was the actual shooter.
I don't know about you, but I know I am getting tired of these violent youngsters pulling crap like this. Unfortunately they often miss their targets and hit innocent bystanders. Even when they hit who they are shooting at, the taxpayers often foot the bill in both directions.
I realize the constitution gives freedom of association and RICO [Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations] prosecutions take time and resources. Sometimes I think we should just round the little bastards up, put them in an arena with baseball bats, put it on pay per view and split the take with the last man standing. But that's probably illegal.
In every American city, gangbangers as young as the mid-teens are shooting up neighborhoods intending to kill rival gang members, but often killing or wounding innocent bystanders. Young kids are selling dope on street corners, robbing convenience stores and committing other serious crimes, crimes for which adults would be sent to prison in a hot New York minute.
Our outmodet juvenile laws were designed for "delinquents in need of help" on the assumption that children are still in a developmental stage and are incapable of forming criminal intent or understanding the consequences of their wrongful acts.
Our state and federal laws have set an arbitrary age, usually 18, at which an offender is judged to be an adult. In some states it is 16 or 17. If a juvenile commits a really serious crime, he can be referred from a juvenile jurisdiction to an adult court.
I've always believed that setting an arbitrary age divide was a lot of horseshit. Delinquents are those little farts who commit petty crimes, not those assholes who shoot up neighborhoods, sell dope, commit armed robberies and other serious crimes. And certainly not those youths in Florida who set that young kid on fire, or those thugs in Chicago who beat that honor student to death. It is way past the time for us to stop classifying dangerous youths as delinquents.
Our laws on juveniles should be rewritten to protect the public from young criminals. Instead of letting a juvenile court determine whether a juvenile should be tried as an adult, it should be the other way around. For serious crimes, a youth should be handled as an adult from the get-go and then the courts can determine whether or not he should be referred to a juvenile court as a delinquent.
And our laws should also be changed to allow release to the media of the names and pictures of juveniles who have been charged with serious crimes. Florida already does this and the names and pictures of those five fire setting thugs were made available for publication right after they were arrested.
Here are Bob Walsh’s thoughts on the pukes who participate in gangbanger shootings:
VIOLENT YOUNG SOCIOPATHIC ASSHOLE
By Bob Walsh
PacoVilla’s Corrections blog
October 14, 2009
Andrew Aradoz is 16years old and, if he doesn't get killed in prison, with be sucking up taxpayers money for the next 24 years or so.
In June of 2007, when he was 14 years old, he and a couple of homies started blasting with a .45 at a few rivals in a supermarket parking lot in the teeming metropolis of Woodland. They hit one of their targets, a 15-year old gangbanger associate who very nearly died as a result, likely costing the taxpayers a ton of money while saving his sorry ass.
The driver, Kory Sanchez, who was over 18 at the time, got 19 years for attempted murder to benefit a criminal street gang.
Aradoz, aka Savage to his road puppies, got a total of 24 years and some change for attempted murder, car theft, use of a firearm and various gang enhancements. He was the actual shooter.
I don't know about you, but I know I am getting tired of these violent youngsters pulling crap like this. Unfortunately they often miss their targets and hit innocent bystanders. Even when they hit who they are shooting at, the taxpayers often foot the bill in both directions.
I realize the constitution gives freedom of association and RICO [Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations] prosecutions take time and resources. Sometimes I think we should just round the little bastards up, put them in an arena with baseball bats, put it on pay per view and split the take with the last man standing. But that's probably illegal.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
THE OFFICER SLEDGEHAMMER AWARD
As a law and order advocate who has a high regard for police officers, I am loathe to criticize cops who make inadvertent mistakes during the course of a police action. However, there are times when I cannot restrain myself. One of those instances involved a LaMarque, Texas woman police officer who shot a dog and an innocent bystander when she mistook two women playing with a Pit Bull as a vicious dog attack [“Women Cops As Dangerous As Women Drivers" (10-8-09)].
That dog incident reminded me of the 1980s TV series SLEDEHAMMER!, a comedy about the misadventures of a shoot first and ask questions later police detective. I have now decided to establish THE OFFICER SLEDGEHAMMER AWARD which will be given to cops who fuck up by firing their weapons without knowing what's actually happening before their very own eyes. Naturally, the inaugural award goes to that clueless cop from LaMarque for shooting a playful dog and an innocent bystander.
The second Officer Sledgehammer Award will be given jointly to Officer Brian Lilly and Sgt. Sean Coutts of the Phoenix Police Department. Lilly shot a homeowner six times after the victim called 911 to report that he was holding a man at gunpoint who had just broken into his house. Coutts neglected to tell Lilly that it was the homeowner with the gun. Both were responsible for the shoot first and ask questions later wounding of the homeowner, Lilly for the shooting and Coutts for his negligence.
The wounded homeowner can consider himself fortunate that it was Officer Lilly who did the shooting. Had the LaMarque cop answered this 911 call, she would have shot not only the homeowner, but his wife and son as well.
The homeowner is suing the officers and the City of Phoenix. Here is the story:
FAMILY SAYS 911 TAPE CAUGHT COPS PLANNING COVER-UP AFTER SHOOTING
BY Jamie Ross
Courthouse News Service
September 23, 2009
PHOENIX - A homeowner says a Phoenix police officer shot him six times in the back during a 911 home-invasion call, and the 911 tape recorded the officer's partner saying, "That's all right. Don't worry about it. I got your back. ... We clear?" The family says the officers were not aware that the 911 call was still recording as they spoke about covering up the shooting.
In their complaint in Maricopa County Court, Anthony and Lesley Arambula say an armed intruder "crashed through the front window" of their home on Sept. 17, 2008 and ran into one of their son's bedrooms.
Anthony, worried about his son who was still in his bedroom, says he "held the intruder calmly at gunpoint" and called 911.
Phoenix Police officers already in the neighborhood heard the crash of the Arambulas' window. When they approached the house, Lesley says, she told Sgt. Sean Coutts that her husband was inside holding the intruder at gunpoint. Lesley says Coutts failed to pass on that information to the two other officers.
Inside the house, the Arambulas say, Officer Brian Lilly shot Anthony six times in the back while he was still on the phone with the 911 operator - twice when he was on the ground.
The officers ran into the bedroom after Anthony told them, "You just killed ... you just killed the homeowner. The bad guy is in there."
The complaint states that Officer Lilly "admitted that it was only after Tony was laying, bullet-ridden, on the ground that he assessed the situation. The 911 tape continued to record what happened even after Officer Lilly unloaded his weapon into Tony, including Officer Lilly's post-shooting, one-word 'assessment': 'Fuck.'
"Tony believed he was going to die; the 911 tape records his plaintive goodbye to his family: '... I love you ... I love you.' Then Tony made what he believed was a dying request to the officers; he did not want his young family to see him shot and bloodied. Officers callously ignored his request and painfully dragged Tony by his injured leg, through the home and out to his backyard patio, where they left him bloodied and shot right in front of Lesley, Matthew and Zachary."
The Arambulas say the officers later dragged Anthony onto gravel, then put him on top of the hot hood of a squad car, and "drove the squad car down the street with Tony lying on top, writhing in pain."
According to the complaint, Lilly can be heard on the 911 tape telling Coutts, "We fucked up."
Lilly says on the tape that he did not know where Anthony's gun was when he shot him and that he "opened fire because he heard loud noises and saw someone who looked like he might be the 'Hispanic' male they were pursuing" before getting to the Arambulas' house, according to the complaint.
The complaint states: "Sgt. Coutts knew that officers has just shot up and likely killed an innocent homeowner and the husband of Lesley, with whom he had spoken before entering the home, instead of the armed intruder. Sgt. Coutts was quick to commence the cover-up of their terrible mistake. Sgt. Coutts asked Office Lilly where Tony's gun was at the time Officer Lilly had opened fire on Tony. Officer Lilly admitted that he did not know where Tony's gun was: 'I don't know. I heard screaming and I fired.'"
Lilly later told a police internal affairs investigator that Anthony had pointed his gun in his direction, "in the 'ready' position," the complaint states. But Anthony Arambula says he was facing away from the officers, who could not have even seen his gun.
The complaint continues: "Still not knowing that he is being recorded n the 911 tape, Sgt. Coutts interrupted Officer Lilly's admission and apology with his assurance that the cover-up would commence: 'That's all right. Don't worry about it. I got your back. ... We clear?'"
After the shooting, the Arambulas say, the Phoenix Police Department treated them "like suspects in a drug bust," denying Lesley, Michael and Zachary information about Anthony's condition and denying friends and family members access to him at the hospital.
Anthony Arambula survived, but continues to suffer pain, which he expects will last for the rest of his life.
The City of Phoenix and Officer Dzenan Ahmetovic also are named as defendants.
The Arambulas seek punitive damages for gross negligence, civil rights violations, failure to supervise, excessive force, deliberate indifference to medical needs, false arrest, and emotional distress. They are represented by Michael Manning with Stinson Morrison Hecker.
That dog incident reminded me of the 1980s TV series SLEDEHAMMER!, a comedy about the misadventures of a shoot first and ask questions later police detective. I have now decided to establish THE OFFICER SLEDGEHAMMER AWARD which will be given to cops who fuck up by firing their weapons without knowing what's actually happening before their very own eyes. Naturally, the inaugural award goes to that clueless cop from LaMarque for shooting a playful dog and an innocent bystander.
The second Officer Sledgehammer Award will be given jointly to Officer Brian Lilly and Sgt. Sean Coutts of the Phoenix Police Department. Lilly shot a homeowner six times after the victim called 911 to report that he was holding a man at gunpoint who had just broken into his house. Coutts neglected to tell Lilly that it was the homeowner with the gun. Both were responsible for the shoot first and ask questions later wounding of the homeowner, Lilly for the shooting and Coutts for his negligence.
The wounded homeowner can consider himself fortunate that it was Officer Lilly who did the shooting. Had the LaMarque cop answered this 911 call, she would have shot not only the homeowner, but his wife and son as well.
The homeowner is suing the officers and the City of Phoenix. Here is the story:
FAMILY SAYS 911 TAPE CAUGHT COPS PLANNING COVER-UP AFTER SHOOTING
BY Jamie Ross
Courthouse News Service
September 23, 2009
PHOENIX - A homeowner says a Phoenix police officer shot him six times in the back during a 911 home-invasion call, and the 911 tape recorded the officer's partner saying, "That's all right. Don't worry about it. I got your back. ... We clear?" The family says the officers were not aware that the 911 call was still recording as they spoke about covering up the shooting.
In their complaint in Maricopa County Court, Anthony and Lesley Arambula say an armed intruder "crashed through the front window" of their home on Sept. 17, 2008 and ran into one of their son's bedrooms.
Anthony, worried about his son who was still in his bedroom, says he "held the intruder calmly at gunpoint" and called 911.
Phoenix Police officers already in the neighborhood heard the crash of the Arambulas' window. When they approached the house, Lesley says, she told Sgt. Sean Coutts that her husband was inside holding the intruder at gunpoint. Lesley says Coutts failed to pass on that information to the two other officers.
Inside the house, the Arambulas say, Officer Brian Lilly shot Anthony six times in the back while he was still on the phone with the 911 operator - twice when he was on the ground.
The officers ran into the bedroom after Anthony told them, "You just killed ... you just killed the homeowner. The bad guy is in there."
The complaint states that Officer Lilly "admitted that it was only after Tony was laying, bullet-ridden, on the ground that he assessed the situation. The 911 tape continued to record what happened even after Officer Lilly unloaded his weapon into Tony, including Officer Lilly's post-shooting, one-word 'assessment': 'Fuck.'
"Tony believed he was going to die; the 911 tape records his plaintive goodbye to his family: '... I love you ... I love you.' Then Tony made what he believed was a dying request to the officers; he did not want his young family to see him shot and bloodied. Officers callously ignored his request and painfully dragged Tony by his injured leg, through the home and out to his backyard patio, where they left him bloodied and shot right in front of Lesley, Matthew and Zachary."
The Arambulas say the officers later dragged Anthony onto gravel, then put him on top of the hot hood of a squad car, and "drove the squad car down the street with Tony lying on top, writhing in pain."
According to the complaint, Lilly can be heard on the 911 tape telling Coutts, "We fucked up."
Lilly says on the tape that he did not know where Anthony's gun was when he shot him and that he "opened fire because he heard loud noises and saw someone who looked like he might be the 'Hispanic' male they were pursuing" before getting to the Arambulas' house, according to the complaint.
The complaint states: "Sgt. Coutts knew that officers has just shot up and likely killed an innocent homeowner and the husband of Lesley, with whom he had spoken before entering the home, instead of the armed intruder. Sgt. Coutts was quick to commence the cover-up of their terrible mistake. Sgt. Coutts asked Office Lilly where Tony's gun was at the time Officer Lilly had opened fire on Tony. Officer Lilly admitted that he did not know where Tony's gun was: 'I don't know. I heard screaming and I fired.'"
Lilly later told a police internal affairs investigator that Anthony had pointed his gun in his direction, "in the 'ready' position," the complaint states. But Anthony Arambula says he was facing away from the officers, who could not have even seen his gun.
The complaint continues: "Still not knowing that he is being recorded n the 911 tape, Sgt. Coutts interrupted Officer Lilly's admission and apology with his assurance that the cover-up would commence: 'That's all right. Don't worry about it. I got your back. ... We clear?'"
After the shooting, the Arambulas say, the Phoenix Police Department treated them "like suspects in a drug bust," denying Lesley, Michael and Zachary information about Anthony's condition and denying friends and family members access to him at the hospital.
Anthony Arambula survived, but continues to suffer pain, which he expects will last for the rest of his life.
The City of Phoenix and Officer Dzenan Ahmetovic also are named as defendants.
The Arambulas seek punitive damages for gross negligence, civil rights violations, failure to supervise, excessive force, deliberate indifference to medical needs, false arrest, and emotional distress. They are represented by Michael Manning with Stinson Morrison Hecker.
DUMBING DOWN OF THE AMERICAN COLLEGE EDUCATION
A MINORITY VIEW: ACADEMIC DISHONESTY
by Walter E. Williams
Townhall.com
October 14, 2009
College education is a costly proposition with tuition, room and board at some colleges topping $50,000 a year. Is it worth it? Increasing evidence suggests that it's not. Since the 1960s, academic achievement scores have plummeted, but student college grade point averages (GPA) have skyrocketed. In October 2001, the Boston Globe published an article entitled "Harvard's Quiet Secret: Rampant Grade Inflation." The article reported that a record 91 percent of Harvard University students were awarded honors during the spring graduation. The newspaper called Harvard's grading practices "the laughing stock of the Ivy League." Harvard is by no means unique. For example, 80 percent of the grades given at the University of Illinois are A's and B's. Fifty percent of students at Columbia University are on the Dean's list. At Stanford University, where F grades used to be banned, only 6 percent of student grades were as low as a C. In the 1930s, the average GPA at American colleges and universities was 2.35, about a C plus; today the national average GPA is 3.2, more than a B.
Today's college students are generally dumber than their predecessors. An article in the Wall Street Journal (1/30/97) reported that a "bachelor of Arts degree in 1997 may not be the equal of a graduation certificate from an academic high school in 1947." The American Council on Education found that only 15 percent of universities require tests for general knowledge; only 17 percent for critical thinking; and only 19 percent for minimum competency. According a recent National Assessment of Adult Literacy, the percentage of college graduates proficient in prose literacy has declined from 40 percent to 31 percent within the past decade. Employers report that many college graduates lack the basic skills of critical thinking, writing and problem-solving and some employers find they must hire English and math teachers to teach them how to write memos and perform simple computations.
What is being labeled grade inflation is simply a euphemism for academic dishonesty. After all, it's dishonesty when a professor assigns a grade the student did not earn. When a university or college confers a degree upon a student who has not mastered critical thinking skills, writing and problem-solving, it's academic dishonesty. Of course, I might be in error calling it dishonesty. Perhaps academic standards have been set so low that idiots could earn A's and B's.
Academic dishonesty and deception go beyond fraudulent grades. "Minding the Campus" is a newsletter published by the Manhattan Institute. Edward Fiske tells a chilling tale of deception titled "Gaming the College Rankings" (9/17/09). The U.S. News and World Report college rankings are worshiped by some college administrators, and they go to great lengths to strengthen their rankings. Some years ago, University of Miami omitted scores of athletes and special admission students so as to boost SAT scores of incoming freshmen. At least one college mailed dollar bills to alumni with a request that they send them back to the annual fund thereby inflating the number of alumni donors.
"Gaming the College Rankings" contains an insert by John Leo, who is the editor of "Minding the Campus," reporting that in the mid-1990s, Boston University raised its SAT scores by excluding the verbal scores of foreign students whilst including their math scores. Monmouth University simply added 200 SAT points to its group scores. University of California reported that 34 of its professors were members of a prestigious engineering association when in fact only 17 of their current faculty were. Baylor University offered students, who were already admitted to the university, $300 in bookstore credits to take the SAT again in the hopes of boosting Baylor's SAT averages.
Academic dishonesty, coupled with incompetency, particularly at the undergraduate level, doesn't bode well for the future of our nation. And who's to blame? Most of the blame lies at the feet of the boards of trustees, who bear ultimate responsibility for the management of our colleges and universities.
by Walter E. Williams
Townhall.com
October 14, 2009
College education is a costly proposition with tuition, room and board at some colleges topping $50,000 a year. Is it worth it? Increasing evidence suggests that it's not. Since the 1960s, academic achievement scores have plummeted, but student college grade point averages (GPA) have skyrocketed. In October 2001, the Boston Globe published an article entitled "Harvard's Quiet Secret: Rampant Grade Inflation." The article reported that a record 91 percent of Harvard University students were awarded honors during the spring graduation. The newspaper called Harvard's grading practices "the laughing stock of the Ivy League." Harvard is by no means unique. For example, 80 percent of the grades given at the University of Illinois are A's and B's. Fifty percent of students at Columbia University are on the Dean's list. At Stanford University, where F grades used to be banned, only 6 percent of student grades were as low as a C. In the 1930s, the average GPA at American colleges and universities was 2.35, about a C plus; today the national average GPA is 3.2, more than a B.
Today's college students are generally dumber than their predecessors. An article in the Wall Street Journal (1/30/97) reported that a "bachelor of Arts degree in 1997 may not be the equal of a graduation certificate from an academic high school in 1947." The American Council on Education found that only 15 percent of universities require tests for general knowledge; only 17 percent for critical thinking; and only 19 percent for minimum competency. According a recent National Assessment of Adult Literacy, the percentage of college graduates proficient in prose literacy has declined from 40 percent to 31 percent within the past decade. Employers report that many college graduates lack the basic skills of critical thinking, writing and problem-solving and some employers find they must hire English and math teachers to teach them how to write memos and perform simple computations.
What is being labeled grade inflation is simply a euphemism for academic dishonesty. After all, it's dishonesty when a professor assigns a grade the student did not earn. When a university or college confers a degree upon a student who has not mastered critical thinking skills, writing and problem-solving, it's academic dishonesty. Of course, I might be in error calling it dishonesty. Perhaps academic standards have been set so low that idiots could earn A's and B's.
Academic dishonesty and deception go beyond fraudulent grades. "Minding the Campus" is a newsletter published by the Manhattan Institute. Edward Fiske tells a chilling tale of deception titled "Gaming the College Rankings" (9/17/09). The U.S. News and World Report college rankings are worshiped by some college administrators, and they go to great lengths to strengthen their rankings. Some years ago, University of Miami omitted scores of athletes and special admission students so as to boost SAT scores of incoming freshmen. At least one college mailed dollar bills to alumni with a request that they send them back to the annual fund thereby inflating the number of alumni donors.
"Gaming the College Rankings" contains an insert by John Leo, who is the editor of "Minding the Campus," reporting that in the mid-1990s, Boston University raised its SAT scores by excluding the verbal scores of foreign students whilst including their math scores. Monmouth University simply added 200 SAT points to its group scores. University of California reported that 34 of its professors were members of a prestigious engineering association when in fact only 17 of their current faculty were. Baylor University offered students, who were already admitted to the university, $300 in bookstore credits to take the SAT again in the hopes of boosting Baylor's SAT averages.
Academic dishonesty, coupled with incompetency, particularly at the undergraduate level, doesn't bode well for the future of our nation. And who's to blame? Most of the blame lies at the feet of the boards of trustees, who bear ultimate responsibility for the management of our colleges and universities.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
SCHOOL AUTHORITIES HAVE LOST THEIR MINDS, IF THEY EVER HAD ANY
I could not have said it any better than the way Bob Walsh described it.
ZERO TOLERANCE OR ZERO BRAINS????
By Bob Walsh
PacoVilla’s Corrections blog
October 13, 2009
I confess to being a fan of good discipline in school. You should not have to put up with kids carrying guns, assaulting staff, assaulting other students, tearing up property, or even being bullies. At some point, however, it becomes stupidity.
Take for instance arch criminal Zachary Christie, age 6. He was admittedly guilty of the heinous offense of taking a Cub Scout eating implement, a spork, to school with him to use at lunch. He had just joined up and wanted to use his new knife-spoon-fork combination. His sentence, 45 days in a "reform school" program operated off-site by the school district.
That will show him I guess. What it will show him is another matter. Maybe how stupid and inflexible adults can be if they have their heads up their asses and their brains disengaged.
His parents, who are not idiots, are home-schooling him for the 45 days rather than send him to "reform school".
I'm sure the school authorities in Newark, Delaware are pleased that they have made their campuses safe from 6-year olds armed with sporks.
ZERO TOLERANCE OR ZERO BRAINS????
By Bob Walsh
PacoVilla’s Corrections blog
October 13, 2009
I confess to being a fan of good discipline in school. You should not have to put up with kids carrying guns, assaulting staff, assaulting other students, tearing up property, or even being bullies. At some point, however, it becomes stupidity.
Take for instance arch criminal Zachary Christie, age 6. He was admittedly guilty of the heinous offense of taking a Cub Scout eating implement, a spork, to school with him to use at lunch. He had just joined up and wanted to use his new knife-spoon-fork combination. His sentence, 45 days in a "reform school" program operated off-site by the school district.
That will show him I guess. What it will show him is another matter. Maybe how stupid and inflexible adults can be if they have their heads up their asses and their brains disengaged.
His parents, who are not idiots, are home-schooling him for the 45 days rather than send him to "reform school".
I'm sure the school authorities in Newark, Delaware are pleased that they have made their campuses safe from 6-year olds armed with sporks.
MODERATE? PEACE PARTNER? (2)
PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY EQUATES SUICIDE BOMBERS TO JEWISH HOMES
Israel Today
October 12, 2009
A top advisor to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday drew moral equivalence between the actions of Palestinian terrorists and Israeli Jews by insisting there was no difference between a suicide bomber and a Jew who builds his home on lands claimed by the Arabs.
"What is the difference between blowing up a bus in Tel Aviv and taking over Palestinian land?" Mohammed Dahlan asked rhetorically in an interview with Israel Radio. Dahlan, who has long been a favorite of US presidents, also warned that violent riots in Jerusalem would continue until Jews stop trying to visit the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism.
Meanwhile, Abbas himself put forward new hardline peace conditions in an effort to bolster his flagging support among Palestinians.
Abbas publicly called for the UN to adopt the Goldstone Report into the recent Gaza War, and to prosecute what he called the "Israeli barbarians" who took part in it. He also made clear that he will never make peace with Israel unless every inch of the eastern side of the city [Jerusalem], home to some 300,000 Jews, is surrendered to the Palestinian Authority.
Israel Today
October 12, 2009
A top advisor to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday drew moral equivalence between the actions of Palestinian terrorists and Israeli Jews by insisting there was no difference between a suicide bomber and a Jew who builds his home on lands claimed by the Arabs.
"What is the difference between blowing up a bus in Tel Aviv and taking over Palestinian land?" Mohammed Dahlan asked rhetorically in an interview with Israel Radio. Dahlan, who has long been a favorite of US presidents, also warned that violent riots in Jerusalem would continue until Jews stop trying to visit the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism.
Meanwhile, Abbas himself put forward new hardline peace conditions in an effort to bolster his flagging support among Palestinians.
Abbas publicly called for the UN to adopt the Goldstone Report into the recent Gaza War, and to prosecute what he called the "Israeli barbarians" who took part in it. He also made clear that he will never make peace with Israel unless every inch of the eastern side of the city [Jerusalem], home to some 300,000 Jews, is surrendered to the Palestinian Authority.
Monday, October 12, 2009
A CALL FOR JIHAD INCITED BY A PACK OF LIES
THE NEWEST ROUND OF WAR
by Caroline Glick
Townhall.com
October 11, 2009
An atmosphere of fantasy pervaded US President Barack Obama's Middle East peace processor George Mitchell's meetings with Israeli leaders on Thursday. In separate photo opportunities, Mitchell stood next to President Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Ehud Barak and pledged to surmount all obstacles to achieve peace not only between Israel and the Palestinians but between Israel and Syria and Lebanon and with the whole Arab world.
Mitchell's remarks were even more stunning than similar statements from him during previous visits, because this week the Palestinians launched their newest terror campaign against Israel. Like previous rounds of Palestinian terror against Jews beginning in 1929, the latest round has been precipitated by wholly fabricated claims by Muslim leaders that Israel is asserting Jewish rights to the Temple Mount - Judaism's most sacred site - and so endangering the Muslim claim to the sole right to worship at the site that was never even mentioned in the Koran.
Beginning last week, convicted felon Raed Salah - who served a prison sentence for his Israeli Islamic Movement's northern branch's financial and other ties to Hamas - began inciting Israeli and Palestinian Muslim worshipers to make war against Israel. As he does every few months, Salah claimed falsely that Jews were committing the unforgivable "crime" of seeking to worship on the Temple Mount during Succot. Succot, which we observed this past week, is of course one of the three harvest festivals in which Jews are commanded to go up to the Temple Mount. This time, Salah's lies were accompanied by similar ones from Hamas leaders and Fatah leaders alike.
As is their standard practice, Palestinian leaders used known euphemisms in their declarations of war. Rather than openly call for Jews to be slaughtered, they called on Muslims to defend the Temple Mount from fictional Jewish assault. Wheelbarrows of rocks were found stockpiled on the Temple Mount on Monday. The rocks made clear the intention of Muslim leaders to reenact the 1990 stoning of Jewish Succot worshipers at the Western Wall. That Muslim assault precipitated a steep increase in Palestinian terror during the months that followed.
This week's riots similarly recall the 1996 Palestinian onslaught. That aggression was justified by the false Palestinian allegation that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's decision to open the Western Wall archeological tunnel was part of a secret plot to dislodge the Aksa Mosque. Yasser Arafat used his manufactured libel as an excuse to order his US-trained and Israeli-armed Palestinian security forces to open fire at IDF soldiers. In the violence that followed some 15 soldiers were killed.
The most violent exploitation of fabricated claims of Jewish aggression against Judaism's most sacred site to date, of course, came in September 2000. Then Arafat and his deputies in Fatah supported by Hamas and the Israeli Islamic Movement claimed that then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon's September 28, 2000, visit to the Temple Mount - a visit that had been coordinated in advance with the PA - was an act of war against the Palestinians and against Islam as a whole. More than 1,500 Israelis were killed in the seven years of terror war that followed.
Perhaps the most overt call for a renewal of jihad against Israel this week came from Fatah leader and titular PA President Mahmoud Abbas. In an interview on Yemenite television, Abbas said, "The second intifada erupted because of Sharon's visit to [the Temple Mount] and... it lasted seven years. This time, therefore the matter of Jerusalem requires a much greater effort [by the Palestinians], something more practical. It's not enough to talk about Jerusalem in books, or to give sermons in mosques. There is a need to work for it."
THE NEWEST round of violence has been building up for the past month. According to data released by the IDF, over the past month, the volume of terror attacks nearly doubled, from 53 attacks in August to 95 in September. This week's spike in violence caused IDF commanders to warn of the possibility that the violence will spread throughout Judea and Samaria. With the near seamless integration of Arab Israeli leaders in the incitement of violence, there is good reason for concern that Arab Israelis will play a prominent role in the newest round of jihad against Israel.
Abbas and his prime minister Salaam Fayad have augmented their violent attacks against Israel with a renewed diplomatic assault against the Jewish state. Fayad and Abbas have both called for the US and European governments to condemn Israel's imaginary provocations and moves to "Judaize" the eternal capital of the Jewish people. Rather than condemn these Fatah leaders for their key roles in inciting violence, the Europeans have been embracing them. Led by Sweden, which holds the rotating EU presidency, European governments have demanded that Israel end its provocative behavior.
For its part, rather than dismissing these obviously false allegations out of hand, the Obama administration demanded that Israel give an accounting of its actions to prove that it is not provoking Palestinian violence.
How long the newest Palestinian campaign lasts, and how many Israelis will be killed is still unknown. Due in large part to their military training provided by the US under Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton, Fatah forces in Judea and Samaria are today better trained and equipped than ever before. In Gaza, Hamas is preparing for a new round of war by housing poor Palestinians along the border with Israel to make it difficult for Israel to defend itself without killing Hamas's civilian shields. At the same time, the IDF remains stronger than these Palestinian forces. So Israel's eventual victory over this new terror campaign is a foregone conclusion, contingent only on the political courage of its leaders.
SINCE THE Palestinians must know that their new terror campaign will end in an Israeli victory, it is worth considering why they have anyway decided to launch it. Four explanations come to mind.
First, it is notable that the calls for jihad are being sounded three weeks before Hamas and Fatah leaders are scheduled to meet in Cairo to reinstate their unity government pending a new round of parliamentary and presidential elections next year. It is possible that in inciting a new terror war against Israel, Abbas and Fayad and their comrades in Fatah are signaling Hamas that they will be willing collaborators in a Hamas-dominated government.
Then, too, since Hamas is favored to win both of those elections, Fatah leaders may be using their calls for jihad to increase their popularity among Palestinians ahead of a possible bid to cancel the elections or in anticipation of the likely derailment of the negotiations toward a unity government. Whatever the case, the looming talks between Hamas and Fatah no doubt figure prominently in the new round of anti-Jewish violence.
The second reason for the renewal of Palestinian violence against Israel and the use of false allegations of Jewish provocations on the Temple Mount as a justification for that violence is that Fatah leaders believe that they can use their campaign to convince the Obama administration to redouble its pressure on Israel to make massive concessions to the Palestinians even before any "peace" negotiations begin. This was Arafat's goal in inciting the 1996 violence. At that time, his gambit was wildly successful. Then-US president Bill Clinton responded to the Palestinian violence by blaming Netanyahu and forcing him to begin negotiating the IDF's redeployment from parts of Hebron.
There is also the possibility that Raed Salah - the most visible force behind this week's Temple Mount riots - is using them to jockey for a more powerful position in the Israeli Arab-Palestinian leadership hierarchy. Inspired by the Hamas takeover of Gaza and Hizbullah's chokehold on the Lebanese government, Salah may have decided that the time is ripe for Israeli Arabs to raise their profile in the jihadist pecking order.
The fourth possible explanation for the current round of violence is that it is being incited by the Syrian and Iranian governments who together control Hamas and are influential in Fatah and Israeli Arab circles. Iranian and Syrian interest in provoking such violence now is clear. If the Netanyahu government and the IDF are kept busy contending with Palestinian terrorism, it will be more difficult for them to address Iran's nuclear weapons program either diplomatically or militarily.
All of these possible causes of the violence shed light on how events are likely to progress. Future events, after all, will in large part reflect the interests of the parties involved in inciting the current attacks against Israel.
BY THE same token, the European and American responses to Palestinian calls for violence against Israel and Jews show how the newest round of Palestinian aggression against Israel is likely to be greeted by the West. In its easy willingness to accept false Palestinian accusations about imaginary Israeli provocations, the EU is demonstrating that a transformation has taken place in its policy toward the Arab conflict with Israel. Whereas in the past the EU has been a more or less neutral actor in the region - officially refusing to support either side, while unofficially siding with the Palestinians against Israel - the European position on the Palestinian violence over the past week has been indistinguishable from the Arab League's position. Europe's newfound willingness to openly side with the Palestinians against Israel makes clear that the EU's role in the violence to come will be qualitatively different from the role it has played in past Palestinian terror campaigns. Israel's ability to launch a relevant and coherent diplomatic campaign to defend itself is contingent on the Foreign Ministry recognizing that a transformative shift has taken place in Europe's treatment of Israel.
And this brings us back to George Mitchell in Jerusalem. What Mitchell's absurd statements about peace breaking out in the region in the near future show is that the Obama administration is perfectly willing to pretend away the Arab violence against Israel. Whether motivated by naivete, an overarching desire for international peace conferences, a plan to align US foreign policy with that of Europe, or hostility toward Israel, the fact that Mitchell can talk about peace when the Palestinians have just declared war makes clear that the Obama administration is uninterested in playing a constructive role in quelling the violence. It certainly isn't interested in helping Israel to secure the lives of its citizens.
Israeli officials have sought to play down the significance of the events this week in Jerusalem. This is a mistake. If the newest round of violence is to end quickly and at a minimal cost in lives, it is essential for Israel to stop defensively humoring Mitchell and move quickly to offense, both militarily and diplomatically.
by Caroline Glick
Townhall.com
October 11, 2009
An atmosphere of fantasy pervaded US President Barack Obama's Middle East peace processor George Mitchell's meetings with Israeli leaders on Thursday. In separate photo opportunities, Mitchell stood next to President Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Ehud Barak and pledged to surmount all obstacles to achieve peace not only between Israel and the Palestinians but between Israel and Syria and Lebanon and with the whole Arab world.
Mitchell's remarks were even more stunning than similar statements from him during previous visits, because this week the Palestinians launched their newest terror campaign against Israel. Like previous rounds of Palestinian terror against Jews beginning in 1929, the latest round has been precipitated by wholly fabricated claims by Muslim leaders that Israel is asserting Jewish rights to the Temple Mount - Judaism's most sacred site - and so endangering the Muslim claim to the sole right to worship at the site that was never even mentioned in the Koran.
Beginning last week, convicted felon Raed Salah - who served a prison sentence for his Israeli Islamic Movement's northern branch's financial and other ties to Hamas - began inciting Israeli and Palestinian Muslim worshipers to make war against Israel. As he does every few months, Salah claimed falsely that Jews were committing the unforgivable "crime" of seeking to worship on the Temple Mount during Succot. Succot, which we observed this past week, is of course one of the three harvest festivals in which Jews are commanded to go up to the Temple Mount. This time, Salah's lies were accompanied by similar ones from Hamas leaders and Fatah leaders alike.
As is their standard practice, Palestinian leaders used known euphemisms in their declarations of war. Rather than openly call for Jews to be slaughtered, they called on Muslims to defend the Temple Mount from fictional Jewish assault. Wheelbarrows of rocks were found stockpiled on the Temple Mount on Monday. The rocks made clear the intention of Muslim leaders to reenact the 1990 stoning of Jewish Succot worshipers at the Western Wall. That Muslim assault precipitated a steep increase in Palestinian terror during the months that followed.
This week's riots similarly recall the 1996 Palestinian onslaught. That aggression was justified by the false Palestinian allegation that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's decision to open the Western Wall archeological tunnel was part of a secret plot to dislodge the Aksa Mosque. Yasser Arafat used his manufactured libel as an excuse to order his US-trained and Israeli-armed Palestinian security forces to open fire at IDF soldiers. In the violence that followed some 15 soldiers were killed.
The most violent exploitation of fabricated claims of Jewish aggression against Judaism's most sacred site to date, of course, came in September 2000. Then Arafat and his deputies in Fatah supported by Hamas and the Israeli Islamic Movement claimed that then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon's September 28, 2000, visit to the Temple Mount - a visit that had been coordinated in advance with the PA - was an act of war against the Palestinians and against Islam as a whole. More than 1,500 Israelis were killed in the seven years of terror war that followed.
Perhaps the most overt call for a renewal of jihad against Israel this week came from Fatah leader and titular PA President Mahmoud Abbas. In an interview on Yemenite television, Abbas said, "The second intifada erupted because of Sharon's visit to [the Temple Mount] and... it lasted seven years. This time, therefore the matter of Jerusalem requires a much greater effort [by the Palestinians], something more practical. It's not enough to talk about Jerusalem in books, or to give sermons in mosques. There is a need to work for it."
THE NEWEST round of violence has been building up for the past month. According to data released by the IDF, over the past month, the volume of terror attacks nearly doubled, from 53 attacks in August to 95 in September. This week's spike in violence caused IDF commanders to warn of the possibility that the violence will spread throughout Judea and Samaria. With the near seamless integration of Arab Israeli leaders in the incitement of violence, there is good reason for concern that Arab Israelis will play a prominent role in the newest round of jihad against Israel.
Abbas and his prime minister Salaam Fayad have augmented their violent attacks against Israel with a renewed diplomatic assault against the Jewish state. Fayad and Abbas have both called for the US and European governments to condemn Israel's imaginary provocations and moves to "Judaize" the eternal capital of the Jewish people. Rather than condemn these Fatah leaders for their key roles in inciting violence, the Europeans have been embracing them. Led by Sweden, which holds the rotating EU presidency, European governments have demanded that Israel end its provocative behavior.
For its part, rather than dismissing these obviously false allegations out of hand, the Obama administration demanded that Israel give an accounting of its actions to prove that it is not provoking Palestinian violence.
How long the newest Palestinian campaign lasts, and how many Israelis will be killed is still unknown. Due in large part to their military training provided by the US under Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton, Fatah forces in Judea and Samaria are today better trained and equipped than ever before. In Gaza, Hamas is preparing for a new round of war by housing poor Palestinians along the border with Israel to make it difficult for Israel to defend itself without killing Hamas's civilian shields. At the same time, the IDF remains stronger than these Palestinian forces. So Israel's eventual victory over this new terror campaign is a foregone conclusion, contingent only on the political courage of its leaders.
SINCE THE Palestinians must know that their new terror campaign will end in an Israeli victory, it is worth considering why they have anyway decided to launch it. Four explanations come to mind.
First, it is notable that the calls for jihad are being sounded three weeks before Hamas and Fatah leaders are scheduled to meet in Cairo to reinstate their unity government pending a new round of parliamentary and presidential elections next year. It is possible that in inciting a new terror war against Israel, Abbas and Fayad and their comrades in Fatah are signaling Hamas that they will be willing collaborators in a Hamas-dominated government.
Then, too, since Hamas is favored to win both of those elections, Fatah leaders may be using their calls for jihad to increase their popularity among Palestinians ahead of a possible bid to cancel the elections or in anticipation of the likely derailment of the negotiations toward a unity government. Whatever the case, the looming talks between Hamas and Fatah no doubt figure prominently in the new round of anti-Jewish violence.
The second reason for the renewal of Palestinian violence against Israel and the use of false allegations of Jewish provocations on the Temple Mount as a justification for that violence is that Fatah leaders believe that they can use their campaign to convince the Obama administration to redouble its pressure on Israel to make massive concessions to the Palestinians even before any "peace" negotiations begin. This was Arafat's goal in inciting the 1996 violence. At that time, his gambit was wildly successful. Then-US president Bill Clinton responded to the Palestinian violence by blaming Netanyahu and forcing him to begin negotiating the IDF's redeployment from parts of Hebron.
There is also the possibility that Raed Salah - the most visible force behind this week's Temple Mount riots - is using them to jockey for a more powerful position in the Israeli Arab-Palestinian leadership hierarchy. Inspired by the Hamas takeover of Gaza and Hizbullah's chokehold on the Lebanese government, Salah may have decided that the time is ripe for Israeli Arabs to raise their profile in the jihadist pecking order.
The fourth possible explanation for the current round of violence is that it is being incited by the Syrian and Iranian governments who together control Hamas and are influential in Fatah and Israeli Arab circles. Iranian and Syrian interest in provoking such violence now is clear. If the Netanyahu government and the IDF are kept busy contending with Palestinian terrorism, it will be more difficult for them to address Iran's nuclear weapons program either diplomatically or militarily.
All of these possible causes of the violence shed light on how events are likely to progress. Future events, after all, will in large part reflect the interests of the parties involved in inciting the current attacks against Israel.
BY THE same token, the European and American responses to Palestinian calls for violence against Israel and Jews show how the newest round of Palestinian aggression against Israel is likely to be greeted by the West. In its easy willingness to accept false Palestinian accusations about imaginary Israeli provocations, the EU is demonstrating that a transformation has taken place in its policy toward the Arab conflict with Israel. Whereas in the past the EU has been a more or less neutral actor in the region - officially refusing to support either side, while unofficially siding with the Palestinians against Israel - the European position on the Palestinian violence over the past week has been indistinguishable from the Arab League's position. Europe's newfound willingness to openly side with the Palestinians against Israel makes clear that the EU's role in the violence to come will be qualitatively different from the role it has played in past Palestinian terror campaigns. Israel's ability to launch a relevant and coherent diplomatic campaign to defend itself is contingent on the Foreign Ministry recognizing that a transformative shift has taken place in Europe's treatment of Israel.
And this brings us back to George Mitchell in Jerusalem. What Mitchell's absurd statements about peace breaking out in the region in the near future show is that the Obama administration is perfectly willing to pretend away the Arab violence against Israel. Whether motivated by naivete, an overarching desire for international peace conferences, a plan to align US foreign policy with that of Europe, or hostility toward Israel, the fact that Mitchell can talk about peace when the Palestinians have just declared war makes clear that the Obama administration is uninterested in playing a constructive role in quelling the violence. It certainly isn't interested in helping Israel to secure the lives of its citizens.
Israeli officials have sought to play down the significance of the events this week in Jerusalem. This is a mistake. If the newest round of violence is to end quickly and at a minimal cost in lives, it is essential for Israel to stop defensively humoring Mitchell and move quickly to offense, both militarily and diplomatically.
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