We’ve been wrestling with this question on this very site for a few weeks now. NBC offers three theories in the clips below, none of them very persuasive.
One: Maybe the states with fewer cases are just doing less testing. Essentially they’d have you believe that the decline across the south is a mirage, that COVID is possibly just as bad there as it is in the northeast but that no one has any inkling of it because they aren’t testing enough people to find out. It’s true that southern states have done less testing by and large than northern ones have, but Louisiana ranks 15th out of 50 states in tests per capita and it’s seen its cases decline for months. Even in states with limited testing, the positivity rate should give us some clue as to whether cases are rising or falling. And in Texas, California, and Arizona, to take just three examples, the positivity rate is way, way off its winter peak.
The acid test is hospitalizations, though. If there’s a genuine surge of cases in the population, that should eventually translate into a surge in hospitalizations. It has in Michigan, the worst-hit state in the union. But in Texas, hospitalizations are still dropping nearly a month after the mask mandate and capacity limits on businesses were lifted. It’s not a mirage. Cases really are down there.
Two: Maybe there’s more natural immunity in states that have adopted fewer restrictions, making it more difficult for the virus to spread at this late stage of the pandemic relative to the ease with which it’s spreading in pro-lockdown states. The logic behind that theory is appealing: States that have stayed open have facilitated more socializing by their residents, and more socializing should mean that the virus has circulated more widely and infected a greater share of the population. I made the point yesterday that Michigan is in the bottom 10 among U.S. states in COVID cases per capita, suggesting that relatively few people there had been infected until recently. That meant there was less natural immunity, which in turn meant there was more kindling for a wave now. In Texas, where restrictions have been lighter, that might not be the case.
But there are wrinkles in that theory. Texas and California may have had more cases per capita than Michigan but they’ve had far fewer than New York and New Jersey, both of which have seen cases rise lately (although not the way Michigan has). If you’d rather compare deaths per capita as a metric of how many infections a particular state has seen, note that New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts comprise the top three among U.S. states whereas Texas ranks 24th and California ranks 31st. Michigan ranks 21st — higher than either of the latter two states. Deaths aren’t a perfect apples-to-apples comparison between states since some (New York and New Jersey) had their deaths “frontloaded” at the start of the pandemic, when hospital treatments for COVID were primitive, while others saw more hospitalizations later, when doctors were better able to save people. But, notwithstanding their pro-lockdown positions, it’s hard to look at what the northeast has been through and come away thinking that there must be less natural immunity there than in the south.
Three: Maybe college kids from the north are going down south for spring break, getting infected there, and bringing the virus back home. Uh, okay — but college students in the south go on spring break too. Wouldn’t they be spreading the virus in their own hometowns after returning, seeding outbreaks down south as well? And wouldn’t business owners catering to spring-break clients be getting infected and then spreading the virus in their own local communities? I don’t know why there’d be a disparity between epidemics in lockdown versus anti-lockdown states because of young people doing more traveling.
I’m sticking with my half-assed pet theory to explain why the lockdown states are doing worse than the anti-lockdown ones: Weather. California has been a heavy-handed pro-lockdown state, after all, but their cases have been in freefall since late January. Yesterday they recorded just 2,402 cases statewide, placing them ninth out of 50 states despite having the largest population by far. And California’s worst period was over the winter, when it endured a ferocious outbreak despite still having many restrictions in place. I think warming weather driving more people outdoors is the easiest explanation for the geographic variance in cases right now. To the extent that easing restrictions encourages people to get outside more, they may be helpful in driving down cases, but weather probably plays a larger role.
Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred (LM Otero/AP)
Major League Baseball’s decision to relocate its July All-Star Game from Atlanta because of Georgia’s new election law has people choosing sides and fact-checkers yelling, “Foul!”
Commissioner Rob Manfred announced on April 2 he was moving the midsummer event and the MLB draft from Atlanta, saying he made the decision after consulting teams, players, and players’ organizations. Others say he folded to political and corporate pressure, noting the Georgia election law expands, not restricts, voter access. They call MLB’s decision harmful to the city and the individuals it claims to defend, and they pointed out the league just sealed a deal with a Communist-backed tech company in China, where free elections don’t exist.
On March 25, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, signed the new law, a response to concerns about security and fairness during the 2020 presidential election.
President Joe Biden two days before MLB made the move said the law restricts voter access and later told ESPN he’d “strongly support” MLB moving the All-Star Game. Citing Biden’s criticisms as false, The Washington Post gave the president “four Pinocchios”—its worst accuracy rating—for claiming the law ends voting hours early and limits voting opportunities. “Experts say the net effect was to expand opportunities to vote for most Georgians, not limit them,” Post fact checker Glenn Kessler wrote.
Opponents continued to insist the law will suppress votes from African Americans because it requires identification when requesting and mailing ballots. (Georgia already requires ID to vote in person.) Like other Southern states, Georgia did use voter laws to disenfranchise blacks during the Jim Crow era, which eventually prompted the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. And some proposals that never made their way into the final Georgia law—such as a provision to end Sunday voting, which would disproportionately affect black voters—raised alarm.
But even some Democrats such as Justin Giboney, president of the AND Campaign, said calling the new law “Jim Crow 2.0” is wrong. He wasn’t alone.
OutKick sports media founder Clay Travis lambasted arguments about the elements of the new law that actually passed: “You need an ID to pick up tickets to attend a baseball game. Or to get a beer inside once you’re there.”
The Coca-Cola Co., headquartered in Atlanta, criticized the law yet required a valid ID for entrance to its own 2020 shareholders meeting. Thirty-six states require some form of voter ID, including Colorado, the state MLB moved the All-Star game to. It mails ballots to all registered voters automatically. But it has fewer early voting days and uses signature matching to verify mail-in ballots.
ESPN’s Howard Bryant said pressure from corporate sponsors caused MLB to change venues, according to his sources. He tweeted players did not threaten to boycott and did not get to vote on the issue. The Atlanta Braves organization announced it was “deeply disappointed” over MLB’s move and had hoped Atlanta’s hosting would enhance discussions of voting.
Coca-Cola and Delta, another Atlanta-based company, say they worked behind the scenes for changes to the original bill. But Delta CEO Ed Bastian condemned the final version, saying it didn’t mesh with Delta’s values and wasn’t necessary because the rationale for it—claims of widespread voter fraud—was “based on a lie.”
Kemp rebuffed Bastian’s statements: “At no point did Delta share any opposition to expanding early voting, strengthening voter ID measures, increasing the use of secure drop-boxes statewide, and making it easier for local election officials to administer elections—which is exactly what this bill does.” Kemp added he had to show his photo ID last time he flew Delta.
Liberal activists are calling for boycotts of Georgia-based companies for not doing enough to block the legislation. MLB’s All-Star Game decision alone will financially harm a sizable portion of the population MLB says it’s defending. The city of Atlanta is predominantly black, and more than 30 percent of its businesses are black-owned. The 2019 All-Star Game in Cleveland generated a citywide spending increase of $65 million (there was no All-Star game in 2020). In 2000, when Atlanta last hosted the game, the economic impact to the city was $49 million, according to Baseball Almanac.
U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., doesn’t support moving the All-Star Game and opposes all boycotts but says corporations should stop supporting the Republican Party. Former President Donald Trump is calling for boycotts of MLB for caving to liberal pressures.
The same week it yanked the All-Star game from Atlanta, MLB signed a deal with Chinese tech company Tencent to stream 125 games in China. This is the same company that in 2019 yanked NBA games after Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey tweeted support for pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.
—A version of this story originally appeared in Muse
If George Washington is the Father of our country, then Ted Kennedy is the father of anti-America. What is anti-America? It is a deep-seated disdain for the America most of us love. Anti-America hates our history, our culture, and our success. Hatred, victimhood, and bitterness are the elements binding anti-America together.
America twice afforded Ted Kennedy the opportunity to become President. His family was to American politics what the Tudors were to England. Ted was reported to be an excellent football player at Harvard. However, when the political football of leadership came his way on two critical occasions, he fumbled badly and slid bitterly back into the locker room of wannabe Presidents who never made the cut.
Like previous presidents — Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Teddy’s brother, John — Teddy was born into wealth. He went to the best schools. He came from a popular political family. What Ted lacked all his life was a moral compass.
The first scandal came when he was a Harvard freshman. When he was failing a Spanish class, he recruited a friend to take a Spanish exam for him. He and the stand-in were caught and expelled from Harvard.
Like many politicians, Ted Kennedy had a reputation for womanizing. His vow to remain faithful to his wife, Joan, was a stumbling block to his appetites for extramarital sex. The national press ignored this part of his character until the summer of 1969. While most of America fixated on Apollo 11’s flight to the moon, Kennedy, presumably drunk, drove off a bridge in Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts. Mary Jo Kopechne, who was in the car with him, drowned. Kennedy freed himself from the car and left the scene to begin damage control on his political career as a Senator from Massachusetts. Contrary to standard practice, Kopechne was buried before an autopsy could be performed on her.
Before Chappaquiddick, Ted was a leading Democrat contender for the party’s Presidential nomination in 1972. Even though Kennedy kept his Senate seat after Chappaquiddick, the Democrats looked elsewhere for a candidate in 1972, ending his first chance to become President.
As the 1980 election approached, Kennedy hungered for another bid to become President. President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, looked vulnerable because of a bad economy and the Iran Hostage Crisis. CBS’s Roger Mudd interviewed Kennedy and asked him why he wanted to be President. Given a perfect opportunity to advance his candidacy, Kennedy responded with incoherent mumbling that would make Joe Biden smile.
One of the reasons Kennedy mumbled incoherently was that he fundamentally disliked America. He was anti-American. He hated the American of 1979 but loved the idea of America he was unable to articulate to his listeners. He had enough sense not to say that, but he was unconvincing pretending to love America. Kennedy’s mumbling cost him his second chance for a Presidential nomination.
I never met Senator Kennedy, but I believe that he felt America owed him a chance to become President. Because his two brothers were assassinated, he was a victim; acclaiming him President would be America’s atonement for killing his older brothers. When America refused to take responsibility for killing his brothers and passed on the chance to make him President, that made Ted bitter.
Kennedy’s involvement in “immigration reform” shows him to be the Father of anti-America. Even though he grew up rich, he was “new rich,” and he encountered snobbery from his “old rich” prep-school and Harvard classmates. His revenge was to fundamentally change immigration in America, along with its future racial and ethnic composition.
His bitterness hurt Hillary Clinton. It must have been agonizing for Ted Kennedy, still in the Senate, to watch Clinton’s two-term presidency. Clinton’s morals made Teddy look like a Boy Scout. When Hillary began her campaign for the presidency in 2008, she was the odds-on favorite to get the Democratic nomination. Another Senator, Barack Obama, also hankered for the nomination. In another act of bitterness, Ted Kennedy threw his support to Obama and Hillary lost her first shot to become President.
Ted Kennedy took his Anti-Americanism to a new level in 1983. While Ronald Reagan was President, Kennedy reached out to Yuri Andropov, president of our Cold War enemy, Russia, for help discrediting President Reagan. Many would consider this treason or at least colluding with the Russians, but for Kennedy, it was just more anti-American opportunism.
Even before his death, Democrats saw in Ted a model. Like Kennedy, they would do all they could to change the composition of the American electorate. If permitting illegal immigration across our southern borders was necessary, they would justify it as compassion. When Teddy died in 2009, the Democrats tried to give him the equivalent of a state funeral. When the rest of America ignored the event, the Democrats felt more hate, bitterness, and determination to honor Saint Teddy’s legacy.
If you look at the modern Democratic Party and see hatred, bitterness, and victimhood, credit the Father of it all: Ted Kennedy.
IMAGE:Ted Kennedy (edited by Andrea Widburg in Pixlr). YouTube screengrab.
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That’s the head of the American Federation of Teachers crowded around a table indoors with some pals. The same person who sent a letter to the CDC not three weeks ago complaining that the agency’s new rule, which allows students to be separated by three feet instead of six feet in class, is based on questionable science and that they should stick with the six-foot guidance. Even though it would mean many thousands of students being forced back into remote learning due to space constraints.
If Weingarten and her colleagues aren’t all vaccinated, what are they doing sitting together indoors grouped much more tightly together than three feet?
And if they are all vaccinated, why isn’t it just as safe for schools to bring vaccinated teachers back to class immediately? No more whining about poor ventilation systems or cramped classrooms. Nearly 80 percent of teachers and other school staff have already received their first dose. If Weingarten can sit around gladhanding cronies because she’s had her shots, teachers who’ve had theirs can get back to in-person instruction.
Teachers in many of these states have been at the front of the line for vaccines for months. Yet unions and local governments refuse to reveal — or even keep track of — the percentage of teachers who have been vaccinated. It’s a con job. Because if teachers are vaccinated, and all of them should be by now, what excuse can there be now for refusing to do their jobs?
It’s been over a year. This is abuse. Open the schools.
It’s not about safety. According to the Burbio tracker, Florida has 100 percent of its schools open for full-time in-person education yet has not seen outbreaks in their schools. A piece in the Wall Street Journal last month noted, “Florida schools have avoided major outbreaks of COVID-19 and maintained case rates lower than those in the wider community.”
It makes logical sense that kids spending all their time in a classroom with the same kids every day will transmit COVID at lower levels than kids dispersed throughout a city in various childcare situations with different groups of kids. According to the CDC, lack of outbreaks in schools has been the case throughout the country and the world. But no one in charge cares about the science whatsoever.
Imagine the sense of impunity Weingarten must feel to have posted a photo of herself at any indoor gathering, without a care in the world for whether it’d be scrutinized by critics to see if she’s following the same rules she insists on for kids and teachers. “Why are your in-person meetings essential? Is Zoom good enough for kids, but not union leaders?” asks Guy Benson. What’s the answer?
So where’s Kamala Harris, Joe Biden’s border crisis project manager?
Looks like she’s in Chicago, getting “a snack,” according to White House spokesweasel Jen Psaki.
Such is the simplified summary of the state of things, based on a snapping, flippant reply by the latter to a question from a New York Post reporter. According to the Daily Mail:
New York Post reporter Steven Nelson acknowledged during Wednesday’s press briefing: ‘As we discussed here today, Vice President Harris is put in charge of addressing the root causes of the border crisis.’
‘She hasn’t visited the border or Central America or spoken with leaders of El Salvador or Honduras,’ he noted. ‘She was traveling this week, took time to visit a bakery in Chicago. I’m wondering, is she still working on this and can you address the perception that she’s sort of quietly backing off while Secretary Mayorkas is pursuing some Trump-era policies?’
He is referencing Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas appearing to take a hard-line lead on the border crisis despite Harris’ role.
Psaki replied: ‘The vice president was visiting Chicago, actually, to talk about COVID and the importance of communities getting the vaccine when it’s available and accessible to them.’
‘So, while she was there, like many Americans, she got a snack.’
Which is a crap answer. For a vice president to “get a snack” (food police note: a non-nutritional one she probably wouldn’t eat in private) takes a lot of pre-planning and time coordination from the Secret Service, the White House schedulers, the limo drivers, the press and other organs of administration. She can easily ‘get a snack’ just by commanding one of her aides to procure it as is normally done, just ask Amy Klobuchar about that one.
It was obviously done for the cameras, given that it was a South Side Chicago bakery, which was likely black-owned. The idea, of course, was to demonstrate that Harris, far from being a rich elitist scion of a Jamaican-origin Stanford professor dad, and an India-born professor/researcher mom who moved her from rabidly leftist fever-swamp Berkeley, California, to spend the other parts of her childhood in Canada, was actually a down-with-it African-American who always eats sugar-bomb treats same as much of the rest of the community (but somehow doesn’t get fat). It was Potemkin theatre to whip up black voters, same as she did with those pork things campaigning in lily-white Iowa, and apparently little else.
In light of what’s on her plate, it seemed rather low-priority, actually, given that the presidential campaign won’t start until 2023. But as has been famously said of Kamala, she’s always campaigning for her next job.
Being busy with that, she’s AWOL on the job she’s actually being paid to do.
Last March 24, Biden named Harris as his point person to lead the effort to stanch the human waves flooding the U.S. border.
The flood is getting very big indeed, with some 50,000 unaccompanied minors now in the U.S., the highest rate in nearly 20 years, and illegal migrant arrests hitting 170,000 in March alone, with even more expected for April as this Wall Street Journal report noted. Catch and release is back, migrants with COVID are being released to walk about the country, often without court dates, and Biden has incentivized the smuggling of children with the sweetener that no child will ever be sent back (to starve, as he falsely claimed), which has triggered a huge wave of small children traveling alone, many dumped and abandoned in the desert by smugglers as inconvenient baggage. Families are being smashed to smithereens in monster border crashes on remote California and Texas highways, the recent mass-death incidents in overstuffed trucks and trailers not even chases with lawmen hot on their tail. Border detention facilities, formerly known as ‘cages’ on the left, are at 1,600% capacity.
Biden’s blundering policy also stripped the U.S. of its treaties with Central American countries which had significantly halted the human waves earlier. A flood began in November, and has yet to crest.
Meanwhile, cartels and professional human smuggling rackets have flooded Facebook with ads targeted at would-be illegals promising “guaranteed” entry for a $8,000 or so price, ads that have yet to be ripped down as they violate Facebook’s claimed policies against facilitating human trafficking. I found some and wrote about them here. Team Biden has focused on radio ads for dissuading illegal migrants, another useless policy which has had no effect as most migrants are using Facebook and its subsidiary, WhatsApp, for information about how to migrate illegally, as this study found here. And day after day, the sad stories about migrants abandoned, brutalized, raped, blackmailed, or callously killed by this inhuman trade continue.
Arizona’s attorney-general says that Kamala Harris hasn’t responded to his invitation to tour the border.
You’d think any one of these things might just keep Kamala focused on her big task as border czar. You’d think at least some of that topic would be in her team’s purview.
Nope, she’s all about diplomacy, as the Biden administration has since hastened to add, looking for all those “root causes.” After all, she does take Joe’s calls from foreign leaders. But apparently, not the Central American ones where the migrant waves are coming from.
Taking phone calls to negotiate with Central American or Mexican officials? Nope, no record of any so far, as it happens.
We have heard about her leaked concerns about the slow pace of her home-decorating at the White House vice-presidential mansion, and the rigors of living at Blair House, where she was stationed despite having her own condo near Dupont Circle, with all its beauty parlors and swimming pools.
And her ‘diplomacy’? Well, thus far, the Biden administration has left U.S. diplomats with little with which to persuade their Central American counterparts with. I wrote about the insipid tools they were reduced to using, basically, lecturing Central American states about ‘democracy’ as reported in the untranslated Central American press here. They’re heard it a million times.
Unlike Kamala, though, these nations certainly haven’t been doing nothing.
Mexico, for one, is pinning the blame for the border surge right where it belongs, on the Biden/Harris administration. How’s Kamala going to negotiate that one?
Or how’s Kamala handling this bunch, from Honduras, which already has its hand out for U.S. aid to eliminate all those the “root causes” of why Hondurans can’t stand living in Honduras? They’re claiming that showering the Honduran government, (whose president has been accused by prosecutors in New York of taking big bucks from a drug dealer), will end all the “root causes” of why Hondurans want to get the hell out of Honduras. Will giving these particular foreign bureaucrats cash end all the root causes? Don’t count on Kamala to figure out any of the potential problems with showering likely corrupt governments with big U.S. bucks. Notice that nobody from Honduras, based on the reporting seen, has bothered with contacting Kamala in any case. They go where they might actually get some money, correctly reading that she’s AWOL.
How’s Kamala going to explain the shifts and surges and backtracks in Joe Biden’s inchoate border policies to these counterparts? One can just imagine.
What this lazy, disgraceful scenario, of a vice president more preoccupied with home decorating, snacks, and photo ops, is the Biden administration in action. Joe didn’t want the problem pinned to him, so he fobbed it off to the inept Harris. Harris has talked dreck on the matter, and carried on with her priorities, which mainly amount to camera photo shoots, like some celebrity influencer with politics added. Neither cares in the least what goes on at the border, what they want is for the illegals to roll in, the money to flow, and the problem to go away. Holding Kamala at least accountable, as Fox News and the New York Post are doing, is a pretty good way for voters to get a whiff of the real agenda here. The Bidenites, particularly Harris, are feathering their nests. The border can do what it is going to do, to paraphrase their ally, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. That’s “who they are.”
The problem with painting Derek Chauvin as a “bad apple”
The officers who testified against Chauvin are simply protecting their legacies. By Fabiola Cineas at VOX:
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Members of the Minneapolis Police Department monitor a protest on June 11, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The MPD has been under scrutiny from residents and local city officials after the death of George Floyd in police custody on May 25.
On Monday, prosecutor Steve Schleicher led a line of questioning that perhaps stands as his team’s strongest case against former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin so far — not because the witness’s testimony was especially riveting but because it was coming from Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo.
That the department’s highest-ranking officer was testifying against a team member immediately set the trial apart. In fact, nine other officers from the Minneapolis Police Department have testified against Chauvin in the past week. While Arradondo, the department’s first Black chief, has testified against an officer before (as assistant chief in a highly publicized 2019 case that involved the shooting of an unarmed woman), it’s rare for so many officers to take the stand against a onetime colleague.
During his testimony, Arradondo was asked about the nature of the trainings that MPD officers receive, with specific attention paid to MPD policies and protocol like use of force, deescalation, procedural justice, and crisis intervention. And Arradondo did not hold back.
When asked whether the force that Chauvin used against George Floyd was consistent the MPD policy that authorizes use of reasonable force, he responded, “It is not,” and went on to say of Chauvin’s behavior: “That is not what we teach and that should be condoned.” To a similar question, Arradondo said that he “absolutely” agreed that Chauvin’s restraint violated policy since Chauvin did not apply “light to moderate pressure” on Floyd’s neck. “That in no way, shape, or form is anything that is by policy. It is not part of our training. It is certainly not part of our ethics or our values.”
The moment represented a triumph for the prosecution, bolstered by other police testimony so far. The previous day, three officers — including Chauvin’s former supervisor, retired Sgt. David Ploeger; the longest-serving officer at MPD, Lt. Richard Zimmerman; and Inspector Katie Blackwell, who ran the department’s training program when Floyd was killed — all testified against Chauvin’s neck restraint of Floyd, saying it was “uncalled for” and “totally unnecessary.” And in the days after the police chief took the stand, additional officers testified for the prosecution.
The rare testimony from several officers has led viewers to question whether the “blue wall of silence” — an unwritten gag rule among officers to band together and stay silent when one of their own is under fire for misconduct — was beginning to crumble, a moment of hope that signals a shift that more officers may now be willing to intervene when they observe their colleagues engaging in wrongdoing.
But adifferentreality is likely at play. While the officers’ testimony can be interpreted as a changing tide in an opaque culture, it’s likelier that the high-profile nature of the trial is forcing them to cast Chauvin as the bad apple — the one officer who doesn’t represent the broader department and system of policing, the one they need to throw out — as a way to avoid greater examination of police.
“They’re throwing Chauvin under the bus because that keeps the bus intact,” Howard University law professor Justin Hansford told Vox. “For each officer who has come forward, this case will determine their legacy.”
The “blue wall” isn’t about friendly camaraderie — it’s about covering up misdeeds
One of the most respected pillars of policing is loyalty, wrote political science scholar Roberta Ann Johnson in “Whistleblowing and the Police.” “Loyalty is exacted with a code of honor that requires officers not to ‘snitch on,’ ‘rat out’ or turn in other officers. The police officers’ respect for and loyalty toward their peer group encourages them to abide by the code of honor and to heed the obligation of silence,” she wrote.
Being silent when a colleague engages in wrongful practices like use of excessive force is a norm in policing, one that has prevented reform. In the wake of the brutal Los Angeles Rodney King beating in 1991 that was caught on camera, for example, the city formed the Christopher Commission to investigate the Los Angeles Police Department, including the department’s training practices and cases involving excessive force. The commission’s critical findings, released in a report, highlighted how the code of silence among officers was “perhaps the greatest single barrier to the effective investigation and adjudication of complaints.”
The commission noted the duty of police to be transparent with the public: “Officers are given special powers, unique in our society, to use force, even deadly force, in the furtherance of their duties. Along with that power, however, must come the responsibility of loyalty first to the public the officers serve. That requires that the code of silence not be used as a shield to hide misconduct.”
Officers are reluctant to break that code because there are consequences for speaking out. For example, in 2012, Baltimore detective Joe Crystal reported two fellow officers whom he witnessed assault a drug suspect, though his sergeant warned him not to. After Crystal stepped forward, his colleagues taunted and harassed him, ignored his requests for backup, threatened him with perjury prosecution in the criminal case against the officers he reported, and left a dead rat on the windshield of his vehicle. There are manydocumentedcases such as this.
So it’s no surprise that it’s rare for officers to testify against a peer. A 2015 Washington Post analysis found that since 2005, 54 police officers nationwide had been criminally charged with murder or manslaughter for shooting and killing someone in the line of duty. The study found that a fellow police officer gave statements or testified against the shooter in just 12 of those cases.
And even when officers do testify for the prosecution, it’s not always certain they’ll act with integrity.Officers may engage in “testilying” — a specific term for officers providing false testimony in court.In the 2016 trial of Ray Tensing, the former officer charged with murder and manslaughter for fatally shooting Samuel DuBose during a July 2015 traffic stop, some experts concluded that two officers who testified against Tensing were untruthful on the stand in an effort to abide by the code of silence. In their testimony, the officers maintained that they did not see the fatal encounter, though they were present at the scene. After two mistrials, the prosecutors dismissed the murder indictment against Tensing.
That’s why it may feel refreshing that Chauvin’s colleagues are testifying against him, saying he did not follow procedure.“It’s true that we don’t have many examples of police testifying, especially the police chief testifying against one of their own, because there’s the blue wall and police unions that create an atmosphere where you’re not supposed to ever speak out,” Hansford told Vox. “We often think of the blue wall of silence as a sort of solidarity move or a loyalty pact but often it’s really just a CYA move — cover your own ‘tail.’”
The collection of officers coming forward to testify has less to do with the egregiousness of Floyd’s killing and more to do with the high-profile nature of the case, Hansford said. “These officers have seen people killed before,” he said. “This is about how big this case is. The Mike Brown case, for example, was big, but it didn’t create this level of response. These officers don’t want to be associated with those pictures of Chauvin on Floyd’s neck.”
Christopher Brown, principal attorney at the Brown Firm, which has sued police officers in excessive force cases, agrees. “We’re seeing such a heavy reliance upon other officers in the prosecution because of the infamous nature of the death of George Floyd. When you have international protests over the death of a man in the hands of an officer, we have a unique scenario, unfortunately, where officers really want to distance themselves from that behavior,” he said. “No one wants to go down in history as being associated with or trying to defend or stand up for Chauvin. They’re taking the opportunity to protect their own legacies.”
Hansford recognizes the media’s instinct to say this is an unprecedented display of officers turning on their own, yet we will not see the three former officers directly involved with the May 25 killing testify in this trial.
Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas K. Lane, who were all fired after Floyd’s death, face their own charges, and have each presented a different version of events in court documents. They are in disagreement over who was in charge of Floyd’s arrest, furthering the idea that each former officer is trying to save himself.
“I can’t really say that this is the piercing of the wall until we hear from the people who were right there, until we hear from the people close to Chauvin in the department,” Hansford told Vox. “I don’t know what the officers who were on the scene have to say and the officers who were there in that moment as part of the response.”
Chauvin’s exoneration would be disastrous for police departments
Hansford and Brown see the officers’ testimony against Chauvin as an effort to cling to the toxic “one bad apple” belief — that it’s not the entire system of policing that’s corrupt but just a few officers who are lone actors.
“This is certainly the idea that the Minneapolis Police Department is trying to paint — that ‘this is not what our department does’ and ‘this is not how our department trains its officers,’ ‘this is notbehavior we condone,’” Brown said.
And though the officer testimony might seem to be creating an opening for greater accountability when it comes to speaking out against a peer, this might not play out on a broader scale outside of this trial.
“Regrettably, I don’t expect to see officers lining up to testify against other officers, but I do expect to see a greater focus on addressing, reevaluating, and updating policies and procedures within departments,” Brown told Vox.
And even when the code of silence is challenged, the culture remains. The brutal police killing of Black 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in 2014 and the subsequent years of an alleged cover-up on the part of the Chicago Police Department (a judge found officers not guilty of covering up the shooting) rocked the department’s code of silence by bringing to light the city’s and officers’ coordinated effort to withhold the video that shows officers shot McDonald 16 times. Despite this and other challenges over the years, Chicago’s police department remains plagued by systemic use of excessive force. A 2017 Justice Department investigation found that Chicago had received more than 30,000 complaints of police misconduct from 2011 to 2016, but there was no discipline for police officers in 98 percent of the cases.
To Hansford, Chauvin’s acquittal would be damaging for police officers since that would mean more protests and more pressure to change. “It would be cataclysmic. We don’t know if it’ll be another Rodney King situation. And if he’s exonerated, a lot of people will say this is something that’s allowed in the rules. They’re going to have more pressure to change the rules, and police don’t want those rules changed.”
Randi Weingarten, leader of the AFT (American Federation of Teachers union) has made a malicious smear against the Jewish community that would normally be characterized as anti-Semitic, but it may get a pass because she happens to be Jewish.
She was asked a very appropriate question: “Why are the teachers across the nation in major cities still refusing to go back and teach children in the classroom in public schools?” Instead of acknowledging the problem, she strangely shifted into a tirade against the Jewish community. She castigated Jews by saying, “American Jews are part of the ownership class … who now want to take that ladder of opportunity away from those who do not have it.” She took legitimate criticism of her union’s refusal to go back to work as a prompt to demonize the Jewish community. Historically, this was labeled “scapegoating.” Scapegoating is the practice of dodging and deflecting a legitimate concern by parlaying each issue against the Jewish people or the hard-work result of Jewish financial success and ownership.
Ms. Weingarten is tragically another example of someone denouncing her own people and inciting others against Jews in order to be the darling of the left, thereby climbing the ladder of political power. She understands that today, power in leftist and minority circles is achieved by those who blame Jews. This has become the left-wing formula.
If anything, those from the Jewish community, who have been critical of teachers being the last holdouts to return to work while still drawing their salary and full benefits, are acting as plaintiffs for the students in public school who will fall behind as a consequence of their school activities being shelved. Indeed, they’ve been acting to keep the rungs of the ladder intact. Thus, one would think there would be significant blowback from the “race police” against Weingarten’s obvious smear of Jews.
But it has not happened. That is because the laws of “wokeness” on behalf all minorities do not include Jews. Jews have been excluded from the victimization monopoly; they are not in the pecking order. You can say anything you want against Jews, just as with whites and Christians, if the accusations can be parlayed into an indictment against those pre-perceived as oppressors of the intersectional officialdom. No doubt, as part of the “ownership class,” Jews are not victims…even when they are. It’s similar to how, conversely, LeBron James is not part of the ownership class, even though he is.
Even more awkward is the silence among the establishment Jewish organizations, those normally entrusted to defend Jews against malicious and false smears intended to incite. Part of the silence is because Weingarten is a card-carrying member of Jewish left-wing politics that most of these organizations admire. She is a darling and big-time operative in the Democrat party and personal friend of the biggest names in the Democrat ruling class. They protect their own first.
Also, by invoking class struggle — “ownership class” — Weingarten gets a free pass as a child of the class-struggle ideology dear to the hearts of so many Jews raised in the mindset and teachings of the left-wing New School of Social Research in Greenwich Village.
Disturbingly, the most prominent reason for silence is that in today’s left-wing woke Jewish community, defending Jewish interests has become secondary to advancing the woke cause. Worse, defending Israel or Jewish interests is considered tawdry, tribal. For instance, establishment Jewish organizations here in America have not vigorously or even openly condemned attacks in Brooklyn and Manhattan against Jews when those attacks were perpetrated by blacks, Muslims or hispanics. Wokeness supersedes all, even physical Jewish security.
So obsequious to wokeness are many progressive Jews nowadays that the very purpose of American Jewishness is to sacrifice itself on the altar of woke social justice. It’s head-spinning how, for leftist rabbis, to be Jewish is to, in principle, continually castigate Israel on behalf of the Muslim Palestinian cause and to indict Jews, as Weingarten did, to promote the goals of Black Lives Matter or other minority causes. In short, one shows Jewishness today precisely by condemning Israel and condemning Jews for caring about Jews. Yes, this is sick stuff — the stuff of people so uninterested in the organic value of Torah observance and Jewish peoplehood as an imperative unto itself that Jewish is no longer about Judaism.
Very often today, the big-time wealthy on the left and in Hollywood condemn capitalism and “ownership” and scold us for not being “inclusive.” They do this from their guarded high-rise apartment buildings and gated mansions. Their scolding us regulars frees them from the spotlight of being so very rich and exclusive. Living like a capitalist while preaching socialism and Marxism is their shield of protection — as if to say to the angry masses: Gee, we wish we didn’t have all this capitalist wealth.
It turns out the matron of scolding against “ownership”, Randi Weingarten, just so happens to have lived in East Hampton, the toniest of America’s towns, and in glitzy and fashionable digs in Manhattan. For many years, she earned above $600,000. Just sayin’.
Rabbi Spero is president of the Conference of Jewish Affairs and author of Push Back: The Battle to Save America’s Judeo-Christian Heritage.
President Biden signed an executive order today which sets up a new commission to study changes to the Supreme Court, including the possibility of expanding/packing it. The full order is posted on the White House website. It creates a commission of 36 members all of whom are considered experts in the legal field. The group will have up to 180 days to submit a report which looks at specific reform proposals and which will include public comment. The full list of members is here. Most of them aren’t household names but a few, like Harvard’s Laurence Tribe, are familiar. There’s no need to guess where he stands on court packing:
A couple of liberal Harvard law professors are lending their name to a new campaign to build support for expanding the Supreme Court by four justices in 2021…
“The time is overdue for a seriously considered plan of action by those of us who believe that McConnell Republicans, abetted by and abetting the Trump Movement, have prioritized the expansion of their own power over the safeguarding of American democracy and the protection of the most vulnerable among us,” Tribe said.
The report itself won’t include recommendations, just analysis of the issues. The Post says progressives are probably going to be in for some disappointment:
The commission, however, is likely to disappoint liberals who are looking for quick action to blunt the court’s conservative majority, while giving the president cover to avoid wading into the contentious debate. The members are not tasked with giving Biden specific recommendations but rather providing an analysis of a range of proposed changes to the court.
And the NY Times echoes that suspicion:
Activists who say a larger court would give Mr. Biden the chance to appoint a number of liberal justices may be disappointed by his commission. People familiar with its charge from the president said the group will avoid making any recommendations to Mr. Biden or lawmakers…
The commission’s members include liberal scholars like Laurence H. Tribe, a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School and a leading progressive voice in the legal community, and Caroline Fredrickson, the former president of the American Constitution Society.
But progressives may balk at some of the conservative members of the commission. They include: Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor who was a top Justice Department official under President George W. Bush; Adam White, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School; and Keith E. Whittington, a professor of politics at Princeton University who takes an “originalist” view of the Constitution.
In short, the commission has enough balance that we’re not likely to see it go all in on something as extreme as court packing. That’s probably because Biden himself doesn’t think it’s a good idea. Back in 2019 Biden said he was against court packing but during the campaign last year he tried to avoid irritating his base by repeating that he was against it. Instead, he simply refused to answer the question and eventually promised to create a commission to study the issue. Here’s a collection of clips put together by the Washington Post.
One of the other things the commission will look at is the possibility of term limits for SCOTUS justices. I’ve seen some people talking about limiting them to 18-year terms and others suggest the justices rotate such that every president gets 1 or 2 nominations. My guess is that in six months when the report is turned in we’ll hear a lot more about those ideas, if nothing else because it’ll be a way for the White House to take the focus off court packing. Justice Breyer warned recently, during an address at Harvard, that court packing was a bad idea. That didn’t go over well with the far left who are now increasing their calls for him to resign. I don’t know why Breyer would retire now rather than in a year or two, but he is 82-years-old and is not going to take the risk that Justice Ginsburg did. He doesn’t want to wake up one morning and realize he’s stuck with having President DeSantis choose his replacement.
If Biden were merely senile, I’d fear for America but perhaps summon up some sympathy for him. But he’s not merely senile. He’s a vicious, creepy, stupid man, and his nonstop attacks on Georgia are Exhibit A in the case against him. In his latest pronouncements, not only did Biden continue to lie about the Georgia law, but he implied that the Masters Tournament should move from Augusta, Georgia, where it’s been held since 1934, as if golf courses were fungible, not unique.
As you all know by now, the Georgia Legislature looked at the inefficiencies of its elections and decided that the state could do better. Therefore, it passed a bill expanding voting hours, increasing the number of pre-election days on which people can vote, and creating more drop box locations. It also did away with signature analysis as a means for verifying absentee ballot requests, a method that can be arbitrary and capricious, and, instead, asked for requesters to submit some common form of identification.
It was this last request that drove leftists insane. If voters have to submit identification, that lessens the opportunities for election fraud. Clearly, the ability to commit fraud is an important part of the Democrat strategy for winning elections.
Starting with Joe Biden’s first, and only, press conference on March 25, Democrats have hammered relentlessly at the law. Joe is especially invested in the narrative, which he clearly understands. (That is, he’s obviously not so demented that he has no idea what his words mean.) To Joe, the law is so evil that it’s not even “Jim Crow.” It’s Jim Crow’s big brother, “Jim Eagle.”
Jim Crow was about demanding that black people take complicated tests that were impossible to pass as a prerequisite to voting. Jim Crow was also about lynchings, cross-burnings, sitting in the back of the bus, separate entrances and drinking fountains, redlining loans, restrictive housing practices, and all the other indignities American Blacks suffered in Democrat-controlled regions for 100 years.
Jim Eagle is worse, though, much worse. Forget about lynchings. Those are small potatoes. Under Jim Eagle, partisan people or agencies cannot hand out food or drink to people in line to vote. Also, under Jim Eagle, as noted, people must have identification to get absentee ballots (just as they do if they vote in person).
If you step back from the hysteria and look at what Democrats are actually saying, it’s this: Blacks are too stupid to get an ID.
Thanks to Democrat hysteria, Atlanta-based corporations are now attacking the act, too. To do so, Delta Air Lines ignored that it requires ID for people to buy tickets and board planes, and Coca-Cola conveniently forgot its friendly relations with Nazis (for which it never apologized).
The most hypocritical is Major League Baseball, which pulled its All-Star Game from Atlanta, even as it remained unconcerned that it requires ID to pick up tickets at will-call. MLB also moved the game to Denver, a lily-white city in a state with even more restrictive voting laws — except that Colorado automatically mails those easy-to-defraud absentee ballots to every registered voter.
The thing is that golf courses, unlike baseball fields, are not fungible. For 87 years, the Masters has taken place at a single iconic location: the Augusta National Golf Club. Bobby Jones, one of the greatest golfers ever, was a club co-founder, and he helped design the course. He also started the Masters Tournament. To hold the tournament anywhere else means that it’s not the Masters. It’s just another golf competition.
So far, the people in charge of the tournament are holding firm. Let’s hope they continue to do so. Any other stance would destroy the tournament and allow the Democrats to get away with the Big Lie — that is, a lie they tell so often and with such fervor that credulous people begin to believe it’s true.
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George Floyd riots against Officer Derek Chauvin (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
Former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin may not escape prosecution for one of the three charges against him for causing the death of George Floyd, but contrary to public opinion, the case against him is not cut and dried. Though radio stations have solemnly gone quiet for nearly nine minutes to remind Americans of the time Chauvin had his knee on Floyd’s neck, Black Lives Matter fire-setters and looters with their violent antifa allies burned parts of American cities in retaliation for his death, and cops were forced to kneel, it turns out there’s a lot we didn’t know about the case.
Why not? There’s only one explanation. Prosecutors didn’t tell you. Antifa-friendly Attorney General Keith Ellison, who picked those multiple private attorneys from white-shoe firms to replace regular Hennepin County prosecutors, didn’t tell you. The media obviously didn’t tell you. And the threatening mob that recorded the horrific site of George Floyd handcuffed and prone on a Minneapolis street didn’t tell you. Black Lives Matter certainly didn’t tell you. This is the group that overtly lied about the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor, Patrick Kimmons, Jacob Blake, and others.
Unfunny comedian Chelsea Handler may want to rush to judgment because “there is video of him” killing George Floyd.
Many things have been revealed during the nearly two-week-long trial of Chauvin. We’re betting you didn’t know most of them. Here are just nine examples.
1. Chauvin Didn’t Have His Knee on Floyd’s Neck
Midway through the second week of testimony, defense attorney Eric Nelson showed video from police body-worn cameras from a different angle showing Derek Chauvin’s knee was on Floyd’s shoulder and upper back, not his neck. Prosecutors immediately began changing their verbiage from “neck” to “neck area,” according to Andrew Branca of Legal Insurrection, who is listening to the trial as I am.
It’s possible Chauvin’s knee slipped to Floyd’s neck at some point before police could “load and scoot” him for medical help, but a different angle showed that he had his knee on Floyd’s shoulder blade.
But wait, didn’t the police chief testify this was against police protocol? Yes. Was this an accurate depiction of what police can do? No. As the prosecution’s own use-of-force expert testified.
2. The Cops Didn’t Use as Much Force as They Could Have
The prosecution’s use-of-force expert testified in cross-examination by Chauvin’s attorney that police could have used their tasers on Floyd, but chose not to, since by that time the knee hold was working.
3. We Still Don’t Know How George Floyd Died
As Andrew Branca has pointed out, the prosecutors have alluded throughout their case to apparent asphyxia as the culprit in Floyd’s death. They are attempting to lead jurors to conclude that the only way that asphyxia could have occurred was by Derek Chauvin’s knee on Floyds “neck area,” which we now know was the shoulder and back area, not the neck per se.
We know Floyd had a deadly cocktail of drugs in his system. It’s believed that this same cocktail of meth and fentanyl are what sent Floyd to the hospital, where he nearly died, only two months before. Fentanyl causes asphyxia.
4. Drugs Were Found in SUV and Cop Car
Pills found in the Mercedes SUV and the police squad car, where Floyd had been for a brief time, had meth and fentanyl in them, which he was believed to have eaten to hide evidence from cops.
5. Floyd Was Using Drugs Again
Floyd’s girlfriend Courtney Ross testified that “Floyd,” as she called him, was living with friends from Salvation Army’s Harbor Light shelter, where the 6’4″, 220-lb. man served as a security officer. She said he was sad because most of his friends had lost their jobs due to pandemic shutdowns. She testified that he was using drugs again after a short sober period.
6. George Floyd Was With His Drug Dealer When Cops Came
George Floyd was sitting in a Mercedes SUV with his reputed drug dealer. Testimony shows that Morries Hall first tried to use fake $20 bills at the local store, and when that didn’t work, sent Floyd inside to use them. It’s entirely possible that Hall urged Floyd to eat the drugs to hide the evidence, which would have sent the dealer to a much longer jail sentence. Indeed, audio from a police video was introduced into court that seems to show Floyd telling cops “I ate too many drugs,” though prosecutors believe he told police “I ain’t doing no drugs.”
7. Floyd’s Drug Dealer Took the 5th
Morries Hall’s attorney announced to the Chauvin judge that he would not testify. Hall invoked his 5th Amendment rights because it’s entirely possible he could be found to have given Floyd his lethal dose of fentanyl.
8. Derek Chauvin Weighed 140 Pounds, Floyd 223
Chauvin and his partner came to back up two other cops who had tussled with Floyd in an attempt to get him in the back of their squad car. It was a priority-one call for a non-compliant, suspected drug-addled perpetrator who had just fought with cops. They encountered Floyd, whom his girlfriend testified worked out every day with weights and played sports. Chauvin weighed 140 pounds and is 5’9″, compared to Floyd’s 223 pounds and 6’4″ frame.
9. The Hostile Crowd Could Have Contributed to Floyd’s Death
Testimony in cross-examination of the prosecution’s medical care training expert, Nicole MacKenzie, revealed that the hostile crowd could have contributed to Floyd’s death. How? Due to the hostility, threats, and the possibility that the crowd could get violent, the Minneapolis officers had to “load and scoot” Floyd to get to a safe area where they would meet paramedics and treat him. Paramedics arrived at the previous location and had to find where Floyd had been moved to, burning up a crucial eleven minutes.
The first week of the trial was filled with crying witnesses meant to elicit sympathy for Floyd but not much else. In fact, the prosecution’s case was “pound the table” weak in the first few days. The facts and expert witnesses introduced in the second week of the trial have been skillfully used by defense attorney Eric Nelson. While publications like The LA Timessay the prosecution “is scoring” big, Nelson, though outnumbered by prosecutors at least 12 to one, has managed to use the prosecution’s paid-for expert witnesses to create doubt in the state’s case. In fact, one expert was so helpful to the defense that Nelson announced he would call her again for the defense when he presents Chauvin’s case.
Now the question is will a jury of Minneapolis residents, who have lived through the George Floyd riots and looting, see any doubt created in a case that Chelsea Handler says is unnecessary and “pathetic” because “there is a video of [Derek Chauvin killing] him.”
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