Just got back from a press conference at Mobile police HQ. Before I get into that, please allow this clarification and apology. In my original blog post yesterday, while blasting Al Sharpton and other national figures for their double-standard in not engaging in advocacy for beaten white people, I also in passing asked why Mayor Sam Jones had not spoken up. In retrospect, putting Jones in the company of Sharpton et al was unfair to Jones. My beef with Jones was not based on any race-related actions or inaction on his part, nor was it based on any apparent hypocrisy on his part. Instead, it was a leadership issue: I thought this was a situation where the mayor should have been out front, verbally “laying down the law” as it were, and that he should already have made a statement. I still think so. But to mention him in the same breath as Sharpton, in the context of Sharpton’s racial double standards, was thoughtless on my part, and I apologize. I may have policy and stylistic differences with Mayor Jones, but he has very little history of anything approaching racial demagoguery. ….. Okay, ’nuff said on that. Moving on to the press conference: Forgive me if I sound cynical, but I came away far
One of the oldest legislative schemes of the left is to hide terrible statist laws behind mellifluous sounding names. There is no better example of this outrage than the Orwellian Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) of 1994, which is up for reauthorization before the Senate. Democrats want to expand the role of this already ill-conceived bill in a way that will subvert our judicial system and shred the Bill of Rights. Their tactic is working, as most Republicans will blithely let it pass the Senate – and possibly even the House. After all, who would want to go on record as supporting violence against women? Under our criminal justice system, states and local governments are vested with the police power to deal with crimes committed against its residents. Those powers are just as robust, whether the crime has been committed against a man, a woman, and everything in between (except for the unborn, thanks to Roe v. Wade). In 1994, the Clinton Administration waded into the criminal justice system by imposing a federal prosecutorial and investigative regime to combat domestic violence. This new layer of government, housed in the Department of Justice, focused on redistributing judicial power to female victims and undermining equal protection, due process and the presumption of innocence for men – all to satisfy the cult of group victimhood. Moreover, the billions spent on sundry social programs have shown no success in reducing incidents of domestic violence, while precluding state and local governments from dealing with the problem as reflected by the reality in their areas of jurisdiction. Now, in an attempt to reauthorize VAWA for the third time, Harry Reid is bringing S. 1925 to the floor later this afternoon. Like every social engineering statist law of the left, this one includes massive mission creep from the original intent. Here are some new previsions in S. 1925: The last reauthorization expanded the programs and protections to the elderly and children. This one would expand “coverage” to men, homosexuals, transgendered individuals and prisoners. After all, in a liberal marriage you have to have some way of identifying the husband and the wife. Nonetheless, this will force shelters for battered women to service …well, some other individuals as well. It expands the definition of domestic violence to include causing “emotional distress” or using “unpleasant speech.” It expands the law’s reach to give tribal Indian authorities jurisdiction over non-Indians accused of domestic violence within the borders of an Indian reservation. It would grant more visas to illegal immigrants who claim to be victims of domestic abuse. In a sane world, this bill would only garner fringe support, yet it is cosponsored by 60 senators, including 8 Republicans – Ayotte, Brown, Collins, Crapo (the ringleader) , Heller, Kirk, Murkowski, and Snowe. Even Republican opponents of the bill have already announced that they don’t plan to mount a filibuster, ostensibly ensuring that is passes the Senate. While there is strong opposition to many of the new provisions from most House Republicans, Boehner has already promised to support a clean extension of VAWA. And once again, the ACLU is nowhere to be found when it comes to true defense of civil liberties. There aren’t too many people in power who are willing to put the brakes on this train wreck. Folks, this is not reflective of a truce on social issues; this is surrender on social issues. The entire concept of criminal laws designed for specific groups or specific motivations, such as VAWA and hate crimes legislation, is an anathema to our constitutional beliefs. Under our constitutional framework, all suspects of any form of violence are afforded due process and a trial by jury. We (unlike liberals) believe that the violent offender, if found guilty, should be punished severely. Liberals can talk about a war on women, but it is they who have declared war on every law-abiding citizen with their moral relativist battle to water down our criminal justice system. There is no room for laws like VAWA in our constitutional republic, certainly not the current bill pending before the Senate. Call your senators and find out if they plan to vote for this travesty. Call your member of Congress and request that they tell Boehner not to bring any VAWA reauthorization to the floor. Cross-posted from The Madison Project
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Say No to Violence Against the Constitution Act
Have you ever used a racial slur? You may have two answers to that question. There’s your initial, visceral, response: No! Of course not! Never! But then there’s the response you’d give if you were being a little more honest: maybe… once or twice. So, if you have, does it make you a racist? In the court of liberal opinion at least, the answer seems to be yes. In the Trayvon Martin case, in which neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman is accused in the shooting death of Martin, the liberal consensus seems to be that Zimmerman, who is Hispanic, acted out of racial hatred against Martin, who was black, and thus is guilty of a “hate crime.” According to the FBI, “A hate crime is a traditional offense like murder, arson or vandalism with an added element of bias.” Hate crime laws move beyond the criminalization of free speech to outlaw thoughts society deems unacceptable. Establishing whether a criminal was motivated by bias or hate is nearly impossible because it’s nearly impossible to distinguish correlation from causation. Just because a criminal hates a particular group of people and commits a crime against a member of that group does not necessarily mean he was motivated by hatred when he committed the crime in question. Of course, there’s little evidence that Zimmerman hates blacks. The only supporting evidence so far is a recording of the 9/11 call he made as he pursued Martin. In it, Zimmerman appears to say, “They always get away, f—-ing coons.” The word “coon” is undoubtedly racist and hateful. But there is doubt about what Zimmerman actually said. It could have been “goons” not “coons.” Let’s assume Zimmerman committed a crime in shooting Martin, and that he used the word “coon” in reference to Martin. Does that make the shooting a hate crime? Many on the left seem to think so, including the 21 Democrats who last week convened a Capitol Hill briefing on racial profiling and hate crimes. The Justice Department and FBI are investigating the shooting as a possible hate crime. But it’s nearly impossible to know whether Zimmerman acted out of racial hatred. His family and friends, some of whom are black, are adamant that he is not a racist. Zimmerman’s lawyer said that he had recently mentored a black boy, taking him to play basketball and participating in fundraisers at the boy’s church. Sometimes people say racist things not because they are racists but because they want to say the most hurtful thing possible at a time when they are overcome by sudden and intense feelings of anger and frustration. It’s plausible that that’s what happened with Zimmerman. The threshold for what constitutes a hate crime continues to decline. Last month a jury convicted Dharun Ravi of all 15 charges he faced for using a webcam to spy on his dorm roommate having sex with a man – a verdict, the New York Times reports, “poised to broaden the definition of hate crimes in an era when laws have not kept up with evolving technology.” Ravi had set up a computer webcam, walked into a nearby friend’s room and viewed his roommate, Tyler Clementi, kissing a man he met on a gay website. Ravi didn’t see any sex. But he sent Twitter and text messages urging others to watch when Clementi invited the man back two nights later. Ravi didn’t follow through with his plan for a second viewing. But Clementi found out about the webcam and the twitter messages. He jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge three days later. Ravi was convicted of “bias intimidation,” which carries with it a possible sentence of 10 years in prison. The jury concluded that Ravi had not knowingly or purposely intimidated Clementi or his partner when he watched the first time. But it found him guilty of the charge because Clementi could have “reasonably believed” he had been made a target because he was gay, which in New Jersey is sufficient to get a hate crime conviction. We will probably never know why Clementi jumped to his death. He may have been contemplating suicide long before he met Ravi. He had files on his computer with titles such as “Why does it have to be so painful,” and he had taken photos of the George Washington Bridge before he entered Rutgers. What’s more, if Clementi felt intimidated by Ravi and his webcam, why did he have another hook up in his room a few days after the webcam incident? And why did he tell a friend that he wasn’t really bothered by what Ravi had seen in the viewing? Ravi was wrong to record Clementi without his knowledge. But it seems unlikely that Ravi was guilty of much more than being an insensitive jerk. The only thing we know with anything close to certainty is that Ravi doesn’t hate gays. Several character witnesses testified that Ravi was not biased against gay people. And the prosecution couldn’t produce anyone who had ever heard Ravi express hostile feelings about homosexuality or homosexuals. In an email to Clementi minutes after he jumped to his death, Ravi wrote, “I’ve known you were gay and I have no problem with it. In fact one of my closest friends is gay and he and I have a very open relationship.” Ravi rejected plea deals because they would have required him to admit to bias intimidation. His lawyers said he simply did not believe he had committed a hate crime. In an interview several days after his conviction Ravi admitted to saying some insensitive things about Clement. But he insisted: “I wasn’t biased. I didn’t act out of hate and I wasn’t uncomfortable with Tyler being gay.… I’m never going to regre not taking the plea.… If I took the plea, I would have had to testify that I did what I did to intimidate Tyler and that would be a lie. I won’t ever get up there and tell the world I hated Tyler because he was gay, or tell the world I was trying to hurt or intimidate him because it’s not true.” Proving that a crime was committed out of hatred for the victim is nearly impossible, thus it has become increasingly irrelevant. Today, all that’s needed for a hate crime conviction is for the victim to be a member of one of the left’s pet constituencies. Daniel Allot is senior writer at American Values.
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The Hate Crimes Farce
A triple murderer should have been deported after his previous robbery and assault conviction leading to a prison sentence . Gee, maybe we should Deport the Criminals First : A day after authorities arrested a suspect in connection with the brutal slayings of five people in a San Francisco home, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say the accused killer had eluded deportation and instead had to be released from custody in 2006 . San Francisco police have connected Binh Thai Luc, 35, of San Francisco with the grotesque killings of three men and two women, who were discovered dead about 7:45 a.m. Friday by a woman who had access to the house. Officials arrested Luc on Sunday and alluded to his having a criminal history. On Monday, officials said Luc had been taken into ICE custody in August 2006 as he was serving a prison sentence at San Quentin State Prison for assault and attempted robbery . Officials say he was ordered to be removed from the country by an immigration judge a month later, but because Vietnamese authorities declined to provide appropriate travel documents , Luc could not be deported and had to be released in December 2006. Vietnam didn’t want their robber back? Now there’s a shocker. I think it’s about time we told countries that we don’t care if they don’t want their criminals back. They are their problem, not ours. If they don’t like it, no more American cash. So that’s one issue. But this one was obvious: of course we should deport robbers. I keep hearing, though, that we are being meanies by wanting to deport illegals who commit minor crimes, like DUIs. OK . . . and when we don’t, here’s what can happen : Immigration officials confirmed Monday that the suspect in an alleged drunken driving wreck that killed one boy and critically injured another was in the country illegally . Luis Hector Lopez-Rodriguez, 27, of San Luis Potosi, Mexico, is accused of plowing into the porch of a southwest Houston apartment, where two young boys were playing during a March 17 party, authorities said. Gregory Palmore, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman, said agents have determined that Lopez-Rodriguez was in the country illegally and have filed paperwork to detain him. Palmore said ICE officials had no prior contact with Lopez-Rodriguez, who was convicted of driving while intoxicated in Harris County in January 2008 . . . . . Jesus Ordonez, 7 , was taken to Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Christopher Cruz, 4, suffered burns on more than 40 percent of his body after the car slammed into a hot grill, authorities said. Yeah, they had no contact with him because they didn’t start their program until later in 2008: Immigration officials launched a jail screening program called Secure Communities in the Harris County Jail in the fall of 2008 . . . Wish they’d listened to me. In November 2003, I said : Look, I understand that we don’t have the resources to deport all illegal immigrants. But it seems like a no-brainer to start with the criminals . If a single immigration agent is worrying himself with illegals who have not already been convicted of a crime serious enough to warrant jail time, while illegals are being deliberately released from jail , there is something seriously wrong. I reiterated the idea in March 2005 and December 2006 . And I started a crusade with my multi-part series “Deport the Criminalst First” campaign in May 2007 . It’s sometimes fun on this blog for me to call myself Carnac by talking about the correct predictions I have made and so forth. But it’s actually no fun being Carnac when you realize that actual lives would have been saved — like that of the seven-year-old boy above — if people had just listened to you earlier. By the way, if you’re still opposing identifying criminal aliens in jail, even those convicted of “minor” crimes like DUI, you’re part of the problem — and the blood of children like Jesus Ordonez is on your hands.
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Deport the Criminals First: Two Stories
“What about saying she’s a wh*re ?” – Jerry Brown and aide in reference to Meg Whitman ““You have to lift their skirts to find out if they are women . You sure can’t find out by how they vote!” – Democrat Congresswoman [edit] State Rep. Janis Sontany (D-TN) “ She works the pole ” (as in stripper pole) – Joe Scarborough about Jerri Thompson “She performed [redacted sexual act] on all the talk show hosts in Milwaukee” – John Sylvester, WDTY about Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch “ She’s a balloon head ” – Chris Matthews, MSNBC in reference to Congresswoman Michele Bachmann “Christian Stepford wife in a ‘sexy librarian’ costume ” — “hardcore pornographic centerfold spread.” – Salon, about Sarah Palin “ Distracted by the lure of celebrity’ and “the gubernatorial equivalent of the Real Housewives of New Jersey .” – Democrat Chair Dick Harpootlian in reference to Governor Nikki Haley The above quotes are just the very tip (and cleanest for a family site) of the iceberg of what Conservative women face in the political arena. Michelle Malkin did a great job highlighting some of the worst in her column this week ‘ The War on Conservative Women “. Conservative women seeking political office are heretics, you see. How dare they stray off the Lefty plantation? For that, they must pay. And be punished. Enter ShePAC . Not only are they refusing to cave , but they aren’t even playing defense; they are on offense (I may faint, having made a sporty thingie reference). First up? Using their brass sets of ovaries to totally annihilate the ever-repulsive Bill Maher a.k.a. Million Dollar Obama donor and the opportunist who is hypocritically embracing him. Here is their fantastic first video, exposing all Maher’s vile, misogynistic attacks on Conservative women (warning: language – all Bill Maher’s reprehensible language aimed at women): BRAVA. This isn’t gender identity politics; this is truth to false narratives. This is truth to lies. This is truth to Lefty scare tactics and punishment aimed at driving ‘the wrong kind’ of woman from the political arena. Conservative women are demonized, sexualized , demeaned and dehumanized as punishment for refusing to toe the victimhood-embracing ‘feminist’ line. Shatter the glass ceiling? Only if you walk in lock-step with us! Otherwise we’ll slam the doors we claim to want to open right in your dare-to-think-for-yourselves faces. “Vote for only ‘authentic’ female candidates ” – Patricia Ireland of N.O.W. Sarah Palin is Pat Buchanan in drag” - Eleanor Clift, in Newsweek “Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman .” – Wendy Doniger, The Washington Post “Do you cheer if the (glass) ceiling is crashed by two conservative businesswomen? ” – Slate feels as if all these women winning are kind of a blow to feminism . - Tina Brown, Daily Beast on Good Morning America Sarah Palin’s Mama Grizzlies are merely the latest incarnation of the anti-women’s movement — a movement to oppose real solutions for women, dressed up in a skirt and lipstick , as if to legitimize their efforts to block progress. – Alternet “She may be a lady, but she ain’t no woman ” – Salon, in reference to Sarah Palin They have to try to shame and dehumanize us to the point where even our gender is taken away from us. Even their children aren’t off-limits and are egregiously part of the shaming and punishment . I guess it’s okay to be that despicable as long as you think their mom has cooties. It’s far past time we recognize it for what it is. The Left aren’t just hypocrites, running to their fainting couches when a conservative calls a ‘Reproductive Justice Activist’ an insulting term, all while spewing far worse bile themselves. They are true misogynists and anti-woman. They believe women are lesser. They seek to keep women victims so that they are dependent on Big Daddy government and are easily controlled. Tot them, women are tools for political gain and are tossed aside when no longer politically expedient. They will punish those who ‘stray’ by attempting to shame and marginalize them, much like ‘outing’ in the gay community . To the Left, all people are boxed up into little groups. The girly bits of women are to be tied to their political ideology inextricably. Think for oneself? What dark magic is this? That doesn’t suit — the greatest crime to the Left is CrimeThink. And Conservative women, for refusing to fall for the anti-woman Left’s lies, are the biggest offenders. Make no mistake; this is a key campaign strategy for President Obama. He will seek to scare women so they don’t keep defecting and he, through surrogates like Bill Maher and with the complicity of the Press, will punish those who seek to challenge him and his harmful ideology. ShePAC knows the only way to combat this is through good offense. And they’ve got it. Jenn Taylor and I had the shake fist-y pleasure of speaking with Teri Christoph about ShePAC, their plans, the Left’s exploitative ‘war on women’ false narrative and the reasons behind it on our podcast “That’s What She Said” this week. Gird your fancy wombs, ladies. It’s on.
