Category: crime and punishment

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crime and punishment defense & war U.S. Constitution

Gunboat Anti-Diplomacy

Venezuela, drugs, war, US Constitution

A boat in international waters off the coast of Venezuela was blown up by the U.S. military, on President Donald Trump’s proud authorization. 

It was not universally praised.

“The controversy erupted on Saturday when Vance wrote on the social platform X,” Sabina Eaton reports, quoting the vice president: “’Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military,’ referencing the September 2 military strike.”

The idea that the “best use” of our armed forces is to destroy — without arrest or declaration of war or even a serious legal case set before world opinion or, for that matter, U.S. opinion — sounds all too modern but not very American.

Does it matter that they were, or merely might have been, “narco-terrorists,” as the president called the eleven people wiped out on the fast-moving boat? Or that Mr. Trump asserted their service to Venezuela’s strongman Maduro — against whom the U.S. has not declared war?

“Sen. Rand Paul all but accused the vice president of celebrating war crimes,” Eli Stokols and Dasha Burns wrote yesterday at Politico. “The Kentucky Republican ripped Vance over the weekend in a social media fight that could offer a preview of future skirmishes between President Donald Trump’s heir apparent and another Republican with 2028 ambitions.”

The Kentucky senator asked, rhetorically, if the vice president had “ever read To Kill a Mockingbird?

“Did he ever wonder what might happen if the accused were immediately executed without trial or representation??

“What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial.”

Rand is right. The use of unlawful or unaccountable power can never advance American interests. Because one of our interests is holding power to account, to the rule of law. 

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment Voting

The Dog That Didn’t Vote

dog, voter ID, elections, democracy, cheating

“Ruff! Ruff ruff ruff! Ruff ruff! Ruff ruff ruff! Growl!”

Translation: “I’m just a dog! I was framed! I had nothing to do with it! I oppose fraudulent voting on principle! Growl!”

The culprit is the dog’s owner, an Orange County, California woman, Laura Lee Yourex.

In 2021, Yourex mailed in a ballot in the name of her dog — not Lucky or Fluffy but “Maya Jean Yourex,” which cognomen the canine, no longer with us, is also on record as disavowing. We’ll call the dog MJ for short and leave your ex out of it.

In 2021, the MJ ballot was accepted. When Laura Lee tried the same thing in 2022, the ballot was rejected. The 2021 election was state level. For state elections, California eschews the voter-verification requirements of federal elections.

According to a local official: “Proof of residence or identification is not required for citizens to register to vote in California elections nor is it required to cast a ballot in state elections. However, proof of residence and registration is required for first-time voters to vote in a federal election.”

You see the problem.

Laura Lee Yourex faces up to six years in prison.

Voter fraud doesn’t exist, we’re told whenever there’s another report of such fraud — except maybe just a little. 

But if we keep adding up documented instances, we’ll come up with a bigger number than “just a little” (I’ll let mathematicians notate that in symbols) — and that’s not counting legalized voter fraud and fraud that people got away with.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment social media

Talking About Crime in DC

Washington DC, crime, police, statistics

How bad is Washington’s crime problem? Well, that’s hard to know precisely, what with rampant fudging of crime statistics.

We get anecdotes. For example, via tweeted responses to an invitation by the X account Washingtonian Problems to “push back against the negative narrative about our city. Share why you love our beautiful home and help show the world the real DC.”

Whether the appeal was meant ironically, a possibility suggested by Not the Bee, I don’t know. But a good many reports of non-beauty ensued.

● “I was called into court to give a statement about a man who’d exposed himself to me on the metro. He had over 200 charges to date. Court was delayed four hours for him to ‘calm down’. . . . Once he had, she dismissed the new charges and let him go.”

● “Less than a mile from the Capitol, kids tried to steal my backpack. Punched, for no reason, by a guy on the Metro. . . . Cops recently showed me videos they can’t release. What’s happening out there is more insane than most imagine.”

● “I watched a man kick a plate-glass door in at a 7-Eleven. 911 kept me on hold for almost five minutes before telling me not to call back, it was a property crime.”

Then there’s the news-making disgruntled DoJ employee who threw a Subway sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection officer.

From these reports and plenty others I think we can conclude that yes, crime has been a problem in Washington DC.

As has law enforcement.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment government transparency

The Case of the Phony Stats

Charlotte Djossou, Washington D.C. crime, crime stats, police

One theme of The Wire, a series about the war on drugs in Baltimore, is the willingness of police department leaders to fake crime statistics.

Despite a few flights of fancy, the drama prided itself on its realism. It turns out that in reality, too, police department bosses may be willing to rewrite crime statistics so things don’t seem as bad as they are.

In Washington DC, a police sergeant, Charlotte Djossou, accused higher-up officers of repeatedly instructing lower-down officers to re-label everything from thefts to violent assaults as lesser offenses. All liberally confirmed by “[Metropolitan Police Department] emails, depositions, and phone call transcripts” seen by The Washington Free Beacon.

The MPD has now settled with Djossou, who sued the department in 2020 after it punished her for bringing the matter up.

One example that emerged in the legal proceedings is a 2022 deposition by Randy Griffen, an MPD commander. Griffen admits telling a police captain, Franklin Porter, to find “a solution for the theft problem, which was driving up the district’s statistics.” The solution was to recategorize instances of shoplifting and theft, now calling them “Taking Property Without Right” — “because TPWOR reports are not tracked in the DC Crime Report.”

The Free Beacon quotes extensively from court documents. Tweaking the crime stats was routine in DC for years.

The DC Police are not alone: other fictionalizers of crime statistics are known to have flourished in LA, NYC, New Orleans, and Columbus, Ohio.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment ideological culture

Rethinking What Safety Means

crime, safety, law, police, Washington D.C.

Joe Scarborough threw kindling onto the fire. 

In the context of President Trump calling up the National Guard to help police the streets of Washington, D.C. — “you’ll have more police and you’ll be so happy, ’cause you’d be safe” said Trump — Scarborough prompted Symone Sanders, a Democratic strategist, fellow MSNBC host, and wife of a former night mayor of the city, with cedar soaked in kerosene: “You don’t think more police makes streets safer?”

“No, Joe,” she said, helping Morning Joe viewers decipher her racial identity: “I’m a black woman in America.

“I do not always think that more police makes streets safer.” 

Before you have time to wonder whether she’s advancing the law of diminishing returns in criminology, she quickly goes on: “When you walk down the streets of Georgetown” — a predominantly wealthy and white D.C. neighborhood — “you don’t see a police officer on every corner but you don’t feel unsafe. So what is it about talking about places like South D.C., right, Ward Eight (if you will), that people say ‘we need more officers to make us safe’?

“I think we have to rethink what safety means in America.”

While adding more police officers to a peaceful society won’t likely decrease crime much, a violent community is another story. People in these communities need greater safety to live their lives. Without becoming a statistic. Law enforcement that is visible on the street can surely help.

But rethinking the meaning of “safety” won’t. 

So what’s burning?

Democratic hopes, maybe. We’ll see how Trump’s move to clean up the capital goes.

Yet, if he tries to use the National Guard in other cities without constitutional warrant, that’d go beyond mere policing, into police-state territory. 

Just don’t consult Democratic strategists for a “rethink” of such distinctions.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment local leaders regulation

Free Troy Lake

US Capitol, pollution, exhaust, regulations, pardon

Colorado mechanic Troy Lake, former and (we hope) future operator of Elite Diesel, was incarcerated by the Biden administration.

The 65-year-old fixed diesel vehicles. Unfortunately for him, he did so by removing EPA-mandated emissions systems that supposedly help keep the air clean. By forcing vehicles to recirculate exhaust, the systems also make it harder for them to function properly.

“I was just trying to help people. And the word got out all over the country that I could do it right.”

One customer was hauling calves when his truck almost caught on fire because of the EPA-mandated system. He removed the filter himself and paid Troy to fine-tune the engine.

Troy has seen school buses unable to move for hours because of problems caused by the filter.

He wasn’t fixing these vehicles “out of malice,” he protests. “I think all of us want cleaner air. [At this cost? No.] But when we’re putting people out of business, there’s got to be a common ground.”

In December 2024, a judge sentenced Troy to 12 months in prison and fined him $52,500 for “conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act.” It could have been worse: up to five years and $250,000.

Now Troy and his friends want President Trump — who has been working to undo some of the worst regulatory impositions of the Obama and Biden years — to pardon Troy so he can get back to his life and business. 

How about it, Mr. President?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights

The Bobbies That Say NIII

UK, British flag, censorship, surveillance, internet, news

In Great Britain, you can get police to show up at your door just by posting an unauthorized opinion on social media.

Things are about to get worse. By talking about it online, Britons who think that the country has an immigration problem could draw the attention of a new police unit, National Internet Intelligence Investigations.

Saying “we’ve got to protest about this” will probably cause the sirens to go off.

Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, says the government is trying “to police what you post, what you share, what you think” because it “can’t police the streets. . . . Labour have stopped pretending to fix Britain and started trying to mute it.”

However, this kind of thing happened under the Tories too.

People still speak their minds in the UK. They aren’t yet used to regarding their political opinions as prenatal forms of criminal activity.

One could use social media to plan or boast about what everybody agrees is a crime. A thug might post video showing how he beat somebody up. Bank robbers might share bank-robbery plans on Facebook. Criminals tend not to do these things. But if they did, for real (that is, they’re not play-acting), who could object if the police inspect the incriminating posts and take appropriate action?

But what’s happening in the UK is not that. 

It’s an attempt to prevent social unrest by finding expressions of dissent and pretending to divine which speech-crime will lead to protest-crime.

It requires Big Brother Bobbies.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom

Precedented Prosecution?

Canada, Covid, truckers, punishment, tyranny

“The Crown says it’s seeking an extraordinary sentence for an unprecedented crime,” wrote Arthur White-Crummey for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation last week, “as court began hearing sentencing submissions Wednesday in the mischief case of Ottawa truck convoy leaders Tamara Lich and Chris Barber.”

The “Ottawa truck convoy” is what they are calling the big anti-totalitarian protests made by truckers in Canada during the late pandemic scare. 

“Crown prosecutor Siobhain Wetscher asked Justice Heather Perkins-McVey to impose a prison sentence of seven years for Lich and eight years for Barber,” we learn, and if you raise your eyebrows over such stiff sentences — for “mischief” cases! — you’re not alone. Chris Barber’s lawyer called the prosecutor’s demanded punishment, “cruel and unusual.” 

The exact charges against the two convoy leaders are “mischief and counselling others to disobey a court order” (Barber) and “mischief alone” (Lich). The prosecutor argued that these people did a lot of damage.

But it wasn’t property damage, or burning buildings, or even littering. The convoys stalled traffic around government buildings and made a lot of noise — and Barber is acknowledged by the prosecutor to have worked with police to move trucks out of residential areas. 

Barber and Lich wanted a clean and pointed protest. 

Barber’s lawyer noted that the organizers and hooligans of the “Black Bloc” protesters at Toronto’s 2010 G20 summit “caused extensive property damage, including upending police cars and smashing storefronts, but received comparatively light sentences of under two years.”

And remember, even the CBC article used the word “unprecedented.”

Traditionally, however, a specific kind of government does indeed prosecute its opponents in this manner, no matter how peaceful.

Tyrannical governments.

So we now know how to categorize the Canadian government.

Very precedented.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment insider corruption scandal

One Dares Call It Treason

Tulsi Gabbard

Directly in the wake of the president calling the Epstein scandal “a hoax,” another hoax came to the fore: Russiagate.

Many of us suspected the wild allegations were a hoax from the get-go in 2016, which was clarified by the Mueller Report in 2019.

Now Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has taken the next step in revealing the perfidious nature of the “Russiagate” accusations made against Donald Trump. “Over a hundred documents that we released, on Friday,” she told Fox News, “detail and provide evidence of how this treasonous conspiracy was directed by President Obama, just weeks before he was due to leave office after President Trump had already gotten elected.”

A treasonous conspiracy?

Strong words. But remember, Ms. Gabbard is not an attorney. When she uses the word “treason,” the actual Attorney General is not required to follow along.

Indeed, how likely is AG Pam Bondi — to whom Gabbard has given the case files — to indict former President Barack Obama on a capitol charge?

“This is not a Democrat or Republican issue,” continued Gabbard, “this is an issue that is so serious it should concern every single American, because it has to do with the integrity of our democratic republic.”

The trouble is, the basic deal of democracy depends on bi-partisan restraint. That restraint has been broken. Shattered. Actually prosecuting the former directors of the CIA and FBI (Brennan and Comey, named co-conspirators) might be feasible in our system — but truly unprecedented. 

Arresting and prosecuting a former president? When all facts are known, accountability may demand it. 

But when do we get off this road?

Remember, the initial breaking of the democratic deal was done by Democrats protesting Trump’s supposed breaking of democratic norms!

It is hard to imagine justice being found here.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment insider corruption

Secret Stupidity?

Trump, assassination attempt, questions, Secret Service, puzzle

Six agents of the Secret Service were suspended yesterday. “The agency has come under intense scrutiny,” explains Eileen Sullivan of The New York Times, “since a 20-year-old gunman was able to fire several shots at Mr. Trump as he spoke onstage at a campaign rally on July 13, 2024. . . .

“It was the first assassination attempt since 1981 to wound a current or former president — a bullet grazed Mr. Trump’s ear.” Such a close miss! No wonder Trump now suggests he’s on a mission from God.

The Times’s Washington reporter says the agency has, since the shooting, endured “intense” scrutiny, but that’s not what it looks like from here in the bleachers. The Butler, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt was dropped by the media like a hot rock, after the first week or so, receiving very little public scrutiny . . . considering its grave implications. (Pun intended.)

“Multiple inquiries, including from Congress,” the Times goes on, “into the security lapses at Butler had some overlapping conclusions, in particular that there was a significant breakdown in communications between agents themselves, and between Secret Service agents and the local law enforcement helping to secure the rally site.”

By Hanlon’s razor, we are supposed to avoid using malice and conspiracy as explanations for when things go wrong . . . if at all possible. And incompetence — if not exactly Hanlon’s chosen word, stupidity — is indeed the official determination.

And now it has been dealt with. Officially. A few agents were suspended without pay from ten to 42 days.

Is that enough?

Such gross incompetence deserves an outright termination of employment. Everybody knows this.
Is it really that impossible to fire a government employee?

Some will speculate that they were treated lightly to keep their mouths shut.

You know, about a conspiracy. 

But the undoubted proliferation of stupidity in government always makes Hanlon’s razor easy to apply.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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