Category: crime and punishment

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crime and punishment Regulating Protest

Force Over Reason

illegal immigration, riot, deportation, borders, cultures, defense, law

L.A. is in flames again, with rioting, looting, attacks on police (with “commercial grade fireworks”) and against the much-despised ICE agents. At issue, they tell us, are the horrible things ICE does to illegal entrants into the United States — kidnap them, say; or deport them, as the government puts it — and this requires. . . .

Well, what does it require in response? Open battles with the feds? 

As in the 2020 BLM riots, rioters are attacking federal buildings, with attempts at violent entry.

This is no way to persuade Americans of much of anything — other than that force triumphs over reason. 

So little wonder that the U.S. president chose to meet force with force by sending in the National Guard. Trump’s explanation on Truth Social qualifies as Classic Trump (not New Trump): “If Governor Gavin Newscum, of California, and Mayor Karen Bass, of Los Angeles, can’t do their jobs, which everyone knows they can’t, then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!”

Federalizing the Guard will be fought in court — like everything else — but it appears to be yet another case in which folks argue that President Trump does not have the lawful authority . . . only come to find out that Congress does constitutionally enjoy said power but unaccountably legislated it away to the president.  

Rita Panahi of Sky News Australia covered the mayhem in her “Lefties Losing It” segment. “And while the Mexican flag was proudly flying throughout these protests, the American flag was nowhere to be seen,” Ms. Panahi observed, “unless it was being set alight.” 

Protesters waving the flag of the foreign state they’ve fled?!?!? 

That’s not Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment election law Voting

DOGE vs. Illegal Voting

DOGE, Government Efficiency, dog, bureaucrats, Washington D.C.

Only five people. What’s the big deal?

The Justice Department is prosecuting five recently stumbled-upon cases of illegal voting.

The Washington Times reports that the fraudsters include a Ukrainian mother and daughter, a Jamaican woman, and a Colombian man “who had been deported three times [and who] stole and lived under the identity” of an American citizen.

“I don’t think five cases is evidence of a systems-wide problem,” says Omar Nourelden of Common Cause. Surely too few to justify investigations or voting requirements that might curb voter fraud if only there were any.

One wonders how journalists like John Fund found material for investigative works like Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy, published in 2004, or Our Broken Elections: How the Left Changed the Way You Vote, published in 2021.

The story quoting Nourelden mentions the Department of Government Efficiency’s referral of 57 cases of illegal aliens voting in the 2024 election. So that’s more than five recent examples. And DOGE isn’t done yet.

Willful negligence in conduct of elections is part of the problem. Specific fraud by specific persons is part of the problem.

Nourelden and others object to voter ID. They also criticize as invasive the new efforts by DOGE to find evidence of fraud, that rarity of our political life. (Of course, non-DOGE government personnel already have access to the voting and registration records.)

If there’s no big problem, DOGE won’t find a big problem. Let it hunt.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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budgets & spending cuts crime and punishment deficits and debt free trade & free markets

The Great Rail Robbery

Amtrak, trains, subsidy, transportation

It’s unclear “what problem Amtrak privatization proposals are intended to solve,” an Amtrak white paper argues.

The authors assert that “giving the United States the passenger rail system it needs will require substantial, assured, multi-year federal funding. . . .”

That flies in the face of experience. But if you are looking for a problem to solve, consider the biggest current story about Amtrak, its thieving employees. 

Buckle up, for the rail gets bumpy: Sixty-one of 119 Amtrak employees exposed in 2022 for perpetrating a healthcare scam were kept on the job until a recent internal investigation. 

For several years, these employees had collected kickbacks from doctors willing to file fake medical claims. 

Amtrak now promises that it is (finally) cleaning house.

The organization’s inspector general says that the large number of employees “who cavalierly participated in this scheme to steal Amtrak’s funds suggests not only a serious lapse in basic ethics, but a troubling workforce culture . . . in which blatant criminal behavior was somehow normalized.”

A culture that DOGE has been finding in many governmental endeavors.

What governments lack are decent feedback mechanisms that real markets provide. Amtrak operates in a fake reality of “needs” — those infinite “needs” mentioned in the white paper against privatization.

Businesses succeed; businesses fail — and if the latter, they move aside to let others try to do better. But the white paper treats business failure as proof that government funding is mandatory.

For taxpayers, always on the hook for Amtrak failures, privatization is a solution.

Privatization would also mean less tolerance for keeping thieves on payrolls.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment subsidy

Newsom’s Terrifying “Antiterrorism”

Gavin Newsom, Islam, Mosque, funding, California,

Some of the worthiest allies in the fight against terrorism are the cheerleaders of terrorism. Make sense?

Makes sense to California Governor Gavin Newsom, apparently. This March he sent nearly $200,000 — on top of earlier grants — to the Islamic Center of San Diego. It’s part of a program to help religious institutions fight terrorism.

The Center is led by an imam who rationalized Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks on Israeli civilians; no atrocity gave him pause. The Washington Free Beacon also reports on links between this mosque and the 9/11 hijackers.

Newsom has awarded similar “antiterrorism” grants to other mosques demanding the demise of Jews and Israel.

Daily reports of Islam-rationalized outrages and atrocities are aggregated by Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch. They aren’t rare.

Some regard “Islamophobia” — which, defined reasonably, means something like irrational hostility to Islam or to peaceful Muslims — as a worse threat than use of Islam to rationalize intimidation, repression, kidnapping, rape, murder. We do have reason to oppose the latter . . . and it is not any kind of “phobic,” contrary to the assertions of those who seek to blur important distinctions, because it is not irrational.*

People are responsible for their own actions, not the actions of others who belong to the same ethnic or religious group. 

But people are responsible for their own actions. 

It should go without saying that applauding the most vicious treatment of other human beings is not the kind of thing an American government should be encouraging.

By words.

Or cash.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 * Remember that the modern use of “phobia” hails from abnormal psychology, which is especially focused on needless fears. 

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Accountability crime and punishment national politics & policies

The State & Child Rape

kids in cages, immigration, border, trafficking,

Four billion bucks: That’s what Los Angeles County has confirmed it will pay “to settle nearly 7,000 claims of ‘horrific’ child sexual abuse related to their juvenile facilities and foster care homes over a period of decades,” according to a BBC report. “Survivors say they were abused and mistreated by staff in institutions meant to protect them — with many of the claims linked to MacLaren Children’s Center, a shelter that permanently closed in 2003.”

A lawyer for the plaintiffs offered the perfectly apt cliché, of foxes and hen house: “they were raping boys and raping girls.”

Meanwhile, something odd’s going on with the “children in cages” issue.

Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., head of Health and Human Services, said, in a Cabinet meeting Wednesday, that “we have ended HHS as . . . the principal vector in this country for child trafficking.” He went on to say that “during the Biden administration, HHS became a collaborator in child trafficking and for sex and for slavery. And, we have ended that, and we are very aggressively going out and trying to find these children — 300,000 children that were lost by the Biden administration.”

Last year, a whistleblower claimed that the Biden-Harris administration had “created a ‘white glove delivery service’” funneling migrant minors “into the hands of criminals, traffickers, and cartel members throughout the United States.” 

The federal government has failed worse than LA County.

Not so much by intention of politicians (we hope) but by abusive acts of government workers and contractors.

However, a major lawsuit against the worst contractor has been dropped, and the contractor re-engaged in “servicing” migrant children.

On this issue, government failure has been massive.

So, maybe when we hear calls for taking kids away from parents at local and state levels, for, say, “gender acceptance” rationales, we should demand that proponents come up with guarantees that such interventions will make things better.

For the children.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment judiciary

Today’s Stunning Outrage

judge, immigration, law, court

“Americans are watching with outrage the stunning news that Trump’s FBI has arrested a sitting judge in Milwaukee for alleged obstruction of an immigration arrest,” declared U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.).

Arresting judges?

“This is a drastic escalation and dangerous new front in Trump’s authoritarian campaign of trying to bully, intimidate, and impeach judges who won’t follow his dictates,” Raskin explained. “We must do whatever we can to defend the independent judiciary in America.”

Oh, my goodness, what is Mr. Trump doing now? was admittedly my first thought. But then I looked at the two cases raised. 

The first features Joel Cano, a former magistrate judge in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, and his wife, Nancy, both charged with evidence tampering, as reportedly “jail records show.” Cano resigned back in March, after the Department of Homeland Security raided his home, on information that “an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela whom authorities suspect of being a Tren de Aragua member, and others were staying on the Canos’ property.”

Last Friday, the FBI arrested Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan on obstruction of justice charges, “alleging,” NBC News reported, “that she obstructed federal authorities who were seeking to detain an undocumented immigrant by escorting the man and his defense attorney though a nonpublic jury door.”

That man, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, in court on a new domestic violence charge, was successfully apprehended by ICE, nonetheless. But what to make of a judge aiding and abetting a criminal’s escape?

Yes, we want an independent judiciary. But independent from politics — not independent from the law. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights international affairs

How We Tear Up

“We revoked her visa,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a reporter asking about Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student from Turkey, detained recently by plainclothes officers of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the process of deporting her.

“Her only known activism,” the Associated Press relates her friends saying, “was co-authoring an op-ed in a student newspaper that called on Tufts University to engage with student demands to cut ties with Israel.”

A federal judge is now preventing her deportation.

Citing those who “want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus,” is how Rubio explained the rationale for the ousting. “We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist, to tear up our university campuses.”

But there’s the rub, isn’t it? 

Obviously, those who “tear up” by committing acts of violence and intimidation, breaking our laws, should be deported. 

Yet, what about those merely speaking or writing words — whether you like them or loathe them, or their speaker — that tear up the university’s status quo in the minds of listeners? Or might, if allowed voice?

Any “alien” in our country legally has a First Amendment right to speak. Even our Highest Court has so ruled. 

The Trump administration appears to have vast legal authority to remove aliens from U.S. soil . . . except perhaps the way they’re doing it. Deportation cannot be a selective punishment for speech, which is protected. 

“America was built on free speech, so if we don’t have that, then what?” said Carina Kurban, a Lebanese American, at a recent rally in defense of Ozturk. “Then where do we go?”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment ideological culture

Propaganda by the Deed

TESLA, Elon Musk, donkey, Democrats, terrorism

“Five Tesla vehicles were damaged when a fire was started at a Tesla Collision Center in Las Vegas on Tuesday morning,” reports Megan Forrester for ABC News, “the latest in a wave of incidents aimed at the electric vehicle company, according to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.”

Described as a “targeted attack” by the police, these acts of outrageous property destruction are not confined to the Silver State. Occurring all over the country, these are obvious political attacks on Elon Musk, who turned against Democrats by supporting Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential run, and who has since led the DOGE effort to confront federal government “waste, fraud and abuse.”

“Violence against Tesla dealerships will be labeled domestic terrorism,” Reuters quotes President Trump, “and perpetrators will ‘go through hell.’”

As of last week, Tesla stock had plunged 50 percent since December, but “[s]hares of the automaker closed nearly 4% higher on Tuesday,” continues the Reuters report, “rebounding from the biggest one-day fall in four-and-a half years the previous day, after the president appeared with Musk at the White House to select a new Tesla for his staff to use.”

“House DOGE Subcommittee Chairwoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.,” USA Today told us last week, “announced that she and her committee colleagues had sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel asking for an investigation into the ‘organized’ attacks against Musk, Tesla and the DOGE effort.”

These spectacular destructions of private property are indeed terroristic. Anarchists used to use a similar approach over a century ago, calling the technique “propaganda by the deed.”

But the tide of public opinion turned against the anarchists, and I suspect it will turn strongly against today’s saboteurs as well. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies

A Whistleblower’s Ordeal

Eithan Haim can finally start to put it behind him, the nightmare that began after he helped to expose the fact that a hospital was lying about no longer performing sex-change surgeries on minors.

Reacting to bad publicity about these operations, in March 2022, the Texas Children’s hospital declared that they would no longer perform them. But Haim was among the residents there who quickly learned that hospital was simply not telling the truth and continued to inject puberty blockers into kids as young as eleven.

That the destructive “gender-affirming care” on minors was continuing was first reported by Christopher Rufo at City Journal, relying on documents provided by Haim. These were redacted medical records of the supposedly discontinued “care.” The names of the victims were concealed.

One result of the story was a state ban against performing such operations on minors.

Another was federal prosecution of Haim for allegedly violating the Health Insurance and Accountability Act. The Department of Justice’s case was weak. The DOJ had to keep refiling its court papers because of errors. And it had to replace the initial prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tina Ansari, when it turned out that she had a conflict of interest.

At PJ Media, Rick Moran points out that even if Haim were not ultimately convicted, he was being forced to suffer a huge financial and personal toll as he fought the charges.

Haim: “I was facing a kangaroo court in a few weeks.” 

Not anymore. The Trump DOJ dismissed the case with prejudice — meaning Haim cannot be re-charged.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights

The January Sixers

January 6, prisoner, jail cell, pardon, insurrection

Among the reasons one might be glad Donald Trump won the presidency is the reprieve he has given to many who attended the January 6, 2021, rally in Washington, DC.

While it is true that some who were punished did engage in violence and riot,* many were peaceful but were imprisoned anyway, under horrific conditions. And even some who avoided imprisonment were treated atrociously.

Among the latter is former police officer Michael Daughtry, who recently told his story. A few of the details:

Invited by President Trump to go to the West Lawn to peacefully protest, Daughtry did so. There, “police officers removed the barricades and waved us onto the West Lawn.” The FBI later confiscated Daughtry’s video of this.

On January 16, he was charged with trespassing on the West Lawn.

Though he had been a police officer and had no criminal record, Daughtry was jailed for hours before being brought before a judge . . . “in handcuffs, leg irons and belly chains. . . .”

Even after he was released, his home was raided repeatedly.

He was forced to turn over passwords to email, social media, bank accounts and much other private information to federal agents, who threatened him with prison if he did not comply.

Daughtry was under house arrest “for almost two years for a crime that carries a maximum punishment of less than a year. I have not been allowed to plea in this case.”

More here.

Trump pardoned Daughtry for his non-crime. Would a President Harris have done so?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Those who assaulted police officers or plotted to do violence on that day should not have been pardoned — even if deserving of mercy, commuted sentences, without wiping their record, would have sufficed.

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