Great commentary on "America First" and isolationism

Jay Nordlinger notes that, as ssensible people have known for centuries, sometimes the world doesn't leave you alone, and foreign policy must go beyond a mere assertion of short term interests of a country. All the more true as more and more nations have the ability to lob a ballistic missile to the opposite end of the planet.

Which is why I donated $51.80 to Ukrainian relief in honor of Ksenia Karolina, a Russian-American ballerina imprisoned by Putin for donating that amount to Razom.  Suggest that you do the same.  Every bit of help to make Ukraine liveable and prosperous is another nail in Putin's coffin.  May he reside there soon.

More great moments in injustice

The city of Houston has apparently suspended 260,000 criminal cases in the past eight years because  of a lack of personnel.  Scary thing in the first regard is that this is only 10% of criminal cases in Houston in this time, meaning that about 300,000 crimes occur annually there, and scarier yet that these cases are "suspended", meaning that whichever victims (say up to thirty thousand families) are involved do not get justice, and also scary because innocent men and women still have the axe of justice hanging over their head, because the case is not dismissed, but rather suspended.

But you can always find Officer Friendly doing traffic patrol.  Priorities, I guess.

Great moments in environmentalism

The state of Colorado is apparently banning the use of gasoline powered lawn equipment on public property, an initiative sponsored by the "environmentally mindless" people at "COPIRG".   As a former Colorado resident, I remember COPIRG well.  One day, they sent some people canvassing in a beat up Subaru with visible emissions....on a "red air quality" (smog) day when they could have simply taken the bus.  

Oh well, given that a lot of power in Colorado is generated using coal, I guess this fits what COPIRG has always done, mess up the air quality while preening about as if they're cleaning things up.  Sigh.

On another note, it makes sense that this "influencer" lives near the royal family, as I've noted for a while that the royals often lack a pleasure I get to enjoy all the time; the comfort of a well broken in piece of clothing.  Seriously, 500 pairs of shoes for over a hundred grand?  I calculated, even worse, that you'd need something like 100 linear feet of wall space to store all those shoes.  So unless one wants to look at nothing but sneakers in one's house, we're talking a bigger house just to house all those stinkies.

So my hearty "Bronx Cheer" to the environmentalists of the week, COPIRG and Miss Nyame.  

Horrors of Injustice

Here in Minnesota, we had a recent case where a man, implicated in a (statutory?) rape of a 14 year old girl, barricaded himself in a home with (his?) seven children and killed two police officers and a paramedic.  The suspect is deceased, but thankfully none of his children are physically hurt.  

That noted, what's of note in my mind is that while the suspect's record is not remarkable--a misdemeanor disorderly conduct conviction, some traffic convictions (also misdemeanors), and a 2007 felony assault conviction--there is an interesting pattern of "what was not done?" that merits discussion.  Specifically, at least two women requested protection orders after being involved with him since 2013, a reality that a judge honored when he refused to restore the man's firearm rights, but an interesting question comes to mind:

Did the judge look up the man's criminal history and ask the applicants for protection orders whether the man owned or possessed firearms, and did anyone visit afterwards if a positive answer was given?

I've done a bit of thinking about what is to be done about under-investigation of allegations, which of course benefits the guilty and hurts the innocent, and how to persuade the criminal justice system to take investigation seriously.  I can think it might have to do with:

• Jurors might refuse to convict based on very thin investigations.
• Defense lawyers might point out a thin investigation as evidence the prosecution hadn't done its job per Brady v. Maryland and Kyles v. Whitley.
• Prosecutors might say the same to the police when cases are handed over.
• Judges might rebuke prosecutors who bring thinly sourced cases to court.
• The state might impose audits of cases to make sure cases are getting adequate investigation.

But all in all, I can hardly imagine a better argument for good investigations than this:

If the police and prosecutors do not insist on sound investigations, the failure to punish the guilty and acquit the innocent may periodically get police officers and other first responders killed.

Might be better than a law requiring audits.  I still favor periodic audits, but there might be something even better.

A mocking term for Russia's President?

        A protester in Paris has referred to Vladimir Putin as "Poutine".  For the uninitiated, poutine is a French/French Canadian dish of cheese curds and brown gravy on top of French fries.

 

I don't personally see what poutine ever did to deserve being associated with Putin, but the sentiment is interesting.  Perhaps because poutine is linked to heart disease?

Seriously, my condolences to the loved ones of Alexei Navalny, almost certainly murdered at the orders of Vladimir Putin Poutine.  May Mr. Putin soon get his ticket to Hell.  Putin delenda est!

Annals of injustice

This article caught my eye, as it illustrates a way authorities can really make the process of investigation and trial into a punishment that probably never would be implemented by a jury.  More or less, 40 states allow the state to recover legal fees paid on behalf of a poor defendant, and those who are not able to repay face various sanctions like losing drivers' licenses and the ability to register a vehicle.  

And since a person who cannot legally drive really cannot legally work, a person who is accused has a choice between debtor's prison and a life of criminality.  I do believe that Charles Dickens wrote something about that, as did Victor Hugo.  We may be creating career criminals by our approach to legal aid for the poor.

Worse yet, for crimes less than (and maybe including) murder, the police do not do a thorough job of investigating.  A 2017 Star-Tribune report found that only 20% of rape allegations got a good basic investigation, but 26% of them were referred to the prosecutor.  One in four people whose cases are referred to a prosecutor are referred on the basis of a paper-thin investigation.  

Now let's think of this in light of investigators' responsibilities from Brady v. Maryland and Kyles v. Whitley--to seek out and provide exculpatory (exonerating) evidence.  Probably the easiest way to avoid these responsibilities is to never collect the evidence in the first place.  "Oopsie.  We put our guys with forensics degrees out on traffic patrol, so they really don't have time to interview rape victims and potential witnesses. Sorry about that!"

Wealthy defendants can get around this by hiring their own investigators to do the investigations the police do not do.  The rest of us?  Not so much.  Again, it's a choice between a ruinous plea and ruinous debt.  

So what should be done?  My take is that the government needs to do (with private help) what businesses do; audits.  Something along the lines of ISO9001, really, where an auditor would come by once a year, take a number of files from the police and the prosecutor's office, and examine them to see if basic standards are met.  If they're not, corrective action (like taking Officer Friendly off traffic patrol and having him do investigations) would be required, and the next audit would use a much larger sample.

Ideally, any government auditors (who often get stymied, if my reading of the federal government is accurate) would be augmented by conscientious policemen, prosecutors, judges, and defense attorneys, pushing back at inadequate investigations by saying "This case was not investigated per basic standards--let's start from the beginning."

A country that needs to be de-Nazified

Russia, of course, as Vladimir Putin has apparently just blamed Poland for being invaded in 1939.   Pro tip for Mr. Putin; if you're basically quoting Hitler in an interview, you can ST*U forever about trying to "de-Nazify" other countries.  You're the problem, buddy.  It fits, of course, with Russia's support of Iran, which of course earnestly desires a new Holocaust.  Somehow I am reminded of the "Prayer for the Tsar" from Fiddler on the Roof:  "Lord, bless and keep the Tsar....far away from us!".  With friends like Mr. Putin, Jews (and the rest of the world) don't need any enemies.

And a pro tip for Mr. Tucker; if you cannot figure out that your interviewee is sympathetically endorsing Hitler's foreign policy, and you don't call him on it, please don't call yourself a journalist.  Stenographer, maybe, but definitely not a "journalist". 

This one will be fun to watch

Hawaii's Supreme Court argues that the "spirit of aloha" overrides the Second Amendment of the Constitution, as well as decisions like Heller, MacDonald, and the like.  My response is first that I'd expect that the Supreme Court will slap them down by at least a 6-3 margin (hopefully 9-0) under the Supremacy Clause, and that it's a pity that the Supreme Court doesn't have authority to administer a "Spirit of Disbarment" to Hawaii's "justices" and Attorney General.  There are things in the law that can reasonably be debated, but the Supremacy Clause is really not among them, and those who argue or rule otherwise really ought to removed altogether, and permanently, from the practice of law.