Things are getting interesting in narco-Mexico...

 

According to a report in the Atlantic (paywalled, but an archived version is here), the politicians in Mexico who have for years - probably for generations - been bribed and/or cajoled and/or threatened by the drug cartels into turning a blind eye to their criminal activities, appear to be changing their tune.

(BIAS WARNING:  The Atlantic is notoriously anti-President Trump and routinely criticizes the policies and actions of his administration.  This article appears to be unusually positive, despite that reservation.)

... the governor of the strategically important border state of Baja California was just caught on tape offering to become an FBI informant. The remarkable thing here is that she would not be the first; the list of current and former Mexican officials and drug traffickers who have offered to cooperate with the U.S. government is now lengthy.

. . .

Since his second term began, Trump has periodically threatened military action inside Mexico, alluding to air strikes or operations that would “take out the cartels.” Mexican officials have repeatedly rejected the possibility. “There will be no invasion of Mexico,” President Claudia Sheinbaum said last year. But quietly, Mexican officials have discussed what it would mean if they were attacked by their neighbor and largest trading partner. Would it be a special-forces operation, like the one that seized former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro? A drone strike on a fentanyl lab? Some Mexican officials are reading books about the Mexican-American War, searching for historical precedent.

Because the threat of military intervention is so dramatic, not enough attention has been paid to a type of intervention that is already taking place, one that could pave the way for strikes. In a break with long-standing precedent, American prosecutors have used informants to pursue members of the Mexican government, apparently “moving up the food chain,” as one U.S. official described it to me ... Several former Mexican officials facing U.S. charges have turned themselves in, apparently agreeing to cooperate with authorities to reduce their sentences. Dozens of newly extradited drug traffickers, too, are believed to be cooperating. Their accounts appear to have allowed U.S. investigators to build cases against members of Sheinbaum’s Morena political party. At least four have been indicted. Many more have had their visas revoked.

It’s a high-risk escalation in the Trump administration’s fight against narco corruption—and possibly also a pretext for a unilateral attack. Trump could use evidence of the government’s links to organized crime in an attempt to justify using force in Mexico. This week, the Trump-appointed head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Terry Cole, gave a speech describing “the deadly connection between cartel networks and the Mexican government.”

“They are one [and] the same,” he said.

. . .

Last week, the State Department designated two lesser-known drug cartels—the Juárez Cartel and Los Viagras—as “foreign terrorist ⁠organizations” and “specially designated global terrorists.” Some within the Trump administration believe that those designations would offer some kind of legal authority for an attack, though international-law experts largely differ ... The campaign against cartel leaders has been so successful that, even if the United States wanted to decapitate a drug-trafficking organization, it’s unclear whom they would target.

There's more at the link.

This has mostly been taking place "under the wire", so to speak.  We've known for years that the entire government structure of Mexico - local, regional and national - is corrupted by drug money from the cartels, who effectively run most of the country.  However, if the cartel leaders, and political leaders, are rendered ineffective (or imprisoned), what's going to happen to the social fabric of Mexico?  So much of it is cartel-corrupted (including almost every element of the police and armed forces, the emergency services, etc.) that ordinary citizens have learned to live without most of the social structure we take for granted.  If the replacement structures of the cartel are suddenly removed, will Mexico survive in its present form?

I think there are three possibilities.

1. Mexico will collapse into a "failed state", with widespread chaos and anarchy.  It will be almost impossible for business to function without paying massive bribes to local strongmen, but those strongmen will be at war with each other, so that an effective regional or national government simply won't be possible.
2. Mexico will limp along as it does at present.  The cartel structures will continue to use their financial wealth (very considerable, having amassed it over decades) to buy the cooperation of the civil authorities.  However, the competition between cartels to take over those resources will devolve into civil war in parts of the country, and will likely spill over into the southern United States.  I'd expect southern California, Arizona and New Mexico to become very dangerous areas, even more so than at present.  (I daresay Texas will probably cope better than they do, because Texas law enforcement authorities aren't handcuffed by liberal politicians who'll do everything in their power to restrict them.)
3. Mexico may break into several smaller nation-states, based on divisions that go back centuries.  Don't forget, "modern" Mexico was "created" out of a series of revolutions and civil wars that imposed unity out of the barrel of a gun, and killed anyone who argued with the concept.  With the number of guns in circulation there now, it'll be harder to impose authority in that way.

I could be completely wrong, of course.  Time will tell . . .

Peter

Medicine, health and gender ideology

 

I hadn't realized how endemic the gender apocalypse had become in the health care (?) industry until I read this article.

In Minton v. Dignity Health, Evan Minton, who was born female but masqueraded as a male, was scheduled by her doctor for a hysterectomy at Mercy San Juan Medical Center, a Catholic hospital near Sacramento, in August 2016. Two days before the procedure, the doctor informed the hospital that she was transgender, and the hospital canceled the surgery. The hospital’s position was that the surgery was elective, part of a “transition,” and that, as a Catholic hospital, they could not participate in sex change operations.

The ACLU filed suit under California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act. The California Court of Appeals ruled in 2019 that Minton had standing to proceed, and in 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Dignity Health’s appeal, leaving that ruling intact.

In the end, the San Francisco County Superior Court entered the following judgment: “It is adjudged that plaintiff Minton, Evan take nothing from defendant Dignity Health dba Mercy San Juan Medical Center.” Minton lost. She was awarded nothing.

In Hammons v. University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center, the ruling went the other way when a federal court subsequently ruled that the hospital’s refusal to perform a hysterectomy on a woman who dressed as a man violated the Affordable Care Act.

. . .

Jessica Simpson, a Canadian transgender activist who retains male genitalia, filed a complaint against a gynecologist who refused to treat her, claiming discrimination. The complaint was filed with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia in 2019, though no resolution has been publicly reported.

A report by Advocates for Trans Equality states, “If a transgender woman’s health care provider decides she needs a prostate exam, an insurance company can’t deny it because she is listed as female in her records. If her provider recommends gynecological care, coverage can’t be denied simply because she was identified as male at birth.”

There's more at the link.

Verily, the mind doth boggle.  How on earth is an insurance company to assess the likely costs to be incurred by a prospective member if they can't be sure whether he/she is male or female?  Women have gynecological expenses that men don't have;  men have male-specific illnesses that women don't have.  It makes a difference to risks, premiums, etc.  For that matter, how about life insurance when life expectancy is affected by biological sex?  All other things being equal, women live several years longer than men, and insurance companies take that into account when deciding on the premium for life insurance policies.  What if they can't be sure of the biological sex (and hence natural life expectancy) of the person applying for insurance?

I've got a simple proposal.  Whenever anyone applies for health insurance, life insurance, or anything else where biological sex makes a difference, insist that they have to undergo a chromosome check.  If it comes back XX, they're female, no matter what they say they are.  If it comes back XY, they're male, ditto.  Only in the vanishingly small number of so-called "intersex" cases (generally accepted by authoritative medical sources as being far less than 1%) would further testing be required.  The insurance or medical procedures the individual seeks should be awarded on the basis of this chromosome test.  If it's not appropriate for their chromosomal (i.e. biological) sex, they can't have it unless they pay for it out of their own pockets and the provider is willing to provide it.  Period (you should pardon the expression).  Biologically female?  No subsidized prostate or testicular cancer exam for you.  Biologically male?  No subsidized birth control pills or cervical cancer test for you.  Is the examination or procedure you want against the moral or ethical code of the provider?  Then you don't get it from them.  End of story.

I think that would eliminate most of the legal problems facing the health care industry, exclude a great deal of the political correctness and "wokeness" involved, and save insurers a lot of money into the bargain.  What say you, readers?

Peter

Not just an open-source treasure hunt, but a COVID vaccine problem supersource

 

By now I'm sure readers are aware that last weekend, the Department of Health and Human Services released an open-source 11GB file containing every single Medicare claim from 2018 to 2024 - not individual patient diagnoses and private information, but every charge claimed against Medicare for every procedure by every provider.  It's a gold mine of information that may lead to literal gold mines for those who find evidence of fraud and abuse in the data.  As Jeff Childers pointed out:

This is clearly not just a DOGE project. It is a coordinated effort across the Trump Administration. For example, timed with the release of the data, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a related new program. Not only have they open-sourced the research, but they have gamified it. Bessent said Treasury was setting up a website for people to report Medicare fraud— and they’ll get up to 30% of whatever’s fined and recovered.

If the $1 trillion fraud estimate is even half right, the government just turned fraud detection into the world’s largest treasure hunt. Some kid in a bedroom with a laptop, a chatbot, and a case of energy drinks might make more money this year than most hedge fund managers. Dog the Bounty Hunter: Fraud Edition is coming soon, to a laptop near you.

Social media quickly began lighting up across the board. Within hours of the data release, citizen analysts had started flagging facilities billing for physically impossible numbers of procedures, clinics with addresses at residential apartments diagnosing hundreds of children with autism per month, and at least one provider that seems to have performed more Medicaid services than there are actual humans in its zip code.

However, the biggest aspect of this data treasure trove might be the unveiling, at long last, of the problems caused by COVID vaccines.

While most folks were off and running hunting for fraud bounties, the covid warriors instantly saw the other, riper fruit hanging higher up in the HHS data’s branches ... And now they have AI to help crunch the numbers, build spreadsheets, put up websites, and suggest, “Would you like me to draft the lawsuit?”

Since the agency was birthed by progressive geniuses in the Carter Administration, HHS has diligently protected the privacy of Big Pharma by keeping a death-grip on Americans’ health data. Even though, during the exact same period, we got fatter by the minute, our health got worse and worse, and we spent more and more trillions on healthcare. It’s none of your business because privacy. Science! Trust the experts! Shut up!

Now, taking the corporate media, pharma, and the political establishment completely by surprise, the data is suddenly out there. The VAERS data looked awful, but they wriggled out of that trap by sneering that the adverse event-reporting system —the system they created— was unreliable. But now we have a second data set— and it includes vaccination records.

What happens when the HHS data confirms the VAERS data? What will they say then?

I don’t say this lightly: this historic HHS data release could be even bigger than the Epstein files.

There's more at the link.

I think he's spot on.  Anyone and everyone who's been affected by problems after receiving the COVID vaccine, or who's lost a relative or friend to vaccine-related issues, can now find out for certain whether there's any correlation between that vaccination and subsequent medical issues, as revealed by what care was billed, when, and for how long.  With that information on hand, lawsuits for medical negligence and/or malfeasance of any kind by the vaccine manufacturers become more than just a theoretical possibility.  They become almost a certainty.

Cue the vaccine manufacturers suddenly lobbying Congress to pass a law granting them retroactive immunity from lawsuits over negligence and malfeasance - immunity they do not have under the existing vaccine legislation.

I wonder how many ambulance chasers lawyers are suddenly rubbing their hands together with glee as they cue up their legal AI systems and turn them loose on the new data?

Peter

That's a very good point

 

In an interview a few days ago, the Commissioner of the Department of Corrections in Minnesota raised what I think is a very worthwhile question.

On Friday’s broadcast of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” Minnesota Department of Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell discussed cooperation between local sheriffs and immigration officials and said that “having judicial orders or detainers or holds that are signed by a judge would address this issue. But, to date, we have not seen a willingness on the part of DHS to pursue those.”

. . .

"... sheriffs are in a very difficult position, because they face legal liability if they hold people beyond their appointed time. And having judicial orders or detainers or holds that are signed by a judge would address this issue."

There's more at the link.

That may be a smokescreen, of course, glossing over the real issue that Minnesota's policy is not to cooperate with Federal authorities over immigration issues, including arrests.  However, the question of administrative versus judicial orders or detainers is, I submit, more important than it may seem at first glance.

In criminal law, a warrant is typically required to arrest someone or search their property. These types of warrants must be issued by a judge; thus, they are also known as “judicial warrants.”

A judicial warrant is a document issued by a judge (or magistrate judge) that authorizes law enforcement officers to perform certain actions (like conducting a search, making an arrest, or seizing property). Judicial warrants are typically issued based on probable cause, which means there must be reasonable grounds to believe that a crime has been committed and that the action authorized by the warrant will yield evidence related to that crime. These warrants serve as a safeguard against unreasonable searches and seizures, ensuring that law enforcement actions are conducted within the bounds of the law and respect individuals' constitutional rights.

. . .

An administrative warrant doesn’t need to involve a judge or court at all (though an administrative law judge may review some). Instead, it’s issued by an administrative agency or official, as the name implies.

. . .

Administrative warrants are used for regulatory or administrative purposes, not criminal prosecution. Another difference is that administrative warrants generally have a lower standard than "probable cause,” which is required for judicial warrants. Finally, administrative warrants are based on statutory authority rather than Fourth Amendment requirements (like judicial warrants).

Judicial warrants typically deal with criminal law, whereas administrative warrants typically deal with civil law. That’s part of why the standard for a judicial warrant is higher: life and liberty are on the line. That’s also why judicial warrants will be in the form of either arrest warrants (to apprehend a suspect), search warrants (to search a specific location for evidence of a crime), or seizure warrants (to seize specific property or evidence related to a crime). Judicial warrants are considered more protective of individual rights, as they require a neutral judge's independent review of the evidence and a finding of probable cause.

Again, more at the link.

I can see both sides of this issue.  ICE and other federal agencies often try to arrest hundreds, even thousands of people in a given area (a city, a suburb, at an employer's premises, etc.).  To get individual judicial warrants against every potential suspect in that area might be so great a burden on their administration that it's effectively impossible.  However, that also runs a greater risk that some, at least, of those they arrest might have their civil rights ignored in the process.  We've already seen reports of that;  for example, US citizens arrested and detained for extended periods (sometimes days or even weeks) until they could prove they were legally resident in this country.  ICE and its defenders will protest that they could have produced such proof at any time, but if they were denied access to telephones and other means of communication (a routine occurrence, or so I understand), how were they to ask a family member or other person to deliver such proof?  If they lived alone, how could they get such proof from their place(s) of residence when they were detained, preventing them from traveling to their homes?

A judicial warrant demands a higher standard of proof from law enforcement authorities before they can make an arrest.  If a suspect's rights are to be restricted or infringed by arresting him/her, a judge or magistrate must confirm that there is enough evidence to justify that interference.  The warrant can also be challenged in court, as can the process leading to its being issued.  If an officer mistakenly asks for a judicial arrest warrant because he/she had unreliable or insufficient information, that can be held against the officer if it comes out in court.  An administrative warrant lacks all such protection - it was (normally) never reviewed by a judge or magistrate before being issued.  In so many words, it's nothing more than a bureaucratic rubber stamp.

I'm firmly of the opinion that illegal aliens should be deported, except for genuine, repeat, genuine, verifiable cases where refugee status might be awarded.  However, regardless of one's perspective on immigration, I think the use of only administrative warrants for mass arrests is legally questionable, and might become a tool of actual oppression if the "wrong people" issue such warrants without judicial scrutiny.  I think ICE may have to reconsider this issue.  Certainly, I'll be more comfortable from legal, moral and ethical perspectives if they do.

At the same time, those opposed to enforcing immigration laws will have to accept that it's a federal government issue, not a state or local issue.  If they want to protest it, there are legal avenues for them to do so.  To physically assault federal officers in the performance of their duties is not one of them;  nor is using state and local laws and regulations to obstruct and interfere with their operations.  Administrative warrants are too often used as an excuse to disrupt such legitimate law enforcement activities, without examining the rights and wrongs involved.

Peter

A criminal investigation I'd like to see to start 2026 on the right note

 

This headline yesterday boggled my mind.

DOJ's Inventory Of Unreleased Epstein Files Soars To 5.2 Million Pages

Remember February 2025?

Today, Attorney General Pamela Bondi, in conjunction with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), declassified and publicly released files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his sexual exploitation of over 250 underage girls at his homes in New York and Florida, among other locations ... Attorney General Bondi requested the full and complete files related to Jeffrey Epstein. In response, the Department received approximately 200 pages of documents...

I don't know what bureaucratic battles Attorney General Bondi has had to fight with an entrenched anti-Trump Justice Department and a Deep State dedicated to fighting him and his minions at every turn.  Her public statements have all been along the lines that she's going to (and wants to) release all the relevant documents.  She may be the victim of bureaucratic sabotage, more sinned against than sinning . . . but her public image has become one of ineptitude, incompetence and waffling.

Who hid the existence of so many documents from her, and why?  Where were they kept, and why were they not catalogued in the FBI's systems so that they could be readily made available?  Why have we found out about them only in dribs and drabs, never all at once so that we knew the scale of the problem?  In particular, why has it taken almost a year to uncover the existence of this latest, massive "document drop"?

I understand that most, if not all, of these documents are coming out of the Justice Department's Southern District of New York.  If that's the case:

• Who was/is responsible for reporting their existence when the Attorney General of the USA demanded that information?
• Who has signally failed in their duty to obey the orders of their ultimate superior and deliver the documents in a timely and usable fashion?
• Why has he/she/they not been at least administratively disciplined, if not criminally charged, for their dereliction of duty?  And why has the Southern District not been cleaned out wholesale, top to bottom, and more reliable personnel appointed to it?  If a major division of a large private corporation had behaved in this fashion, you may be sure heads would have rolled a long time ago!

Attorney General Bondi's credibility has been severely affected by failures to charge various individuals and address known issues over the past year.  The latest development over the Epstein documents threatens to completely derail her government career.  She may become poisonous to the political touch for her supporters.

WHY IS NOTHING BEING VISIBLY, IMMEDIATELY DONE, OPENLY AND WITHOUT EQUIVOCATION, TO RESOLVE THIS ISSUE ONCE AND FOR ALL?

One hopes the President will act swiftly to address the matter.  These problems are doing him no favors at all, and are tarnishing his administration as a whole.  What's more, many of us who supported him want - demand - answers now.  We're tired of waiting, and see no good reason why we should wait.  If there's nothing to hide, why is it being so carefully - and so successfully - hidden?

Peter

Bloody cheek!

 

If Greenpeace wanted to make at least half of America fighting mad, it's chosen a good way to go about it.

A North Dakota jury ordered Greenpeace in March to pay pipeline company Energy Transfer $667 million for the environmental group’s rogue campaign to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. Now, Greenpeace is trying to get a Dutch court to nullify the jury award, which the trial judge reduced to $345 million in October. Energy Transfer is asking the North Dakota Supreme Court to block the activist group’s attempt to end-run the U.S. legal system. If Greenpeace’s efforts succeed, they would harm much more than the pipeline company. They’d open the door for activists to torpedo other American critical infrastructure projects under European law.

. . .

The suit claims that Energy Transfer’s litigation violated Greenpeace International’s rights under the European Union’s 2024 anti-Slapp law, an anagram for strategic litigation against public participation. The law seeks to protect journalists and nonprofit organizations from meritless lawsuits designed to silence or intimidate them.

Greenpeace’s case isn’t an ordinary appeal, in which a party asks a higher court to review a lower court’s application of the law. Rather, Greenpeace is asking a Dutch court to reassess the merits of the North Dakota case under Europe’s sweeping anti-Slapp directive. The case marks the first attempt to apply the law “extraterritorially” to stymie a lawsuit brought in a country outside the European Union.

If the European directive achieves this reach, it would extend the EU’s regulatory imperialism to the political and social spheres where Europe and America follow starkly different legal norms: In a nutshell, Europe’s speech rules are based on values, while America’s are based on rights.

. . .

Under the EU directive, courts can award damages to parties that have been subjected to “abusive court proceedings,” including those involving “an imbalance of power between the parties” or “excessive” claims.

Greenpeace claims in the Dutch lawsuit that the financial resources of Energy Transfer constitute an “obvious” imbalance of power and that the company’s demands for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages are “clearly excessive.” But the rule of law is based on whether the parties acted within their legal rights, not on whether they happen to run a successful business like Energy Transfer that is seriously affected by a shutdown in operations. If Greenpeace succeeds, expect other activist organizations to incorporate in Europe so they can wiggle out of liability by invoking the EU’s loosely drawn “abusive court proceeding” standard against U.S. companies.

There's more at the link.

I don't know whether the European Union envisaged its anti-SLAPP law being used in this way, to undercut and nullify the duly constituted courts and legal system of a nation that's not a member of the Union.  Nevertheless, it was worded loosely enough that Greenpeace sought to take advantage of it.

What happens if the Dutch court rules in Greenpeace's favor?  For a start, no US court will issue an order making the Dutch ruling binding under US law.  That right does not exist in terms of our constitution.  So, let's say the US court goes ahead with its proposed ruling, and orders Greenpeace to pay damages.  What if Greenpeace refuses, citing the Dutch court's ruling?  If the US government sues them in a US court to recover the money, they'll simply file another Dutch lawsuit in retaliation.  If the US does nothing, our laws will quite obviously no longer be adequate protection for our constitutionally enshrined property rights - and that will open the door to a Pandora's box of litigation, countersuit and wealthy lawyers.  What if the US tries to sue Greenpeace in a European court?  What if the latter rules that the US has no standing to do so, not being a member of the EU?

This is an appallingly complex can of worms.  What it might lead to is anybody's guess.  However, one thing I'm sure of:  from now on, if I come across anything Greenpeace wants, or motivates, or works towards, I'm going to oppose it.  I'll even donate to their opponents, whether or not I agree with their perspective.  Try to thwart our laws, would they, without so much as a "By your leave" to the American people?  To hell with them!

Delenda est Greenpeace!

Peter

No, this wasn't self-defense

 

I note the ongoing argument over whether a Michigan resident was defending himself, or acting recklessly, when he fired at intruders.

Sivan Wilson, 17, was with six other mainly teenagers when the group broke into Dayton Knapton’s garage in White Lake shortly after 1 a.m. July 8, authorities said.

Knapton, 24, got an alert from his home security system, grabbed a .9mm gun, ran outside and fired two shots into the garage through a windowless door, striking Wilson, according to prosecutors and cops.

As the group fled, Knapton fired five more shots before going back into his house, reloading his gun and returning outside, according to a statement by the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office.

Another teenager in the group also was shot in the leg.

. . .

“This defendant crossed the line by firing outside his home at fleeing persons,” prosecutor Karen McDonald said of Knapton. “His actions not only took a life but potentially endangered the surrounding community by firing his weapon into the night.”

There's more at the link.

Laws differ in the 50 States, but legally there's one principle that generally has to be clearly visible before a shooting can be ruled self-defense:  namely, that there has to be a clear, imminent and otherwise unavoidable danger of death or serious injury to the person defending himself.  In this case, it's immediately obvious that this did not exist, because:

1. The shooter could not actually see the people at whom he was shooting.  He fired through a closed door without any windows.  He could not have known whether his targets were armed, or whether they intended to pose any physical threat to him at all.
2. The shooter went on to fire at fleeing people - their backs to him, running away as fast as they could, presumably with their hands clearly visible.  They could not have posed a threat to him under those circumstances.

Mr. Knapton may have been angry at having been repeatedly burgled in the past, and may have been afraid or upset at finding it happening again:  but there's no evidence at all that he was actually threatened, or faced any real danger of assault, injury or death.  Under the circumstances, I don't see how a claim of self-defense can be made to stick.

Some states (for example, Texas) allow one to use lethal force in defense of one's property, not just one's life, under certain circumstances.  However, one has to be very careful not to take that as a carte blanche to do whatever one wishes with intruders, whether they're accidental or deliberate.  If there is no physical threat, one has every chance of being indicted for using more force than necessary to remove them.  Frankly, I think that's the way it should be.  Our response should be proportionate to the threat.  Tragedies occur every year when a homeowner's response is not proportionate, such as this case in Indiana or this one in Texas.  One has to draw a line, and in most cases our laws do just that.  We can't use a firearm when our lives are not in danger (for example, to stop a fleeing thief who's not a threat, and is only trying to get away).

Those of us who espouse the right to self-defense, and the right to keep and bear arms, need to think about this often.  Our actions and reactions may provide ammunition to those wanting to take away those rights.

Peter

Lock them all up? Can we afford that?

 

Over the past few months I've been noting the number of calls from both sides of the political spectrum to lock up - i.e. imprison - those they don't like, or whom they think deserve it.  If all those calls were heeded, our prison population would be at least ten times higher than it is today - and, let's not forget, the USA imprisons a higher proportion of its population than any other First World nation.  When it comes to locking up people, we're the winners and still champions, by a very long way.

What people forget is the backstory to prisons.  They're a relatively modern phenomenon, in the sense of long-term incarceration.  Short-term detention (say, between arrest and trial, or trial and sentencing) has been with us for centuries, but long-term imprisonment as a punishment is only two to three centuries old.  The reason is simple:  it's expensive!  If the State imprisons a man for a period of months or years, it is responsible for his upkeep during that period.  It can't be any other way, because he has no means of supporting himself while incarcerated, and it's unlikely his family and/or friends will be able to do so.  Metrasens estimates:

The cost of incarcerating an inmate varies significantly by state, facility type, and inmate population. According to recent estimates:

• The median annual cost per prisoner in the U.S. is around $65,000.
• Some states exceed $100,000 per inmate per year, such as California, New York, and Massachusetts.
• The lowest-cost states (e.g., Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana) spend around $23,000-$30,000 per inmate per year.
• The Federal Bureau of Prisons reports an average cost of $36,300 per inmate annually.

There's more at the link.  Those figures cover accommodation, clothing, food, medical care and essential legal services (as ordered by the courts).  Incarcerating illegal aliens between their arrest and deportation is adding enormously to those costs right now.  It's been estimated (I don't know how authoritatively) that a single alien costs in excess of $5,000 per month to house, care for and provide security against escape.

Our problem at the moment is how to reduce expenditure on jails and prisons, because we can't afford the ones we've got!  As long as the drive to round up and deport illegal aliens persists, prison and jail costs will continue to soar out of reach of budget-cutters.  It's simple economics.  Increase the demand (for prison cells) and you force an increase in the supply (of money to build, maintain and operate them).  I entirely agree with deporting illegal aliens, but we have to face reality too.  That's why illegals who self-deport are being offered free flights to their home countries plus $1,000 apiece to go voluntarily.  It saves us a lot of money compared to doing it the hard way.

It's also worth noting that only relatively wealthy countries can afford large prison systems such as ours.  Most nations can't afford them, so they don't bother.  Anyone who's lived and worked in the Third World will be able to tell you horror stories of prisons crowded to three or four times their capacity, resulting in gang conflict and all-out riots (as, for example, in Ecuador and Brazil);  prisoners starving to death because the money to feed them was misappropriated by underpaid prison officials;  and families being forced to bring food and clothing to their loved ones every day, or see them gradually die of hunger.

Being a wealthy country with touchy-feely public morals (well, sometimes, anyway), we've chosen to build a prison system to house incarcerated persons in at least minimal comfort.  Trouble is, we (the taxpayers) don't like paying for it;  and it's going to get a lot more expensive as we increase the number of inmates, whether transient or otherwise.  Deporting illegal aliens comes with a hefty price tag.  The question is, do we want them gone badly enough to be willing to pay that price?

Peter

Doofus Of The Day #1,126

 

Today's award goes to a bank robber in Ohio.

A 42-year-old man was arrested Friday morning after robbing the Huntington Bank on West State Street, marking the city’s first bank robbery since 2010.

According to the Alliance Police Department, Jauan L. Mason, recently moved to Alliance from Akron, entered the bank around 9:20 a.m. and claimed he had a weapon. He demanded cash and fled on foot with approximately $400 in one-dollar bills.

Police responded immediately and searched the area. Patrolman Paul Vesco located Mason walking on South Union Avenue near State Street. Mason had changed clothes and was carrying the stolen money.

. . .

During his arrest, he reportedly asked police to deposit the stolen cash into his jail commissary account.

There's more at the link.

It's weird how many criminals regard what they've stolen as theirs.  "If I steal it, it's automatically mine!" - except that the law doesn't see it that way.  I've encountered that attitude time and again among prison inmates during my time as a chaplain.  I'm sure the police had a lot of fun pointing out to him that his deposit was going to be a big fat zero.

In this case, kudos to the teller who kept several big bundles of $1 bills in his/her drawer.  It looks like a lot of cash, but in actual value it's not worth much.  The robber simply grabbed the big bundles, doubtless congratulating himself on his score, and ran off with them without counting them.

Peter

Yet more evidence of how US taxpayers have been robbed blind by left-wing progressive policies

 

Two reports caught my eye over the weekend.  Just remind yourself as you read them that they are the fruit of four years of the Biden administration - and if President Trump is forced to back down on his policies (e.g. through losses in the mid-term elections, or court rulings) we'll be back in the same situation in no time.

First:  "SNAP’s Hidden Reality: 83 Million Citizens and Illegal Aliens Are Dependent on Food Aid Each Year".

The most frequently cited statistic about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, is that about 43 million Americans rely on it each month to feed themselves and their families. That number is often used to justify the program’s scale and reach. But this monthly average hides a far more disturbing truth. Because of high turnover, the real number of Americans who receive SNAP benefits at some point during a given year is much higher. Federal data show that 52% of new enrollees leave within one year, and 67% within two years. That means that across twelve months, between 63 and 83 million unique individuals participate in the program. In other words, about 22% of the entire US population uses SNAP to buy food during any calendar year. This is not a small anti-poverty program. It is a vast, parallel food economy. The only way such numbers make sense is if many more illegal immigrants are benefiting from the system than politicians admit.

. . .

SNAP benefits are set to be suspended on November 1 if the shutdown persists, and states like California, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Washington have each announced that their food programs for illegal immigrants will be suspended at the same time. These programs were supposedly distinct from SNAP, yet their funding halts when SNAP halts. That coincidence exposes the truth: the money, the systems, and the administrative pipelines are connected. States have long played a shell game, quietly routing federal funds into state-level programs for illegal immigrants. The shutdown has revealed the link.

The implications are enormous. If SNAP were truly separate from these state programs, the shutdown would inconvenience them, not paralyze them. Their paralysis proves a shared infrastructure, shared databases, shared eligibility systems, and, most troublingly, shared funding streams. This confirms what conservatives have long argued: state officials are using federal welfare mechanisms to subsidize benefits for illegal immigrants. It is not a clean firewall between programs. It is a revolving door.

There's more at the link.

Next:  "Nearly $200M in Direct Federal Grants Has Been Aimed at Expanding Programs to Serve Illegal Immigrants".

Illegal immigrants have benefitted from at least $197 million in direct federal healthcare-related grants since fiscal year 2021, according to new research from Open the Books. This figure does not include indirect spending on illegal immigrants via Medicaid, which was estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to be around $27 billion from FY 2017-2023, nor does it account for education spending that benefits illegal immigrants and their children, which amounts to an estimated $70 billion annually.

. . .

Health-related spending is principally directed towards programs serving the neediest members of society, such as the homeless, drug-addicted, or otherwise medically fragile. The expansion of programs to include illegal immigrants both encourages illegal migration into the United States and directs spending away from high-poverty Americans.

. . .

According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, illegal immigration costs taxpayers $150.7 billion per year [at] the federal state and local level. Meanwhile, this year’s budget reconciliation bill directs $45 billion to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s detention budget and nearly $30 billion to ICE’s enforcement and deportation operations over the next four years. The bill directs an additional $46.5 billion to border security infrastructure.

Again, more at the link.

So much for our taxpayer dollars.  So much for constitutional and legal provisions forbidding the expenditure of taxpayer dollars on those not entitled to such support.  The previous administration appears to have disregarded those provisions wholesale.  If these numbers don't demonstrate the absolute contempt that the progressive left wing of US politics has for taxpayers and regular citizens, then I don't know what will.

Even with all that President Trump has accomplished so far, we remain balanced on a knife-edge as far as our future fiscal policies are concerned.  If the progressive left gains control of the House and Senate during the 2026 mid-term elections, and/or if left-wing judges use the judicial system to block much of the President's program, then we're neck-deep in the financial dwang once again . . . and given how deep that noxious substance already is in our body politic, I don't know whether we'll be able to dig our way out again.  That's particularly troubling in the light of opinion polls suggesting that a majority of the electorate is not happy with the President's policies for one reason or another.  (Whether or not those polls are accurate is another question:  without knowing the exact statistics of who and how many were sampled, when and where, it's one I can't answer.)

It's up to all of us, individually and collectively, to keep up the pressure, encourage all those we know to think rationally and count their pennies (particularly those given to the taxman), and stop that from happening.

Peter

Yet again, grievous moral sin hides behind legal smokescreens to avoid responsibility

 

Regular readers will know of my own struggle with the clergy sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church.  I've documented it in some detail (see the sidebar for links).

Now comes news that the Catholic Church has once again chosen to behave like a business organization rather than as the Body of Christ on earth, as it is called to be.

On October 1, 2020, with sexual abuse lawsuits piling up, the Rockville Centre diocese filed a “voluntary petition for reorganization” under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.

“This decision was not made lightly,” said Bishop John O. Barres in a statement at the time. And perhaps that is true. But as a legal strategy it was a no-brainer, since its primary effect was to undermine the purpose of the Child Victims Act. Bankruptcy gave the diocese the upper hand, while the victims became creditors who will be lucky to get a fraction of what a jury might have awarded them.

As of July, 41 Catholic dioceses and religious orders have used Chapter 11 filings to deal with the decades of horrific crimes committed by thousands of priests. Those filings have stopped lawsuits in their tracks and forced victims to accept pennies on the dollar, a Free Press investigation has revealed. To put it bluntly, long after the Church looked the other way at clergy sexual abuse, it has now found another way to deprive the victims of justice: the bankruptcy courts.

It has long been standard practice for companies facing massive numbers of lawsuits—for manufacturing asbestos, say, or marketing OxyContin—to file for bankruptcy. A Chapter 11 filing does not require companies to be insolvent; they simply need to show “financial distress,” allowing them to restructure their debts while continuing to operate.

Chapter 11 shuts down all litigation, halting discovery, the process by which litigants gather documents and witness testimony to support their claims. It prevents additional lawsuits from being filed. It eliminates jury trials and instead shifts the ongoing cases to federal bankruptcy court, where any settlement requires a process of mediation between the bankrupt company’s lawyers and lawyers for the creditors. That mediation often takes years. Although additional claims can be made, they too are routed to the bankruptcy court, where claimants fill out standard claim forms rather than filing lawsuits.

Early on, said Marci Hamilton, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania who represented abuse victims in many early clergy sex abuse cases, dioceses used some unorthodox defenses to wriggle out of their obligations to sexual abuse victims. “They argued that it was unconstitutional for them to have to provide discovery,” she recalled. “It was unconstitutional to interfere with any kind of exchange between a bishop and a priest. They called it the formation privilege. And they argued that you couldn’t punish them for doing nothing but forgiving. Because forgiveness was what their faith required.”

In court, recalled Hamilton, “I dismantled all those arguments.”

But when states began passing laws like the Child Victims Act—ultimately, 21 did so, as did the District of Columbia—many dioceses decided that their best course of action was to adopt the bankruptcy playbook.

“It was a brilliant tactic because the bankruptcy system makes it about saving the debtor,” Hamilton said. “So they were able to flip the lawsuits from the victims being at the center of it, to them being at the center. And the victims just became collateral damage.”

In New York alone, nearly 5,000 people claiming to have been abused by clergy or staff came forward during the two-year exemption period from the statute of limitations. In September 2019, just one month after abuse victims were allowed to file lawsuits, the Rochester diocese sought Chapter 11 protection. Rockville Centre was second. Overall, six of the state’s eight dioceses have filed for bankruptcy. (The only ones that haven’t are the Archdiocese of New York, based in Manhattan, and the Diocese of Brooklyn.)

“Bankruptcy eviscerates the whole architecture for ferreting out the truth,” Paul Mones, a plaintiff’s lawyer who has represented dozens of victims in Rockville Centre diocese cases, told me. “By removing cases from the civil justice system, there is no cross-examination of church hierarchy, and all the ways to tease out the injurious behavior of church abusers gets whitewashed. It’s all about how much money the entity has to distribute, and nothing else. Lawyers are reduced to being financial managers.”

There's more at the link.

I think this is utterly horrendous in moral terms.  The Church claims to be the Body of Christ, yet uses completely non-Christian secular tactics to avoid accepting responsibility for the damage it has done to so many people.  Personally, I don't care if bankruptcies were to reduce the Church to meeting in private homes and hired halls, giving up all its luxurious properties and accumulated assets.  Isn't that what the early Church did?  Isn't that how it took root and grew?  However, the Church has become utterly focused on itself as a business.  Its bishops (and, to a certain extent, their subordinate clergy) see themselves as "defending the Church against secular attack" when, in fact, they are focused on defending the Church's assets - not its teachings, not its eternal mission, and most certainly not the victims of evil acts on the part of some few of its ministers and other members.

Every time I read reports such as this, I quail inwardly.  Every Catholic - every Christian - knows the judgment that awaits all of us, when we must give account of our lives to the Righteous Judge.  How is it even possible to think of justifying such attitudes and actions to Jesus Christ?  "Oh, I saved your Church a few million dollars, by denying justice to a few of its victims."  How many bishops and priests dare to think of trying to excuse that to the Christ who said, "It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones."

I have committed many sins in my life, and I'll have to accept responsibility for them when my turn comes to face the Judgment . . . but I do most sincerely thank God that I won't have to account for that sort of sin.  The thought of trying to plea-bargain my way out of that is just too ghastly to contemplate - and, absent the most radical repentance and conversion, I doubt very much that it will succeed.

Peter

This is long overdue!

 

Thanks to insane regulations that forbid prisons to jam cellphone signals, inmates have for decades (literally) been using smuggled cellphones to operate crime networks and organize specific crimes from behind bars.  We've known they're doing it, but the regulators have always insisted that cellphone frequencies may not be jammed for any reason.

At long last, that looks to be changing.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 5, 2025 – The Federal Communications Commission may soon give state and local prisons authority Congress has repeatedly declined to grant.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said Friday the commission will vote Sept. 30 on a proposal to let state and local prisons jam contraband cell phones - effectively cutting off the smuggled devices inmates use to communicate with the outside world. Carr stressed it would be voluntary and not a federal mandate to jam.

“Contraband cell phones are the root of so many evils taking place, not just in prisons, but across the country, for the crimes that people are phoning in and enabling,” Carr said, speaking at the Arkansas Attorney General’s office in Little Rock, following a tour of Varner Prison. “We need to do something about this serious threat to public safety.”

Carr said the proposal would sidestep federal law by declaring that calls from contraband cell phones are not “authorized communications” under 47 U.S.C. § 333, the statute that bars jamming. By de-authorizing those communications inside prisons, the FCC would clear the way for state and local facilities to deploy targeted jamming technology without running afoul of federal restrictions.

“Once contraband cell phone use is not an ‘authorized communication,' then the federal law is no longer a prohibition to jamming it, and that's well within the FCC authority to give that reading to federal law,” Carr said.

There's more at the link.

When I worked as a prison chaplain, I became aware of more than a few major crimes (up to and including murder) that were clandestinely arranged between inmates and their families and gangs outside the walls.  Even though that was a couple of decades ago, and modern miniaturized cellphones (much more easily concealed than the bigger, old-fashioned bricks) did not exist at the time, the cellular network was an increasingly important element in those arrangements.  With modern phones and encrypted communications apps, it's become a nightmare to keep track of what's going on.  This decision should be a major benefit to law enforcement in shutting down some of the worst of the worst criminals, who've regarded incarceration as simply a better-protected way for them to do business (because inside prison walls, their enemies outside find it, not impossible, but harder to get at them).

Peter

Do it!

 

I note with satisfaction that the Epstein "victims" are threatening to release the names of those who victimized them.

Jeffrey Epstein’s victims have told Donald Trump they are compiling a list of men who were clients of the paedophile financier.

Survivors gathered outside the Capitol on Wednesday to demand that his administration authorise the release of all of the documents it holds on Epstein.

Lisa Phillips, who was abused by Epstein from 2000, said she and other victims will produce their own client list if the US government fails to publish the names of wealthy clients believed to be connected to Epstein’s crimes.

. . .

Ms Phillips added: “We know the names, many of us were abused by them. Now, together as survivors, we will confidentially compile the names we all know who were regularly in the Epstein world.”

Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, an ally of Donald Trump who is working with Democrats on a bipartisan bill to secure the release of the files, said she would read the list of co-conspirators and abusers to Congress.

Noting that Epstein’s survivors would struggle to publicly disclose the list of names over fears of the potential ramifications, she said: “Yeah, it’s a scary thing to name names, but I will tell you, I’m not afraid to name names.”

There's more at the link.

Given suitable safeguards to prevent innocent people from being falsely accused, I think this is a very good idea.  One could protect against abuse by naming only people who are remembered by two, or three, or more of the women, so that it isn't a "he said, she said" case, but one with multiple witnesses and/or victims.  One could also remind them, prior to publication, that false accusations can lead to both civil and criminal charges against those making them, so they'd better be willing and able to back up their claims.  Given those and similar measures, I can't see a downside to this.

I'm prepared to believe that President Trump's people in the Department of Justice have not found "smoking gun" evidence to convict anyone of complicity in Epstein's crimes - but that's only because their predecessors, and some of those still in the DOJ, have carefully erased or hidden that evidence.  The cover-up has been massive.  Anyone who believes that Epstein committed suicide in his prison cell has got to be so naive as to defy credulity.  "Blissninny" just about covers it.

As far as Epstein's crimes are concerned, we haven't even scratched the surface yet in determining culpability and punishing offenders.  It's long overdue.

Peter

So where's the justice in this sentence???

 

I was infuriated to read about an extraordinarily lenient sentence in a child sex abuse case.

Just hours after her first day of high school, a 15-year-old girl sat in a Fremont County courtroom and told a full gallery of people, both known to her and not, about her life from the ages of 7 to 12, when she was being sexually assaulted.

Candon Dean Dahle, 22, was sentenced by District Judge Steven Boyce to a minimum of five and a maximum of ten years in prison. Boyce then suspended the sentence and placed Dahle on probation for eight years.

He was also given a 180-day local jail sentence that began on Tuesday. After that, he will be required to complete 200 hours of community service.

There's more at the link.

The source article contains sickening evidence from the victim and her family of what this man's abuse did to her, the psychological effects of which will probably continue for the rest of her life.  I won't publish that here, because I try to keep this blog family-friendly, but if you can stomach that sort of thing, I urge you to click over there and read it for yourself.

For the life of me, I can't understand how such a monster in human form could be let off with so light a sentence.  There are parts of the world - including many in Africa, from where I come - that wouldn't have left him alive after doing things like that.  People there wouldn't wait for the courts to give him a slap on the wrist.  They'd administer rather more than a slap on the wrist to make sure he never did it again, and so that anyone else with ideas like that would be given a graphic example of why they should never, ever even consider putting their ideas into practice.

Furthermore, I've never yet seen a single case where a child abuser was "cured" of his "disease" by any therapy, program or punishment.  I've had to deal with far too many of them as a prison chaplain.  Even those who'd sincerely, genuinely repented of their sin would tell me that they didn't know if they could refrain from doing it again after they finished their sentence.  They said that for them, temptation sometimes grew so great that it amounted to an irresistible compulsion, so much so that some of them actively considered suicide as the only way they believed they could avoid acting on it.  I somehow doubt that Mr. Dahle will prove any different.

I'd call him a complete and utter waste of oxygen, except that I'd then have to apply the same description to the judge who let him off so lightly, and the prosecutors who plea-bargained his offense down so greatly.  I suspect society would be better off without any of them.

Peter

What happens to trust when anything can be faked?

 

Ted Gioia asks the question.

It is now possible to alter reality and every kind of historical record—and perhaps irrevocably. The technology for creating fake audio, video, and text has improved enormously in just the last few months. We will soon reach—or may have already reached—a tipping point where it’s impossible to tell the difference between truth and deception.

• Can I tell the difference between a fake AI video and a real video? A few months ago, I would have said yes. But now I’m not so sure.
• Can I tell the difference between fake AI music and human music? I still think I can discern a difference in complex genres, but this is a lot harder than it was just a few months ago.
• Can I tell the difference between a fake AI book and a real book by a human author? I’m fairly confident I can do this for a book on a subject I know well, but if I’m operating outside my core expertise, I might fail.

At the current rate of technological advance, all reliable ways of validating truth will soon be gone. My best guess is that we have another 12 months to enjoy some degree of confidence in our shared sense of reality.

But what happens when it’s gone?

. . .

Consider those loonies who believe that the Apollo moon landing never happened. Now imagine a world in which everybody is like that about everything—because nothing can be proven.

We have always lived in a world of disputes, but never on this new level of total skepticism. Consider a football game: I think the ref made a bad call, and you disagree—but at least we both believe that a game is actually happening.

Not anymore.

We once disagreed on how we interpreted events. Now we can’t even agree on the existence of events.

There's more at the link.  Go read the whole thing.  It's worth it.

That's a very good question.  It has very serious implications for every aspect of our lives, from the micro to the macro.  Consider:

• If a government announces the existence of a new and purportedly dangerous virus, and orders everyone to be vaccinated against it, how many of us will believe them?  After COVID-19, you can bet your bottom dollar I won't, even if they broadcast video of sufferers from the disease collapsing and dying on camera - because my immediate suspicion will be that they've faked the video.
• If two nation-states at war (think Russia and Ukraine) make claims about battlefield successes, or trumpet the success of an air strike, whom do we believe?  We aren't there to see for ourselves.  The only evidence we have will be video clips on Twitter or Tiktok.  How do we know they're genuine?  How do we know whether an atrocity, or an incident described as a casus belli, actually took place at all?
• If convictions in court rely on technological tools such as security camera footage, what will the jury do if the defendant's lawyers claim that the cops faked the footage?  The odds of that happening get better and better as the criminal justice system is challenged to take offenders off the streets.  We already know of cases where a criminal might not have committed a particular crime, but is railroaded by the "system" anyway, because the prosecutors and the cops "know" that he's committed many other crimes for which they can't obtain evidence to convict him.  Their answer - put him in jail for something, rather than let him off.  That may be karma catching up with him, but it's not justice.
• What about civil claims - say, a divorce case relying on video of a spouse committing adultery?  How many porn videos are already out there, purporting to show famous actresses having sex with someone, only for it to emerge that it's a "deep-fake", artificially contrived video showing the actress' head superimposed on someone else's body?

This is going to become worse by the day.  I don't know the answer, but Mr. Gioia is very right to ask the question.  What are we going to do about it?

Peter

The Federal takeover of Washington D.C. law enforcement

 

A number of interesting perspectives have emerged on President Trump's takeover of the Washington D.C. police department and other law enforcement functions.

Quoth The Raven points out a very basic and inescapable logic behind this step.

For too long, the capital of the United States—the city that houses the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court—has looked less like the shining beacon of democracy and more like a live-action hellscape from a horror movie. Tourists and school trips meandering through downtown D.C. to learn about the history of our great nation are confronted with makeshift shantytowns, hypodermic needles and smells worse than J.B. Pritzker’s bathroom the morning after a long night at Big Ed’s Bar-B-Que.

. . .

When world leaders, diplomats, and tourists step off the plane, they’re not just visiting a city; they’re seeing America’s face.

And if that face is covered in human feces a block from the White House, guess what—they’re not going to be thinking “land of the free,” they’re going to be thinking “third-world cosplay”.

. . .

And this is where Trump’s move makes perfect sense ... There’s nothing shallow about caring how your country looks. It’s not “cosmetic,” it’s called “national pride.” When visitors—whether foreign dignitaries or American schoolkids—arrive in Washington, what they see should tell them we are a capable, functioning nation that respects itself.

. . .

Right now, what they see too often screams “we’ve given up.” And nothing broadcasts “we’ve lost control” like a tent city and drug-addled homeless within selfie range of the White House ... sometimes the fastest way to fix a broken system is to start by sweeping the front porch—especially when the front porch happens to be the front porch of America.

There's more at the link.

I entirely agree.  In fact, I'd apply the same logic to any and every US city and town.  Do we want the places where we live, where we choose to associate with others, to look like Third World hellholes?  If we don't, let's clean them up before that gets any worse.  As far as I know, there's no constitutional right to crap on the sidewalk or inject yourself with illegal narcotics on streets where people live, work and shop.

Jeff Childers adds that this may be the start of cleaning up the notoriously corrupt and ineffective Washington Police Department.

During January 6th, the Metro Police Department outed itself as a sold-out, partisan political actor deeply aligned with Democrats and hostile to Americans who share different beliefs. Now that Pam Bondi has assumed control of MPD, get this, she has hire/fire authority ... my guess (and I’m just guessing) is that we’re about to see a DOGE-style, anti-DEI deconstruction of DC’s entire police department. I think that could be what this is really all about. The dots are right there.

. . .

But if the real plan is to strip MPD down to the studs — purge leadership, dismantle DEI programs, root out anyone they think is politically hostile, and rebuild the force in the Trump-Bondi image — then all those federal bodies aren’t temporary help, they’re a replacement backbone. They’ll keep the city covered while the locals get benched, investigated, or walked out.

. . .

If I’m right, if that is the play, the public story is “crime crackdown,” but the operational reality is federal receivership with a remodel crew already on site. Brilliant.

But I could be wrong. Very wrong. There could be a lot more to this move. A much bigger dot ... What if —and I am just wondering here— what if the Administration is securing DC before it makes a really controversial move? Like arresting someone near the top of the political food chain?

Suppose you were planning something like that, and you wanted to preclude the otherwise inevitable violent protests in the Nation’s Capital. What better way to prepare than in advance by loading up DC with military, national guard, FBI, and tons of other resources under direct federal control, that might otherwise seem like overkill to handle a few mobs of unruly teenage gangsters?

Again, more at the link.

Finally, several commenters have pointed out that Washington D.C. isn't a state, and isn't under a state's constitutional authority.  It's Federal land.  Furthermore, it has its own unique military reserve unit, the District of Columbia National Guard, which operates under a unique legal framework:

Normally, U.S. federal law specifically charges the U.S. National Guard with dual federal and state missions.[citation needed] As a federal district, the District of Columbia has a mayor but no governor, and federal law makes the president the commander-in-chief.

Supervision and control of D.C. National Guard was delegated by the president to the defense secretary pursuant to Executive Order 10030, 26 January 1949 with authority to designate National Military Establishment officials to administer affairs of the D.C. National Guard. The Army secretary was directed to act in all matters pertaining to the ground component, and the Air Force secretary was directed to act in all matters pertaining to the air component.

The D.C. National Guard is the only U.S. military force empowered to carry out federal functions in a state or, in this case, a district. Those functions range from limited actions during non-emergency situations to full scale law enforcement of martial law when local law enforcement officials can no longer maintain civil control. The National Guard may be called into federal service in response to a call by the president.

That means the President and the Secretary of Defense can legally use military forces to augment federal law enforcement resources in restoring law and order in Washington D.C.  The restrictions of the Posse Comitatus Act do not apply.

Makes you think, doesn't it?

Peter

Prison reform? Start with the basics

 

City Journal published an article recently advocating that America adopt the Japanese model of prison reform.

America’s federal prisons are decaying and overcrowded, contributing to violence among inmates and undermining opportunities for rehabilitation. But thanks to an infusion of federal cash authorized by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the Bureau of Prisons has a chance to clean things up. As the BOP weighs those and other reforms, it should look to Japan, where prisons are spacious, efficient, and largely disorder-free.

. . .

Federal prisons are currently about 10 percent over capacity. At BOP’s high-security lockups, the figure is 23 percent ... Japanese prisons, by contrast, operated at 47 percent of capacity in 2023. Their facilities, not coincidently, haven’t seen riots or wide-scale disorder in decades, and they report far fewer assaults on inmates ... These differences can’t be attributed, moreover, to differences in system size or composition. Though Japan is a much smaller country, its prisons detain roughly the same proportion of people as America’s federal prisons, relative to population.

There's more at the link.

That's all very well, but it ignores some great big red flags over the US prison system - state and local as well as federal.  Having worked as a prison chaplain in both federal and state systems, I can summarize the issues like this:

1. There are far too many people in prison, because we criminalize far too many minor offenses.  What should be handled by a fine, or a "boot camp" for young offenders, or so many hours of public service, is instead shuffled off onto an already overburdened prison and jail system.  The revolving door never stops spinning.  I've known individuals imprisoned three or four times in a single year for short sentences, only to come out, offend again, and be incarcerated once more.  It makes no sense.
2. Prisons themselves are basically warehouses for criminals.  The federal system is better than most state systems, but none of them offer much in the way of rehabilitation, vocational education and/or training, or meaningful efforts to help people change their way of life once they get out of prison.  Nobody cares about the prisoners, to put it bluntly.  They want them out of sight and out of mind, so prison budgets are set to do precisely that - and nothing more.
3. Our prisons are "fed" by a welfare and entitlement system that pays people to live in dysfunctional families, attend dysfunctional schools, and emerge as dysfunctional adults in a dysfunctional society.  To reform our prison system, start by reforming the society in which our prisoners live, out of which they come, and to which they return.
4. Our young offenders are given slaps on the wrist rather than real punishment or correction when they do wrong.  Offenders might get to 17 or 18 years old with literally dozens of arrests and convictions, and never receive any serious punishment - but when they're legally no longer kids, and do precisely and exactly the same thing for the umpteenth time, they're slammed with an adult sentence of years in jail.  They don't understand it, and they resent it, and they become even more bitter and anti-social as a result.  Frankly, I can understand that.  It's like complaining that a puppy pees on the carpet in the living-room, but never trying to train him not to do that.  He's going to go on doing what he can get away with, and never think twice about it.  When he becomes an adult, some owners take their "undomesticated" dogs out back and shoot them, because they're "incorrigible" - but it's the owners' fault in the first place.
5. As a society, we've largely abandoned a working system of ethical and moral values.  "If it feels good, do it" became the mantra of the 1960's, followed by the pagan "An it harm none, do what thou wilt".  The results are to be seen woven into the very fabric of society.  We've abandoned the Biblical wisdom of "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it".  It's going to take generations to reinvent and reapply such basic standards, but unless and until we do, our prisons will bear mute witness to our joint culpability.

If we get those things right, or go back to them, our prison problems will be resolved.  If we don't, then any attempt at prison reform is basically farting against thunder.

Peter

The Netanyahu trial in Israel: is this anti-Trump lawfare redux?

 

Tablet magazine has published an interesting overview of the trial of Israeli prime minister Netanyahu on various allegations of corruption.  The key take-away is this:

The trial of Benjamin Netanyahu began in Jerusalem District Court over five years ago, on May 24, 2020. Since that date, Israel has become a different country, one scarred by terror attacks and international condemnation and also boasting stunning military victories. Meanwhile, judges and researchers have cast serious doubt on the evidentiary basis for all four charges against the prime minister, only one of which has of yet been dismissed and none proved in court. Yet no matter how the world changes, the trial itself marches on, immune to both the global situation and to the quality of the evidence presented in court. Instead, prosecutors regularly compel testimony from the prime minister, often several times a week, and force him to demonstrate that the matters of state for which he is responsible are of greater importance in this or that moment than remembering whether or not his wife might have asked a family friend and political supporter to purchase a Bugs Bunny doll for his son in Manhattan nearly 30 years ago.

. . .

Which is not to say that the Netanyahu trial isn’t a very serious matter: It’s the climax of a struggle between two opposing power structures over how Israel is to be governed and by whom. On one side is the machinery of electoral politics, and on the other that of the administrative state. It is also a struggle between right and left, as the right keeps winning elections while the left keeps amassing institutional power beyond the reach of voters. It is therefore also a competition between two visions of the Jewish state: The right holds a national view of liberal democracy, and cherishes the Jewish religion and tradition, while the left is increasingly progressive, globalist, and suspicious of religion and nationalism alike. Finally, it is also a class struggle between the country’s diverse, less affluent majority and the old-guard, established Ashkenazi elite. And when you have an event so cataclysmic as to simultaneously bring all three aspects—the institutional, the ideological and the sociological—to a showdown, you have a political supernova.

. . .

Netanyahu’s voters expect him to fight this legal battle to the end—ironically for the same reason that Aharon Barak would like to see it terminated: The deep state is on trial, too, and it must lose, in order for Israeli democracy to triumph.

There's much more at the link.  Recommended reading.

There will doubtless be those who argue that the Tablet article is not objective enough, or is pro-Netanyahu.  Not being an expert on Israel, I can't speak to that.  Nevertheless, I can't help but notice that the Netanyahu prosecution appears to be very similarly motivated - and the tactics used are often almost identical - as other progressive-left lawsuits in various countries against center or rightist governments and/or policies.  Brazil's courts versus Bolsonaro;  Germany's courts versus AfD, a right-wing political party;  European courts against conservative opposition to leftist European Union policies;  the "lawfare" against President Trump in America - they're so alike as to be striking in their similarity.  This seems to me to be a deliberate international onslaught against the rule of law and popular democracy by the progressive left in all its forms - and it's clearly coordinated between nations and movements, all helping each other to further their legal strategies.

For that reason alone, it's well worth paying attention to what's going on in the Netanyahu trial.  It's a microcosm of left-wing intentions and desires throughout the world.  The Tablet article exposes much of what's happening, and enables that sort of comparison.

Peter

Sounds like a public service homicide to me...

 

An Arkansas man is to stand trial after killing the man who, after already being charged for abusing his daughter, apparently kidnapped her and did so again.

According to records obtained by the Arkansas Times, Spencer initially called 911 just after 1 a.m. on October 8, 2024, to report his 13-year-old daughter missing. Spencer told police he’d been awakened by his dog barking, went to his daughter’s room to check on her and saw she was missing. He said he suspected she was with Fosler, 67, who had been arrested in July and charged with 43 counts, including sexual assault of a minor and internet stalking of a child, related to Fosler’s pursuit of Spencer’s then-13-year-old daughter.

The arrest affidavit for Spencer says he went to look for his daughter and Fosler after calling 911 the first time. The Lonoke County Sheriff’s Office contacted Cabot police to ask them to check a specific address. Prior to hearing back from Cabot police, however, 911 dispatch got a second call from Spencer, who said he had located the “man who kidnapped his daughter” and his daughter, but that Fosler was “dead on the side of the road” and that “he had no choice.”

. . .

On November 27, prosecutors charged Spencer with second-degree murder and commission of a felony with a firearm. That same day, Spencer’s attorneys, Erin Cassinelli and Michael Kaiser, issued a statement calling Spencer “a decorated war hero who protected his country and a loving father whose heroic actions protected his family.” They said Fosler “repeatedly violated his child” and “kidnapped her in the dark of night to continue his assaults on her.”

The statement criticized prosecutors for bringing charges against Spencer at all, accused prosecutors of “perpetuating these horrors instead of protecting legitimate victims and punishing true criminal offenders,” and thanked those who had “voiced their outrage over the treatment Aaron, his child, and the rest of his family had suffered.”

There's more at the link.

Based on the evidence available so far, if I were a member of the jury at Mr. Spencer's trial, I'd be voting him "not guilty" before the trial began!  Sure, he did it, and he admits he did it, but there appears to have been more than enough moral and ethical reason for his actions.  Sometimes jury nullification is the only appropriate response to a letter-of-the-law "crime".

The organization Gun Owners of Arkansas has a legal defense fund that's contributing to Mr. Spencer's case, and they've arranged for his legal representation.  I'll be contributing to it, and I hope my readers will consider doing the same.  At the link, you can read more about the case from Mr. Spencer's wife, Heather.

Peter