"Misguided youth" being "tricked" into becoming terrorists.[Luger] meant to direct attention to something we have done or failed to do. Luger's statement represents the received wisdom [of liberalism], but it is exceedingly stupid. In this sense, I am sincerely sorry to say, Luger himself is part of "the Minnesota problem."
Pretending that the problem derives from insufficient time, attention and resources spent on the Somali community by the various arms of the state contributes to the problem. In that wholly unintended sense Luger may have been on to something....
Making the case that we have a "Minnesota problem" of politically correct misdirection and misdiagnosis, I give you as Exhibit A today's Pavlovian Star Tribune story by Mila Koumpilova: "Terror charges leave shock and dismay across Twin Cities." The Star Tribune reports:
Monday's federal charges against six Minneapolis men accused of conspiring to join Islamic extremists overseas spurred soul-searching and pledges for action across the Twin Cities -- from the governor's office in St. Paul to the campus of Minneapolis Community and Technical College, where four of the men were students.
Some wondered what they might have done differently in the run-up to the charges; Minnesota leaders vowed to do more to engage with the Somali community in their aftermath.
"I think we need to do a better job, all of us, in providing a lot of good reasons for young Somali youth to see their better future here in Minnesota," Gov. Mark Dayton said in an interview.
* * * * *
On Tuesday, Dayton said he and Lt. Gov. Tina Smith had met with U.S. Attorney Andy Luger on Sunday and discussed the arrests. He said he promised that his office would do more to reach out to Somali community leaders, promote Somali-American appointments to state leadership positions and explore ways to boost job opportunities for young Somalis.
"We pledged whatever assistance we could," he said.
Hours after authorities announced the charges on Monday, a Minnesota House panel voted to boost state funding tenfold to combat terrorist recruitment in Minnesota. Rep. Phyllis Kahn, DFL-Minneapolis, offered an amendment that would raise Department of Public Safety funding earmarked to combat recruitment, to $250,000. Kahn said the money would support partnerships between community groups and government agencies to thwart recruitment efforts.
"We'll be able to better understand the appeal and recruitment tools ... and develop an effective response so more misguided youth aren't tricked into becoming terrorists," Kahn said in a statement.
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Painting the Criminal as Victim
Anyone who spent as much time as I did watching allocution knows how routine it is for defense counsel to try to turn the client into the victim. In a sense, I don't blame them. What else are they going to say? They can't very well just tell the plain truth -- that the client did it because he gets his kicks hurting people and thinks rules are for suckers. That's not the world's most persuasive pitch for leniency.
It's thus one thing, and understandable, for defense counsel, and the culture in which criminal defense takes root, to make this sort of argument. It's another when anyone else buys it, much less makes a fetish of it. But that's what happened in a fairly prominent case last week in Minnesota, in which six Somali immigrants were arrested for plotting to join the world's most notorious throat-slitters, ISIS.
In a remarkable statement, US Attorney Andrew Luger said that the plot was "a Minnesota problem." That claim is false, if not absurd; the "appeal" of joining ISIS has nothing to do with, and is scarcely limited to, Minnesota.
The problem is that the US Attorney's statement goes beyond mere absurdity. It pulls back the curtain on the extent to which the culture of criminal-as-victim has permeated Obama's Justice Department.
My friend Scott Johnson has the story here.
You cannot make this up.
In addition to welfare, free community college tuition and myriad other means of financial support, the next step for progressives will be to provide an additional cash grant to Somalis if they "promise" not to kill their adopted countrymen.
Nailed it. The idea that we should use taxpayer money to bribe immigrants (or anyone else) to refrain from murder is just astonishing.