October 2018 Archives

I think one thing we should is we should do is stiffen up our laws in terms of the death penalty. When people do this, they should get the death penalty, and they shouldn't have to wait years and years. Now, the lawyers will get involved, and everybody is going to get involved, and we'll be 10 years down the line. And I think they should stiffen up laws, and I think they should very much bring the death penalty into vogue. Anybody that does a thing like this to innocent people that are in temple or in church -- we had so many incidents with churches -- they should be -- they should really suffer the ultimate price. They should pay the ultimate price. I've felt that way for a long time. Some people disagree with me. I can't imagine why. But this has to stop.

I've felt that way for a long time, too, Mr. President. Now what are you going to do about it? It's been almost two years since your election, and you haven't done anything at all yet, as far as I can tell.

Authorities charged a Florida man Friday in connection with the packages containing suspected explosive devices sent to prominent Democrats and outspoken critics of President Trump this week.

Cesar Sayoc, 56 years old, was arrested in the Miami area Friday. Mr. Sayoc, a Trump supporter, is a failed entrepreneur and a former manager of a male revue with a history of arrests.

At a Justice Department press conference in Washington, officials said he would face five federal counts including interstate transportation of an explosive, illegal mailing of explosives and making threats against former presidents. The charges in total carry a potential penalty of 58 years in prison, officials said.

"This is utterly unacceptable. Political violence, or the threat of violence, is antithetical to our vigorous system of self government," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said.

"This is a law and order administration," Mr. Sessions said. "We will not tolerate such lawlessness, especially not political violence."

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg blamed the polarization of the nation's judicial confirmation process on a lack of bipartisanship and collegiality in Congress during a public appearance Wednesday in Washington.

Packages containing pipe-bomb-type devices addressed to former President Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.) and CNN were intercepted by authorities and investigators are looking into whether Democrats are being targeted, federal and local officials said Wednesday.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen warned Sunday that the illegal immigrant caravan heading toward the U.S. could be exploited by cartels that control most of the illegal flow of people through Latin America.

In any given year, more than 18,000 U.S. police agencies are asked to submit crime data to the FBI. But some don't provide complete information or, in some cases, any information at all.

When that happens, the Federal Bureau of Investigation uses crude estimates to account for the missing data. Those figures are then used to generate "Crime in the United States," an annual tally of violent and property crimes that is a quality-of-life measure as well as a gauge of criminal justice policies and spending.

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Other experts believe, at minimum, the FBI should use a more sophisticated system for generating estimates.

Two decades ago,  the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a unit of the Justice Department, published a 78-page paper critiquing the FBI's procedure and recommending ways to improve it.

"So far, nothing has come of it," said Michael D. Maltz, the criminologist who wrote the paper and is now a researcher at Ohio State University's Criminal Justice Research Center.

California's Secretary of State reports that the initiative to require a vote in 2021 on whether California should secede from the Union has failed to achieve the requisite number of signatures by the deadline.

Will they try again? Tomorrow is another day.

Former Mayor and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom says San Francisco has become "too permissive" when it comes to open drug use and other bad behavior on the city's streets.

"People shooting up on the streets and sidewalks, where kids are in strollers, is not acceptable -- it's just not," Newsom said during a visit to The Chronicle's editorial board last week.

Newsom, who served as mayor for seven years before being elected lieutenant governor in 2011, has been attacked by GOP opponent John Cox for his leadership in San Francisco, a city that has drawn attention for homelessness, feces littering the streets and blatant drug use.

It wasn't a violent or particularly noteworthy crime but for the brazenness with which it was carried out, and that didn't sit well with Chico's police chief, Mike O'Brien.

The police said it went like this. A man, 43-year-old William Emis, walked into the Liquor Bank convenience store last month in downtown Chico, allegedly grabbed a $2 beer and, while he was walking out of the store, told the clerk to call the cops on him because he wasn't paying for the booze.

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During the encounter, Emis was incredulous that police would take the time to transport him to the county jail in Oroville. Emis, police said, believed, not without reason, that he would be cited and released on the spot because his alleged theft was a misdemeanor offense.

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Law enforcement officials and prosecutors say multiple factors have changed the way people suspected or convicted of misdemeanor crimes -- such as petty theft and vandalism -- are supervised and punished, leading to cases in which some offenders know there will be little consequence for habitually committing petty crimes.

O'Brien said the "three-headed monster" comprising Assembly Bill 109 (prison realignment), Proposition 47 (reclassification of certain offenses from felonies to misdemeanors) and Proposition 57 (additional parole opportunities) have undermined community safety and impacted property crime.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Thursday afternoon that the Senate would vote on the 15 nominees by the end of the evening. Three nominees are for appellate courts--one each for the Second, Third and Ninth Circuits. That would put the total of appellate judges confirmed at 29 in the last two years--a modern record for the first two years of a Presidency.

California launched the Motor Voter program on April 23, which automatically registers and pre-registers eligible voters when they go into a DMV office to complete a driver's license, state ID or address change transaction.

The DMV reported last month that it made 23,000 voter registration errors resulting from technicians toggling between multiple screens and having registration information improperly merged. In May, the Los Angeles Times reported that a software error affected 77,000 voter records generated at the DMV.

On Monday, the DMV said about 1,500 people were improperly registered to vote, some of whom may not be citizens. Padilla said his office immediately removed all 1,500 people from the voter rolls. In a letter to the DMV, he called for the agency to hire an independent third-party to conduct an audit.

Zagorski was convicted in 1984 of killing two men in Robertson County. He shot them, slit their throats and robbed them after luring them into the woods by promising to sell them a large amount of marijuana.

Sheldon Silver was due to begin his seven-year sentence this week for violating the law, the public trust, and the responsibilities of his office as assembly speaker--a position he occupied for 21 years. Though a federal judge has stayed his entry date while Silver appeals his conviction, many New Yorkers are justifiably pleased to see Silver heading off to jail, viewing his conviction as a long-overdue draining of the Albany swamp. With recent convictions of other top players in state politics, it appears that New York may have begun to clean itself up.

But while Silver is eventually going to prison, he won't lose a single taxpayer-funded pension paycheck of $6,602 per month, even while serving his time behind bars. And in spite of his own federal conviction, former New York Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos also continues to receive a $95,831 annual pension, courtesy of New York taxpayers. If this makes you angry--as it should--it might further upset you that these ill-gotten pensions could have been eliminated if our elected lawmakers had done their job properly during the most recent legislative session.

Last November, New York voters passed by a nearly two-to-one margin a state constitutional amendment known as Proposal #2. The common reading of the proposal, and the one most people thought that they were voting for, was that it would punish legislators convicted of felonies by stripping away their pensions. In reality, lawmakers wrote an amendment with enough poison pills to ensure that even when they lose, they win.