Texas Executes Triple-Murderer:  A Texas man convicted of the brutal murders of his wife and two young stepsons was put to death Wednesday.  The Associated Press reports that in September of 2007 Robert Sparks stabbed his wife 18 times as she lay in her bed, then took his 9-year-old and 10-year-old stepsons separately into the kitchen and stabbed them to death.  He then raped his 12-year-old and 14-year-old stepdaughters.  At trial Sparks attempted a mental defense, claiming that he believed that his wife and stepsons were trying to poison him.  No word on what induced him to rape the two stepdaughters.  In a last minute appeal, his attorneys claimed that Sparks was intellectually disabled, arguing this his trial attorney failed to present sufficient evidence of the disability.  The Court of Appeals and Supreme Court refused to grant a stay.  The Texas Attorney General called the killings "monstrous crimes" and noted that, at trial, Sparks' own expert testified that he was not intellectually disabled. 

Ignoring the Evidence to Preserve the Narrative:  The claim that America is fundamentally racist has become the central focus of virtually any discussion involving leading Democrats on issues ranging from climate change to crime.  In a recent article in the City Journal, Heather MacDonald noted that while there appears to be a consensus among Democrat candidates for President that white supremacy is driving systemic racism, particularly with regard to law enforcement, actual data completely refutes that narrative. "Just this month, the Bureau of Justice Statistics released its 2018 survey of criminal victimization. According to the study, there were 593,598 interracial violent victimizations (excluding homicide) between blacks and whites last year, including white-on-black and black-on-white attacks. Blacks committed 537,204 of those interracial felonies, or 90 percent, and whites committed 56,394 of them, or less than 10 percent," writes MacDonald. "Blacks are also overrepresented among perpetrators of hate crimes--by 50 percent--according to the most recent Justice Department data from 2017; whites are underrepresented by 24 percent. This is particularly true for anti-gay and anti-Semitic hate crimes." Somehow, these facts are not being acknowledged by leading Democrats or progressives, and are ignored by the major media.  In 2008, Barack Obama was able to connect such lawlessness to family breakdown during a speech in Chicago. "Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and twenty times more likely to end up in prison."  In today's political environment that statement would be characterized as bigoted and insensitive.