Minority communities bore the brunt of the crime wave and vocally criticized what they considered inadequate law enforcement. In 1967, the Harlem-based Amsterdam News editorialized that the city "can't get rid of crime by ignoring or compromising with it" and called for "restoring the legitimate, unbiased use of firearms by our police." The local chapter of the NAACP said, "It is not police brutality that makes people afraid to walk the streets at night" and demanded an end to "the reign of criminal terror in Harlem." In a 1968 report, [Vincent] Cannato writes, the civil-rights organization asked for "greater police protection in Harlem, harsher criminal penalties for murderers and drug dealers, and 'vigorous' enforcement of the city's anti-vagrancy laws."
Bloomberg's apology (again, like Biden's) ignores the role that proactive policing played in driving down crime. By exercising their authority to initiate contacts with citizens--in some cases, by legally detaining, questioning, and, yes, frisking those whom they reasonably believed to be involved in crimes and armed--NYPD officers significantly deterred crime in the city's most troubled precincts (which had large minority populations). This was the finding of a 2014 study, which addressed an important limitation in the earlier assessments of stop-and-frisk. Those assessments focused on citywide crime numbers, though many of the NYPD's stops were concentrated in high-crime neighborhoods. With a more "microlevel" analysis, the 2014 study found that NYPD stops-and-frisks had significant, albeit "modest," effects on crime.
The late votes tallied in the San Francisco District Attorney race came in for the anti-law-enforcement candidate, Chesa Boudin. In essence, he is going to take all the policies that have trashed a once-beautiful city and gravely degraded the quality of life there and make them all worse. Erica Sandberg has this article in the City Journal.
Boudin pledged to stop taking first-offense drunk drivers to trial, providing they didn't injure anyone. He promised to end gang enhancements, part of a California law that adds additional prison sentences to defendants who participate in violent street gangs. As for quality-of-life crimes that harm communities, he's been open about ignoring them, stating that "crimes such as public camping, offering or soliciting sex, public urination, blocking a sidewalk, etc., should not and will not be prosecuted."
Tucson voters overwhelmingly opted against the "sanctuary city" initiative, which would have limited the circumstances in which police officers could ask about immigration status.
Yes: 23,562 28.60%
No: 58,820 71.40%
Former Massachusetts Governor and Republican presidential challenger Bill Weld said Monday that President Donald Trump's "acts of treason" in pressuring Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden deserved the death penalty.
"That is treason. It's treason pure and simple, and the penalty for treason under the U.S. code is death," Weld told MSNBC's Morning Joe. "That's the only penalty."
CJLF takes no position on the underlying question in the case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn. v. City of New York, No. 18-820. However, the court-packing threat illustrates why Sen. Whitehouse and his ilk must never have full control of the government. As for this overt political threat made while talking about reducing the influence of politics, that pretty much speaks for itself.When liberals worry about losing a major Supreme Court case, they usually make appeals to the Court's "legitimacy." This is intended to attract Chief Justice John Roberts by suggesting that a conservative outcome would damage the institution's reputation. The ritual is disingenuous but usually subtle.
Five Democratic Senators have had it with subtle. In a remarkable and threatening amicus brief, Sheldon Whitehouse, Mazie Hirono, Richard Blumenthal, Richard Durbin and Kirsten Gillibrand all but tell the Justices that they'll retaliate politically if the Court doesn't do what they say in a Second Amendment case.
"The Supreme Court is not well," they tell the Justices in what is really an enemy-of-the-Court brief. "Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be 'restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics.'" By "restructured," they mean packed with new Justices by a Democratic President and Senate after they kill the filibuster.
The claim is not merely false. It is one of the most destructive lies in recent history. For a candidate to repeat it is beyond inexcusable.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in an interview Tuesday that she does not favor proposals put forth by some Democratic presidential candidates who have advocated changing the number of Supreme Court justices if the Democrats win the presidency.
Campaign contribution data for the last two months made public by the Virginia Board of Elections this Monday has shown an eye-popping $583,237 has donated by a nebulous "dark money" Washington, D.C.-based source to a challenger in the June 11 primary in the race for Arlington-Falls Church Commonwealth's Attorney.
According to the Washington Post, the money comes from billionaire George Soros, who has also lobbed another whopping $392,000 into Fairfax County in an effort to unseat the incumbent commonwealth attorney there.
Claudia Prado ("Prado") seeks review of the Board of Immigration Appeals' conclusion that her California felony conviction for possession of marijuana was an "aggravated felony" and an offense "relating to a controlled substance" that rendered her removable. See 8 U.S.C. ยงยง 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii), (a)(2)(B)(i). Prado claims this conviction is no longer a predicate to removal because it was recalled and reclassified as a misdemeanor under California's Proposition 64. Because valid state convictions retain their immigration consequences even when modified or expunged for reasons of state public policy, we deny her petition.
