Crime

Alvin Bragg has made good on his campaign promise to hold former president Donald J. Trump “accountable” by indicting him under New York law for thirty-four felony counts of falsifying business records. For seven years, Bragg’s predecessor and numerous federal entities considered the same facts and declined to pursue charges. Given Bragg’s well documented leniency toward the violent criminals currently terrorizing New York, it’s difficult to imagine this case would have been brought against anyone but Trump.

Baltimore has the highest murder rate in the country, so one would imagine the state’s legislators would be seeking ways to get tough on violent criminals and safeguard the city’s residents. Instead, nine members of the Maryland House of Delegates, all Democrats, have co-sponsored a bill designed to benefit young killers. The deceptively named Youth Accountability and Safety Act (HB 1180) prevents prosecutors in the state from charging anyone under the age of twenty-five with first-degree murder.   Under Maryland law, first-degree murder includes premeditated murder, along with various other types of murders, including those committed while perpetrating arson, rape, burglary, carjacking, kidnapping, escape from a correctional facility, sexual offenses and others.

From top to bottom, the Chicago Teachers Union — one of the shadiest unions in America — now runs the Windy City. Brandon Johnson will succeed scandal-plagued Mayor Lori Lightfoot and hand his former colleagues in CTU the keys to the city. Johnson made hundreds of thousands of dollars as a CTU executive, while failing to pay thousands of dollars to Chicago in fees in water and sewage bills. When all is said and done, Johnson will have defeated his fellow Democrat Paul Vallas in the runoff by about 4 percent. In contrast with Johnson’s platitude-heavy offering, Vallas ran a campaign laser-focused on crime, pledging to boost the city’s police force numbers at a time when crime is surging once again in America’s third largest city.

Spoilt for choice in the Windy City If the heavy defeat suffered by incumbent mayor Lori Lightfoot last month is anything to go by, Chicagoans have plenty to grumble about when it comes to how their city is managed. But when they head to the polls in the mayoral runoff next week, they cannot complain about a lack of choice. The two candidates are both Democrats, to be sure, but they offer sharply different approaches on the crime and public safety — issues that have dominated the race and which polls suggest are at the forefront of voters’ minds.  Paul Vallas, who used to run the city’s public schools, is running in the moderate lane: sharply critical of Lightfoot and prioritizing public safety above all else. Brandon Johnson is the progressive option.

It's tempting to see Keir Starmer as a political wind-up merchant given the number of times he likes to quote people who annoy his own activists. Recently he adopted the ‘take back control’ slogan and today he approvingly quoted Margaret Thatcher. Hell, the man has even praised Tony Blair.  Labour sees an opportunity in the rising salience of crime among voters The Thatcher quote today was in a speech about crime. The Labour leader told his audience in Stoke that: ‘The rule of law is the foundation for everything. Margaret Thatcher called it the “first duty of government” – and she was right.’ He later accused the Tories of having ‘thrown in the towel’ as he promised, like Blair in the 1990s, to make Labour tough on crime.

When last we checked in on The Donald Trump Show, the absurdist political thriller that’s been airing nonstop on CNN for the past seven years, the program seemed to have gotten its groove back. A new character had been introduced, Cassidy Hutchinson, a Trump aide who told the January 6 committee that the former president had lashed out violently, including allegedly trying to commandeer the presidential SUV. Here was everything that had made The Donald Trump Show so great in the first place: the over-the-top drama, the scandal, the unpredictability of its main character. Alas, one of the gripes that critics have most often leveled at the show is that it introduces new plotlines and then doesn’t do anything with them.

Americans may never before have felt their country was farther from its finest hour. And yet, on the Fourth of July last year, residents gathered in the heart of its birthplace for an ever-rarer expression of patriotic sentiment. It was to be a brief display. Blood spilled before the clock struck ten. Though no one saw a gunman or heard gunfire, two police officers were struck by stray bullets on the famous steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum. Word spread quickly, and suddenly no one could be sure whether they were hearing fireworks or gunshots. On the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, patriotism turned to terror, then shrieks gave way to silence.

The murder trial of prominent South Carolina patriarch Alex Murdaugh has it all: two deaths, a lethal drunken boat accident, a suicide-for-hire plot, the mysterious death of the family's housekeeper and a suspicious hit-and-run. That's why the case has caught the attention of true crime fanatics and the national media — ABC News, Discovery, HBO, CNN and Netflix have all taken a stab at various documentaries and podcasts. Others still might find themselves lost in the schadenfreude of watching a powerful and wealthy family descend into tragedy. The Murdaugh family has long exercised a significant amount of legal influence in the Low Country region of South Carolina.

The National Park Service cleared a major homeless encampment in downtown Washington, DC on Wednesday, a move that eased local residents and infuriated activists. McPherson Square, located just blocks from the White House, has been effectively cordoned off from the rest of the public since the proliferation of the tent city during the pandemic. The Spectator was the first to report in December that the NPS would start enforcing its no camping policy on park land in the nation’s capital. Signs went up around McPherson Square last month warning the inhabitants of the tent city that they would be removed on February 15.

Gavin Newsom is running for president. Sure, he hasn’t announced it and has claimed he’s “all in” for Biden, but he’s increasingly taking time off from personally disrupting the nation’s Dapper Dan supply chain in order to weigh in on national issues, measure the drapes, and attempt to troll Republican governors. His latest salvo, directed toward Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was sworn in as Arkansas’ governor about 15 minutes ago, claims that “While [Sanders] touts public safety, here is what she skips over: Arkansas has the one of the highest murder rates in the nation.” This is, of course, true. In 2020, the last year for which CDC stats are available, Arkansans have a much greater chance of being murdered than Californians.

Cockburn found himself grimacing over his Monday morning mimosa as he watched a viral video of Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot “dancing” in the snow-strewn streets of the crime-ridden city she is supposed to govern. Lightfoot is under fire for her behavior at a Lunar New Year parade, as her lighthearted attitude contrasts sharply with the recent release of somber Chicago Police Department data showing crime reports have surged 59 percent this month compared to last January. Of course Cockburn is not surprised that Lightfoot would be so nonchalant in such a moment. Her city's crime problem is, after all, nothing new. According to the Washington Examiner, “the city has experienced an overall 33 percent increase in crime since 2019, the year Lightfoot was sworn in as mayor.

In the wake of Saturday’s horrific shooting at a Lunar New Year celebration in the heavily Asian neighborhood of Monterey Park, California, Democratic lawmakers sprang into action, speculating that the violence may have been racially motivated. Hours later it emerged that the shooter was himself also Asian. The frequency of mass killings in this country is harrowing. But Cockburn finds such tragedies are made all the more gruesome when politicians so often jump ahead of the facts, ascribing motivations or reasons to the violence that are politically beneficial to them or fit their ideological framework. Representative Adam Schiff, for example, pegged “bigotry towards AAPI individuals as a possible motive.

President Biden said Tuesday he was “surprised” to learn that in November his lawyers had found classified documents in his former office at a Washington think tank. No doubt he was equally shocked when more classified docs turned up in his Delaware home. Yet the tone of the mainstream media seems to be that boys will be boys. Since Biden is being so cooperative with authorities after being caught red-handed, maybe this has nothing in common with Donald Trump's cache of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Or Hillary's cache on her private e-mail server. Could there be a double-standard? Biden had some/several/a bunch of classified documents while Trump had hundreds so that's different.