Shorter Mitt Romney: “Don’t hate me, Christians. I’m one of you. Join me, and together we’ll hate the atheists!”
Bad Santa.
To paraphrase the Reddit poster who submitted this: Come join us, as a guest speaker who never served and a bunch of College Republicans who aren’t serving now, get together to discuss why we need to send more U.S. troops off to die.
Incarceration nation: The U.S. prison population hit an all-time high of 2.25 million last year, a 500 percent increase over the last 30 years.
The number represents an incarceration rate of 751 per 100,000 US residents — “substantially higher than that of Libya (217 per 100,000), Iran (212), and China (119),” HRW said in a statement.
For comparison, France’s incarceration rate is 85 per 100,000, while the rate in Britain’s is 148 and Canada is 107, HRW said.
If you’re a black man between 30 and 34, there’s about an eight percent chance that you were sitting in a cell at the end of 2006.
More of this please. And faster.
Powerline has discovered the benefits of a firm line between church and state, arguing Mike Huckabee’s strong faith makes him “too moralistic” to be president. Excellent! What issue could have brought them to that conclusion? Huckabee’s position teaching creationism? Enforcing laws against “immoral” consensual acts like gambling, drugs, or prostitution? Nope. It’s that Huckabee’s faith clouds his judgment on….torturing people.
Creepy? Maybe a little. But I also think it’s pretty damned cool. Also helps with the “casket cartel” problem in many states, where a few funeral home empires have captured the regulatory system and shut out competitors, driving up the costs of dying. Capitalism rocks.
Another data point in favor of always allowing police to be videotaped.
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on Friday, December 7th, 2007 at 11:30 am by Radley Balko
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TheAgitator.com
I politely submit that no one should take a person seriously when they list “Womens Quarterly” and “Food and Wine” among serious writing outlets. While I’m sure some group must think highly of that activity, it’s right up there with listing you were a Boy Scout as a qualification to be president.
Kudo’s to Crespo for the MP3 recording. I hope that we all agree with the statement that perjury by law enforcement should not be negotiable and is not simply an error in judgement. That is EXACTLY why many people have lost their trust in the police and judicial system, top down. That cop should be stripped of his job, retirement, recieve major jail time and all his cases reviewed. We all know what the actual outcome will be. Yes Mr. Detective, we have been watching. That is why you get no respect.
For those who haven’t clicked on the third link posted above, the guest speaker who never served is none other than Jonah Goldberg, whom the invitation describes as “a rising star in the conservative intellectual movement.” I’ll give them conservative, but intellectual? Come on, have you ever actually read his articles?
Why was a minor being questioned without a parent/guardian present? Also, why aren’t all interrogations recorded to begin with? Shouldn’t this be mandatory by now?
As for the Santa debacle, someone had to program that in. Whether it was a joke or not, the guy who did should probably start looking for a new job.
Regarding prisoners:
It’s a good thing China doesn’t keep as many prisoners per capita as we do. With their Capita, they’d need a whole country to store them in. Like Tibet. Oh, wait.
As for your comments on the police… aren’t you aware? They don’t exist to protect you, they are just imperial stormtroopers.
SCOTUS says so: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html
Wow, I don’t remember that decision by the SC. That’s just ridiculous. I mean, doesn’t the police shield specifically say to protect and serve?
Nando, the minor was likely questioned because he didn’t understand his rights and the police took advantage of it. Law enforcement will resist mandatory recording not because cost prohibitive (excuse) but because defense attorneys will now be able to undermine many speculative cases where default justice is given to cops, not the public. No recording, less defense. I agree with a prior poster in that those technicalities are our legal protections, not inconveniences to overcome, perjure, no-knock etc.
And yeh, the programmer of that bad santa should be fired asap if that was in the code.
oh, dear. the poor NYPD detective is in trouble for a spot of testilying. but wait …. i thought police departments had a *policy* of ‘telling the truth under oath’? isn’t that why their testimony is considered by courts to be superior to that of mere proles? isn’t that why we’re supposed to trust them with ever-higher pay & budgets; ever more military weaponry and tactics; ever more high-tech toys to assault mouthy speeders and grandmaws with? because the security forces are by legal definition superior people, right? “super”citizens? what could *possibly* go wrong?
ah, well. at least we can always videotape them to protect ourselves, right?
no … wait …..
If Costco really wants to make a difference, they’re going to have to start offering, not just caskets, but actual cremations and burials. I’d put a discount cremation on layaway right now…
-Dave
“Protect and Serve” is a PR racket. They protect themselves and serve whoever signs their paychecks.
If you’re a black man between the ages of 18 and 34, chances are you are far more likely to be wanted or punished for at least one serious crime than most white or asian men your age.
If black men committed crime at the same rates that men of other races did, you wouldn’t see so many black men hauled before the courts.
MikeT: I’m afraid that your argument does not necessarily logically follow.
“If black men committed crime at the same rates that men of other races did, you would likely not see so many black men hauled before the courts.” is a far more rigorously defenceable statement.
Nando: “To Serve and Protect” is nothing more than an advertising slogan. It carries about as much legal weight as “The Freshmaker”.
mike T has a point. a point most folks don’t like to acknowledge or think about. a point to out of favor, that when it’s raised, they’ll either run screaming from it/ignore it/attack the person who brought it up.
they recently announced the 10 most dangerous and crime-infested cities in america, did they not? i don’t remember the list verbatim, but detroit was far and away the worst. followed by other the garden spots of newark, st. louis, gary, ind., oakland, and - i seem to recall - baltimore, atlanta, philadelphia, new orleans …..
now for the uncomfortable question: those are cities spread all across the country, in multiple states with a wide range of climates, economic conditions, and schools. in fact, any reasonably close examination of that list shows - really - just *2* things that they have in common.
1 of those things is that they’re all controlled by long-established hugely-corrupt *democrat* political machines.
anyone care to mention the other?
Ochressandro,
True.
chiuninho,
I almost pointed out that if you took out blacks from crime statistics, that America would strongly resemble Europe in many categories, but you beat me to it in a way.
One of the things I’ve never seen mentioned here (maybe it has been, but I haven’t seen it) is the way that many blacks stick up for black criminals. It is appalling the way that many blacks will defend blacks for committing crime against other races, but God help those involved, if the roles are reversed.
Just look at cases like the Jena 6. If the races were reversed, you wouldn’t see a single respectable person coming forward trying to defend the actions and motives of six white thugs who beat up a black teen.
MikeT - might I remind you of the Duke lacrosse case, where three white guys were acting like asshats to a black woman, then got accused of a crime they didn’t commit, and people rushed to their defense (and rightly so, in my opinion)? Radley covered Jena and has pointed out some of the real injustice that was done to the black teens there.
chiuninho - I’ll name the other. Lots of urban poverty. If it were white people that were mired in urban poverty and black people who made up the bulk of the middle and upper class, you’d be hearing about “white crime.” Race has nothing to do with it, so come off it already and address the real problem - urban poverty breeds crime.
Jeff,
Might I remind you that the woman in question raised suspicions pretty early on that she was lying, and that the case started unraveling pretty quickly once it started getting broader scrutiny? Do you really think it would have been the same, if the woman had never contradicted herself, and done things like implicated a man who wasn’t even at the party the whole night?
That old leftist canard…
Maybe they wouldn’t have the poverty if they didn’t have the crime. It’s a little hard to get businesses to start and flourish in areas where there is little social cohesion and rule of law.
Not one month after the incident, the DNA lab had to admit that it had no DNA evidence that any of the players had assaulted her or raped her.
As I said, it got out pretty quick that the prosecution and “victim” might be lying.
Most of the “crimes” that blacks get arrested for are drug related. So, just like Americans of all colors, a huge percentage of blacks in prison are in for doing something that shouldn’t be illegal.
Plus, they’re arrested at much higher rates for drugs than whites even though they use drugs at about the same rate. I’d hazard a guess that the stats for other crimes are roughly the same… that is, blacks are probably much more likely to be sent to prison, and will probably get a longer sentence, than whites who commit the same offense.
I find this thread pretty depressing.
Blacks were systematically abused for about 325 years in this country. For about another 30 more, they were hit with well-intentioned but devastatingly poorly-incentivized welfare programs that shred the family structure. For the last 25, they’ve been incarcerated at rates greater than apartheid-era South Africa with racist, targeted drug laws that punish “black cocaine” at rates 50 times greater than “white cocaine.” A quarter century of locking nonviolent offenders up with rapists and murderers, then releasing them back into society with no prospects and a felony criminal record–that too will take its toll on a community.
And of course attitudes like those expressed in this thread only make the problem worse. The logic’s also circular. “The fact that there are disproportionately more black people in prison doesn’t mean there’s racism in the criminal justice system. It just means black people commit more crimes. How do I know? Because look at how disproportionately more black people are in prison.”
MikeT and Chiuninho, if you’re implying that there’s something inherently or genetically savage or criminal about black people, this really isn’t the site for you. Go someplace else, please.
I agree with most of what you write and think you have done some really good work work exposing the militarization of the police and the abuse of tasers to mention just a couple of things. But this knee jerk reaction to religious people is getting tiring. Shorter Romney, we will hate the atheists? What the hell?
“….bunch of College Republicans who aren’t serving now, get together to discuss why we need to send more U.S. troops off to die.” You are launching the chickenhawk argument? Really? Against citizen control of the military now?
Finally, anyone who thinks blacks are more inclined towards crime needs to up their meds, but almost as bad are the people who justify crime because of anything other than free will. You find me a 355 year old black man who is in prison, then you’ve got a point.
I have to say that I have a small quibble with:
“a guest speaker who never served and a bunch of College Republicans who aren’t serving now, get together to discuss why we need to send more U.S. troops off to die.”
I understand that your complaint is about people who will never be at risk blithely putting others’ lives at risk, but I don’t buy the implications here. They may be right, wrong, brilliant, foolish, naive, or diabolical, but as long as civilian control of the military is important in this country, there will be people who have not served in uniform influencing or deciding military matters.
This reminds me of the argument that men can’t have an opinion on abortion because they can’t get pregnant.
Either their arguments have merit, or they don’t.
i think we have the internet in enough places already! i guess its slightly less obnoxious to surf the web than to talk on a cell phone?!?
happy to leave, balko. clearly you’re one of those guys who wants libertarian freedom for all! - just not the freedom to use our eyes & our brains to ask uncomfortable questions.
this attitude differs from the hillaryesque statists you pretend to agitate against … how, exactly?
It may be possible that some small amount of the people who end up in prison today would have ended up in a mental hospital 50 years ago.
There’s an old post on the Volokh Conspiracy about it.
http://volokh.com/posts/chain_1177998929.shtml
I don’t know if it has been discussed here before, so apologies if this is repetitious.
The fact that you got a genetic argument out of what I wrote is pretty depressing too.
Now, if I were going to twist your words, the way you did mine, I would say the very fact that you were so quick to suggest that blacks might be inferior would mean that you’ve thought an awful lot about “black inferiority.” It’d be a stupid logical conclusion… kind of like taking my words here and twisting them into David Duke talking points.
You answered your own question about black crime issues when you pointed out the effects that the welfare state has had on the black family. 70% of black kids are born to fatherless homes, and lo and behold, black teens (especially young men) have real crime problems. Big surprise.
Now, since you accused me of circular thinking, much of it pertaining to the War on Drugs, take out the War on Drugs issues from black crime. How much more often are blacks sentenced to harsh prison sentences, that other races typically wouldn’t get for the same offense, with the same history?
Funny thing too about the issue of disproportionate sentencing. White people are the primary target of hate crimes laws, even though minority-on-minority hate crimes are an issue, especially in places like LA between black Americans and illegal immigrants. I don’t see a whole lot of difference between the hate crime statutes and how they’re used disproportionately against whites, and the way that blacks get hit hard under drug laws.
Both laws are asinine, but what are you going to do?
How about not acting like only one group is getting screwed by the system when the system has stamina to go for a round with every group?
We’re both minarchists, but the big difference is that I don’t care about “group” issues like racism because every group does the things it cries about. When you get down to it, no group has a sob story worth hearing because it has done to some other group, the things that it complains about being done to it. I care about individuals, and that’s about it. That’s why I can get militantly upset about what is being done to Cory Maye, and yet not give a damn about racism in general.
The Chickenhawk slur? Really?
That’s all you’ve got?
MikeT - How many people are in prison for hate crime laws? Maybe more importantly, how many of those people wouldn’t be in jail anyway for assault, even without the addition of a “hate crime?”
Now, how many people are in jail for the non-violent offense of drug use - mere possession, etc? That’s the difference to me - impact. Far more blacks are in jail solely for having some dope in their coat pocket at the wrong time, compared to white people who beat up blacks and got tagged with the hate crime charge on top of it.
I agree that both laws are asinine. That doesn’t mean that something shouldn’t be done. And in terms of priorities, if whites that are prone to violence sit in jail for a while as we advocate for non-violent black offenders to be released, I’m okay with that.
Finally, you seemed to agree with chiuninho’s assessment that the American cities with the highest crime rates have entrenched democratic administrations and one other factor. You don’t seem to believe that the second factor is urban poverty or any genetic issues associated with minorities. So, what do you think it is?
1) I am skeptical about the statistics about the War on Drugs imprisonment of blacks because I have yet to see any analysis of the issue that tests all of the variables, like what sort of existing criminal records blacks have versus whites. I would like to see solid states, across all state legal systems and the federal legal system, that show how first time offenders are treated. For those with existing, non-trivial records, I have neither the time nor the energy to care about how they get treated in sentencing.
2) I think the reason that those predominantly black cities have so much problem is a cultural issue. Black pop culture is particularly degenerate. It glorifies crime and anti-social behavior. Imagine if white communities were such that people looked up to criminal, sociopathic white trash, while saying “you actin’ asian/jewish” to any white person who tries to make something of themselves.
Okay, Mr. O’Reilly. I think I get the jist of your argument. “Those crazy blacks with their rap music and their bitches and hos and their pimping. Always drooping their pants and walking across the street all slow.”
You probably thought Oprah was one of the “good ones” until she endorsed Obama, since he tried teh drugs back in his youth and lived up to your stereotypes.
It’s interesting that you need statistics to prove that many blacks in prison are there for non-violent, victimless offenses while you are able to discern, ostensibly sans statistics, that blacks are criminals because of Ludacris and Tupac.