Guest Post by Simon Black
In early 2007, the brand new District Attorney for Milwaukee County, Wisconsin gave an interview to a local newspaper spelling out his ‘progressive’ approach to crime.
He told the reporter:
“Is there going to be an individual I divert [i.e. release back onto the street] or I put into treatment program, who’s going to go out and kill somebody? You bet. Guaranteed. It’s guaranteed to happen. It does not invalidate the overall approach.”
(Actually his approach is invalidated by the data; rape, homicide, arson, aggravated assault, and other violent crime have risen dramatically in Milwaukee. His approach is clearly not working…)
But last Sunday, one such criminal– Darrell Brooks– who benefited from this prosecutor’s legendary clemency, drove his SUV into a crowd of people, killing six… including an 8-year old child.
Brooks is a classic repeat offender; he had just been arrested a few weeks prior for runing over his ex. And his numerous felony convictions go back two decades.
The only reason he was on the streets was because of this District Attorney’s outrageous progressive policies.
One HUGE problem in the United States is how ambitious people see prosecutor jobs like District Attorney and Attorney General as stepping stones to higher political offices.
Kamala Harris, for example, got her start as a prosecutor, first winning the office of San Francisco District Attorney back in 2003. She later became California Attorney General in 2010, then Senator in 2016.
Jumping from prosecutor to politician is extremely common. But it creates bad incentives for ambitious prosecutors to abuse the system for their own political gain.
We’ve seen this a lot lately– prosecutors bringing up ridiculous, dubious charges in high profile cases simply to increase their national name recognition.
Other prosecutors will use their offices to make noise about their ‘progressive’ approach to crime, in an effort to win broad support from the left. Or they’ll often NOT prosecute prominent individuals to gain political favor.
This is extremely unethical. The criminal justice system is supposed to keep bad people off the streets.
Clearly there are way too many laws criminalizing non-violent acts. And the system should ample room for discretion to give people a second chance. But not 20 years of second chances.
People like Darrell Brooks are on the streets because prosecutors, oftentimes for personal and political gain, simply refuse to follow the law.
I’ve written about this concept a lot lately– the rapid deterioration of America’s ‘Rule of Law’.
Rule of Law is an idea that goes back thousands of years to the days of Hammurabi’s Code. It suggests that you can’t simply change the law whenever you want. Clear rules should be applied and followed equally across society, without exception.
A strong Rule of Law was once a major cornerstone of western civilization… right alongside capitalism, individual liberty, and a sense of community.
Each of these is vanishing at an astonishing pace. And with respect to Rule of Law, we constantly see new examples where government officials will either ignore the rules, or simply invent new rules, to do whatever they want.
Several months ago, for example, the CDC Director invented the authority to take control of the entire $10+ trillion US housing market.
Obviously nothing under the Constitution or US federal law grants her that power. But she arbitrarily decided that housing fell within her jurisdiction… and hence she felt entitled to issue a moratorium on evictions.
Last week the Federal Trade Commission (whose new chairwoman is a hardcore Marxist) announced they would “identify additional legal theories” to stop mergers in the energy sector.
In other words, they don’t actually have the legal authority. So they’re just going invent some new legal concept that gives them the power to do whatever they want.
Last week’s verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial was another obvious example; Hunter Biden’s dad raged that he was “angry and concerned” after the jury decided Rittenhouse was NOT guilty.
Yet when another jury delivered guilty verdicts against all three defendants in the death of Ahmaud Arbery, Biden proudly announced that “the guilty verdicts reflect our justice system doing its job.”
It’s amazing that the President of the United States publicly opines on the health of the justice system based on whether the jurys’ verdicts meet with his personal approval.
And this is an extraordinary testament to the declining Rule of Law in America.
Not to be outdone, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee said Rittenhouse’s acquittal was a “gross miscarriage of justice and sets a dangerous precedent. . .” He also called for the US Department of Justice to “review” the case.
It’s no longer OK for a jury to hear evidence and deliver a verdict.
If that verdict doesn’t conform to what the woke mob wants, the government will ignore the law, legal tradition, and the entire system of justice, to demand the outcome that it wants.
As a final example, several months ago workers at an Amazon facility in Alabama voted whether or not to organize and form a union.
The vote made national news, because government officials all the way up to Hunter Biden’s dad were pleading with the workers to unionize.
The workers, however, had different plans. And they voted by an overwhelming margin to NOT unionize.
But yesterday afternoon the US National Labor Relations Board decided to invalidate that April vote. And they are now requiring the workers to hold a new election.
If you say anything about an election being unfair or fraudulent, then you’re a conspiracy theorist who is a threat to democracy.
Yet if the government doesn’t like the outcome of union election, they’ll just invalidate the vote until they get the outcome they want.
I cannot overstate the importance of this issue; strong nations have a strong Rule of Law.
And history is full of examples, from Rome to medieval Venice to the Ottoman Empire, which show that a deteriorating rule of law is a leading indicator of a civilization in decline.
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There is no more coexisting.
When the breakdown, breaking & entering, etc that is the ‘rule of law’ breaks down enough that even some people in the cheap seats can see it… & still, probably, not synthesize it.
“Lawfare” is new word-wine in the original, oldest cask.
Was in the Cape of Girardeau, a river town on the Mississippi sitting on a spit of land founded by a Frenchman named Girard. There is quite an interesting hunting/trapping/Lewis&Clark sort of history embedded in the local folklore dating back toward the Lousiana Purchase which Jefferson didn’t really have the authority to do either, but he did.
I got into a terrible row with a bunch of Cape Girardeau’s finest a few years ago, ending up on the ground in handcuffs because I was under the mistaken idea I could walk on public streets without being forced to ride in a police car. (I stomped off down the street when there was a traffic stop and cops were literally walking up the street looking into people’s cars. It pissed me off and I stomped off from Nick, who was telling me to sit my ass down and shut up. Anyway, there really was never a rule of law, was there?)
They were convinced I was wrong and I found out just how painful those damn handcuffs can be… and how someone was either shocking me or twisting the cuffs in a way that pinched my nerves. But fortunately, I married well and my husband convinced them I needed medical attention. Which ended up being true but for reasons other than my walk through the neighborhood between West End and Kingshighway, where my attorney’s office was located. I didn’t make it there.
I ended up in observation at the hospital and since I have genuine issues (don’t get anyone started!), the cops realized they should just let it go.
So did I.
There is a legend about this Bootheel region where Illinois, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri share sections of both the foothills of the Ozarks and the alluvial plain of the Mississippi River which once merged with the Gulf of Mexico and then moved across the state 30 miles when the New Madrid Fault Line introduced itself to the country. The legend is that the New Madrid Fault changed not only the geography of the region but its very history.
For gathered on those foothills just behind my shoulders there on the farm so long ago, were all the tribes gathering for a final assault on the caravans of white men making their way across the Mississippi.
The tribes were gathering to wipe out the little port at Cape Girardeau.
Then, the New Madrid Fault Line changed history.
It’s an interesting legend. Hope it happens again soon.
That’s a heluva post, Ghost.
Jefferson said to himself, hmmm, possession’s 9/10th’s the law, so let’s just buy it & let the rest of those chips fall in line as they may & as the combined might of Uncle Weus, aka Sam, insists that they will.
(And if it can’t be bought, there’s always conquest. Or eminent domain condemnations. Heads we win, tails they lose. The very definition of win-win. And redundant superluousness. It’s just ‘win.” But if losing’s not an option in cattle futures trading, well then winning doesn’t actually have a thing to do with it.)
Yes, there has always been rule of law. But before words, & the lawyer-types that sling them (which is a far greater number than mere lawyers “proper”), that law was wordlessly known as “the jungle.”
I’ve read some about what lots of those non-white tribes did to each other before being done by the white tribes. Maybe some of them, when on the losing end, hoped for fault lines, meteors, something-anything, too.
But no matter what comes, or doesn’t, the jungle’s always there, indifferent, & overgrowing everything.
What’s the interesting car you’re sitting on?
(Heard on radio a bit ago that this date ’70 the AMC something was $1800 & rent was $143. Some more of what the law has wrought.)
That was the 1959 Ford Fairlane (standard 4-speed, shift on the steering wheel) my father insisted on keeping in driving form, having traded a blue body for the original black, salvaging the hood and trunk from the car he bought “almost new” in 1961 to take my mother to the hospital to have me. She’d told him she wasn’t riding in that old truck without any doors.
So, that was the car that brought me back home to the farm and the car my father asked me to sit upon when I left finally for the USAF.
The jungle is always there, but the beasts were not always so restless.
Is like the Island of Dr. Moreau.
Hamilton supposedly responded to Jefferson “Your *people*, sir, is nothing but a great beast.”
Of course that’s true.
And also true that Ham & the boys are what float to the top of the pot of beast stock. No matter how much skimming you do, this broth has gotta’ scumbubble top ~ & pop-pop-pop ~ itself.
He ain’t heavy, he’s my lighter than soup nazi broth•er.
People post about how terrible cops have become. Fact is, I think they were far, far worse in years past. They could do, and did, just about anything they pleased. I have seen, and heard, of some atrocities, especially in southern states. Modern phones now mean the cops are far more likely to be caught in the act.
Yes. Agree.
Cops in LA and MS are enough to keep a lot of people away. It is just a symptom of corrupt government.
Sure. I know some stories, too. But the police state (& not just the thin blue line cop part of it) was more local back in the good old days. All that acute viciousness is now much more pervasive & the chokeholds & truncheon work are more normalized-comfortable. Scale & trompe l’oeil fool a lot of eyes into seeing essential nature “evolve.” It doesn’t.
I’m originally from Missouri too. From the very beginning I objected to these traffic stops. Then it was coming down off the ski hill and after concerts. I wasn’t even particularly political then, either. Obviously unconstitutional. How naive I was then.
I was the only person I knew against traffic cameras when they came out, too. I’d say, they can make dinosaurs look real on film, and guess what the answer always was- why would they do that? Sound familiar?
I’ve read the old eyewitness accounts of this earthquake and they are truly astounding. There were very few people in that area but someone had the foresight to interview some survivors. I guess no one moved back to this area for a long time. You should google and read these accounts.
We are probably going to have to get rid of all the lawyers in order to establish any sort of rule of law.
They have bottom fed themselves into a pit of slime.
Precedent is a clever con.
kamala got her start fucking/sucking willie brown,be honest.I purposefully did not use a capitol on either name,not me editors fault(this time!).
Michael Savage long ago called liberalism a mental disorder and so it is. Nancy Pelosi just bought a sea-side $25 million mansion in Florida. Apparently, the rising oceans are of no concern. Instead of retiring on her own turf in the Bay area, she leaves those fools who elected her to live the societal collapse she engineered and fled to where the earthquakes don’t bother, the taxes are much less and they are led by a governor who will enforce the law.
And how do the saps who elected her feel about that? Why they’re just fine with it all.
Just more outrage porno.
I remember when we had 3 strike laws and were putting a lot of career criminals behind bars, but it was determined that the laws were RAYCISS because more black men were getting charged and sent to prison for a very long time. Of course, more black men were committing violent felonies than their white counterparts, but we are not allowed to look under that rug.
Bastard scum should be hanged–yesterday.
One of the major signs of the end times………
Matthew 24:12: “And because lawlessness will abound,
the love of many will grow cold”
“The criminal justice system is supposed to keep bad people off the streets.” This creates a cost. Giving honest people traffic tickets and the like create revenue.