Wolf Bytes

Dennis Prager has a piece disagreeing with those family members of the people killed by the nutjob Dylann Roof in SC for forgiving said nutjob. I don't think that Mr. Prager quite gets the Christian doctrines. Their forgiveness is simply refusing to hold hate in their heart and to hope that the nutjob repents. That really is a refusal to allow themselves to have this nutjob power over them to effect their lives. It is not a call for releasing the nutjob or to not to have him pay for the consequences of his evil actions, which is where I think Prager misses the distinctions.

Prager also misses another distinction in the second half of his article, though I agree with most of his points in that second half. I doubt that you will find better race relations throughout the U.S. than in the southeast. There is a reason that so many blacks are migrating back to the southeast. There is a reason that the blacks in Charleston have not reacted in riots and outrage, either to this mass murder or to the police shooting of Walter Scott. Indeed, the horrible facts of the Roof's case show that he went to the Emanuel AME Church and was welcomed by the members into their Bible Study for an hour. Roof has since said that the people there were so nice to him, he almost turned away. Prager seems to be conflating the members of Emanuel Church with the race hustlers, and there he is wrong. The people of Emanuel Church, like most blacks, are not race hustlers nor reverse racists.

Have you read Michael Oren's new book, Ally? Robert Avrech gives it a good - and disturbing - review. Obama and his entire administration are anti-semitic.

First there was Rachel Dolezal:

And now we have a white Huffpo writer so caught up in white guilt that she won't reproduce because she does not want to spread white privilege. She is a true product of the teaching of grievance history and, as such, I applaud her decision. I personally think that all on the left should emulate her.

The only good thing about living in 2015 is that the insanity of the neo-Stalinist left and the fruits of their labor are now out in the open everywhere. It is no longer metastasizing in the dark, where its motives can be denied and obfuscated.

I finally found an English translation of Laudato Si here. The last time the Church weighed in on cutting edge science as a religious matter was with Galileo. It very rightfully didn't go well for the Church. I guess it is time for the Church to relearn that lesson. I wish they would require Popes to take a course in basic economics while they're at it.

I am all for free trade and agree with all of Kevin Williamson's points in his article at NRO. That said, I do not trust Obama or Republicans at this point, and I am incredibly wary about any trade deal that puts powers rightfully in the purview of our Congress in the hands of any sort of international tribunal, which apparently this proposed trade deal does in regards to certain visas.

Victor Davis Hanson weighs in on that iconic Democrat symbol, the Confederate Battle Flag. I agree with him. As a government sanctioned flag, get rid of it. Indeed, I agree with him that we should get rid of all left wing symbols of racism and separatism, such as the Black Caucus, La Raza, etc.

Thomas Sowell weighs in on why Hillary's record as Sec. of State should disqualify her from running for the President. It is a good restatement of the obvious.

Let's finish with a couple of public service announcements. One, ladies, tight jeans are solely for showing off, not for practical work. Two, I would not go to Vermont if I were you . . . at least if I expected to eat. First they gave us Bernie, now they outlaw GMO's. And then the hungry, penniless bastards will move south in search of food and gold where they will find it -- and then proceed to try to change the culture to match Vermont's. The lesson of Colorado is that we really do need to have border control, not just with Mexico, but also between functioning red states and escapees from the blue states.

But a good short reminder of the origin of the word Kamikaze and the failed Mongol invasions of Japan.

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The Left's New Definitions Of Racism & Rape - It's All About Feelings

In this country, we live in an era virtually free of mainstream racism, just as we live in an era of relative gender equality (speaking of only two genders now) and of vastly declining violence against women. Yet if one were to believe the left, America today is rife with racism manifesting itself in countless microaggressions. Likewise, according to the left, there is a war on women being waged in America, one aspect of which is "rape culture," particularly on college campuses, where women are being subject to sexual assault by evil white men on a scale to rival the incidence of rape in the war torn Congo. Both claims, incredibly destructive to society as well as to individuals who get caught up in their web, are wholly disconnected from reality. So why is the left doing this, and how is the left justifying these canards?

In regards to both microaggressions and claims of rape culture, the left is taking this incredibly damaging tack because they want to balkanize America, and as part and parcel thereof, to keep minorities and women feeling as if they are under siege. With respect to race, this has been the playbook for over the past half century. When it comes to the modern radical feminists, however, there is a far more ambitious goal - to punish men as a whole and do away with societal norms of sex and family.

How they are trying to accomplish this is likewise obvious - do away with any objective standards for defining racism or rape. No longer is an actual act of racism necessary to sustain claims of racism. No longer is an act of rape or sexual assault necessary to sustain claims of rape or sexual assault. It is all now about the subjective feelings of the "victim."

This from Jim Goad in his article, Land of 1000 Microaggressions:

If a person of color feels offended by something a well-meaning white person said and no one knows they’re offended, is it still a hate crime?

This is the implicit question posed by the very idea of “racial microaggressions.” The concept seems to have been formulated by the racial-grievance industry to fill the savage dearth of truly aggressive acts committed by whites toward nonwhites over the past few generations.

In other words, if what used to be known as “racism” no longer exists, you have to greatly expand the term’s breadth so that it includes words, thoughts, and acts that have zero conscious hostility behind them. You have to make everything racist just to stay in business. . . .

Even if you have no hatred in your heart for a person of color and even if you make the most obsequious gestures of appeasement toward them, you are still hurting them and acting racist toward them because, well, you’re white, and that’s what you people do.

That’s what’s ultimately dangerous about this concept of “microaggresions”—even the demented fanatics who insist that such things actually exist will concede that the perpetrator may not harbor or exhibit any malice whatsoever. They may not even be the least bit conscious that they are being horrid bigots. Under this framework, bigotry is solely in the eyes of the accuser. No matter how pleasant your demeanor or how generously you act, you can still be bludgeoned over the head with baseless accusations of unconscious racism, and your accuser will feel like a good person for doing it.

I can’t imagine the agony of being a person of color on a college campus these days, what with all the microaggressions, microinsults, microinvalidations, microassaults, and especially all the microrape. Why, it’s enough to make a person of color want to drop out of college entirely. . . .

The study bears the catchy title of Racial microaggressions at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Voices of students of color in the classroom. I highly recommend it as the finest comedic document I’ve seen so far this year.

Sponsored by the University of Illinois Racial Microaggressions Project and conducted by a specially appointed “Racial Microaggressions Team” whose associates have colorful first names such as Efadul, Shinwoo, Tanisha, Sang, and Artesha, the study concludes that it really, really, really, really sucks to be a person of color on campus these days.

For example, a robust two-fifths of the online study’s respondents claimed they “felt uncomfortable on campus because of their race.” . . .

Some sample testimonials from the POCs who claim to have been microaggressed upon:

People do not necessarily say I do not belong, but I feel as if I do not when I am in a classroom and I am the one non-White person. (Latina, Female) . . .

Do read the entire article.

And if the testimonial in that last quoted paragraph sounds familiar, it should. Not but a few weeks ago, no less than Michelle Obama, a woman who has led a truly charmed life and now sleeps in the White House, gave a speech noting how victimized she felt by, what in so many words, were microaggressions. She even went so far as to note that she, as a minority and like all minorities, felt very uncomfortable going into museums and other places of culture in America.

For another outrageous example, thoroughly explored by Heather MacDonald in The Microaggression Farce, there is the case of UCLA Professor Val Rust. He committed the racist microaggression of "correcting the capitalization, grammar and punctuation of a minority student's paper." This from Ms. MacDonald describes the insanity:

Val Rust’s dissertation-prep class had devolved into a highly charged arena of competing victim ideologies, impenetrable to anyone outside academia. For example: Were white feminists who use “standpoint theory”—a feminist critique of allegedly male-centered epistemology—illegitimately appropriating the “testimonial” genre used by Chicana feminists to narrate their stories of oppression? Rust took little part in these “methodological” disputes—if one can describe “Chicana testimonials” as a scholarly “method”—but let the more theoretically up-to-date students hash it out among themselves. Other debates centered on the political implications of punctuation. Rust had changed a student’s capitalization of the word “indigenous” in her dissertation proposal to the lowercase, thus allegedly showing disrespect for the student’s ideological point of view. Tensions arose over Rust’s insistence that students use the more academic Chicago Manual of Style for citation format; some students felt that the less formal American Psychological Association conventions better reflected their political commitments. During one of these heated discussions, Rust reached over and patted the arm of the class’s most vociferous critical race–theory advocate to try to calm him down—a gesture typical of the physically demonstrative Rust, who is prone to hugs. The student, Kenjus Watson, dramatically jerked his arm away, as a burst of nervous energy coursed through the room.

After each of these debates, the self-professed “students of color” exchanged e-mails about their treatment by the class’s “whites.” (Asians are not considered “persons of color” on college campuses, presumably because they are academically successful.) Finally, on November 14, 2013, the class’s five “students of color,” accompanied by “students of color” from elsewhere at UCLA, as well as by reporters and photographers from the campus newspaper, made their surprise entrance into Rust’s class as a “collective statement of Resistance by Graduate Students of Color.” The protesters formed a circle around Rust and the remaining five students (one American, two Europeans, and two Asian nationals) and read aloud their “Day of Action Statement.” That statement suggests that Rust’s modest efforts to help students with their writing faced obstacles too great to overcome.

The same subjectivity now used to find racism rampant throughout our nation is equally apparent in the claims that our nation is involved in a "war on women," part of which is "rape culture." These claims come from radical feminists running the women's studies programs in our nation's ivory towers. Robert Stacey McCain, who has quite literally written the book on modern radical feminism - Sex Trouble - explains:

Once we go beyond simplistic sloganeering about “equality” and “choice” to examine feminism as political philosophy — the theoretical understanding to which Ph.D.s devote their academic careers — we discover a worldview in which men and women are assumed to be implacable antagonists, where males are oppressors and women are their victims, and where heterosexuality is specifically condemned as the means by which this male-dominated system operates.

Feminist professor Camille Paglia was sounding the alarm bells about this twenty years ago. This from her 1995 interview with Playboy:

The women's movement is rooted in the belief that we don't even need men. . . .

It's a mess out there. Men are suspicious of women's intentions. Feminism has crippled them. They don't know when to make a pass. If they do make a pass, they don't know if they're going to end up in court. . .

. . . [Y]ou can't have the Stalinist situation we have in America right now, where any neurotic woman can make any stupid charge and destroy a man's reputation. If there is evidence of false accusation, the accuser should be expelled. Similarly, a woman who falsely accuses a man of rape should be sent to jail. My definition of sexual harassment is specific. It is only sexual harassment--by a man or a woman--if it is quid pro quo. That is, if someone says, "You must do this or I'm going to do that"--for instance, fire you. And whereas touching is sexual harassment, speech is not. I am militant on this. Words must remain free. The solution to speech is that women must signal the level of their tolerance--women are all different.

Far too many people still view the modern feminist movement as merely one seeking fair and equal treatment with men. That was true of feminism until the late 60's when, just like the civil rights movement, it was co-opted by our modern neo-Stalinist left. But these truly radical and insane interpretations of feminism - that our society is inherently discriminatory against women, that white males are the implacable oppressors of women, and that all heterosexual sex is rape - was still largely confined to corners of the ivory tower until recently. Thus, in 1995, when Prof. Paglia was sounding her warning, it was easy to dismiss her. Not so any longer. These utterly toxic views are now mainstream and driving policy throughout our government and in academia.

To justify their claim of "rape culture," the radical feminists rely on bogus statistics. This from Ashe Schow:

The doom-sayers began with the statistic that 1 in 5 college women will be sexually assaulted to get their foot in the door. They screamed from the mountaintop that any woman in college will probably be raped any day now. Not in India, not in Iran, not in South Africa, but here. In America. On campus.

Using that false statistic (most are at least intelligent enough now to stop using it), activists began a crusade to right the injustices of the past (and potentially present) by swinging the pendulum to the other side. This, not surprisingly, has created a new problem of male students losing their due process rights and being treated as guilty until proven innocent.

But 1-in-5 isn't the only statistic being used to create these new policies. Now that the issue is consistently in the news, other statistics with equally dubious origins are cropping up.

One is that only 2 percent of rape accusations are false. This factoid traces back to a single source (Susan Brownmiller's 1975 book Against Our Will), which in turn cites a police officer talking about a study that no one has been able to find. But from this dubious claim springs the dogma that one must therefore believe all rape-accusers to be true victims.

Couple the notion that all accusers must be believed to another statistic — that relatively few men commit the majority of sexual assaults — and the prevailing logic becomes that anyone accused of sexual assault must immediately be treated as a serial rapist, because they likely are or will be.

This is how we get to a culture where an accusation is all the evidence needed in campus disciplinary hearings — and evidence and witnesses telling a different story are discounted.

With due process sacrificed, what the feminists have accomplished is to redefine rape and sexual assault so that they no longer require objective acts of rape or sexual assault. It is enough if, post coitus, a woman feels like she should not have engaged in the act of sex and wants to claim rape. Men are guilty until proven innocent.

Moreover, this view of heterosexual sex as rape is being written into black letter law:

California’s “yes means yes” law turns the idea of sexual consent upside down. Suddenly, nearly all sex is rape, unless no person involved reports it as such.

Consent, under the California law that is spreading to other American universities, is required to be “ongoing throughout a sexual activity and can be revoked at any time.” The law also states that “a lack of protest or resistance does not mean consent, nor does silence mean consent.” Also, previous sexual activity “should never by itself be assumed to be an indicator of consent.”

The law also states that incapacitation due to drugs or alcohol is considered nonconsensual. In theory, one could imagine that meaning black-out drunk or visibly not in control of one’s actions. But in practice, even having one or two drinks hours before sexual activity can constitute "too drunk to consent."

By this definition, the only sex that isn’t rape is sex where consent can be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt for every stage of the activity. Sure, that sounds reasonable, but the fact that one of the bill’s sponsors doesn’t know how anyone could prove consent tells you a lot about the bill.

The left's goal, to make and keep America balkanized, can only be sustained by taking away objective standards. How incredibly damaging it is to teach people that they are to view the world through the hypersensitive lenses of their gender or skin color, and that they are indeed being victimized if they simply feel that way. At this point, one could say the left's efforts with microaggressions and "rape culture" have reached the level of farce, but there is no humor in this game where the costs of the left's canards are so damaging to this nation. And there is no doubt that the groups hurt most are the women and the minorities who are taught that they are actually being victimized, then adjust their lives in respect of it.

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The Toxic Fruit Of Race Hustling - Seeing The World "Through A Glass, Darkly"

Having spent a good portion of my life in the infantry, a true melting pot of races, I never saw racism nor the toxic effects of the left's racial politics until I left the military and entered civilian life. We were brothers and sisters in arms and all Americans. Nothing so perfectly captures that as this video of a retired MSG during the Baltimore riots.



The attitude displayed by that man is pervasive throughout the military. There is no victim group mentality among minorities in the military. Tragically, the same cannot be said of our nation outside the military. Blacks in the civilian world are fed a steady diet of propaganda that they are victims of pervasive racism in this country and that any problems common to their group are all as a result of external racism. They are literally programmed to view everything in life through the lens of their skin color and to interpret anything negative that occurs to be the result of external racism. It is a deeply distorted, toxic vision of life.

Exhibit No. One, from Walter Hudson writing at PJM:

A Facebook friend of mine just set the above image as his profile cover photo. He’s an activist in the Black Lives Matter movement whom I became acquainted with while working on an election issue in my state.

I look at this picture, and the first thing I think is: Wow. That’s… that’s really offensive.

Then I look at it some more. I think about it. Then I realize that for some people, like my Facebook friend, this accurately represents how they perceive the world in which they live.

We can criticize that. We can tell them that they are wrong to view the world that way. We can insist that things aren’t as bad as an image like this makes them out to be. And we may be right. But maybe we should stop and consider how terrifying life has to get for this to become your perception.

What do we do with that? How can we have anything approaching a productive conversation about race relations and criminal justice issues when starting from such divergent perceptions of the status quo?

What do we do indeed. The left's message, that racism is pervasive in America and the single major problem blacks face in this country is believed throughout, it would seem, much of the blacks in this nation at every socioeconomic level.

Exhibit No. Two is Michelle Obama. She is a woman who sees racism in innocent events and ready to claim racism at the drop of a hat. Indeed, as Ian Tuttle points out, for Ms. Obama, and indeed, for all of the left's victim's groups, the mere feeling of alienation is taken as proof positive of it's reality. In Ms. Obama's case, racism exists because she subjectively feels it, irrespective of reality.

Michelle Obama has led a charmed life, from attending Princeton and then Harvard Law to a successful career and now to First Lady. Racism has not held this woman back. And yet, in giving the Commencement Address to Tuskesgee University last weekend, she spoke of how hard her life has been having to endure racist sleights. It was astounding.

Exhibit No. Three is Saida Grundy, newly hired professor at Boston University, who seems quite the reverse racist -- something wholly tolerated on the left. Indeed, our universities seem full of such people, who teach grievance, hatred and the canard of pervasive racism as part of a curriculum. As to Ms. Grundy:

. . . [T]he Boston Globe reported some of the tweets: "why is white america so reluctant to identify white college males as a problem population?" and "every MLK week i commit myself to not spending a dime in white-owned businesses. and every year i find it nearly impossible."

This is yet another woman who has apparently not been held back by racism, yet she sees all white males as a "problem?" Not merely is Ms. Grundy's philosophy abhorrent and insane, it is equally as abhorrent and insane that Boston University fully intends to employ this women to teach at the institution.

The left's goal is to keep America balkanized. They are certainly succeeding. And while the extinguishment of racism on any sort of appreciable scale in this country has seen significant portion of blacks in this country advance into the upper and middle class, there is a large substrata of blacks that have not:

By virtually every metric, while the lives of blacks have improved, and while many black individuals have been able to embrace the opportunities this country has to offer, a very substantial portion of blacks have not. It is obscene that, in America, some 25% of blacks live in poverty. It is obscene that, where in 1965, less than 30% of black children were born into a single parent family,that number is now over 70%. It is obscene that that 30 to 40 percent of inner city kids don’t graduate from school, and a very substantial number who do graduate are functionally illiterate. It is obscene that blacks are seven times more likely to commit violent crime than other races. And it is obscene that these problems are cyclical. Nothing the left has done for blacks has broken this cycle, and it all portends to get much worse as cities, where large numbers of blacks congregate and many of whom take public sector jobs, fall into bankruptcy and economic chaos from the failure of the blue political / economic model.

As toxic as the fruit of race hustling is on the left to keep blacks balkanized and feeling victimized by racism, the penultimate cost of that effort is being paid first and foremost by blacks themselves. And for every black in the civilian world that climbs into the middle or upper class, one has to wonder how many are held back nursing grievance politics instead of focusing on the opportunities available to them.

When the blacks rioted in Baltimore last month, doing millions of dollars in damage to the businesses and stores that serve their neighborhoods, they were acting out over perceived racial conflict with the police that led to the death of Freddie Gray. To put that into perspective, there are a host of problems affecting blacks in inner city Baltimore, from poverty to unemployment to single parent homes and high crime. Freddie Gray was one of 87 homicides having occurred in Baltimore City already this year. The reality is that a black living in Baltimore City has exponentially more to fear from other blacks than they ever have to fear from the police. Yet none of these other homicides send people out into the street or raise the community in arms to try and stop this devastation in their communities. It is only because blacks are fed a steady diet of victimhood and grievance politics that they are primed to riot, rather than address the real problems they face.

We'll give the last word to a man living in "the hood," as he describes it, Mr. Eric Thomas:

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Watcher's Council Forum: What's Your Reaction To The Baltimore Police Being Criminally Charged ?

The six Baltimore police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray. From left to right, top row: Officer Caesar R. Goodson, Jr.; Officer Garrett E. Miller; Officer Edward M. Nero. Left to right, bottom row: Officer William G. Porter; Lt. Brian W. Rice; and Sgt. Alicia D. White.

Each week, the Watcher's Council hosts a forum as well as a contest for best post among the Council members. This week's forum question, referring to the wrongful death of Freddie Gray, is "what's your reaction to the Baltimore police being criminally charged?" I have been kindly been invited to respond.

Update: The Forum is posted here. I urged you to click on the link and read the various responses.

Here are the facts. On 12 April, Freddie Gray was out in public in Baltimore City when he saw several police officers headed in his direction. He made eye contact with an officer and took off running. That gave the officers probable cause to stop him, though not to arrest. After a chase of over a mile, police caught up with Mr. Gray and tased him. He went to the ground. Mr. Gray had no outstanding criminal warrants nor any record of violence. Police searched him and found a pocket knife. They arrested him for possessing an illegal weapon, but we learn from reports today that the knife was of legal size and type under Maryland law and the arrest was wrongful.

The arrest was filmed from the time Mr. Gray was on the ground after having been handcuffed and searched. The arrest itself and the transportation to the van appear wholly unremarkable. Mr. Gray was calling out as if in some pain every few seconds and he dragged one leg. None of that is atypical during an arrest. There was no brutality involved in the portion of the arrest that was filmed. When the police get him to a police van, he stands on the bumper. That is the end of the film.

Three days prior to the arrest of Mr. Gray, a memo was sent through the Baltimore City Police Department mandating that suspects being placed into the police van be placed in a seat and secured with a seat belt. Mr. Gray was simply lain on the floor of the vehicle. Mr. Gray continued to complain and act agitated while in the van. At some point, and perhaps twice, he requested medical aid, which requests were ignored. Within 30 minutes, Mr. Gray was taken from the van by paramedics where he expired a week later as the result of an 80% severing of his spine at the neck. There were no other injuries to Mr. Gray. As Bookworm Room has pointed out, there is some basis to suspect that Mr. Gray's reported prior exposure to lead may have left him particularly vulnerable to the type of injury that caused his death.

At this point, we are being fed information piecemeal by the Baltimore City Police Department and the District Attorney's office. No statements have been released. The indictments have not been made public. The Medical Examiner's Report has not been made public. There have been witness statements of barbarous treatment of Mr. Gray during the arrest, but based on the video and the fact of what information has been released from the ME, they appear baseless. Nonetheless, Baltimore has seen race riots occur over the past several days. And, at last report, Rev. Al is on his way there for some good old fashioned race based demagoguing.

On 1 May, Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced that six Baltimore City Police officers have been arrested and charged in the death of Freddie Gray. Of the six officers, three are white, three are black, one is a woman. Two of the officers have been charged with crimes relating to wrongful arrest. Three others have additionally been charged with involuntary manslaughter. The driver of the police van has been charged with second degree murder.

So, on the facts above, what is my reaction to the police being criminally charged?

As a threshold matter, Freddie Gray deserves justice, period. That is beyond question. It will certainly mean civil damages for his death. Whether his death involved criminal wrongdoing such that others deserve punishment is a separate question. Equally, those involved in Freddie Gray's death are entitled to justice. They need to be prosecuted to the degree to which they are culpable, and spared any punishment if they are not.

There is not enough information yet to say for certain if the ends of justice are being served by the arrests of these six officers. My initial reaction, and I dearly hope that I am wrong, is that a lot of this is nothing more than a sacrifice to the racial grievance industry. This is not a planted evidence case, nor a case of brutality by the arresting officers. If they wrongly arrested, that would, in the normal course, be a matter for internal discipline as well as open the officers up to civil suit. But now a wrongful arrest on these facts is being used, in at least three cases, to end careers and criminally prosecute police officers? It appears that all three of them are the white officers, by the way. That seems utterly outrageous just on the facts available. Indeed, it seems a lynching, no less than that which happened to Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson.

Likewise, charging three officers with involuntary manslaughter, just on the known facts and the lack of established policy regarding transport, seems as if it is quite a stretch. It is far less of a stretch to the extent the charge of involuntary manslaughter is based on failing to timely render aid, if such aid was requested and may have in fact saved Mr. Gray's life. But it is not clear which evidence is being relied upon to support each charge against each individual.

Lastly, the driver of the police van, a black officer, has been charged with second degree murder. He, having sole custody of Mr. Gray from the time Mr. Gray was placed in the van until he was removed, injured, by paramedics, is likely at least guilty of involuntary manslaughter. That said, a charge of second degree murder, which requires some degree of intent or extreme recklessness, is likely an overcharge, just on the basis of the known facts.

So my reaction is mixed. At least one of the indictments - and perhaps as many as three - are or may well be warranted based on the available information. Several seem like nothing more than a lynching to satisfy the Al Sharpton wing of the left, who would dearly like to turn this into an indictment of racism and police brutality with which to, somehow, blame the right.

Baltimore City is a model of left wing urban governance and has been a social laboratory for nothing but left wing social policies for the past half century. The fact that Baltimore City, as well as its Police Department, are wholly owned subsidiaries of the left, and indeed, are led by minorities, is meaningless to the developing narrative. Already, Joan Walsh of Salon is tweeting that "there is no debate that tragically, black police officers often absorb the attitudes of their colleagues." Shades of white hispanics. The left will do anything to insure that whatever comes out of the Baltimore riots, it will not be a platform for rational discussion of the problems besetting Baltimore and inner city blacks. And if justice actually occurs in Baltimore -- justice for Freddie Gray as well as the six officers -- I am afraid it will be purely by accident.

Update: Alan Dershowitz shares my concerns that this is, in far too large a measure, a politically motivated prosecution:



Sheriff David Clarke from Milwaukee County, feels likewise:

. . . Clarke said of the charges, “it’s a miscarriage of justice. This neophyte prosecutor stood up there and made a political statement, Neil, and I say that because she’s chanting or voicing some of the chants from this angry mob. Her job is to tune that out. She said, I hear the voices. She’s not supposed to hear anything as she reviews this case that is not consistent with the rule of law and our system of justice. Look, I’m an experienced and a veteran homicide detective. I’ve had — I’ve participated in charging conferences. There is no way I have ever gotten a criminal charge within 24 hours after taking over all the reports and evidence to a prosecutor. A prosecutor who is thorough needs several days to sift through hundreds of pages of reports. They usually want to interview some of the witnesses themselves, in person, and they have to sift through all of the evidence, piece by piece, and they have to wait for some of the forensics evidence to conclude, to come back and that’s why I say on a minimum, three to four days. She just got this case yesterday. This is political activism. She’ll never prove this beyond a reasonable doubt, and I’m not going to silently stand by and watch my brother officers, offered up as human sacrifices, thrown like red meat to an angry mob, just to appease this angry mob.” And that “she rushed this thing through.”

After his interview was cut off to carry a Fraternal Order of Police press conference live, he continued, “she knows she’s not going to be able to prove these charges beyond a reasonable doubt. This is George Zimmerman and the Duke Lacrosse case all over again. A politically active district attorney or state’s attorney, you can tell the emotion in her voice, she almost did this with glee. And that’s why I believe, like they [the FOP] do…she needs to remove herself from the case. I hope the state’s attorney general gets involved in this, and sees the error of her ways. The smart thing for her to do is recuse herself and name a special prosecutor.”

He added that “there may be and probably are, some civil torts here, but what little I know, and I don’t know all the facts, but I’m listening to the emotion in their voice, and listening to those political statements that she made at the end of that news conference, that’s political activism, it’s wrong, it’s probably in violation of her code of ethics as a lawyer. And again, I’m going to take my time with this, but I’m not going to sit idly by, and I want to call out to every law enforcement officer in the country to pay attention to this. Because, I see a pattern, at least demands from an angry mob, that we be offered up as human sacrifices. We don’t do that in our system of justice in the United States just to please an angry mob. And I sense from what I heard her say, Neil, that that’s what is going on here.” . . .

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The Death of Freddie Gray & Baltimore's Race Riot (Updated)

The headline article in the Daily Mail says: Huge blazes rip through Baltimore as Freddie Gray rioters torch buildings including a nursing home, loot stores and attack police, injuring fifteen officers, as violence rages into the night. Baltimore is indeed convulsing in race riots over the death of 25 year old black male, Freddie Gray. This is reminiscent of Detroit, 1967.

A week ago, Freddie Gray died in Baltimore City Police custody. Here is what we know. Approximately two weeks ago, Baltimore City Police officers showed up near where Mr. Gray was standing in public. Mr. Gray took off running. That gave police probable cause to stop him. Mr. Gray had no outstanding warrants. When police finally caught him, they did a search and found a small knife not unlike what millions of Americans carry around on their person every day, myself included. I am still not clear if it was a valid arrest even under insane Maryland law, but I think it was. Maryland is California writ small in terms of it being a leftist cesspool these days.

Mr. Gray was in good health when he was arrested and placed in the patrol car. Something happened during transport, precisely what is not clear, nor is it clear how long it took the police to get Mr. Gray medical attention. Mr. Gray died a week later of a severed spine sustained within an hour, if not minutes, of his arrest. This could be anything from simple negligence to murder.

The police seem to be doing the right thing in their investigation of the incident, and everything is being carried out in public. There has been no delay in the investigation, nor it would seem any attempt at a cover-up. And yet, Baltimore has exploded in black riots undertaken for no other reason than an opportunity to riot, apparently. The Mayor of Baltimore, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, has been worse than useless. She did not officially ask the Governor for help at the outset of the rioting, and indeed, went so far as to instruct Baltimore City Police to give space to the rioters that "wished to destroy."

The Mayor has gotten more than she bargained for. Thugs have turned Baltimore into a nightmare, with the more feral elements of the black community threatening anyone who isn't black. There is at least one report of a serious racial attack in Baltimore, and already fifteen police have been injured in the riots. Black street gangs have made common cause to stop attacking each other and concentrate on attacking the police. The Governor has declared a state of emergency and called in the National Guard.

(H/T Instapundit)

Obama and the left have spent the last six years stoking racial tensions at every opportunity. In the absence of actual racism, they must still convince blacks in our country that we America is nothing more than Selma 1954 writ large. In the nightmarish fantasy world of the left, any effort to insure the integrity of the vote is somehow racism. Applying the same standards to all Americans in whatever context is somehow racist. George Zimmerman was a racist and Trayvon Martin was an innocent youth murdered in cold blood. In Ferguson, Missouri, an evil racist cop shot an unarmed gentle giant, Michael Brown, just as he had raised his hands in surrender.

Before 1968, when the leadership of the civil rights movement was in the hands of a Republican, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the clarion call of the movement was for a colorblind society with equality of opportunity. After the left took over the civil rights movement, they morphed the movement into one where blacks were to become a permanent victim class, a color-centric group forever entitled to special treatment and equality of outcome. Dr. King's niece, Dr. Alveda King, said in an interview yesterday that if her uncle could see the riots in Baltimore, "he would be hearbroken."

I have no doubt that she is right. The people of Baltimore and this nation have every right to be angry about what happened to Freddie Gray and to demand justice on his behalf. That is not what these riots are about. The rioters are people, many in systemic poverty, who have been fed for the past fifty years on a steady diet that they are victims, that their number one problem is white racism, and that they are entitled both to special treatment and to act out. The issues facing the lower socioeconomic strata of the black community - endemic poverty, single parent homes, horrid educational opportunities, violence and criminality - are real and pervasive, but white racism is not among them. And until the actual issues are addressed honestly, they will never even begin to be solved.

And in all fairness to the good people of Baltimore, black and white, the majority are not involved in this riot. It is a clique of thugs and young people, some of whom clearly have parents outraged at the actions of their children. Update: Indeed, indications are that at the heart of this violent rioting are elements of the groups involved in instigating the violence in Ferguson. That would not surprise me in the least. And it is to the honor of the family of Freddie Gray that they have spoken out clearly condemning the violence and rioting that occurred in the wake of Mr. Gray's funeral, and believe it to be motivated by concerns other than the death of Mr. Gray.

From Hot Air, here is a video of one Baltimore Mom delivering an epic whooping to a son she saw rioting in what Hot Air is calling the "slap heard round the world."

Updates:



That child doesn't realize it at the moment, but he has a damn good mom.

There is also another video out of a retired Army MSG facing down the rioters in Baltimore. There is no organization as fully and successfully integrated as the U.S. military. It is what our nation should be aspiring to, not the balkanization of the left.



At any rate, the problems giving rise to these riots are not something the left wants to cure. The race hustlers have already started to portray what is happening in Baltimore as an eruption of anger at racist police, just as they did in Ferguson - that even though Baltimore's Mayor, the majority of its city government, and indeed, the majority of its police force are black. It has already started with Representative Elijah Cummings, from Maryland, who recently stated:

"This whole police community relations situation . . . is the civil rights cause for this generation, no doubt about it," . . .

Cummings noted that the Maryland delegation in Congress had asked for the Department of Justice to conduct a civil rights investigation into the death of Gray.

"We've got to take this department apart and try to figure out what is wrong and what is right," he said, referring to local police.

Just sickening. So, there will be another investigation by the DOJ. Prepare for a repeat of the Ferguson scenario. No racism will be found in the arrest of Freddie Gray, though I am sure they will find negligence in his treatment, or it could even rise to the level of murder. Then there will be a disparate impact statistical analysis of incidents in Baltimore and, lo and behold, it will show a higher incidence of arrest among blacks in proportion to their representation in the city. Wait for yet another DOJ lawsuit against the city and more NAACP mailers to raise money off of racism rampant in society, as alleged in the DOJ report. And of course, the next race riot will be in the offing, blacks will continue to vote 90% for Democrats, and their plight, worse now then in 1964 when this embrace of the Democrat Party began, will not improve in the slightest.

Update: From the left wing side of the media, here are ten tweets that really need to be seen to be believed. The least offensive is from Jamil Smith stating that the rioters are merely children attempting to communicate. The most offensive are from Vox, Salon and Te-Nehisi Coates apparently in full support of the violence. On CNN, Anchorwoman Brooke Baldwin has placed the cause of these riots at not merely the feet of the Baltimore City Police, but more particularly, military veterans hired into the police force who she thinks are all too ready to do violence.

This from former U.S. Rep. and former U.S. Army LTC Allen West:

[W]hat is playing out before our eyes is the depraved spectacle of anarchy, violence, wanton criminality and an utter lack of leadership. To have the mayor of Baltimore issue a statement allowing these thugs “space to destroy” is unconscionable. Is the rioting over Gray’s death or just an excuse for the most disgusting aspect of human nature? . . .

But the fact that police officers are being injured and that three black gangs have pledged allegiance in order to attack police is beyond disconcerting. What is there to gain by destroying one’s own neighborhood? Is this the new mantra of “no justice, no peace?”

Perhaps this would be somewhat understandable if it weren’t for the recent episode in North Charleston, South Carolina where a police officer fired several shots into the back of Walter L. Scott, killing him. There were no violent riots and the officer was arrested and charged. The Scott family even went so far as to demand that Al Sharpton not come to Charleston.

But in Baltimore they’ve had to cancel a baseball game and there are warnings for people to stay away from the city. The governor has finally declared a state of emergency to activate the National Guard. But where is the mayor of Baltimore? Where is the leadership for the city? Imagine the horns of a dilemma upon which the Baltimore police find themselves. The mayor basically gave carte blanche to the criminal thugs to take the streets and the police seemingly are only employed to try and contain the “destruction.”

As of now, 15 police officers have been injured. As the NY Post reported, “Baltimore police officers were injured on Monday as rioters threw bricks, broke windows, looted businesses and burned patrol cars in violent protests following the funeral of a black man who died after he was injured in police custody. The riots broke out just a few blocks from the site of the funeral of 25-year-old Freddie Gray in northwest Baltimore and then spread through other parts of the city in the most violent demonstrations since looting in Ferguson, Missouri, last year.

Television images showed mobs of rioters jumping on top of a police car, destroying a taxi and setting two other patrol cars on fire after teenaged crowds ignored calls to disperse and clashed with lines of hundreds of police. Gangs had threatened to target police officers, local law enforcement said. Schools, businesses and train stations closed in Baltimore, a city of 662,000 people 40 miles (64 km) from the nation’s capital.”

So we are watching the result of a social media post calling for a “purge” for Monday at 3pm. But this is not just about the death of Freddie Gray, this is about something far more tragic: the breakdown of the inner city and the black community.

Where are the parents of these kids? Where are the adults and community pastors? Why are these kids responding to this call for violence instead of heading home and preparing for end of year final exams? Does anyone believe these looted businesses will be restored — therefore black unemployment in Baltimore will be even worse. Perhaps if there were a thriving job market and better opportunities, these black teens would be working in these stores, not looting them.

When I was watching the TV reports, Baltimore looked more like East Jerusalem than an American city with a proud patriotic heritage — Ft. McHenry the birthplace of our national anthem. And this is a city just some 40 miles away from our nation’s capitol — where is the leadership that demands this behavior is unacceptable?

The Baltimore police are showing incredible restraint because we all know the liberal progressive media is just waiting for some unarmed — although I consider tossing a brick a projectile — black kid to get shot.

My greatest fear is that there will come a day when police basically leave the urban communities to their own devices — in other words, abandon them and let them be overrun by gangs and other perpetrators of deplorable behavior. After all, the anarchist sentiment is to not abide by the rule of law — but rather to take matters into the hands of the mob and establish the rule of mobocracy. And if there are no elected officials willing to support the police — realizing that there are bad apples in any batch — then what is the motivation for police officers to patrol those disrespectful and unwelcoming streets?

Freddie Gray tragically lost his life, we know little about how or why. What we do know is that the black community of Baltimore is not comporting itself in a manner that will garner sympathy — but rather contempt.

The joys of living in the post-racial world of the left. It is obscene, not just that a segment of the black community should be acting out like this, but that the issues actually facing their community go unaddressed.

Update: At Powerline, Paul Mirengoff makes the point that these riots are not about racism or the Baltimore City Police:

The Post’s reporting suggests that, at root, the protests aren’t about the police department (which, as noted, is not a White institution and almost certainly not a racist one). One of the protest leaders said:

Officials are not interested in bettering our neighborhoods. People are tired of their quality of life, and they’re frustrated nobody helps them. They want to be heard, and they will do what it takes.

In other words, a population grown dependent on public officials is lashing out because said officials aren’t helping them attain the quality of life they desire.

I agree that the hard-working people of Baltimore have been let down by public officials. For one thing, liberal public policy has encouraged dependence on “officials.” For another, liberal housing policy helped produce the economic crisis that hit Baltimore so hard. In addition, liberal education policy has undermined educational opportunity. And now, liberal immigration policy seems determined to bring in foreign laborers to compete for jobs with hard-working, low-income Americans.

I find it depressing to see Baltimore in such a sorry state while Washington, D.C., fueled by the federal government, flourishes by comparison.

Obama spoke up on just that topic today, claiming that if Republicans would just pass an infrastructure bill, that would solve the problems actually at the root of the rioting. The left is completely out of ideas at this point. The solutions tried since the Great Society have not simply failed, but have made matters worse, and the only option remaining for the left is to pretend that the problems plaguing inner city blacks are all external. One wonders how much longer that canard will work?

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The Watcher's Question -- How Would You Improve Race Relations In America?

Each week the Watcher's Council holds a forum. This week's topic is "how would you improve race relations in America." Having been invited to respond, here is the extended version of my answer. A shorter version will appear at the Watcher's forum.

Update: The Forum has now been posted. There are several very good answers to the question. Do pay the forum a visit.

There will always be some degree of tribalism, it being human nature. But racism today is largely absent from this country. Those who harbor "racist" views are relegated to the very fringes of society. Virtually all Americans of whatever color or political persuasion would like to see nothing more than blacks fully embracing the opportunities life in this nation offers, and enjoying the fruits of their efforts equally with all others. So why are race relations problematic today, and why, by all metrics, are black Americans worse off than others? It can all be summed up in one picture:

This picture is from one of Rev. Al's protests a few years ago. The sign the woman is holding up says everything. Racism is no longer a real issue in society, but the left must maintain the canard that it is. Blacks must be made to see themselves as permanent victims of racism and as being championed by the race hustlers of the left. Moreover, it's important to note the poor grammar used on the sign. It screams out that the woman who wrote it has been failed by whatever schools she attended, thus limiting her opportunities to thrive in America.

So with that in mind, the first thing to understand about race relations is that the left are invested in seeing that the "racial divide" remains as wide as possible. This is political, as it has been since the early 60's, when the marxist "new left" -- our modern left -- made common cause with the heirs of Martin Luther King's civil rights movement. They morphed that movement from an effort to build a color blind society with equality of opportunity for all into a color centric, unified block of people who are fed daily a tautology that they are, and will ever be, permanently victimized by white conservatives. Actual history of support for blacks and civil rights was ignored or rewritten, and it was done so effectively that, to this day, blacks vote 90% as a block for Democrats. If the modern left ever loses even a portion of that block of support, it would be catastrophic. While quite literally everyone I know on the right would like to heal the "racial divide," for the left, their very political survival depends on using it to "divide and conquer."

Thus do you have Rep. John Lewis claiming that any effort to insure the integrity of the vote, something that should be of greater importance to blacks than any other racial group, is actually an effort to deprive blacks of their right to vote. Thus do you have a man at the pinnacle of academia, Harvard Prof. Henry Gates, and other black intellectuals teaching their students about critical race theory, color blind racism, white privilege, and to believe that black slavery was an unpardonable sin such that, irrespective of today's reality, they should keep their two hundred year old racial grievances alive until all blacks are paid reparations. Thus do you have the Department of Justice using disparate impact theory to claim that racism is rampant, despite the fact that they can find no actual incidents of racism in any individual instance. For the modern left, it is critical to keep blacks beliving that all of America today is nothing more than 1954 Selma, Alabama writ large.

The second thing to understand is that blacks have paid a heavy price indeed for their Faustian bargain with the left. By virtually every metric, while the lives of blacks have improved, and while many black individuals have been able to embrace the opportunities this country has to offer, a very substantial portion of blacks have not. It is obscene that, in America, some 25% of blacks live in poverty. It is obscene that, where in 1965, less than 30% of black children were born into a single parent family, that number is now over 70%. It is obscene that that 30 to 40 percent of inner city kids don’t graduate from school, and a very substantial number who do graduate are functionally illiterate. It is obscene that blacks are seven times more likely to commit violent crime than other races. And it is obscene that these problems are cyclical. Nothing the left has done for blacks has broken this cycle, and it all portends to get much worse as cities, where large numbers of blacks congregate and many of whom take public sector jobs, fall into bankruptcy and economic chaos from the failure of the blue political / economic model.

The third thing to understand is that the left takes blacks for granted. In the pantheon of left wing victim groups, perhaps no group gets more attention and ink, but falls lower on the scale of importance. No two things would perhaps benefit the black lower and middle class than good entry level jobs and better education. But those needs run up against the reality that unions, and especially teachers unions, are the financial foundation of the left. Thus did you have Obama, almost in his first days as President, end the school voucher program in the nation's worst performing school district. Thus do you have the D.C. city council voting to, in essence, keep Walmart from opening stores in their district. And thus do you have Obama on the cusp of legalizing millions of Central and South American illegal aliens -- nearly all of whom will be competing for jobs with the black lower and middle class -- in order to gain Decomcrat voters. When it comes to blacks, the left feels no need to balance their needs against those of leftwing economic interests because they have the only thing they need from blacks -- their votes -- already locked up.

The fourth thing to understand is the race card. The race card has been incredibly powerful tool, and the left has not hesitated to use it whenever possible since the 1960's. It has been used to silence all debate and end careers. It serves the triparte purpose of mining white guilt, keeping the focus off of the real problems in the black community, and keeping blacks focused on nursing historical racial grievances. How many blacks today see imaginary racism as their greatest threat? And when was the last time conservatives made an actual, concerted push to reach out to blacks? The answer to that last question is never. The RNC at the national level spends next to nothing on reaching out, having written off the black vote since 1964.

So, how to improve race relations? The answer in today's post-racial America starts and ends with politics. Conservatives must convince blacks that they have their best interests at heart -- that we see them as equal members in the melting pot. Conservatives must also convince blacks that the solutions we propose will, in the long term, work to their advantage. When conservatives call for the end to teacher's unions, no single group of people would benefit more from that then blacks. When conservative call for an end to, or at least a lowering of, the minimum wage, no single group of people would benefit more from that then blacks. When conservatives call for altering laws that decrease the stability of the family unit, no single group of people would benefit more from that then blacks. Conservative must make their case, both that they have black Americans interests firmly at heart, and that blacks have been sorely used by the left.

But to do that, conservatives have to break through a wall of lies and propaganda from the left, at the national level, but most importantly, at the local level. They need to appear at every black forum to make their case, from the NAACP to Howard University to the inner city schools and the local black churches, despite the fact that they will be buried under an avalanche of race cards. And they need to become vociferous in immediately responding to the race card whenever it is played. All of that requires determination, money, and conviction. Rand Paul has flirted with it, and my hat is off to him for at least making some efforts in this regard, but it needs to become a focus for conservatives and Republicans alike, at all levels. That and only that is how you will improve race relations in America.

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The Left Reaps The Racial Whirlwind In Ferguson

Last night, during the latest protests in Ferguson, Missouri, over alleged racism, two police officers were shot. This from Fox:

The gunman who shot two Missouri police officers early Thursday at a protest outside the Ferguson police headquarters remained at large, and a top law enforcement official said it was only "by God's grace" that the two cops - one of whom was hit in the face - are expected to survive. . .

The police officers, one a member of Belmar's force and the other from another county police department, were part of a 25-man police line at the embattled headquarters, where Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson had announced his resignation hours earlier. Witnesses reported hearing as many as four shots and seeing the flash of a muzzle about 125 yards away from the police . . .

'This is what they wanted to happen'- Ferguson police officer reportedly said after the shooting . . .

The police officers, both men, were not named, but authorities said one is a 32-year-old from suburban Webster Groves and the other was described as a 41-year-old officer from St. Louis County. The Webster Groves officer was hit in the the cheek and the bullet stopped behind his ear, Belmar said. Doctors are deciding how to best remove the bullet.

The St. Louis County officer suffered a gunshot wound to his shoulder, and the bullet exited his middle back, Belmar said. Both were taken to a local hospital. Their injuries were described as "very serious," but not life-threatening.

The protest began at about 5:30 p.m., after Jackson stepped down. His resignation came after months of controversy and a grand jury decision and a separate Justice Department report that cleared a white former Ferguson police officer, Darren Wilson, of civil rights charges in the shooting of black 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson last summer. Wilson has since resigned. A separate Justice Department report found a profit-driven court system and widespread racial bias in the city police department. . . .

This is the racial whirlwind -- lives ruined, people injured, possibly killed, the nation left with an ever widening racial divide while real race based societal problems are ingnored. And its a very safe bet that whoever shot the officers was one of the many inflamed by the overt and blatant race hustling of Eric Holder, the DOJ, Al Sharpton and others.

This travesty began on 9 August 2014 of last year, when white Ferguson PD Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed the black "gentle giant," Michael Brown, who was in the process of attacking the officer. Within days, Al Sharpton was on the ground in Ferguson to get his piece of the racial spoils, Eric Holder announced that the DOJ would be doing a civil rights investigation, and a cadre of professional agitators from "groups like the ANSWER Coalition, the New Black Panthers, the Revolutionary Communist Party, the Organization for Black Struggle and the Soros-linked U.S. Human Rights Network" descended on Ferguson to play this incident for all the racial gold it was worth. One time civil rights hero, now a traitor to Rev. Martin Luther King's noble cause, Rep. John Lewis was busy leading the Congressional Black Caucus in a "hands up, don't shoot" display, alleging that Brown was executed by the cracker racist cop while he was meekly trying to surrender. And last week, at his speech on the 50th anniversary of the "Bloody Sunday" civil rights march in Selma, President Obama pointed to alleged racism in the Ferguson Police Department as proof that racism still casts a "long shadow" on our evil country.

For the race hustlers in and out of government, America must always be portrayed as 1950's Selma, else they lose their power. And God forbid that blacks, who for half a century have voted 90% as a block for the left, begin to question whether they are being misled by their political masters and overseers.

The trigger for last night's protest, and presumably its violence, were DOJ reports issued last week. One, an investigation of the Darren Wilson - Michael Brown incident, wholly and completely exonerated Officer Wilson. The DOJ found, just like the Grand Jury, that all credible evidence supported Officer Wilson's account of the incident. There was no question of wrongdoing, let alone racial bias evident in the altercation from start to fatal finish.

The second DOJ report issued last week, (copy here), claiming that the Ferguson PD was riddled with racism, was nothing more or less than pure bullshit. The only evidence of racism that the DOJ produced, besides noting a few non-pc jokes that were passed to some people in the department, was statistical -- the so called "disparate impact" theory so beloved of the left because it allows them to claim and prosecute for racism without having to show any actual, you know, racism. The "data" from Ferguson PD arrests and citations showed that blacks were being stopped, cited, searched and arrested at more frequent intervals than whites relative to their population in Ferguson. At no point did the DOJ make any effort to drill down to each individual incident to determine if there was racism animating the officers' decisions. (They did show that some officers, race unknown, acted like horse's asses on occasion, but that is as much a surprise as observing that water is wet).

In truth, given that, according to DOJ statistics, blacks commit crimes in far higher number relative to their population than whites, it would be a surprise in any city in America if blacks were not being stopped, cited, searched and arrested at more frequent intervals than whites relative to their population. The numbers tells us nothing other than there is a problem. Whether racism lies at the heart of it requires a whole other level of analysis. But the left, and the DOJ today is a left wing snake pit, is happy to use disparate impact theory alone to claim racism. As Thomas Sowell opined this past week, the disparate impact theory is a left wing racket.

The other Justice Department report, . . . -- "Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department" -- was a complete contrast [to the fact based report exonerating Officer Wilson]. Sweeping assumptions take the place of facts, and misleading statistics are thrown around recklessly. This second report is worth reading, just to get a sense of the contrast with the first.

According to the second report, law enforcement in Ferguson has a "disparate impact" on blacks and is "motivated" by "discriminatory intent."

"Disparate impact" statistics have for decades been used, in many different contexts, to claim that discrimination was the reason why different groups are not equally represented as employees or in desirable positions or -- as in this case -- in undesirable positions as people arrested or fined.

Like many other uses of "disparate impact" statistics, the Justice Department's evidence against the Ferguson police department consists of numbers showing that the percentage of people stopped by police or fined in court is larger than the percentage of blacks in the local population.

The implicit assumption is that such statistics about particular outcomes would normally reflect the percentage of people in the population. But, no matter how plausible this might seem on the surface, it is seldom found in real life, and those who use that standard are seldom, if ever, asked to produce hard evidence that it is factually correct, as distinct from politically correct. . . .

The Supreme Court ruled several years ago that the disparate impact theory alone could not be used to prove racism in the employment context. Since then, the DOJ has been at great pains to keep the Supreme Court from ruling on the disparate impact theory in any other context. It is the single best weapon in their arsenal for making out charges of racism, whether any exists or not in a given situation. In this case, the DOJ's use of disparate impact to smear the Ferguson PD was nothing more than race hustling at its worst.

But, the report served its purpose. Ever since the thug Michael Brown was killed, the race hustlers have been demanding the sacrifice of Officer Wilson and the Ferguson PD on the alter of racial grievances. Well, they've gotten a goodly portion of it. Officer Wilson, wholly exonerated of any wrongdoing by a grand jury and a DOJ investigation, has had his life ruined and has left the Ferguson PD. The police chief of the Ferguson PD has resigned in the wake of DOJ report finding racism rampant in the Ferguson PD. And last night, two innocent police officers were gunned down in yet another race baiting protest. So, Al, Eric and crew, are you satisfied yet?

The left have sown the wind with their race baiting. Last night, they reaped the whirlwind.

Update: Via Instapundit, "IN FERGUSON? IN AMERICA. 'The most-effective left-wing activist in Ferguson has got to be Eric Holder’s Justice Department:'"

. . . In a press conference, Holder decried last year’s riots, claiming that “violence is never justified,” before going on brazenly to justify the violence: “[S]een in this context—amid a highly toxic environment, defined by mistrust and resentment, stoked by years of bad feelings, and spurred by illegal and misguided practices—it is not difficult to imagine how a single tragic incident set off the city of Ferguson like a powder keg.”

Holder’s claim is that while Darren Wilson didn’t murder Michael Brown, in a way, the entire system did. This type of racial grievance-fueling is like a shot of straight adrenaline to the agitators of Anonymous and their fellow travelers on the professional far left. One can’t help but marvel at the outgoing attorney general’s chutzpah as he condemns Wednesday’s shooting as a “cowardly” and “senseless” act. Senseless? For anyone who’s spent the last eight months watching Holder’s cynical manipulation of the protests in Ferguson, Wednesday’s shooting made all the sense in the world.

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Nothing More Racist (Or Regressive) Than A "Progressive"

Pat Condell hits the nail on the head in his discussion of those who style themselves "progressives," from their complete lack of intellectual honesty to their regressive politics to their racism of low expectations:



Pat's take misses on one point and only alludes to another worthy of more specific citation. Condell describes the world view of "progressives" correctly, even down to their view of the West as imperialists with the stain of original sin (while ignoring that the most imperialist force in world history has been Islam). It is worth noting that this view comes directly from Karl Marx and his theory that all history is a struggle between the oppressed and the oppressors. In the progressive world view, we are the oppressors while anyone who can be shoehorned into a victim group are the oppressed entitled to permanent special treatment.

What Condell misses in his analysis is the animus of progressives towards Christianity. To understand fully the motivation of progressives, one must note their abhorrence of Christianity. Christianity is the foundation of Western civilization; progressive are warring against it. Christianity must be removed from the public square for "progressives" to achieve their goal of remaking society with themselves as the sole arbiters of morality. Thus the "progressive" treatment of Islam is more nuanced than simply that "brown skinned" people are not to be held to the same standards. Muslims also seek to displace Christianity, and thus they are, in many ways, allied with progressives.

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