Tag Archives: politics

The Philadelphia Shooting

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The shooting in Philadelphia Wednesday in which six cops were shot while trying to serve a drug crime-related warrant illustrates a couple of things.

One is the naked gun-control politicization of any event involving firearms inflicted on us by Progressive-Democrat politicians. This is illustrated by Party Presidential candidate and Senator Kamala Harris (D, CA) going on television just an hour into this day-into-nighttime event—an hour!—to push for gun controls because this guy was using a gun.  Never mind that she knew nothing about the event as it unfolded, here was a chance to make personally beneficial political hay, and Harris jumped on it with both feet.

The Philadelphia Mayor, Jim Kenney (D), also is all over television demanding more gun control laws.

The other thing demonstrates just how deep and slimy is the cesspool into which Harris jumped with both her feet, and how foolish the Philadelphia mayor looks with his virtue signalling.

The perp here had his guns illegally. Nor was he barred from legally possessing guns because of any old felony.  His were all gun-related.

His first arrest when he was 18 years old was in 2001 for having a gun with an altered serial number, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
[He] has been arrested around a dozen times since he was 18, including being convicted six times on charges that involved illegal possession of guns, drug dealing, and aggravated assault.

Gun control laws don’t work.

Progressive-Democrats just want use them to pander and virtue signal while along the way disarming the rest of us.

And a bonus third thing: police actually are at great pains to take folks alive,

A US Attorney’s Statement

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In the aftermath of the Philadelphia shooting, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania William M McSwain issued this statement:

Statement by United States Attorney William M. McSwain on the Shooting of Six Philadelphia Police Officers
What I witnessed last night was true heroism by the Philadelphia police.  But the crisis was precipitated by a stunning disrespect for law enforcement—a disrespect so flagrant and so reckless that the suspect immediately opened fire on every single officer within shooting distance.  Only by the grace of God did they survive.
Where does such disrespect come from?
There is a new culture of disrespect for law enforcement in this City that is promoted and championed by District Attorney Larry Krasner—and I am fed up with it.
It started with chants at the DA’s victory party—chants of “F*** the police” and “No good cops in a racist system.”
We’ve now endured over a year and a half of the worst kinds of slander against law enforcement—the DA routinely calls police and prosecutors corrupt and racist, even “war criminals” that he compares to Nazis.
This vile rhetoric puts our police in danger.  It disgraces the Office of the District Attorney.  And it harms the good people in the City of Philadelphia and rewards the wicked.
The alleged shooter last night, Maurice Hill, is a previously convicted felon with a long rap sheet.  We have plenty of criminal laws in this City—but what we don’t have is robust enforcement by the District Attorney.  Instead, among other things, we have diversionary programs for gun offenses, the routine downgrading of charges for violent crime, and entire sections of the criminal code that are ignored.
The criminal laws in this City—and especially the existing gun laws and drug laws—should be aggressively enforced in order to protect the public and the police.  My Office is doing all that we can.  We have prosecuted 70% more violent crime cases this year than we did last year, in response to the District Attorney’s lawlessness.  But it is now time for the District Attorney and his enablers to stop making excuses for criminals.  It is time for accountability.  It is time to support law enforcement and to put the good people of this City first.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office, in conjunction with the Philadelphia police and our federal partners, is investigating the horrible events of last night and we are considering all options at our disposal.  We will do everything that we can to support our brothers and sisters in the Philadelphia Police Department and ensure justice is done.
To the officers involved last night—those who were wounded and those who rushed to defend them—and to their families, I say thank you.  The whole City thanks you.  We owe you more than we can ever repay.

What he said.

Democracy is Terrorism

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That’s the openly stated position of the People’s Republic of China.  PRC President Xi Jinping now has said, through his government’s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs of the State Council spokeswoman Xu Luying, that he

condemned what [the State Council] described as “terrorist-like” attacks on its citizens by pro-democracy protesters.
“We express the strongest condemnation of these terrorist-like actions[.]”

Because pro-democracy demonstrators—who are the citizens of Hong Kong—in objecting to Xi’s weeks-long attempt to take complete control of the erstwhile semi-autonomous city, are terrorists.

And this from Xu:

Hong Kong’s radical violent elements have completely broken through the bottom line of the law, the bottom line of morality, and the bottom line of human nature.

Never mind that the Hong Kong police have done precisely that: using strong-arm tactics—truncheons and beatings, on top of tear gas—to quell nearly universally peaceful protests.

Never mind Xi’s attempts to intimidate the people of Hong Kong by massing PLA units just outside the city and threatening to inflict a Tiananmen Square assault on the city.

Here, too, is the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Carrie Lam, with her crocodile tears:

Take a minute to think, look at our city, our home; do you all really want to see it pushed into an abyss?

No, they don’t. That’s why they’re in the streets, trying to protect Hong Kong from the power grab and threatened occupation of Lam’s bosses in Beijing.

On the other hand, the thought of democracy does truly terrify Xi.

In Which the 9th Gets One Right

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Facebook’s use of the output of its facial recognition software—imagery of individuals’ faces—without those individuals’ prior permission can be contested in court, according to the Ninth Circuit.  Facebook had demurred when the case was brought.

On Thursday, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected Facebook’s efforts to dismiss the ongoing class-action lawsuit, which could potentially require the company to pay billions in compensation.
The lawsuit dates back to 2015 when three Facebook users living in the state [Illinois] claimed the tech giant had violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, which requires companies to obtain consent when collecting their biometric information.

Judge Sandra Ikuta, writing for the court, wrote:

We conclude that the development of a face template using facial-recognition technology without consent (as alleged here) invades an individual’s private affairs and concrete interests.

Yewbetcha.  However, the courts, ultimately, the Supreme Court, need, in the end, to rule decisively that no company gets to steal a man’s personally identifying information—which his face assuredly is in this day of highly accurate facial recognition software—and theft is what it is when the data are taken without permission.

It’s even worse when these data, these facial recognition image outputs, are monetized for the benefit of the company in question with that done behind the individuals’ backs, too.

Threats

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Progressive-Democrats are nakedly trying to intimidate the Supreme Court to get their own way—and they’ve made their threat overt, in an Amici Curiae brief filed with the Supreme Court concerning New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc v City of New York, which is a case involving New York City’s ban on transporting “licensed, locked and unloaded handgun[s] to a home or shooting range outside city limits.”

Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D, RI), Richard Blumenthal (D, CT), Mazie Hirono (D, HI), Richard Durbin (D, IL), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D, NY) made their threat thusly:

The Supreme Court is not well. And the people know it. Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be “restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics.” Particularly on the urgent issue of gun control, a nation desperately needs it to heal.

The threat to the Court’s safety, its independence, couldn’t be more clear.  Never mind that the influence of politics is made manifest by this threat.

We can’t afford this in our government. At any level.

The despicable brief can be read here.